These are words I don’t want in my vocabulary: evidence technician, K-9 team, search grid.

When Shoffler orders the team to return “to base,” not a single member of the unit wants to do it. Everyone grumbles, pleads for more time. “We don’t want to give up,” a man named Rusty, who is the leader, barks into his handset, “we’re rollin’, Shoff.”

But Rusty surrenders grudgingly to Shoffler’s insistence. Replacements are standing by. Exhaustion causes mistakes. Fresh eyes are better. “And besides,” Shoffler says, his voice ragged with static, “I need to discuss something with Mr. Callahan.”

The room is a mess, the area devoted to a kind of makeshift canteen already overflowing with foam cups, doughnut and pizza boxes, water bottles. Untidy mounds of clothing and shoes obscure the counter of the Lost and Found desk. Heaped on the floor are piles of communication equipment, stacks of orange traffic cones, vests shiny with reflective tape, a small mountain of olive-green fleece blankets still encased in plastic bags.

I wait for the promised discussion, so tapped out that for the moment I lack the energy to imagine its subject or purpose. It’s not about the boys being found (or a replacement team would not be heading out into the dark), and that’s the only item of interest to me.

Shoffler slings a big arm around my shoulder and tells me it’s time to go home. I sputter my objection, but Shoffler gently reminds me of two matters.

“We’ve got no evidence of abduction,” he starts. “There’s the shoe, but” – he shrugs – “you couldn’t positively identify it.”

“I’m sure it’s Kevin’s shoe.”

“You’re sure it’s his shoe because he’s got a shoe kinda like it and he’s missing.”

“And he was there, at that jousting ring.”

Shoffler shakes his head. “You know how many kids come through this place every weekend? Who knows how long that shoe’s been there? It’s a pretty common type of shoe.” He shifts from foot to foot. “If this is an abduction, and there’s a call, they’re not going to leave a message on your voice mail. They’re gonna want to talk to you.”

I nod.

“We’d like to install a trap and trace on your phone, and that’s gonna go much faster if you’re there – otherwise, we got to get a form signed, get it to these guys, get ’em some keys, it’s a whole rigmarole. If you’re there, it’s done inside a coupla hours.”

“Okay.”

He purses his lips for a moment, cocks his head. “Second thing is,” Shoffler goes on, “you can’t have all these people, helicopters” – he makes a sweeping gesture with his arm – “and keep it secret. Point is, this is gonna make the early news in some bulletin kind of form, and then, by the regular morning news…” He shakes his head. “Well, you would know…”

“Right,” I say. And of course Shoffler is right. I should have thought about this, but didn’t. Not until this moment.

Parents all over the country are already on edge, thanks to a recent series of highly publicized child abductions and disappearances. There’s a trial going on right now in California, in the abduction-murder of a five-year-old girl. It’s an atmosphere in which any new missing child is instantly big news, a national story.

And from the media’s standpoint, the disappearance of Kevin and Sean will be pure gold: photogenic twins vanish in the midst of jousting knights, Elizabethan ladies, men in waistcoats and doublets. It’s not just going to be a news story; it’s going to be a monster.

“And that’s good, that’s all to the good,” Shoffler is saying. “It’s time to enlist the public’s help. And the media, they will do that for you, they will get the word out.”

He stops talking and waits for me to say something. I can tell I’m supposed to be connecting some dots here, but I don’t see what the detective is after. “You probably got people,” the detective finally says in a patient voice, “shouldn’t hear about this on the TV, or because they get a phone call from a reporter.”

Christ! Liz! I’m going to have to tell Liz.

“I think you should go home.”

I stare at my feet. Liz.

“Chris here,” Shoffler continues, with a nod toward Officer Christiansen, “he’ll go with you.”

“I’ll be all right,” I say. Shoffler obviously thinks I shouldn’t be alone, but the last thing I want is Officer Christiansen for company.

Shoffler ignores me and nods at Christiansen, then walks us toward the entrance gate. “You got juice in your cell phone?” he asks Christiansen, who lifts the phone from its holster and flips the top open.

“I’m all set.”

Outside, it’s quiet. A faint murmur of traffic. The rhythmic rise and fall of chatter from cicadas. The helicopter is gone for now, having returned to refuel. For a moment, I think I can hear the faint cries of the search team, but then a breeze rustles through the trees and swallows the sound.

We walk through the small cluster of cars and squad cars parked near the entrance gate. “Well,” Shoffler says, stifling a yawn. “We’ll do our best here.” He offers his hand and I shake it. Then he gives Christiansen a little tap on the shoulder and heads back into the fairgrounds.

In front of us looms the vast empty space of the parking lot. Near its far perimeter sits the small squarish shape of the Jeep, alone in the huge field. Christiansen walks beside me, talking in nervous little bursts about “a kidnap case I worked on couple of years back.” “They found the kid in Florida,” Christiansen says. “Boyfriend’s backyard.”

On the long walk to the car, the notion that Shoffler sent the officer with me out of some kind of compassion, because he didn’t want the bereft father to be alone in his distraught state, dissolves into a darker truth. I realize this as I fumble in my pocket for the keys and press the button on the remote. The door locks pop. The headlights tunnel out into the darkness. “That’s what they say, y’know,” Christiansen rambles on. “Nine times out of ten, it’s someone who knows the kid. Nine times outta ten, it’s a parent.”

Here’s the truth: Christiansen isn’t babysitting. I’m a suspect.

I stand with my hand on the door handle. I can’t bring myself to get into the car. Going home without the boys is… wrong. It feels like a signal of defeat and surrender, as if I’m giving up on them.

“Hey, you want I should drive?” Christiansen asks.

Then a sudden effervescence of hope bubbles up in my brain and I can’t get into the car fast enough.

“I guess that’s a no,” Christiansen says, sliding into the passenger’s seat. “Suit yourself.”

By the time I flip on the brights and make it from the grass parking lot to the gravel drive, an entire hopeful scenario has constructed itself in my head. Maybe the boys got disoriented, tried to come back to their hay bale and took a wrong turn. When the joust was over, everybody was leaving; it was chaotic.

I turn from the gravel drive onto a paved road. When they couldn’t find me, maybe the boys met someone – someone from the neighborhood, someone they hadn’t seen since Liz took them to Maine. And these people, they drove the boys home.

Or maybe Liz… Liz followed the boys down from Maine. She wanted to prove some point, so she waited until Alex and the boys were separated… Or not Liz herself, but she hired someone…

I’m filled with maybes, filled with fear and hope. On one level, I know these notions don’t hold up, not if I give them a minute’s hard thought.

Now that I’m on the road, I have an irrational need to get back to the house. As if that will make things right somehow. Tagging home base. I’ll be safe. The kids will be safe. Somehow it’s in my head that the kids will be there, waiting for me.

“You better slow it down,” Christiansen whines.

I glance at the speedometer. I’m doing eighty.