“It was only later we got worried.” Miss Ella’s harsh voice brought me back to her living room. “Later, when we could get out and about, and, by then, we couldn’t find anyone who had seen him.”

It was when I asked for a photograph that Miss Ella seemed startled. I was surprised, actually, that among all the framed slogans and pictures of Dr. King, Malcolm X, and other black leaders, that I hadn’t seen any family pictures at all.

“Why do you need one?”

“If I’m going to look for him, I need to know what he looked like forty years ago. I can scan it and age it, see what he might look like at sixty.”

Miss Ella returned to the sideboard and fumbled inside for a photo album. She looked through it slowly and finally took out a shot of a young black man in yellow graduation robes. His hair was cropped close to his head in the style of those pre-Afro days. He stared seriously at the camera, his eyes hard and bleak.

“That was when he graduated high school. Even though he’d started down a wrong road, I made him stay in school until he was done. The rest are all just baby pictures and such. I want this back, and I want it back in the same condition it is today.”

I slipped it into a plastic sleeve and put it in a file folder. I told her I’d return it at the end of the week, after I’d made some copies and preliminary inquiries.

“But I don’t want your sister to imagine this will be easy. I never guarantee results. And, in this case, we may end up with too many dead ends for you to want to continue.”

“But you expect me to pay you even if you don’t find him.”

I smiled brightly. “Just as your pastor expects to be paid even if she can’t save your soul.”

She eyed me narrowly. “And how will I know you’re not cheating her? My sister, I mean? And me?”

I nodded. She had a right to know. “I’ll give you a written report. You, or Pastor Karen, can do some spot-checking to see if I’ve done what I claim I did. But until you give me the names of your son’s friends, there’s very little I can do.”

When I left a minute later, I heard all the bolts on the door snap shut in reverse order. I stood in the hallway, already depressed by the inquiry.

IN THE DETECTIVE’S ABSENCE I

IN THE DETECTIVE’S ABSENCE I