Trimble reached into his jacket and brought out a card, handed it to me. “If you find out anything, hear anything, give me a call. My home number’s on there, too. Look, Lawrence was my friend, too, he still is. I’m guessing …” He let the sentence trail off, like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “I’m guessing he told you that I let him down one time, a while back, and there’s a lot of truth to that. I wasn’t there for him that night, and I’ve got to live with that for the rest of my life. But if there’s anything I can do now, to help him, to find out who did this to him, I’m going to do it. And I’d appreciate any help that you can give me.”

I nodded, took the card from his hand and slipped it into my jacket.

“Okay,” I said.

I got out of the cruiser and noticed that one of the uniformed cops was just finishing up with my cabby. As I approached the cab, my cell phone rang, and I jumped.

“Hey,” Sarah said.

“Hi,” I said.

“Listen, I’m sorry to call, I know you’re on your stakeout now with Lawrence, but I wanted to give you a quick call.”

“Yeah,” I said, evenly. I felt very tired all of a sudden.

“I called home, talked to Paul. And he sounded, I don’t know, I think he sounded drunk.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“I mean, he’s sixteen, I’m not stupid, I was sixteen, too, once, but I just wondered what he was like when you left the house.”

“He was fine.”

“I asked Angie what he’d been up to, but she either didn’t know or was covering up for him. She says she ran into you at the mall?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Angie’s home?”

“You were at the mall?”

I was trying to remember. It was true. I had been at the mall, but instead of just a few hours ago, it felt like days.

“Yeah, I guess I was. But when you talked to Angie, was she home?”

“Yeah, she said she’d just got in. Zack, what is it? You sound almost as weird as Paul did on the phone.”

“Listen, Sarah, I’m in a bit of a situation here at the moment. Why don’t we talk in the morning?”

“Is something going on? Is everything okay?”

“Lawrence didn’t make it to the stakeout tonight. He ran into a bit of trouble. I’m at his place now.”

“What kind of trouble?”