“The old man was using him as a bargaining chip. Stupid, yes, but he’s out there and we’ve got to find him.” Again, he went for the door to Mr. Page’s room. But Greg grabbed him by the arm and dragged him a few feet down the hall, well out of earshot of the agents in black suits now wrinkled and stale.

“Darren, I just indicted the man in federal court on a homicide charge.”

But if Levi is alive and returned, Darren thought, Leroy doesn’t go to prison.

This was what Rosemary was waiting on, for Mr. Page to come to his senses about the sale, not realizing that Mr. Page had lost access to his senses.

He slapped his palm against the hospital wall. “Greg, that kid is alive, and we have to find him.”

“I’m worried about you, Darren,” Greg said, leaning in close enough to smell his breath. Darren knew he must have seemed unhinged. There was still dried blood on his mouth. “We found the kid’s clothes at Page’s house. It doesn’t get any clearer. What’s going on with you? Who did that to your face?”

“You can’t have gotten the DNA back that fast.”

“No, but we’re banking everything on the mother and sister identifying the items of clothing. The stuff itself, shirt and shorts, even underwear, had been laundered. The man actually had them folded and sitting on top of his washer. The fucker thought he could wash away all the evidence.”

Darren got a sudden image of the dozens and dozens of premade sandwiches in Leroy’s fridge on the day he’d returned from a fishing trip with no fish, his pants legs soaked to the knee with lake water, like he’d waded out to something. And Greg said they’d found the boy’s clothes washed and folded. He hadn’t hurt the boy; Margaret was right about that. He was taking care of him.

Darren thought he knew where.

He left Greg with his mouth hanging open and ran as fast as he could through the halls out to the parking lot. He got into his truck and raced toward the railroad tracks and the Truth and Treasures shop.

“I need a map,” he told Marcus. “Gogo Island. Where is it exactly?”

Marcus, who had been sitting with his feet up on his table listening to a podcast on his phone while sleeving new inventory of photographs into plastic, reached to the box on the floor for a copy of his book. He flipped through the pages until he came upon a crude hand-drawn map of Caddo Lake, considerably less impressive than the one Sheriff Quinn had shown Darren when they first met. He ripped it from the book like it was an act of great heroism.