The apartment was still unlocked, but no one was inside. Bart was the first to notice, vocally at least, that Stiles’s things were gone. The reloader, the guns, the pack of explosives, and anything else that might even hint that he was ever there. Billie felt a sudden pang of distress at the discovery but said nothing. Bart was not nearly so controlled. “Looks like he packed up and left,” he said, half-indifferent, half-frightened by the implication. “You think he’d really take it on the lamb like that?”

“No, I don’t.”

He shrugged. “Me neither. But I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”

She was adamant. “Believe me, he didn’t, so let’s drop it and go find your brother.” She turned then and started for the door, inadvertently knocking a photo from the end table with her elbow. She picked it up. The photo had been taken at Kings Island—the Eiffel Tower and person in the Scooby Doo suit in the background were the giveaways. In the foreground was Charlie, wearing a law enforcement cap and a T-shirt that read, CALL 911 TO MAKE A POLICEMAN COME. He held a woman in his arms, a clowning knight with his mousy damsel, and the two of them together were a study in contrasts. Where he was beefy and stout, she was petite. Where his manner, even frozen in the photo, was flamboyant and garrulous, hers was retiring and shy, eyes avoiding the camera. But she was looking at him, and Billie could read the emotion in that look. It choked her up. She kept connecting it to the Toyota wagon they’d found out on Croglin Way—Susie’s wagon, off the road but with the nose pointed homeward, the doors open and the driver gone. Billie tried to think hopefully, to believe that Susie might have made it to safety. But she failed.

“You okay, Mom?” Bart asked, but then he saw what she was staring at. “Oh. Are you going to tell him?”

She sat the photo down gently, like a fragile, precious thing, then wiped her eyes. “No. Not till later.” She held out a hand to her son. “Let’s go find Del.”

As they came down the stairs, they found Delbert and Ted sitting in the well of the truck’s big side doors, the younger with a large sack perched on his lap. Del rifled through it and produced a handful of candy bars for their examination. “What do you want? We’ve got a Kit Kat, a Mounds, a Nestle’s Crunch . . .” Billie was indignant. “I thought I told you to leave money for anything you take.”