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Arthur Vance stood beneath the yellow sodium-vapor light of the diner parking lot, his breath pluming in white, ragged clouds.
His black Lexus LS500 sat idling ten feet away, its climate control set to seventy-two degrees, its leather seats heated, its V8 engine purring with silent, obscene luxury.
He looked at the heated car.
Then he looked at the footprints the little girl’s split sneakers were leaving in the freezing slush along the edge of the dark highway.
Arthur stepped off the curb, his polished leather oxfords sinking into the slush, and began to follow the footprints into the dark.
The shoulder of Route 30 narrowed half a mile west of the diner, where the state highway crossed a seasonal creek bed through a reinforced concrete box culvert. Here, the streetlights died completely, leaving only the dark silhouettes of bare locust trees and tangled walls of multiflora rose briars clawing at the ditch.
