Ethan looked at him, and Robin thought that maybe he had overstepped his bounds. But Ethan just took another drink. “Don’t mean I have to band together with all those arseholes and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ does it? I’m fine exactly where I am.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

“Yeah, well...” Ethan said breathlessly.

“I lost someone too,” Robin said. “A while ago. You never stop wondering.”

Ethan looked at him, really looked at him for the first time. “No, you never do. And I can’t stop. All the time, round and round in my head. She’s nothing now—just a...a question mark.”

“What was she like? Your daughter?”

“The usual young woman. Ran rings around me and May. May was my... Pru’s mum. Pru had big plans. She was a hell of an engineer. She had just got an internship designing things for spas. New kinds of hot tubs, swimming pools, saunas. It wasn’t what she really wanted to do, but it was a step in the right direction. She really wanted to work on space shuttles. Move to Florida and go to work at the Kennedy Space Center. Imagine that.” He tipped the beer to Robin and took a sip. It left a foam mustache on his upper lip and he didn’t seem to have any interest in rubbing it off.

“She must have been very special.”

“She was. Not like me. I work at the City Council—I mean, I used to. Not anymore. Not these days.”

“I... You don’t have to explain...”

“I know what they think...what they talk about behind my back. But it doesn’t matter anymore. The day Pru disappeared, it was like part of me disappeared too. You know?” Pack absentmindedly picked up his newspaper and put it on the seat beside him. “That’s when it all fell apart. I’m going to put it back together. But... Just someday, right?” He gave a laugh that had no joy in it at all. “I was out there for days at a time, out there looking for my little girl. But she wasn’t there. There’s only one person that knows where she is. And he’s sitting there in his box not talking.

“People see prisons as a bad place. A punishment. I see it as protection. There’s a dozen or more people in this town who’d like to beat it out of him. Beat out...where he...where he put them...” Pack’s speech cracked up but he still didn’t cry. He just took another drink. “Pru never did anything to anyone. Never even hurt a fly. And she trusted every one of her friends. She would die for them all. And this is what he did to her.”

Robin couldn’t help it slipping out. “There doesn’t actually seem to be any concrete proof that Matthew...”