“I’m so sorry,” the woman said.

Back in the truck, she said to Dwayne, “They haven’t found her yet.”

“That’s not good, is it?” he said.

“It’s only a matter of time,” she said.

Dwayne thought about that for three seconds, then said, “I could definitely go for something to eat.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Ethan ran into my arms as I walked through the front door of my parents’ house. I hoisted him into the air and kissed both his cheeks.

“I want to go home,” he said.

“Not yet, sport,” I said. “Not yet.”

Ethan shook his head. “I want to go home and I want Mom.”

“Like I said, not right yet.”

He squirmed angrily in my arms to the point that I had to put him down. He strode forcefully down the hall and out the front door.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going home,” he said.

“The hell you are,” I said and went out after him, grabbing him around the chest and swinging him up into the air. I brought him back inside, plunked him on the floor, gave him a light swat on the butt, and said, “Go find something to do.”

He vanished into the kitchen, where I heard him open the fridge. Ethan usually enjoyed his time here, but he hadn’t been in his own house since early yesterday morning. And as much as my parents loved Ethan, he was probably wearing out his welcome.

“Sorry,” I said to Mom.

“It’s okay,” she said. “He just misses her. David, what’s going on? Why did they take your car away?”

Dad, who’d just come in, said, “You should see what they’re doing at his house. Tearing the goddamn place apart, that’s what they’re doing.”

I steered Mom outside onto the porch where Ethan couldn’t hear. “The police think I did something to Jan,” I said.

“Oh, David.” She was more sorrowful than surprised.

“I think they think I killed her,” I said.

“Why?” she said. “Why would they think such a thing?”

“Things are… things seem to be pointing in my direction,” I said. “Some of it’s just coincidence, like the fact that no one’s actually seen Jan since I took her to Lake George Friday. This mix-up with the online tickets-”

“What mix-up?”

“But then there’s other things, things that don’t make sense, where people have been telling lies. Like up in Lake George, whoever runs that store up there.”

“David, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would people tell lies about you? Why would someone want to get you in trouble?”

“The boy needs a lawyer, that’s what he needs,” Dad said through the screen door.

“I need to go up there,” I said. “I need to find out why that person’s lying.”

“Is anyone listening to me?” Dad said.

“Dad, please,” I said.

“Your father’s right,” Mom said. “If the police think you had something to do with whatever happened to Jan-”

“I don’t have time now,” I said. “I have to find Jan, and I have to find out why things are being twisted to look like…”

“What?” Mom asked.

“Reeves,” I said.

“The councilor?” Mom said. “Stan Reeves?”

“I was thinking he only just found out about this when I ran into him at the police station. But what if he’s known about it for a while?”

“What are you talking about?” Dad asked.

“And Elmont Sebastian,” I said. “I can’t believe-I know they’ve got it in for me, but they wouldn’t…”

My mind raced. It didn’t take long to connect the dots, but what sort of picture did they form, really?

If something happened to Jan, and if I could be framed for it, I wouldn’t be able to write any more stories challenging Star Spangled Corrections’ bid for a prison in Promise Falls.

There wouldn’t be any more attempts by me to get stories into the paper about how Sebastian was bribing councilors-at least Reeves-to see things his way.

Was that possible? Or was I nuts?

Was it worth going to that much trouble to silence one reporter? I did work for the only paper in town, and despite its decline, the Standard still wielded some influence in Promise Falls. And I was the only one at the paper who seemed to give a shit about this issue. Not just whether for-profit prisons were a good idea, but what Star Spangled Corrections was willing to do to get its way.

And while taking me out of the picture wouldn’t solve all of Elmont Sebastian’s problems, it sure wouldn’t hurt.

But even if it was true, and Elmont Sebastian was manipulating things behind the scenes to have me neutralized, how was I to explain what I’d learned in Rochester? About Jan’s past, or lack of it?

“I need a glass of water,” I said suddenly.

Mom led me into the kitchen, where Ethan was lying on the floor, his head pressed sideways to the linoleum, running a car back and forth in his field of vision, making soft, contented engine noises. Mom ran the tap until the water was cold, filled a glass and handed it to me.

I took a long drink and then said, “There’s something else.”

My parents waited.

“Something about Jan.”

I led them out of the kitchen so Ethan wouldn’t hear what I had to say.

I hit the road half an hour later in my father’s car. Now, having done it, I wasn’t sure telling my parents about what I’d learned in Rochester had been such a good idea. Dad had gone into a rant about incompetent civil servants who’d probably issued Jan the wrong birth certificate.

“I’ll just bet,” he said, “she sent in her particulars to get a birth certificate, and they gave her one for some other Jan Richler, and when she got it in the mail she never even looked at what it said. They pay these people a fortune and they have jobs for life so they don’t care how good they do them.”

But Mom was deeply troubled by the news, and spent much of her time looking out the window into the backyard where Ethan was now whacking croquet balls all over the place. At one point, she said, “What will we tell him? Who are we supposed to tell him his mother really is?”

I floated my theory about the witness protection program, which Dad found plausible enough that it distracted him from his tirade about government slackers. (It never seemed to occur to him that he had been a municipal employee himself.) His willingness to embrace the theory made me doubt its validity.

Dad was still going on about how I needed to get a lawyer even as I got behind the wheel of his car. On this, I had to admit he was talking sense, but I couldn’t bring myself at this point to explain everything that had happened in the last two days to someone new.

I had too much to do.

To placate him, I said, “You want me to get a lawyer? Go ahead and find me one. Just not someone who handles driveway disputes.”

I kept watching my rearview mirror all the way up to Lake George. I wasn’t expecting to see the blue Buick Jan had spotted the last time I’d driven up here, but I did have a feeling that Detective Duckworth, or one of his minions, would be keeping an eye on me. If Duckworth truly believed I was a suspect, it didn’t make sense for him to let me out of his sight.

If I was being followed, they were doing a good job of it. No one car caught my eye the entire drive up. I pulled off the road and into the parking lot of Ted’s Lakeview General Store shortly after three in the afternoon.

The place was far from jumping. No one was pumping gas, and there were only a couple of cars in the lot. Assuming one belonged to whoever was minding the store, that meant maybe one customer inside.

The door jingled as I went in. A thin man in his late sixties or early seventies was behind the counter. At first I thought he was standing, then saw he was perched on the edge of a tall stool. He gave me half a nod, and half a smile, as I came in.

A plump woman already in the shop reached the counter before I did and set down a bag of Doritos, a king-sized Snickers bar, and a bottle of Diet Coke before him. He rang up her purchases, bagged them, and sent her on her way.