“I recognize when a man has turned the corner in his spirit and begun to change. These five men had stopped moving on. They had stopped running from the Lord. They were sober. They were working and saving money. That they would disappear under those conditions is suspicious, is it not?”

She didn’t feel sure but declined to debate. She pushed Dr. Kleekamp’s photo of the dead man’s face across her desk.

“Is this someone you recognize?”

The priest’s eyes closed. His lips moved silently for several moments. When he opened his eyes again, they were blurred with tears.

“Of course. That’s Daniel Greevey. Danny.”

“When did you last see Danny?”

“July the twenty-sixth, five-thirty in the morning, drinking coffee as he walked out the mission door into the sunrise.”

His precision seemed defiant, as if challenging her to question the symbology of his last Daniel Greevey sighting. The priest gripped his hands together and awaited her response.

“Where was he going?”

“To the job line.”

“The job line?”

“Corner of Industrial and Third, about a mile from the mission.” He touched Greevey’s paper face. “Men who want work line up there on the curb five days a week. People who need help, contractors, homeowners, landscaping crews, drive up, make an offer, off they go. Danny…”

Outside, Denise’s truck door slammed. Off she went. Down the hall, Rinehart Rog, Rhino, settling in for the night shift, had turned on his radio to a Milwaukee Brewers game.

“Danny was working,” said Father McCartney. “He was going out every day. He was putting money in the bank. He was clean and he was getting good with the Lord. He walked out the door on the morning of July twenty-sixth, and he never came back.”

“Did you—”

“Yes, of course.”

She sipped Dew.

“Just like I notified the police when the other four men disappeared under the same exact circumstances. The cops don’t give a damn. A homeless man goes missing, nobody cares. Easy targets.”

This she believed: easy targets.

“So what do you think happened to Danny?”

“I have no idea. Except he got picked up in the job line.”

“Tell me more about the job line.”

She heard Velcro. Up from a cargo pocket came his cell phone.

“I’ll show you.”

He squared the phone on her desk.

“I’ve been to that curb, taking pictures, asking questions, every day since Danny disappeared. If the police won’t solve this, I will.”

He began to flip through photographs so fast she couldn’t follow. Down the hallway, a thin voice on the radio described Ryan Braun hitting a long fly ball… going, going… caught. Please hurry home, she silently begged Harley.

“According to what I hear,” said Father McCartney, “and what the La Crosse cops refuse to hear, is that at one point or another, every one of the men I’ve lost got into… into this…”