The dark ghost carried a struggling boy into the brush. When the ghosts faded, I was shaking.

"That's what happened."

Myers was staring at me. So were Starkey and Chen. Myers shook his head, but I couldn't read his expression.

"So where are his other prints?"

"That's how good he was, Myers. He didn't leave other prints. This one was a mistake."

Richard shook his head, disgusted, then got up. Myers got up with him.

Richard said, "I can't believe this is all you have, one crappy half-assed hole in the dirt, and your only explanation is that Rambo stole my son. Jesus."

DeNice glanced around the hill.

"Maybe they just didn't look hard enough."

Fontenot nodded.

"Bubba, I hear that."

Myers nodded at them, and Fontenot and DeNice spread out over the hill.

Gittamon leaned closer to the print.

He said, "Can you make a cast of this; John?"

Chen pinched a bit of soil and let it dribble through his fingers. He didn't like what he saw, and frowned, sourly.

"You see how fine and dry the soil is, like salt? Soil like this won't hold its structure. You got soil like this, you can lose a lot of detail when you make the pour. The weight of the plastic deforms the impression."

Starkey said, "Everything's a drama with you. I've worked fifty blast sites with this guy and it's always the end of the world."

Chen looked defensive.

"I'm just telling you. I can frame the impression to help with the structure, then seal the soil before I pour, but I don't know what I'll get."

Starkey got up.

"You'll get a cast. Stop whining and start working, John. Jesus."

Richard watched DeNice and Fontenot searching through the brush, then shook his head. He checked the time.

"Lee, this is going to take forever at this rate. You know what to do. Hire more people if we have to and bring in whoever we need. I don't care what it costs."

Starkey watched Gittamon like she was hoping he would say something, and she spoke up when he didn't.

"If more people come out it'll end up like a zoo down here. It's bad enough now."

Richard slipped his hands into his pockets.

"That isn't my problem, Detective. My problem is finding my son. If you want to arrest me for obstruction or some silly thing like that, I'm sure that'll make a good story in the local news."

Gittamon said, "No one's talking about anything like that. We just have to be concerned with preserving the crime scene."

Myers touched Richard's arm. The two of them had a low conversation, then Myers turned back to Gittamon.

"You're right, Sergeant, we need to worry about preserving the evidence and also the case against whoever took Ben. Cole shouldn't be here."

I stared at him, but Myers held the same unreadable expression. Gittamon looked confused.

I said, "I don't get your point, Myers. I've already been here. I was all over this slope searching for Ben."

Richard shifted his shoulders impatiently.

"What's not to understand, Cole? I never practiced criminal law, but I'm enough of a lawyer to know that you'll be a material witness in whatever case arises. You might even be named as a party. Either way, your presence creates a problem."

Starkey said, "Why would he be a party?"

"He was the last person to see my son alive."

The canyon grew hot. Sweat leaked from my pores and blood pushed hard through my arms and legs. Chen was the only one who moved. He tapped a sheet of rigid white plastic into the soil a few inches from the shoe print. He would frame the print like that to support the soil, then spray a thin clear sealant not unlike hairspray to bind the surface. Framing the soil would lend strength. Binding its surface would yield structure. Stability was everything.

I said, "What are you saying, Richard?"

Myers touched Richard's arm again, just as he'd done outside Lucy's apartment.

"He's not accusing you, Cole. It's nothing like that, but it's clear that the man on the phone bears a grudge against you. When everything comes out, maybe it will turn out that you used to know him and didn't like him any more than he likes you."

"I don't know what he's talking about, Myers."

Richard said, "Myers is right. If his lawyer can establish that the grudge goes both ways, he'll argue that you purposefully contaminated the evidence against him. He might even claim that you planted evidence. Look at O.J."

Starkey said, "That's bullshit."

"I used to be a lawyer, Detective. Let me tell you that when you're in court, bullshit sells."

Gittamon squirmed uncomfortably.

"No one is doing anything improper down here."

"Sergeant, I'm on your side – I'm even on Cole's side, as much as it pisses me off to say it, but we have a problem with this. Please. Ask your superiors or someone in the prosecutor's office. See what they think."

Gittamon watched Pike and Richard's detectives moving through the brush. He glanced at Starkey, but all she did was shrug.

He said, "Ah, Mr. Cole, maybe you should wait up at your house."

"What good would it do, Gittamon? I've already been all over this slope, so it won't make any difference if I keep looking."

Gittamon shuffled. He reminded me of the pug, nervous for a place to pee.

"I'll talk to the Hollywood captain. I'll see what he thinks."

Richard and Myers turned away without waiting for more and joined Fontenot and DeNice in the brush. Gittamon hunkered down beside Chen so that he wouldn't have to look at me.

Starkey watched all of them for a moment, then shrugged at me.

"Look, I'll probably hear back on those names in a couple of hours. A regular guy sitting around in Des Moines doesn't just decide to do something like this one day; anyone who would do this is an asshole and assholes have records. If we get a bounce on one of those names you gave us, we'll have something to work with. Just wait upstairs and I'll let you know."

I shook my head.

"You're crazy if you think I'm going to wait."

"We don't have anything else to work with. What else can you do?"

"Think like him."

I waved Pike over, and we climbed the hill to my house.

time missing: 19 hours, 08 minutes

When people look at Joe Pike, they see an ex-cop, ex-Marine, the muscles and the ink, dark glasses riding a secret face. Pike grew up at the edge of a small town where he spent his childhood hiding in the woods. He hid from his father, who liked to beat Pike bloody with his fists, then tool up on Pike's mother. Marines weren't frightened of brutal alcoholics, so Pike made himself into a Marine. The Marines saw Pike move well in the woods and the trees, so they taught him other things. Now Pike was the best that I had ever seen at those things and it was all because he once used to be a scared little boy in the woods. When you see someone, all you see is what they let you see.

Pike studied the canyon from my deck. We could hear Starkey and the others below, though we could not see them. The cut of the canyon funneled their voices, and would have funneled Ben's voice, too, if Ben had called out.

I said, "He couldn't know when Ben would leave my house or be alone, so he needed a safe place to watch and wait. He was some other place until he saw Ben going down the slope, then he came here."

Pike nodded at the finger ridge across the canyon.

"Can't see your house from the street below because of the trees and he needed a clear field of view. He had to be across the canyon with a spotting scope or glasses."

"That's the way I see it."

The opposite ridge was a crooked finger of knobby peaks that rose and fell as it stepped down into the basin. Residential streets threaded along its sides, cut by undeveloped wedges where the slopes were too unstable or too steep to hold houses.