“What does this mean?” Brian finally asked.

That Williams is the culprit here, Mary thought but didn’t say. She didn’t want to get into that again, because it was clear that Dennis didn’t agree with her theory. She didn’t feel like arguing with him, at least not until she knew a little bit more.

“It means that we have to go out to Upper Stretch Road to find that trailer,” Dennis said.

“But you heard her, Dennis,” Mary said. “They moved away. Polly’s gone.”

“I think he’s leading us there, Mary,” Brian said plaintively. “I think we’re supposed to go. The detective talked about the trailer, Bethany Cavendish did, and now that waitress.”

Mary remained silent. She couldn’t debate the point that it seemed as if Williams was, in fact, leading them to the trailer for some reason. She thought about that old comic strip of the carrot on a string leading the mule. This is what she felt like: led, played, not in control of anything she did.

Just as Dennis was bending into the driver’s seat, Brian said, “Wait. I have something to tell you.” They both looked at him. Mary braced herself for some acknowledgment that Brian had been in on it all along, or that Brian knew where Williams was but had not told them for some reason. But he only said, his voice soft and hesitant, “I met Polly.”

“You what?” Dennis asked.

“It was two weeks ago. I’d had too much to drink. This girl started following me around, and we ended up”-diverting his eyes from Mary now, refusing to look at her-“down in Chop Hall, by the kilns. She told me her name was Polly, and of course I didn’t believe her. I think I got mad. Irate. I screamed at her. I thought she was part of this, you know. I thought Williams had sent her there to show me up. The next day, this guy told me the story of Deanna Ward.”

“How old would Polly be?” asked Mary.

“Thirty-five?” Dennis guessed. “Forty?”

“It was hard to tell,” Brian said. “She looked-she looked young. But she was hiding her face. Her hair was over one eye and she kept turning to the side, like she was afraid she was going to reveal herself. Look, guys, I didn’t know what it meant. I would have told you if”-he looked at Mary, shame in his face-“if I thought it meant something.”

Mary couldn’t stifle the laughter that was in her throat then. She let it out and it crashed out into the air like an animal uncaged, her soul finally, after weeks of pressure, finding release in what Brian had said.

“What?” he asked, reddening.

She couldn’t answer. She only laughed, and when they were in the car and heading toward Upper Stretch Road, she was still laughing, giggling every now and then into her fist. “Shit,” she heard Brian mutter. But then he was laughing, too, and then Dennis, until they couldn’t contain themselves anymore.

How silly! thought Mary. Everything means something.

Upper Stretch Road was a sinking stretch of highway in northern Martin County. If they had felt as if they were in the backwoods at the Collinses’ house on During Street, then now they were beyond the pale of civilization. Rusted car hulks burned orange under the sun out in front lawns. A group of children, many of them in diapers, played inside the carcass of an old Cale school bus. The road was just a whisper now, nonexistent, pitted and damaged and crumbling down the hillside.

They drove for two or three miles. They were beginning to wonder if they had missed it when the forest to their right opened up and they saw the trailer. It was in a sad shape, dilapidated and caving, its facade red with rust. The color gave the impression of blood, and Mary could not help but feel that she was entering into the final chapter of Williams’s game. What would it be like, to find a lost girl? But what if the girl was dead and Williams had killed her? There were still so many questions-but there was something about this abandoned trailer out in this expanse of nothingness. An answer was in there. She knew it.

They got out of the Lexus and stomped through the high grass. The trailer had been set up on cinder blocks, and every time the wind blew the whole thing creaked, as if it were going to tip over and break apart into a thousand pieces. The sky was graying up now, and a little mist was beginning to fall. The grass swayed at their knees, and wisps of oak seed blew here and there, white as snow.

“Look,” Brian said, dragging up the remains of a tricycle out of the muck. The significance was clear: these are the things that had belonged to Polly. Finally, she was more than a misty apparition they were trying to find for credit in some stupid class. She was real, and they were standing outside the place where she had grown up.

They walked around to the back. An old children’s pool was there, turned upside down. A swing set without the swings. The ground here and there had been burned, and Mary thought about what Edna Collins had said about kids building fires on their property. It seemed that the same activities went on at this trailer, and suddenly Mary felt sad for Polly, that the girl had unwillingly caused all of this. And for what? Just because she bore a striking resemblance to a missing girl from Cale? There had to be more than that.

“Over here,” Dennis called.

He was standing on a small embankment that overlooked a stream. At the bottom of the embankment was a motorcycle. Its wheels were missing but the bike was otherwise intact. “What is that?” Brian said, pointing. They strained to see. “There,” he directed them, “painted on the side of the bike.”

“It looks like…stars,” Mary said.

“It’s his,” Brian said unequivocally. “Deanna’s father’s motorcycle.”

They went back to the trailer and looked in the dirty windows, swiping away the grime that had accumulated on the panes with their sleeves. There was no furniture inside. The walls and floor were stripped bare, and in one corner there was a lump of rags and trash. There was something about the lump, though, something angular and strange-

The lump moved.

Mary jumped back from the window. “What the hell is that?” asked Brian, who was standing next to her on a milk crate, looking in the kitchen window.

Mary looked back inside. The man was sitting up now, rubbing his eyes as if he were just waking up from a long sleep.

The mist had turned into a light rain, which now slanted down and ticked off the window, striking Mary sharply on the cheeks. She was too afraid to run or move or do much of anything but stare at the man. This, she thought. This is where it ends.

“What?” she said aloud. She didn’t know why she had said it, but it was the word that had come out, choked and broken like a gasp.

From across the room where he lay the man looked at her. He looked right at her. The window was so streaked that it looked as if the inside of the trailer was the inside of a lung, or a storm cloud-everything was blurred and stretched. The man got up and took a few steps toward the window.

“What the hell does he want?” Brian asked. He was suddenly at her arm, squeezing it, priming her maybe for a mad dash to the car.

The man slid open the window. It broke and cracked away from the nails that held it down to the rotted sill. The man leaned out as if he were serving them from a drive thru window. “Afternoon,” he said.

Mary felt his hot breath on her face. She tasted him-his breath was dirty, as if he had been eating soil. His teeth were ruined, and little wisps of oily hair splayed out on both sides of his head. But there was something attractive about the man, something Mary couldn’t identify. He had been someone’s lover once, a long time ago.

“You the folks here about Polly?” he asked.

Mary nodded. She was still locked in place, immobile.

“Sharon called me from the diner. That’s my girl. Said there were some kids down from DeLane looking into the Deanna Ward thing. Anyway. Said I might know something about that. I said, ‘Yes ma’am, I certainly do. Or I know someone who does.’”