The trooper—a large, pleasant woman he recognized but couldn’t name—nodded but didn’t wave back. The morning sky was bright and cloudless, the temperature probably pushing fifty degrees, the snow long gone. He heard echoes of people who were already at work—hammering nails, scraping barnacles from boat-bottoms. The world felt delicate and kind of precious this morning. He unfolded the paper on the kitchen table. Jackson Pynne was there on the top left-hand side of the first page: DEVELOPER HELD ON CHARGES. Charlotte stood at the stove in her moose pajamas, making cheese and mushroom omelets, Sneakers at her feet, sleeping soundly. A sweeping symphonic music played from her CD box. On the top of the right-hand side, Luke saw: PRAYING WOMAN CASE STILL A MYSTERY. The subhead read: FBI to Take Over Investigation. “The AP picked up on the story, evidently,” he said. “They’re calling her ‘Praying Woman’ now.”
