We watched each other, anxious.

“Straight to voice mail,” said Elsa.

In the middle of the parkland was a play area. A sign warned children from the neighboring areas to keep away.

“Vee!” I shouted uselessly. “Vee!”

I walked on. I stood on the high metal bridge above the station, but there was no one on the platforms and I could see no one on the tracks. On a balcony in an apartment building very much like ours an old woman turned to watch me. From another balcony, farther away, a man with binoculars tracked me as I walked.

“Vee!” I shouted again. “Vee!”

I walked the path that skirted the perimeter, eyes searching the ground forty meters below. I found a smaller, narrower footway that led me down on to a dry mud track, and followed that until I could follow it no more.

Elsa would have called Julie’s mother, and after Julie’s mother her own father, then a couple of friends back home in D.C., in case Vee had called.

I took the footbridge down to the main road, walked along the high grass bank, heading past the mall. Nothing would be open there, not at this time, but it was the only place I could think of going. Outside were the cleaning staff, sharing cigarettes, waiting to be let in, speaking in languages I didn’t recognize. Every one of them was a foreigner, I guessed.

The vehicle fumes smelled of burnt licorice and ammonia.

Elsa called.

“Hey,” I said.

“The boat key’s gone.”

At the marina I took my key fob from my pocket, held it up against the reader. The gate clicked open. I could see that our rented boat was not on its mooring, but I ran out along the pontoon, needing to be sure.

Four tensioned ropes, two on each side. Vee had set them neatly in place on the spits; she had folded the tarpaulin canopy of the boat into four and left it on the pontoon, along with the steel hawser and the padlock.

I called Elsa. “Boat’s not here.”

Elsa’s breathing, the sound cutting in and out on the line.

“You there?” I said. “Jo and Hedda brought it back for us, right? Elsa?”

“Vee took Licia’s life jacket off the peg. I’m assuming she took the boat.”

“So, what, she has some kind of a plan to find Licia?”

“I’m going to call my dad. Ask him to drive up and fetch Franklin.”

The highway cut through commuter towns, low-built and ugly. Elsa drove without speaking, eyes flicking from mirror to mirror, rarely settling on the road.

“What are you thinking?” I asked her after a time.

She glanced at me. “Same as you, Cal. Exactly the same as you.”

She reached across with her free hand, and I clasped it tightly, threaded my fingers through hers.