“Eleven.”

Just a year younger than Scooter. “Isn’t that young to be walking around on his own?”

“It’s the West End. They don’t think like other people.”

“And what was your read of the family dynamics? Maybe he was a runaway.”

“I wouldn’t’ve split from a deal like that,” Ryan said. “Life of luxury, every need met. Plus the parents seemed over-the-top upset.”

“You believed them?”

The other woman’s silence told what she thought of the question.

Sam moved on. “How did Shaw come into the picture?”

“He lived in the neighborhood, he’d been seen talking to the kid in the past, and his own son—now an adult—said he wouldn’t put it past him.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. We went by the house, a fancy brownstone, and the son was there. Clearly no love lost. We wanted to talk to Shaw himself, but he was out. We got lucky anyhow. The son was leaving for Australia and had just come by to get something. I don’t remember what. Anyhow, one thing led to another, we mentioned that a kid had gone missing and we were doing a standard door-to-door. No big deal. We didn’t tell him his old man had been seen with the kid. But the son threw him right under the bus. Without a pause. ‘No wonder you’re here,’ he says. ‘I would be, too.’ We pressed him, but he had nothing. He just hated his dad and was giving him shit.”

“It’s a big step, telling the cops you think your father’s abducting children,” Sam reacted as Willy came in from putting Emma to bed. She gestured to him to sit beside her and eavesdrop, stressing he keep silent.

“My money was on child abuse,” Ryan explained. “The son, named David, wouldn’t spill the beans. He made no bones that he wanted to get as far away from Boston as the planet would let him. He wasn’t goin’ to tell us anything that would delay that. Plus, it was clear his gripe was ancient history.”

“Our background check said there’s a daughter, Annabelle,” Sam said.

“We got nothing from her. Lives in California, has no contact with the parents, and when we got her on the phone, she all but hung up on us. I’ve had better talks with a hydrant.”

Willy straightened at that, smiling.

“What else made you look at Shaw?” Sammie pressed her, sensing there had to be more.

“We had an eyewitness who claimed to have seen the actual grab, but at the photo lineup, it fell apart. This happened in the afternoon. A weekday. We thought we had Shaw nailed when we couldn’t find anyone who’d seen him at work at the same time, but then his wife swore up and down that he’d been with her.”

“This was Lucy?”

“Yeah. Real jerk. I figured she was lying, but what’re ya gonna do? We had no kid, no evidence, unreliable witness, nothin’. Tell me you’ve got a better case.”

“Not really,” Sam conceded as Willy wrote Seamus? on the pad she had before her.