Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

The police definitely
seem to think it’s … close to home
.
‘People think they know her because they read the
books growing up,’ I said.
‘I can see that,’ Boney said, nodding. ‘People want to
believe they know other people. Parents want to believe
they know their kids. Wives want to believe they know their
husbands.’
Another hour and the volunteer center began feeling like a
family picnic. A few of my old girlfriends dropped by to say
hello, introduce their kids. One of my mom’s best friends,
Vicky, came by with three of her granddaughters, bashful
tweens all in pink.
Grandkids. My mom had talked about grandkids a lot,
as if it were doubtlessly going to happen – whenever she
bought a new piece of furniture, she’d explain she favored
that particular style because ‘it’ll work for when there’s
grandkids.’ She wanted to live to see some grandkids. All
her friends had some to spare. Amy and I once had my
mom and Go over for dinner to mark The Bar’s biggest
week ever. I’d announced that we had reason to celebrate,
and Mom had leapt from her seat, burst into tears, and
hugged Amy, who also began weeping, murmuring from
beneath my mom’s smothering nuzzle, ‘He’s talking about
The Bar, he’s just talking about The Bar.’ And then my mom
tried hard to pretend she was just as excited about that.
‘
Plenty
of time for babies,’ she’d said in her most consoling

---

voice, a voice that just made Amy start to cry again. Which
was strange, since Amy had decided she didn’t want kids,
and she’d reiterated this fact several times, but the tears
gave me a perverse wedge of hope that maybe she was
changing her mind. Because there wasn’t really plenty of
time. Amy was thirty-seven when we moved to Carthage.
She’d be thirty-nine in October.
And then I thought: We’ll have to throw some fake
birthday party or something if this is still going on. 
We’ll
have to mark it somehow, some ceremony, for the
volunteers, the media – something to revive attention. I’ll
have to pretend to be hopeful
.
‘The prodijal son returns,’ said a nasally voice, and I
turned to see a skinny man in a stretched-out T-shirt next to
me, scratching a handlebar mustache. My old friend Stucks
Buckley, who had taken to calling me a prodigal son
despite not knowing how to pronounce the word, or what its
meaning was. I assume he meant it as a fancy synonym for
jackass. Stucks Buckley, it sounded like a baseball player’s
name, and that was what Stucks was supposed to be,
except he never had the talent, just the hard wish. He was
the best in town, growing up, but that wasn’t good enough.
He got the shock of his life in college when he was cut from
the team, and it all went to shit after. Now he was an odd-
job stoner with twitchy moods. He had dropped by The Bar
a few times to try to pick up work, but he shook his head at
every crappy day-job chore I offered, chewing on the inside
of his cheek, annoyed: 
Come on, man, what else you got,
you got to have something else
.
‘Stucks,’ I said by way of greeting, waiting to see if he
was in a friendly mood.

---

‘Hear the police are botching this royally,’ he said,
tucking his hands into his armpits.
‘It’s a little early to say that.’
‘Come on, man, these little pansy-ass searches? I
seen more effort put into finding the mayor’s dog.’ Stuck’s
face was sunburned; I could feel the heat coming off him as
he leaned in closer, giving me a blast of Listerine and
chaw. ‘Why ain’t they rounded up some people? Plenty of
people in town to choose from, they ain’t brought a single
one in? Not a 
single
one? What about the Blue Book
Boys? That’s what I asked the lady detective: What about
the Blue Book Boys? She wouldn’t even answer me.’
‘What are the Blue Book Boys? A gang?’
‘All those guys got laid off from the Blue Book plant last
winter. No severance, nothing. You see some of the
homeless guys wandering around town in packs, looking
real, real pissed? Probably Blue Book Boys.’
‘I’m still not following you: Blue Book plant?’
‘You know: River Valley Printworks. On edge of town?
They made those blue books you used for essays and shit
in college.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know.’
‘Now colleges use computers, whatnot, so – phwet! –
bye-bye, Blue Book Boys.’
‘God, this whole town is shutting down,’ I muttered.
‘The Blue Book Boys, they drink, drug, harass people. I
mean, they did that before, but they always had to stop, go
back to work on Monday. Now they just run wild.’
Stucks grinned his row of chipped teeth at me. He had
paint flecks in his hair; his summer job since high school,
housepainting.