“Men’s basketball,” Sergeant Everard said sardonically. “If you’re going to spend more than another twelve hours here, you’d better memorize the Hawks—Jayhawks—men’s schedule so you know when you’ll be able to get anyone to listen to what you’re trying to say.”

He asked me for chapter and verse on why I’d come to Lawrence to look for August and Emerald. I told him. He asked for proof that Sonia had phoned me from the bar. I showed him my call log. He asked what Sonia had to say. I gave him the gist.

“You really think she saw them?” Everard said. “She’s quite a few filaments short of a bulb.”

“She said a young man was taking pictures and an older black woman was encouraging him. I didn’t include anything about Veriden being a videographer in the posters I put up.”

Everard thought it over. “Maybe Sonia did see them. Just seems odd that no one else in town knows anything about them.”

“Where’s the cemetery that Sonia was talking about, where her truelove is buried?” I asked. “If I go there, maybe I can find someone who would have seen Ms. Ferring or August Veriden.”

Everard shook his head. “That’s all in Sonia’s mind, a truelove and his burial ground.”

“Who is she? Officer Peabody said you’d explain about the group home and who Sonia— What’s her last name? Kiel, was it?”

Everard made a sour face. “Sonia Kiel. She grew up in this town. My older brother went to high school with her, and she was an oddball then. She’s only turned odder with time.”

I would have put Everard at about forty: the skin on his face was still taut, none of that sag under the chin where aging begins. Even if his brother were a lot older, Sonia had looked to be a tired fifty-something. Life on the streets does terrible things to the human body; a diet of alcohol and drugs isn’t exactly a healing recipe.

“Oddball how?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s all ancient history. Her old man was a big noise up on the hill, scientist, knew all there was to know about what bugs got you sick. Anyway, Sonia, she’s his youngest kid. Her two older brothers were academic all-stars, you know the kind. One was a math whiz, and the other could learn any language you put in front of him.”

His cell phone rang. When he hung up, he told Suze that a fight had broken out over by the Cave. “Polanco is there. No shots fired yet, but you go help him sort it out. Call me if you need a bigger club to hit them with.”