“Yes,” Tolliver said. There was no way to dress that up and make it prettier, so he didn’t. Sheriff Rockwell didn’t flinch or try to make us feel guilty about earning a living, as some people did. They acted like we were ambulance chasers. This was all I could do, my sole unique ability; and I was determined to bank as much money as I could while it was still operative. Someday, as quickly as it had been given to me, it might be taken away. I imagined I would be glad; but I would also be unemployed.

“How do you decide where to look?” the sheriff asked.

“We get as much information as we can. What did you find after the disappearances?” Tolliver asked. “Any physical clues?”

The sheriff very sensibly got out a map of the county. After she spread it out over her desk, we all three rose to peer at it. “Here we are,” she said. “Here’s Doraville. It’s the county seat. This is a poor county, rural. We’re in the foothills, as you see. There’s some hilly land, and there’s some steep land, and there’s a valley or two with some level acres.”

We nodded. Doraville itself was a town strewn about on many levels.

“Three of them had vehicles of their own,” Sheriff Rockwell said. “We found Chester Caldwell’s old pickup up here, in the parking lot at the head of the hiking trail.”

“He was the first one?” I asked.

“Yes, he was the first one.” Her face tightened all over. “I was a deputy then. We searched all along that trail for hours and hours. It goes through some steep terrain, and we looked for signs of a fall, or an animal attack. We found nothing. He’d gone missing after football practice, in the middle of September. This was when Abe Madden was sheriff.” She shook her head, trying to shake the bad memories out of it. “We never found anything. He came from a tough home; mom drinks too much, divorced. His dad was gone and stayed gone.”

She took a deep breath. “Next gone was Tyler Webb, who was sixteen. Went missing on a Saturday after swimming with friends at Grunyan’s Pond, a summer afternoon. We found his car here, at the rest stop off the interstate.” She pointed to the spot, which wasn’t too far (as the crow flies) west of Doraville. About as far as the trailhead parking lot was from north Doraville. “Tyler’s stuff was in the car: his driver’s license, his towel, his T-shirt. But no one ever saw him again.”

“No other fingerprints?”

“No. A few of Tyler’s, a few of his friends’, and that’s all. None on the wheel or door handle. They were clean.”

“Weren’t you wondering by then?”