There were three bedrooms, but only one that appeared to have been used for sleeping. One had been turned into a spillover room to hold boxes of files and old clothing and shoeboxes of photographs. He riffled through one of them, guessing them to be pictures Dolores’ parents had collected over the last half-century or more.

The second bedroom was clearly where Dolores spent her nights. The bed was unmade and a woman’s clothes were scattered on the floor.

The third bedroom also contained a bed, a single that was pushed up against the wall to allow room for a desk, a computer chair, and some bookshelves. An open laptop sat on the desk, its recharging cord attached and leading to a wall outlet off to one side. Next to the laptop was a framed picture of Dolores, looking pretty much as Duckworth remembered her from the tattoo parlor, standing between a much older couple he assumed were her mother and father.

He tapped the spacebar and the screen came to life. The background pic featured a dragon and a woman with very blonde, almost white hair. Duckworth wasn’t sure, but he thought this was a scene from that Game of Thrones TV show.

He was worried the computer might be password-protected, but it wasn’t. He pulled back the computer chair, dropped himself into it, and clicked onto the web browser. Once it had filled the screen, he clicked on the search history, crossing mental fingers that it had not been cleared.

It had not.

Dolores had traveled far and wide on the World Wide Web. Facebook pages, Twitter, local weather, celebrity gossip.

One of the sites she had been on in the last twenty-four hours had been Just Deserts. When Duckworth clicked on it, the headline that immediately popped up was “Where is the Big Baby?”

He scanned the most recent sightings of Jeremy Pilford in the Promise Falls area. Plus one out-of-focus shot in front of a hotel that was identified as being in Kingston, New York, south of Albany. That one had supposedly been taken just a few hours ago.

Duckworth said, “Hmm.”

He decided to let the computer experts examine the laptop more closely. He wanted to complete his walkabout.

When he had finished his tour of the top floor, he went back down to the kitchen and exited the house the same way he’d entered it. Standing in the fresh air, his eyes settled on the barn. As he walked toward it, he didn’t see anything to suggest this was still a working farm. No cows or pigs or chickens, and none of the deposits they left behind. Nor did he see any farm equipment. No tractor, not even a pickup truck. Maybe he’d find a vehicle in the barn.