“It’s that Mexican girl, really,” Aunt Jacqui said. She was sitting on an embroidered hassock, her legs crossed, the skirt of her long dress falling open just above her knees. “He’s in love, or thinks he is, and it’s making him imagine he understands the world from her perspective.”

“He did get very upset when he found that Pat Grobian at the warehouse had been spying on him and reporting back to you, Mr. William,” I said. “He went down to the warehouse on Sunday afternoon to confront Grobian. Grobian says he knows Billy cleared out his locker on Monday, but he didn’t see him then. You also were there on Monday, Mr. William, but you say you never saw your son, either.”

“What were you doing down at the warehouse?” Buffalo Bill demanded, lowering his bull’s head at his son. “First I ever heard of it. Don’t you have enough to do without shoving onto Gary’s turf?”

I pictured the family chart I’d seen in my law enforcement database—it was hard to keep track of all the Bysens. Gary was Aunt Jacqui’s husband; I guess he handled domestic operations.

“Billy has been behaving so strangely I wanted to check up on him in person. He is my son, Father, although you delight so much in undermining me that—”

“William, this isn’t a good time for that,” his mother said. “We all are devastated about Billy, and it doesn’t help for us to attack each other. I want to know what we can do to help Ms. Warshawski find him, since your big agency hasn’t succeeded. I know they tracked down his car and his cell phone, but he’d given those away. Do you know why he did that, Ms. Warshawski?”

“I can’t be sure, but he knew they were easy to trace, and he seems to have been very determined to disappear.”

“Do you think that Mexican girl has talked him into a runaway marriage?” she asked.

“Ma’am, Josie Dorrado is an American girl. And I don’t know any state where it’s legal for a fifteen-year-old to get married. Even a sixteen-year-old needs written permission from her guardian, and Josie’s mother isn’t eager for this relationship, either—she thinks Billy is a rich, irresponsible Anglo boy who will get her daughter pregnant and abandon her.”

“Billy would never do that!” Mrs. Bysen was shocked.

“Maybe not, ma’am, but Ms. Dorrado doesn’t know your grandson any better than you know her daughter.” I watched her face change as she absorbed this idea, before turning to her husband. “Billy apparently has, or took, some documents that your son wants pretty badly. Mr. William tried to laugh it off when we spoke this afternoon, but he went to the Dorrado apartment Monday night and searched there. What’s missing that—”