“Do you blame them?”

Chuck seemed to consider the question seriously. “No. I don’t. But I did feel bad for them. Even after I knew all of it—and trust me, Shep told me all of it—I knew Shep had changed. He isn’t the same person. Most of the boys who came to see him understood that. The ones who didn’t, well, ultimately they were the ones who were trapped by the past. Not Shep.”

“Trapped by him,” North said. “He did that to him, he—”

“Ok,” Shaw said.

“It’s not fucking ok.”

“So you knew,” Shaw said. “You still wanted to work with him.”

“I still do want to work with him. And it’s not just me. We’ve got one of his boys working with us. I say boy, but you know what I mean. Beau. He was an Arkansas boy, and he grew up ok. Pretty great, actually. He’s our youth activities coordinator. Full time at Iris; we’re the only two that are.”

“That was never uncomfortable.”

“Never.”

“But now Shep’s gone.”

“Yeah, he disappeared.”

“Tell us what you mean by that.”

“Nobody knows where he is: not his husband, not any of us at Iris, not any friends or neighbors.”

“His husband?” North said. He felt proud, again, of how steady his voice was. “Somebody was willing to date this motherfucker? To marry him?”

“Somebody was willing to marry you,” Shaw muttered.

North shoved Shaw’s chair hard enough to send him rolling, and Shaw scrabbled at the desk to catch himself. “He’s got a husband?” North asked again.

“Yeah, Mike’s awesome. But he’s freaking out, of course. We all are.”

“When was the last time somebody saw him?” Shaw asked, still trying to drag himself back to the desk.

“Thursday. Five o’clock.”

“That’s very specific.”

“He was leaving Iris. I had the evening shift. Shep was going to run some errands. The next day, Mike called Iris; he was looking for Shep. Sometimes, if there’s a kid in crisis, Shep will stay overnight. He’ll stay as long as it takes, to be honest.”

“So Mike wasn’t worried when he called.”

“No. This was all old hat. He was just calling to check in.”

“But Shep wasn’t there.”

“No. I locked up around eleven that night; that’s when we send the kids home.”

“On a school night?”

“For most of these kids, there’s a strong correlation between time spent out of the house and a decreased risk of self-harm.” Chuck waved a hand vaguely. “There’ve been all sorts of studies about it.”

“And Shep didn’t come back to Iris while you were still working?”

“No. And he didn’t come back after I left either. There’s a security system on the house, and it logs every time someone codes in and out. Personalized codes, by the way. I left, I set the alarm, and I was the first one in the next morning. I didn’t check the records right away—Mike and I thought there was some sort of silly explanation, maybe something we’d forgotten, a trip he’d forgotten to tell us about, a flat tire, something. I guess now I know we were stretching. I didn’t know there was a problem, I didn’t really know, I mean, until Mike showed up at Iris in person on Saturday afternoon. He was pretty upset by then, worried sick, so I freaked out. I finally thought to check the security system.”