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

Is that a baked good in
your pocket or are you
…
‘Yeah. Nothing.’
‘Yester
day
. They went yester
day
, the jackasses.’ He
ducked, looked around, as if he worried they’d overheard
him. He leaned closer to me. ‘You go at night, that’s when
they’re there. Daytime, they’re down by the river, or out

---

flying a flag.’
‘Flying a flag?’
‘You know, sitting by the exits on the highway with
those signs: 
Laid Off, Please Help, Need Beer Money
,
whatever,’ he said, scanning the room. ‘Flying a flag, man.’
‘Okay.’
‘At night they’re at the mall,’ he said.
‘Then let’s go tonight,’ I said. ‘You and me and
whoever.’
‘Joe and Mikey Hillsam,’ Stucks said. ‘They’d be up for
it.’ The Hillsams were three, four years older than me, town
badasses. The kind of guys who were born without the fear
gene, impervious to pain. Jock kids who sped through the
summers on short, muscled legs, playing baseball, drinking
beer, taking strange dares: skateboarding into drainage
ditches, climbing water towers naked. The kind of guys who
would peel up, wild-eyed, on a boring Saturday night and
you knew something would happen, maybe nothing good,
but something. Of course the Hillsams would be up for it.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Tonight we go.’
My phone rang in my pocket. The thing didn’t turn off
right. It rang again.
‘You gonna get that?’ Stucks asked.
‘Nah.’
‘You should answer every call, man. You really should.’
There was nothing to do for the rest of the day. No
searches planned, no more flyers needed, the phones fully
manned. Marybeth started sending volunteers home; they
were just standing around, eating, bored. I suspected
Stucks of leaving with half the breakfast table in his

---

pockets.
‘Anyone hear from the detectives?’ Rand asked.
‘Nothing,’ Marybeth and I both answered.
‘That may be good, right?’ Rand asked, hopeful eyes,
and Marybeth and I both indulged him. Yes, sure.
‘When are you leaving for Memphis?’ she asked me.
‘Tomorrow. Tonight my friends and I are doing another
search of the mall. We don’t think it was done right
yesterday.’
‘Excellent,’ Marybeth said. ‘That’s the kind of action we
need. We suspect it wasn’t done right the first time, we do it
ourselves. Because I just – I’m just not that impressed with
what’s been done so far.’
Rand put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, a signal this
refrain had been expressed and received many times.
‘I’d like to come with you, Nick,’ he said. ‘Tonight. I’d
like to come.’ Rand was wearing a powder-blue golf shirt
and olive slacks, his hair a gleaming dark helmet. I pictured
him trying to hail-fellow the Hillsam brothers, doing his
slightly desperate one-of-the-guys routine – 
hey, I love a
good beer too, and how about that sports team of yours?
–
and felt a flush of impending awkwardness.
‘Of course, Rand. Of course.’
I had a good ten unscheduled hours to work with. My car
was being released back to me – having been processed
and vacuumed and printed, I assume – so I hitched a ride
to the police station with an elderly volunteer, one of those
bustling grandmotherly types who seemed slightly nervous
to be alone with me.
‘I’m just driving Mr Dunne to the police station, but I will

---

be back in less than half an hour,’ she said to one of her
friends. ‘No more than half an hour.’
Gilpin had not taken Amy’s second note into evidence;
he’d been too thrilled with the underwear to bother. I got in
my car, flung the door open, and sat as the heat drooled
out, reread my wife’s second clue: