“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I wish I could tell you who did it.”

“Oh, we’re going to find out who done it,” he said, without a shadow of a doubt in his voice. “Me and Bethalynn, we got to. We got Carson here, he deserves to grow up without being afraid.”

Carson’s eyes met mine. He didn’t seem afraid right now, but he had his dad beside him. The boy’s calm eyes told me that Carson had been brought up in the expectation that adults would protect him from harm. Nothing had happened to shake that expectation. Even though his brother had been taken, Carson was sure he would not be. I hoped he was right.

Parker seemed to think that Doraville would be safe if he discovered and eliminated the man who’d killed his son. He seemed to think it would be easy to do this. For a moment, I jeered at him in my head; but then I reminded myself of what this man had gone through. He had a right to any fantasy he chose if it would help him get through this life.

We all have our fantasies.

Seven

THE cabin at the lake had been used by the Cotton family for forty years or more. In recent years, the McGraw family had enjoyed it. Parker said that at first they’d felt like intruders, but the surviving children of Archie Cotton were well into their sixties and had no children of their own living in Doraville any longer. They seemed content to let the children of their dad’s wife enjoy the old place.

“Jeff loved it out there,” Parker said. “Me and Carson, we’ll stay out there and go fishing in the spring, won’t we, Carson?”

“Sure,” Carson said. “We’ll catch some fish for Mom to clean. She loves to clean fish so much.” That startled a smile out of his dad.

The deputy on duty had buzzed us into the fenced parking lot behind the police station. Tolliver and I scrambled out of the truck and got in our car. We followed Parker out of the parking lot.

Pine Landing Lake was about ten miles out of Doraville in a northeastern direction, and those ten miles were up a twisting, narrow two-lane road. We had met light traffic along the way. The lake seemed to be close to a community much smaller than Doraville, a dot on the map called Harmony. We didn’t drive all the way around the lake, but at some points I could see its farther shore quite clearly. There were dwellings scattered around the lake, ranging from homes that looked year-round habitable to structures that were little more than open-air pavilions.

“This would be beautiful in summer,” I said, and Tolliver nodded.