I went into my bedroom and dressed in jeans and put on a couple of loose knit tops under my navy peacoat. I got my gun out of the wall safe. I wasn’t expecting a battle with Billy, if, in fact, he and Josie had run off together. But drive-by shootings were a dreary commonplace in the old ’hood, and I didn’t want to end up lying on the floor of an abandoned warehouse with some punk’s stray bullet in my back, just because I hadn’t come prepared. That was the real reason we were taking Mitch, too—not too many gangbangers dis a big dog.

Before we left Lakeview, I called Billy’s mother. Her phone was answered by a man who was some kind of butler or secretary—anyway, a call screener. He was very reluctant to disturb Mrs. William, and when I finally pushed him into bringing her to the phone it was clear why: Annie Lisa was high on something other than life. Whether it was modern and respectable, like Xanax, or old-fashioned and reliable, like Old Overholt, she had a delay, like a satellite echo, in answering anything I said.

I spoke slowly and patiently, as if to a child, reminding her that I was the detective who was looking for Billy. “When did you last hear from him, Ms. Bysen?”

“Hear from him?” she echoed.

“Did Billy call you today?”

“Billy? Billy isn’t here. William, William is angry.”

“And why is William angry, ma’am?”

“I don’t know.” She was puzzled and talked about it at some length. “Billy went to work, he went to the warehouse, that’s what a good boy does, he works hard for a living, it’s what Daddy Bysen always told us, so why does that make William angry? Unless it’s because Billy is doing what Daddy Bysen says, William always hates for Billy to follow Daddy Bysen’s orders, but William also likes children who work hard. Children who lie around using drugs and getting pregnant, they get sent away, so he should be happy that Billy went to the warehouse again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sure deep down he’s ecstatic, just hiding it from you.”

Irony was a mistake: she thought I was saying William was hiding Billy from her. I cut her questions off and asked for Billy’s sister’s phone number.

“Candace is in Korea. She’s doing mission work, and we’re proud that she’s turning her life around.” Annie Lisa spoke the sentences like an inexpert news reader looking at a teleprompter.

“That’s nice. But in case Billy called his sister to talk over his plans, can you give me her phone number?”

“He wouldn’t do that; he knows William would be very angry.”

“How about her e-mail address?”