“The girl was in trouble of some kind. In her mind it was so bad that she had to cut off contact with her family. Her friend Sandy Willis seems to know something about where Tonya had gone, but I’ll have to tread very lightly there; she’s as skittish as a colt.” I reflected a moment. “No, that’s not quite true—she’s afraid; of who or what I don’t know, but she’s frightened.”

“And the brother?” Bob asked.

“He’s hiding something, Bob. He’s scared also. And he’s into something dirty of some kind. I doubt that he works a job, but he drives a tricked-out pickup, and there’s a new bass boat sitting in the yard.”

“Have you come to any conclusions?” he prodded.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t have enough information yet and I don’t want to cloud my thoughts with unfounded supposition. I’m going to the police department today to get a copy of the nine-one-one report; maybe there’s something hidden there. After that, I have to find a way to get Sandy Willis to speak candidly with me.”

Bob was looking at that spot on the wall again. “Ever hear of something called Occam’s razor?” he asked.

I thought for a second. “Yeah,” I replied. “I think it goes, ‘Plurality ought never be posited without necessity,’ or something close to that.”

Bob nodded. “Uh-huh; if several theories will give you the same result—pick the simplest one. Now, how did we say that in the army?” He smiled.

Now it was my turn to smile. “The old KISS formula: Keep It Simple, Stupid.”

“Exactly,” my friend returned. “And it works with everything except people. The answer, when you find it, to what happened to that poor girl, will be simple. The reasons—the answers to the question why—will be anything but simple, because it has to do with people and their emotions. We like to think of ourselves as rational animals—and in some ways we are. But the decisions we make are almost always emotional ones.”

It was my turn to be silent and think for a minute. There was much wisdom in Bob’s words. And I had to ask myself if the why of the matter made any difference to me. The answer to my question was: Yes, it did—to me, if to no one else. And I had to admit that for me it was a decision based on emotion.

I looked again at my friend across the table. He spoke before I did.