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replaying the scene. “Said he’d agree to thirteen, he’d given us thirteen, and that was all we were getting.”
    “I’m assuming that something has brought this case back to active status?”
    “Active only in the sense that I’d like to see if we can get Woods to tell us where he buried Williams.”
    “Why now?”
    “Because the boy’s mother is dying. She wants to be buried with her son.”
    “Oh, that’s rough,” Portia acknowledged. They’d all faced a lot of rough scenarios. Very few of their cases ever had happy endings.
    “This woman—Madeline Williams—courageously sat through every minute of the hearings. Sat by and listened while Woods described in horrific detail what he’d done to these children. Sat there, knowing that he’d done pretty much the same to her boy, but she never said a word.” John swallowed hard. “After the sentencing, as Woods was being led away, Mrs. Williams reached out for him, begged him to tell her where they would find her son. Woods asked her who her son was. ‘Christopher Williams,’ she told him. He just smiled and looked at this grieving woman and said, ‘I’m sure he was a lovely boy.’ Turned his back and they led him away, leaving her standing there, sobbing,
knowing.
”
    “One of those moments that just stays with you,” Portia whispered.
    “It’s one of the great regrets of my life that I wasn’t able to protect Madeline Williams from that moment. That I wasn’t able to find that boy and return him to his family. I promised her that I’d do whatever I could to find her son, but once the case was over, there were others…” John shrugged his shoulders. “There was never any time. Now she’s dying, and if there’s any way we could give her this…”
    “I understand,” Portia said, and she did. Every agent had at least one case that haunted him or her. The unsolved case, the missing closure for heartbroken loved ones, the killer who was never found. “I just don’t understand how I fit into this.”
    “If I could do this myself, I would. But if Sheldon Woods had any reason to suspect I had an interest in this, he’d never give an inch.”
    “Because you arrested him.”
    “That and other reasons.”
    “What other reasons?”
    “Woods felt that by sharing his kills with me, by letting me ‘witness’ his depravity, that we’d become sort of soul mates.”
    “Jesus. Was he serious?” Portia’s stomach turned.
    “The bastard felt I’d betrayed him by arresting him.”
    “It never occurred to him that maybe you were only keeping him on the line long enough to try to pinpoint his location?”
    “At first he’d cut the conversation short so we couldn’t trace the calls. Later, though, it was as if he’d lost all sense of fear of being found. Almost as if he really believed I wasn’t actually looking for him, but somehow participating,
sanctioning…
”
    “Dear God, John.”
    He stood and ended the meeting abruptly.
    “I want you to go to Arrowhead Prison and talk to Sheldon Woods. Find out how to persuade him to give up Christopher Williams’s body.”
    “All right.” Portia picked up the file and tucked it under her arm.
    “Madeline Williams’s daughter tells me that her mother only has maybe three weeks left,” John told her. “That’s how long you have to make a deal with Woods and find the boy’s remains. Use the time wisely.”

FOUR
    T he air in the tiny, windowless room was stale and smelled of sweat, Lysol, and anxiety. Portia grimaced before taking a seat on one of two orange plastic chairs, both marked with questionable smears and bolted to the floor. Whoever had cleaned the room last had apparently focused all his efforts on the floor, which was spotless except for a few black heel marks under the table. Fortunately, Portia’d had the good sense to wear old pants and a matching jacket in a dull shade of brown. Whatever the last visitor left on the chair would probably blend right in.
    When the door