Tom Archer was thirty-four years old and he had three rules for Sunday morning walks and it was no phones, no rushing and Poppy stayed where he could see her.
The third rule was the one that required the most obedience.
Poppy was seven and she approached paths the way she approached everything as though they were personally designed for her benefit, as though the world was a series of invitations to move faster than anyone around her was comfortable with.
"Poppy," he called. "Stay where I can see you."
"I am where you can see you," Poppy called back, which was the kind of response that was technically not wrong and practically entirely unhelpful.
Diane laughed beside him.
"She's your daughter," she said.
"She's absolutely your daughter," Tom said.
Diane took his hand.
They walked.
The park was quiet at this hour it just them and the birds and the particular Sunday morning light that made everything look slightly more beautiful than it actually was. Tom breathed it in , this was the point of the Sunday walks not the exercise, not even the fresh air exactly, but this breathing, this not being anywhere else.
Poppy had gone around the curve in the path.
Out of sight for two seconds.
Tom started walking faster.
"Poppy"he shouted
He came around the curve.
Poppy was standing completely still on the path ten meters ahead of him. She wasn't running or moving. Just standing with her arms at her sides and her head slightly tilted the way she tilted it when she was looking at something she was trying to understand.
Tom looked past her.
A man sitting against the oak tree with his back straight and his hands in his lap and his eyes closed and a blue mug on its side on the ground beside him, the coffee soaked dark into the earth.
Tom stopped walking.
"Poppy," he said, His voice came in a whisper a little quiet "Poppy come here."
Poppy didn't move.
"Poppy," He reached her in four steps and put his hands on her shoulder he gently turned her completely away from the tree, away from the man, towards him.
She looked up at him.
Her face was very still.
"Daddy," she said quietly, "Is the man sleeping?"
Tom looked at Diane over Poppy's head.
Diane had gone pale.
She came forward without being asked and crouched down and put her arms around Poppy and held her and said something low and calm into her daughter's hair while her eyes wide and frightened stayed on Tom.
Tom took out his phone.
His hands were shaking.
He had promised himself no phones on Sunday morning walks.
He dialed anyway.
The officer arrived in eleven minutes.
Detective James arrived in nineteen.
He ducked under the tape they had put tape up quickly, efficiently, the first officer on scene good at her job and walked to the oak tree and stood beside Richard Calloway and looked at him for a long time.
He looked peaceful.
James had been doing this for nineteen years and he knew that meant nothing.
He crouched.
Looked at the hands folded in the lap. The coffee mug on its side.
He looked at the chest he gasped 'a moth again '
Not beside him this time but on Richard's body.
James looked at it for a long time.
Then he stood up, looked at the pond he took out his notebook.
Wrote one line.
Richard Calloway. The pond. Sunday morning. The moth is on him this time.
He looked at the line.
Looked at Richard.
Thought about the name in his file Dr. Elena Voss, grief counselor, Mercer Street — and the appointment card found in Richard's wallet during the preliminary search.
Dr. E. Voss. Thursdays. 4pm.
He put his notebook away.
Took out his phone.
Looked at Sara's number.
Then at the family Tom and Diane Archer sat on a bench further down the path with a family liaison officer, Poppy between them, her face turned into her mother's coat.
He walked over.
Crouched down to Poppy's level.
She looked at him with the serious careful eyes of a child who had seen something she couldn't unfold yet.
"Hello," James said quietly. "My name is James, I'm going to make sure that man is looked after properly. Okay?"
Poppy looked at him.
"Was he sleeping?" she said.
James looked at her for a moment.
"He was very tired," he said gently. "He's resting now."
Poppy considered this.
Nodded once.
Put her face back in her mother's coat.
James stood.
Walked away from the family.
Took out his phone.
Called Sara.
She answered on the first ring.
"Richard Calloway," he said. "Grief counselor's client. Found in Holbrook Park twenty minutes ago." He paused. "Same method. Same signature."
Sara was quiet for one second.
"The moth?" she said.
"On his chest this time," James said. "Not beside him. On him."
Another silence.
"That's different," Sara said.
"Yes," James said.
"What does it mean?"
James looked at the oak tree. At the blue mug on its side in the wet grass. At Richard Calloway sitting with his hands in his lap and his eyes closed and his coat buttoned correctly and something small and white and deliberate placed above his heart.
"I don't know yet," he said.
He hung up.
Called Elena Voss.
It rang four times.
Five.
Six.
No answer.
James stood in Holbrook Park on a Sunday morning with the ducks on the pond and the grey light in the trees and a dead man against an oak tree and a phone ringing out in his ear.
He left a message.
"Elena," he said. "It's James. When you get this please call me back." A pause. "It's important."
He hung up.
Looked at the oak tree one more time.
Looked at the moth.
Thought about a retired nurse with steady hands who had found Nadia Petrova on a Monday morning and stayed at the park gate until she had to leave.
Thought about a name on page thirty-eight of a forty-three page file.
Webb, Carol. Retired. Formerly of Marsden Street Harton. Currently residing Ashford Hollow.
He wrote something in his notebook.
Looked at it.
Turned the page.
Started a new one.
That evening Karen Calloway arrived at her brother's house at one o'clock with a pot of lentil soup and her keys and the particular feeling she had been carrying since Thursday that something was wrong and she should have said so.
She knocked.
No answer.
She used her key.
The house was empty.
The kitchen was clean, the coffee press was on the counter. Margaret's mug was gone from the cupboard.
Karen stood in the kitchen for a long time.
Then her phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
An Ashford Hollow number she didn't recognize.
She answered.
"Ms Calloway?" said a voice, "My name is James. I'm a detective with Ashford Hollow police, I'm very sorry to be calling you like this."
Karen sat down on the kitchen floor.
She didn't know why she sat on the floor.
She just did.
She sat on Richard's kitchen floor and listened to what James said and outside the Sunday morning went on being ordinary around the house where a man had made coffee and talked to his wife's photograph and gone for his walk and not come back.