Replacing the photos, I put the shoebox back on its shelf, where Kamareia had kept it. Or as Genevieve had said, keeps. Keeps.

Goddammit, I thought.

I took the stairs two at a time on my way back down. I was ready to be gone.

Darryl Hawkins, his wife, Virginia, and their 11-year-old daughter, Tamara, were the newest additions to our Northeast neighborhood. Darryl, a mail carrier in his late thirties who looked about ten years younger than that, had come across the street early on to admire the Nova. He owned a Mercury Cougar he was fixing up; we’d talked cars for about twenty minutes.

Shiloh had noticed something else about our new neighbors: their dog. It looked like a black Lab/Rottweiler mix, and it lived on the end of a chain.

The Hawkinses’ side gate was made of cyclone fencing. We could easily see through it to the backyard, and no matter what time of day or night, the dog was there at the end of its ten feet of chain. It got food and water and was brought inside in bad weather. But I’d never seen it walked, played with, or exercised.

It bothered me, but not as much as it did Shiloh.

“Well, at least he’s not beating the damn dog,” I pointed out. “And he doesn’t beat his wife, like the last guy who lived there.”

“That’s not the way an animal’s supposed to live,” Shiloh said.

“Sometimes you can’t help what other people do.”

Shiloh had let it alone for a while. Then one afternoon I’d seen him sitting in the front windowsill, finishing an apple, watching something across the street. I followed his gaze and saw Darryl Hawkins waxing his dark-blue Cougar.

“You’re thinking about the dog again, aren’t you?” I said.

“He spends hours taking care of that damn car every weekend. The car’s not even alive.”

“Let it go,” I advised.

Instead, Shiloh pitched the apple core into the bushes and swung his legs off the windowsill, jumping down to our front yard.

He was across the street for about fifteen minutes. Neither of them raised their voices; I would have heard it from where I was. But Darryl Hawkins’s posture became rigid early on, and he came to stand very close to Shiloh, and Shiloh held his ground. I saw anger in the line of his back, too. When he came back his eyes were dark.

I didn’t ask what the two of them said to each other, but it put a permanent end to warm relations between our two houses. Virginia Hawkins avoided my eyes, embarrassed, when we passed in the market.

When I returned from St. Paul, the blue Cougar was in the driveway.

Darryl answered the door, still in his USPS uniform.

“How have you been?” I asked.

“All right,” he said. He didn’t smile.

“I could use your help with something,” I told him.

He didn’t invite me in, but he opened the screen door between us so that we were face-to-face.

“You know my husband, Shiloh?” I said.

“Huh,” Darryl said, almost a laugh, but without humor.

“Have you seen him in the last few days?”

“Seen him? What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m looking for him,” I said. “I haven’t seen him or heard from him in four days, and to the best of my knowledge no one else has, either.”

Darryl raised his eyebrows. “He gone? That’s something. If it was you who wised up and left him, I could understand that.”

“I didn’t come here to get flattered at Shiloh’s expense,” I said evenly. “And he hasn’t left me, he’s missing. I’m trying to find out when was the last time you saw him, if you saw anything strange going on at our house or in the neighborhood.”

“I ain’t seen nothing in the neighborhood, except the usual.” Darryl leaned against the doorjamb. “Your man? I see him running all the time. I don’t even think about it anymore, so I can’t remember the last time.” He shrugged. “Now that you mention it, I ain’t seen him running in about a week.”

“Okay,” I said. “Will you ask your wife and Tamara if they saw anything, and if they did, will you come over and let me know?”

“Yeah, all right.” He half closed the screen door, then he said, “I didn’t know you two was married.”

“We got married two months ago,” I said.

“Huh,” he said. “Look, if I think of anything else I’ll let you know. Really.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

The rest of the interviews with our immediate neighbors were as unfruitful. No one could remember specifics, except that they’d seen him running from time to time, and no one had seen him running in the past few days.

I showed the photograph around: to more neighbors, at businesses near our home, to kids on bikes, to adults walking home from work. “He looks familiar,” a few people said, peering at the photo. But no one could remember having seen him specifically on Saturday or Sunday.

Ibrahim lifted a hand in greeting when I pushed open the swinging door to the Conoco. I waited for him to finish with a customer before I told him what I needed.

Ibrahim nodded, eyes narrowing. “Mike was in here a few days ago. Maybe more than a few.” Ibrahim’s English was perfect. Only his accent gave away his childhood home, Alexandria.

“Was it before last Sunday?” I asked.

He rubbed his balding head in thought.

“Try to remember something else that happened the same day, to set it apart,” I suggested.

Recognition sparked in his eyes. “The fuel delivery was late that day. So it was Saturday.”

“Did Shiloh come in before or after the delivery?” I asked.

“Oh, before,” he said. “Maybe noon, one o’clock. I remember it now. He bought two sandwiches, an apple, and a bottle of water.”

“Did he say anything that stands out to you?”

Ibrahim shook his head. “He asked how I was, I asked after him. That’s all.”

“When you asked him how he was, what did he say?”

Ibrahim frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

“That means he said he was fine, thanks,” I said sourly.

Ibrahim smiled. “You’re a clever woman, Sarah.”

“Not lately,” I said.

When I got in, the message machine light flashed in a single on-and-off pattern. One message.

“Sarah, Ainsley Carter wants you to call her when you get a chance,” Vang’s recorded voice said. “It’s an outstate number that she gave me, looks like she’s back in Bemidji…”

I picked up a pen and quickly copied down the number that he recited.

Ainsley picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Oh, hi, thank you for calling, Detective Pribek,” she said.

“How’s Ellie?” I asked.

“Much better, it seems,” she said, and I could tell from the lightness of her voice that she wasn’t just trying to put a bright face on things. She sounded genuinely relieved. “The doctors at the crisis unit let her come home with us yesterday. Joe and I said we’d let her stay with us, and the psychiatric evaluation suggested she’d do okay under family supervision. And we’re finding her a therapist in town.”

“That’s good,” I said. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing,” Ainsley said immediately. “I just wanted to thank you. What you did that day… I was too upset to realize it at the time, but what you did was extraordinary.”

My leap into the river, the minor notoriety around the department it caused, my embarrassment… these seemed like events from a year ago.

“I’m just glad Ellie is getting better,” I said.

“She’s on her way,” Ainsley said. “I really believe that she is. Detective Pribek?”

“I’m here,” I said.

“When I tried to call you at your work number, your partner said you were on leave, and then he wouldn’t say why.”

“Well, I am on leave,” I said.

“It wasn’t because of Ellie, was it?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why would-”

“What you did was so extreme, I thought maybe you violated procedure and they put you on administrative leave because of it.” Ainsley laughed a little. “At least, that’s what I was afraid of.”