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

I specialize in trim work
, he’d say, and wait

---

for you to get the joke. If you didn’t laugh, he’d explain it.
‘So, the cops been out to the mall?’ Stucks asked. I
started a confused shrug.
‘Shit, man, didn’t you used to be a reporter?’ Stucks
always seemed angry at my former occupation, like it was
a lie that had stood too long. ‘The Blue Book Boys, they all
made themselves a nice little town over in the mall.
Squatting. Drug deals. The police run them out every once
in a while, but they’re always back next day. Anyway, that’s
what I told the lady detective: 
Search the fucking mall
.
Because some of them, they gang-raped a girl there a
month ago. I mean, you get a bunch of angry men together,
and things aren’t too good for a woman that comes across
them.’
On my drive to the afternoon search area, I phoned Boney,
started in as soon as she said hello.
‘Why isn’t the mall being searched?’
‘The mall will be searched, Nick. We have cops
heading over there right now.’
‘Oh. Okay. Because a buddy of mine—’
‘Stucks, I know, I know him.’
‘He was talking about all the—’
‘The Blue Book Boys, I know. Trust us, Nick, we got
this. We want to find Amy as much as you do.’
‘Okay, uh, thanks.’
My righteousness deflated, I gulped down my giant
Styrofoam cup of coffee and drove to my assigned area.
Three spots were being searched this afternoon: the Gully
boat launch (now known as the Place Nick Spent the
Morning of, Unseen by Anyone); the Miller Creek woods

---

(which hardly deserved the name; you could see fast-food
restaurants through the treeline); and Wolky Park, a nature
spot with hiking and horse trails. I was assigned to Wolky
Park.
When I arrived, a local officer was addressing a crowd
of about twelve people, all thick legs in tight shorts,
sunglasses, and hats, zinc oxide on noses. It looked like
opening day of camp.
Two different TV crews were out to capture images for
local stations. It was the July 4th weekend; Amy would be
squeezed in between state fair stories and barbecue
cookoffs. One cub reporter kept mosquitoing around me,
peppering me with pointless questions, my body going
immediately stiff, inhuman, with the attention, my
‘concerned’ face looking fake. A waft of horse manure hung
in the air.
The reporters soon left to follow the volunteers into the
trails. (What kind of journalist finds a suspicious husband
ripe for the picking and 
leaves
? A bad low-pay journalist
left behind after all the decent ones have been laid off.) A
young uniform cop told me to stand – right here – at the
entry to the various trails, near a bulletin board that held a
mess of ancient flyers, as well as a missing person notice
for Amy, my wife staring out of that photo. She’d been
everywhere today, following me.
‘What should I be doing?’ I asked the officer. ‘I feel like
a jackass here. I need to do something.’ Somewhere in the
woods, a horse whinnied mournfully.
‘We really need you right here, Nick. Just be friendly,
be encouraging,’ he said, and pointed to the bright orange
thermos next to me. ‘Offer water. Just point anyone who

---

comes in my way.’ He turned and walked toward the
stables. It occurred to me that they were intentionally
barring me from any possible crime scene. I wasn’t sure
what that meant.
As I stood aimlessly, pretending to busy myself with the
cooler, a latecomer SUV rolled in, shiny red as nail polish.
Out poured the fortysomethings from headquarters. The
prettiest woman, the one Boney picked as a groupie, was
holding her hair up in a ponytail so one of her friends could
bug-spray the back of her neck. The woman waved at the
fumes elaborately. She glanced at me out of the corner of
her eye. Then she stepped away from her friends, let her
hair fall down around her shoulders, and began picking her
way over to me, that stricken, sympathetic smile on her
face, the