Holloway cut him off. “You’re my attorney. You’re on retainer. Now, tell them.”

The lawyer looked from Holloway to the cops. He shot his cuffs as if he were in court. “Mr. Holloway is the owner of these premises. He wants access to his property.”

“Demands access,” Holloway interrupted. “It’s my house.”

Hunt kept his voice calm. “When I was here before, you said that you were a guest in the house.”

“Semantics. I own the property.”

“But Katherine Merrimon is the legal tenant.”

“Mr. Holloway charges her a dollar a month,” the lawyer said. “That hardly makes her a tenant.”

“Rent is rent,” Hunt said, and eyed the lawyer. “You know that.”

“Nevertheless, he has the right to inspect the premises.”

“At a reasonable time and with notice provided,” Officer Taylor corrected. “Not in the middle of the night. If he wishes to call Mrs. Merrimon, he’s welcome to do so.”

“She is not answering the phone,” the lawyer said.

Holloway stepped forward. “I want to see that child. He’s damaged a valuable piece of private property and needs to be held accountable for that. I just want to speak with him.”

“Is that right?” Hunt could hide neither the dislike nor the disgust.

“Of course. What else?”

“And if I told you that he’s not here?” Hunt asked, stepping forward until a bare six inches separated the two men. He knew that Holloway had a temper. Knew it. Now he wanted to see it.

Begged to see it.

Holloway’s eyes tightened, and Hunt recognized the first crack in the facade. The man didn’t like being crowded, didn’t like the challenge, so Hunt leaned even closer. He showed Holloway the contempt in his eyes, and saw him take the bait. At the last second, the lawyer realized, too, what was about to happen. He opened his mouth: “Mr. Holloway-”

“Do you have any idea who I am?” Holloway raised a finger and planted it square in Hunt’s chest. And that was all it took. In one smooth, economical movement, Hunt gripped Holloway’s wrist, spun the man in place and shoved his hand all the way to his shoulder blades. Holloway stepped forward to relieve the pressure, and Hunt kept the momentum going. He walked him to the Escalade and slammed him facedown across the hood.

“You just assaulted a police officer, Mr. Holloway. In front of witnesses.”

“That’s not assault.”

“Ask your lawyer.”

Holloway flattened one palm on the car and tried to push himself up. Hunt had to lean into him, and spoke again as he did. “And that’s resisting an officer.” The cuffs came out. He cinched the manacle around one thick wrist, clamping the steel as tight as he could, squeezing hard for that last click. Holloway cried out, and Hunt jerked the other hand behind his back. He put all of his weight on Holloway to keep him on the car, then ratcheted down the cuff. “Those are serious charges, Mr. Holloway. Your lawyer can explain them to you later.”

Hunt hauled Holloway upright. The arrogance had vanished, but the anger was alive in his face. “You can’t touch me,” he said.

Hunt caught the chain of the cuffs and manhandled Holloway to Officer Taylor’s car and opened the door. He put a hand on Holloway’s head. “Nothing personal,” he said, and stuffed him into the back. When he caught Taylor’s eyes, there was no smile or irony in his voice. “Officer Taylor, would you please drive Mr. Holloway to the station and process him?”

Taylor kept her face straight, but could not hide her feelings. “Yes, sir.

Hunt watched them go: the squad car with Holloway’s florid face pinned in the window, the big Cadillac with the girlish attorney behind the leather wheel. They rose on the hill and dropped from view, tomorrow’s problem. The anger drained away, the hot spark of satisfaction. He stood alone in the yard, thinking of Katherine, and then he turned. Inside the house, he pressed an ear against her door. He spread his fingers on the sandpaper wood and for one second pictured himself walking into her room. She would be small and pale, very still on the bed, but she would smile, and her hand would rise.

Hunt felt that moment roll out like a mile of warm sand, but that’s all that it was, a moment. An illusion. He was the cop who’d failed to bring her daughter home. He could no more change that fact than she could forget it. It would be unfair to even ask.

His hand fell away and he stepped to Johnny’s door. It stood open and a small lamp pressed a yellow circle on the neatly made bed. The room was so different from the rooms of other boys. So empty. Hunt saw no toys or games, no posters on the wall. An open book lay facedown on the bed. More stood on the dresser, a long row pressed between two bricks. There was a photograph of Johnny’s mother, three of Alyssa. Hunt lifted the nearest photo of the girl. Her smile was secretive and small. Dark hair dipped across her left eye, but the right one carried such a light; she looked as if she knew something special, as if she were waiting for someone to ask and might burst from the expectation of it. Her energy made Johnny seem stark and compressed, and Hunt wondered if he’d always been like that. Or had he merely changed?

Merely.

Hunt shook his head at the absurdity of the word. There was nothing mere about the boy Johnny had become. The evidence was everywhere: in his actions and his attitudes, in this bare-walled room and even in the books he kept. They were not a boy’s books. Johnny had books on history and ancient religions, vision quests, and the hunting rituals of the Plains Indians. There was one on druid lore that weighed three pounds. Two more on Cherokee religion. They were library books, stamped with square white placards on the spines. Hunt picked up the one that lay open on the bed and saw that Johnny had checked it out fourteen consecutive times. Never overdue. Not once. Hunt pictured Johnny on his bike, pedaling eight miles each way to present his card and sign where they told him.

He examined the title-An Illustrated History of Raven County-then looked at the page to which it had been opened. On the right side was a black-and-white lithograph of an older man in a perfectly creased suit. A whitish beard covered the front of his collar and his eyes were specks of flint. The caption beneath read: “John Pendleton Merrimon, Surgeon and Abolitionist. 1858.” Johnny’s ancestor, Hunt realized. He looked a bit like Johnny’s father, and nothing like the boy.

He flipped a few more pages, put the book back on the bed, and did not know that Johnny’s mother was in the hall until he turned. Her legs descended from a shirt that barely covered her, and she was loose on her feet, one hand pressed flat to the wall as her shoulders cut small ellipses in the air. Her eyes were undressed wounds, her voice shockingly calm. “Do me a favor, Johnny.” One palm turned to catch the yellow light. “Tell Alyssa I need to speak to her when she gets home.”

“Katherine…” Hunt stopped, uncertain.

“Don’t argue with me, Johnny. She should be home by now.”

She turned, slid one hand along the wall and closed her door behind her. Bedsprings crunched and silence rippled through the house.

Before Hunt left, he turned on lights and checked the doors. In the yard, he tried to focus. There was still Tiffany Shore and the ruin of her parents; a wax-faced giant who might or might not be gone by now. There was Ken Holloway, Hunt’s need to see his own son, and Johnny, out there somewhere doing God knows what. Hunt felt it all, a swirl, a massive weight, but he pushed it aside and stole one more moment. That’s all it would ever be, and so he took it selfishly. He stood beneath a blanket of ink, and he thought of Katherine Merrimon, of her bruised eyes and her emptiness.

Nothing else seemed to matter.