Cutter forces himself to complete a circumnavigation of the outer walls. Smacking on the sheathing as he goes, looking for weak points. With great relief, he ascertains that the outer barrier remains intact, securely fastened to the steel frames of the building.

The boy is inside the shed. Inside and hiding.

“Tomas?” Cutter hardly recognizes his own voice. “It’s Steve. Guess what, you passed the test.”

Making it up as he goes along, as he so often did while interrogating prisoners and suspects and civilian troublemakers. Breaking them with his mind, molding them to his will. Creating stories and scenarios that seemed so plausible that they were soon dying to cooperate.

“This whole thing was a test, Tomas! An elaborate test! We had to know if you were strong enough, clever enough to find a way out of the white room. You passed the test with flying colors. Congratulations!”

Cutter prowls the boat shed, eyes scanning every dark corner, searching for movement, for the quivering of a frightened boy.

“This is part of a top-secret government project, Tomas,” he says, riffing. “You’ve been chosen. We need a boy of your size and your cunning to complete a very important mission. Your mom knows all about it. She gave us her permission.”

Cutter finds the ladder on the floor, under the boat. That’s what his brain noted when he first came into the shed. Not a noise, but a visual clue: the old wooden ladder was missing from the side of the Chris Craft.

He sets the ladder against the hull, climbs up into the cockpit. The engine hatch is open, tools strewn about. All staged, part of making it look good as if the landlord came by to check on progress. Yup, we’re tearing apart that old Chrysler engine, make it purr like an eight-cylinder pussycat.

He crouches. Gets a visual line from the back of the engine compartment into the ruined cabin. Interior panel laminations peeling away, the floor all funky with dry rot. There’s a V-berth forward, a small galley, lazarette lockers under the seats, cupboards and a small enclosed toilet. Plenty of places for a determined eleven-year-old to hide.

Inside the cabin, Cutter sniffs. Amazing how strong and detectable the stink of fear, if you let your brain sort out the various odors. He detects motor oil, rust, mildew, rotting carpet, his own rank odor. Can’t detect the boy, but he must be here. Hiding in a locker, under the V-berth, somewhere very close.

Time to reach out and touch someone.

“Tomas? I’ve got a cell phone in my pocket. Your mother really wants to talk to you. She wants to explain what’s been going on these last few days. I know you won’t believe me—why should you?—but you’ll listen to your mother.”

Using the toe of his boot, Cutter lifts the lid on the lazarette, exposing bundles of rotted rope, rusted anchor chains.

“Come on out, Tomas. You passed the test.”

Cutter moves to the V-berth, all the way forward. He’s about to lift up the ruined cushions and look under the berth when the door to the enclosed toilet creaks open and the boy streaks out.

Clever kid waited until he had a clear shot at the cabin hatchway, must have been clocking him through the keyhole. Doesn’t matter because Cutter is fast and ready and his arms are long. His right hand locks on the boy’s ankle as he tries to scamper up the hatchway.

The boy kicking to no avail.

As Cutter yanks him back inside the cabin, the boy turns, wielding a hacksaw blade in his fist. Cutter doesn’t dare let go of the flailing boy, who is able to rake the saw blade across Cutter’s cheek, laying him open to the bone.

Blood everywhere. Amazing how much flows from a facial wound. Makes things slippery and difficult, but Cutter is a pro and he manages to subdue the struggling boy. Holding him tight, jabbing him with a loaded syringe, hanging on until the powerful anesthetic takes effect and the boy goes limp in his arms.

“Good night, son,” Cutter whispers, and then he allows himself to weep. Weeping for lost boys and sick boys and mothers who yearn for their missing children. Weeping for the already dead and the soon-to-be dead and for a man he used to know.

When the tear ducts finally empty, the dead man gently puts the unconscious boy on the deck and prepares to attend to the wound on his own face. Nothing fancy, just a rudimentary repair that will get him through the next few hours. He sets a shaving mirror on the galley table and lights a wax candle for illumination. Using a sailmaker’s needle and waxed-cotton thread, he stitches himself together. He has in his possession an extensive kit of pharmaceutical drugs, including various anesthetics, but chooses not to numb the wound or dull the pain.

It hurts, and he deserves it.

39 white lady in the moonlight

Back in the day, this was the American dream house. A tidy clapboard Cape-style home with a green patch of lawn and a white picket fence. Friendly neighbors leaning over the fence, trading recipes, resuming conversations that lasted a lifetime. Now the dream is more likely to be a gated community and a million-dollar ski retreat in Vail, and a waterfront condo in South Beach, and enough luxury cars to fill all three garages.

Expectations have changed, but the Cutter family home still looks like a Norman Rockwell postcard. Driving to New London, to an address scrawled in Shane’s hurried hand, I’d been terrified of what I might find. Imagining a dark dungeon where children are tortured, or a crime boss’s fortress, all razor wire and seething menace. The last thing I expected was a cheerful, if somewhat smaller, version of my own home.

Back in our walk-up-apartment days, Ted and I would have killed for a perfect little house like this. Bad choice of words, but my every thought is shaped by morbid anxiety. The rational, analytical part of me knows that my son might well be dead—that’s what kidnappers do, all too often—but if I’m to get through this day, I have to believe that Tommy is alive. That’s the only way I can function, and what gives me the courage to proceed on my own. That, and the feeling, odd as it may seem, that Randall Shane still guides me.

Shane with his head smashed. Shane unconscious, fighting for his own life. And yet somehow he’s along for the ride, long legs folded into the passenger seat, making his little self-deprecating jokes, quietly urging me not to give up hope. What would he think of the white picket fence? Probably remind me that criminals sometimes live in houses just like this. Scratch that rare suburban dad and find a monster. God knows the cable channels are full of them. Moms who drown their children and blame it on a black bogeyman. Dads who set fire to their families to collect enough insurance to buy jewelry for a trophy mistress. We’ve all heard the stories, watched them play out on TV. Getting some sort of vicarious thrill, I suppose, in the certainty that our own lives will never be touched by evil, no matter how familiar the shape it assumes.

But for all that, first impressions count, and I’m almost certain the owner of this house will be another dead end. Stephen Cutter will turn out to be a regular guy, want to know about his old army buddy Big Mike Vernon. He’ll introduce me to his wife and his adopted son and we can commiserate about the sleazy way Family Finders took advantage. But maybe, just maybe, he’ll know something useful, point me in the right direction.

I promise myself that I won’t waste time, that as soon as the Cutters are eliminated as suspects, I’ll move on to the next name on Shane’s list.