“He’s a football player, am I right? And the coach wants you to find him and his ma.”

“You’re wasted out here on the street,” I told him. “Go up to the university’s theater department—they’re looking for good screenwriters.”

As I walked away, I heard him chortle, “Got her that time.”

Let him have his triumph—life probably didn’t afford him many. One of the coffee shops where I’d put my flyer told me I should check with the county sheriff—they had their own jail out east of town. The sheriff worked with the town forces, but they had their own forces, too.

The sheriff’s department was in the same building where I’d talked to the police, in a park just south of the downtown business district. I walked over and spoke with one of the deputies. Like the town’s police this morning, the deputy was civil and willing to help; she checked their list of inmates in custody, looked up anyone found dead or injured in the county in the last month, even called the hospitals in the area, but came up empty.

Cady Perec, the very part-time research associate, phoned as I returned to my car. She was breathless, apologetic: if she’d known someone wanted to look at the records, she would have come over straightaway.

“Not to worry,” I assured her. “If this is a good time, I’m nearby.”

This was perfect, she’d be right there, her school was only four blocks away, just give her a moment to organize her papers.

“Take it easy,” I started to say, but she cut the connection.

Despite her protestations I waited another ten minutes in the museum lobby before Perec got there. She ran up the steps, dropping papers that she was trying to stuff into a backpack, and apologized again for her delay.

“One of my students, Dougie Mackelson—I didn’t want to turn him away because he’s never asked for help before and he needs it more than most, or I wouldn’t have kept you waiting. Do you have time now, or do you need to come back?”

Cady Perec was a short woman in jeans and a corduroy jacket who hardly looked old enough to be out of junior high, let alone teaching there. Her copper-colored hair kept falling over her glasses as she spoke, and she dropped more papers as she tried to push strands away from her face.

I knelt to help collect the papers—student exams that seemed to be about Kansas in the 1850s. “I think John Brown was a terorist,” someone had written in large letters, “because he wanted to blow people up. He didn’t want to negoshate. He had extrem ideas just like ISIS.”

“Can we sit down, let you catch your breath while I explain what it is I’m looking for?”