“Which means?” Myron said.

“Which means it will recognize your friends. So you post the picture and suddenly, Facebook will circle a face and say, ‘Do you want to tag John Smith?’”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“They do that now?”

“They do, yes.”

Myron shook his head, happy for his naïveté.

“Notice,” Spoon continued, “that I said ‘facial verification,’ a technology that recognizes that two images show the same face, versus the more common facial recognition, an attempt to put a name to a face. Big difference. So I put the profile photograph of Tamryn Rogers through the beta program—‘beta’ meaning that it’s still being tested—to see what it came up with. Oh!”

Spoon slapped his own forehead.

“I almost forgot. I first tried it on Patrick Moore. I was able to get a still frame from his appearance on that television interview. I thought, wow, maybe someone has taken a photograph of him. Maybe I can find something about him and thus Rhys somehow.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Not a single hit. Except . . . well, let me show you.”

He clicked the mouse pad on his laptop. A group photograph came up, maybe twenty, twenty-five teenagers. The caption underneath read SOPHOMORE CLASS, with names below it.

“This photograph popped up on an alumni site for students who attended St. Jacques. If you look over here”—he let the cursor do the pointing for him—“well, do you recognize that young lady?”

Myron did. “It’s Tamryn Rogers.”

“Precisely, Myron. Excellent work.”

Myron glanced at Ema to see if Spoon was goofing on him. Ema shrugged a “what can you do?”

“And if you look down here at the caption”—again Spoon used the cursor—“you’ll see a list of first names only. I assume that has something to do with a privacy program at the school, but I can’t say for sure. Tamryn is the fourth person in on the second row . . . See?”

Myron saw it. It read simply: Tamryn.

“So?”

“That’s what we thought,” Spoon said, “at first. In fact, well, I confess I’m not that great with details. I’m more of a big-picture guy, you know what I mean?”

“Assume I do.”

“Ha, good one! It was Ema here who . . . Ema, you want to show him?”

Ema used her finger and pointed at the boy standing right behind Tamryn Rogers. Myron frowned and bent down for a closer look.

“No need to strain your eyes, Myron,” Spoon said. “Not at your age. I can zoom in.”

Spoon started clicking the image until it got bigger and bigger. It was a good shot, taken recently and with a decent enough camera, but onscreen the pixels were starting to blur as he clicked. Spoon stopped. Myron stared again.

“So you think . . . ?” Myron began.

“We don’t know,” Spoon said.

“I know,” Ema said.

Myron looked for the boy’s name and read it out loud: “Paul.”

The boy in the photograph had long, wavy blond hair—the prep boy trying to assert his independence. Patrick Moore’s hair was stubble short and dark. “Paul” in the photograph seemed to have blue eyes. Patrick Moore’s eyes were brown. Their noses were different too. Paul’s appeared to be smaller maybe, differently shaped.