“He’s not really trying to jump,” Lieutenant Vernon explains. “He just sort of rocks forward, you know, like they do, and if he loses his balance, out he goes.”

The black-haired, olive-skinned boy has been relegated to his bedroom while Daddy talks with the nice man and woman. The handsome little boy went willingly enough—it’s obvious he enjoys pleasing his father—but every minute or so he makes a high-pitched shriek that startles all of us, even his father, who knows to expect it.

“He’s just playing. That’s the voice he uses when he’s playing with his toys. Tea okay? Good. Now, how can I help you?”

Shane explains that my son has been abducted, and that the kidnapping may have had something to do with Family Finders.

“Your kid got snatched? No shit. Sorry, Mrs.—what is it again? Brickyard?”

“Call me Kate,” I tell him. “Don’t worry about swearwords, Mr. Vernon. I’m not offended by salty language.”

That makes him chuckle. “Salty language? That’s the marines. I was army, we just plain cuss. Anyhow, Kate, you please call me Mike, okay? Around here they call me Big Mike so as not to confuse me with the boy, but just plain Mike is fine.”

“You were Special Forces?” Shane asks.

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“The tattoo.”

“Oh, yeah.” Big Mike glances at his massive forearm, as if he’d forgotten the image of the unsheathed dagger inked into his skin. “Ancient history now. I got out five years ago on a hardship, because of Mike Junior. Had him in a special-needs school for a while, but really it doesn’t work for him, having all those other kids around. With Little Mikey, you got to control his environment, make him feel safe and secure. Then he’s fine. Really, he’s a great kid.”

From the bedroom, the boy shrieks. I’ve begun to recognize that the shrieks do indeed have a playful quality. And I’ve decided that Big Mike Vernon is a thoroughly decent man for staying home with the boy, and for speaking about him with such obvious patience and affection.

“Maybe we could start at the beginning,” Shane suggests. “How did you establish contact with Family Finders?”

Big Mike shrugs. “Cathy wanted a baby, that’s how it started. We’d been hitched for what, five years, and no luck. Something about her plumbing. ’Scuse me, Kate. Woman troubles. Anyhow, I was fine with that, but she wasn’t. Really wanted to have a baby, it was all she thought about, raising a kid. Army isn’t real big on fertility therapy because it’s so costly, but what they had we tried. Didn’t work. We talked about adopting and that seemed like a good idea, so we put ourselves on the list with our church organization, you know? Only there aren’t a lot of babies up for free adoption. Couple years went by. Then I’m on this temporary assignment and there’s a guy in the unit, a captain, he’s a pretty good guy and it turns out we both married Connecticut girls, so we had that general connection. Turns out and he and his wife have just adopted the cutest little baby boy you ever saw. So I ask him how he did it and he told me about Family Finders, up there in Pawtucket. Said all it took was cold hard cash. Not a lot of paperwork and no long waiting lists, if you didn’t mind adopting a brown-skinned baby.”

“What did they tell you about your son’s background?” I ask. “Anything about his birth parents?”

“Nah, not really. That’s supposed to be a secret, unless the birth mother wants to make contact. Which they assured me she wouldn’t do. And it’s not like we wanted the mother coming in a month later, taking him back.”

“No,” I agree. “Of course not.”

“Just between us chickens, I formed the impression the mother might have been a prostitute. Cathy didn’t pick that up—didn’t want to think about it—but I been stationed in places not a whole lot different than San Juan. Young women, girls, they get roped into the life because they’re poor, it don’t mean they’re bad people. Anyhow, the main thing you worry about with a baby from a situation like that is if the mother passes on a disease. Syphilis or HIV or whatever. But Mikey was clean. Whatever’s wrong, it’s not something they can find in his blood. Not that it would have mattered, long run.”

“Why is that?” Shane wants to know.

“You adopt a kid, he’s yours, for better or worse. You don’t give him back because he’s not perfect.”

“No.”

“I’m not saying we didn’t freak out when we realized something was wrong with Mikey. But by then he was part of the family. So you deal with it. You do whatever is necessary.”

“Of course. Did this fellow officer, did his son have problems, too?”

Big Mike slowly shakes his head. “Nope. They lucked out. Kid was perfect, far as I know. Smart and healthy and, you know, a normal kind of kid. ’Course, I haven’t seen them in years, not since I left active service.”

“But the child was adopted through the same agency?”

“Yep. That’s how we got onto it. Cathy had ten grand from her dead aunt, and that’s exactly how much they charged. The captain, I think he paid a little more.”

“Could you tell us how to get in touch with the captain, if we have any further questions?”

“I can tell you his name,” Big Mike says. “Cutter. Captain Stephen Cutter. ’Course, he might have been promoted since then. Maybe he made colonel. Guy was smart, a real brain.”

Shane flips open his notebook, grunts, and uses his thumb to indicate one of the names he’d scrawled down. Captain S. Cutter, 23 Crestview, New London.

“The captain have a tattoo?” Shane wants to know.

Big Mike has to think about it. “Good possibility. Most of the officers got ’em, in those units. Unit cohesion and all that good stuff.”

“He built like you?” Shane asks.

Mike grins. “Nah. Not many are. No real advantage to being a big guy in Special Ops. Harder to be stealthy, sneak up on the enemy. The cap, he’s about average size. And like I say, a real smart guy, too, which I guess is why he made captain.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Vernon. You’ve been a big help.”

“Can’t see why. How’s this all connected to Family Finders, anyhow?”

“We’re not sure,” says Shane.

“But you think it was an army guy grabbed him, huh? That’s why the question about the tattoo?”

“We’re not sure. Just running down leads.”

“’Cause the cap, he’s not the type to be stealing kids, my opinion. Very stable guy, devoted to his family and all. His wife now, that’s another matter.”

Shane instantly perks up, as do I.

“How so?”

Mike taps his big, freckled forehead. “Poor woman is a little off. The cap was always very protective of her, but you pick up on things like that.”

“You think she has mental problems?”

He shrugs. “Just off, someways. Real nervous and flighty in this dreamy sort of way. Never let the kid out of her sight, I’ll tell you that, like maybe he’d vanish if she couldn’t see him for even a minute.” He notes my crestfallen expression and adds, “Sorry, miss. No offense.”

At the door he says, “I’d walk you down, but Mikey, he gets upset if you leave him alone. Likes to know there’s someone in the house.”

“We’ll be fine.”

He hesitates, looks worried. “You know what? Probably I shouldn’t have mentioned about the wife being a little off. Everybody’s got their own problems. So if you see the cap, you just tell him Big Mike says hello, okay?”

By the time we get downstairs the sky has clouded over, looks like thunderstorms rolling in from the west.

“Next stop New London?” I ask Shane.

“Absolutely. We’ll cruise by, see if anybody’s home,” he says. “Interesting, that part about the wife. This could be the one.”

“I’ll know him when I see him up close, when I hear his voice. I realize that now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’ve got a strong feeling that things are starting to break our way, Kate.”

“You know what? Me, too. For the first time in days I really feel good about this. We’re going to find Tommy.”