Duckworth sat and stared at the man. Alastair, growing increasingly uncomfortable, finally reached for the phone on his desk. He hit one button, put the phone to his ear and waited.

He grimaced. “It’s gone straight to message.” He waited a second, then said sternly, “Cory, it’s your father. Call home immediately.” He replaced the receiver.

“He’s turned his phone off,” Duckworth said.

“Or he’s someplace he can’t get a signal. I’m sure that’s all it is. What happened to the girl? I demand to know.”

“What do you do, Mr. Calder?” Duckworth asked.

Alastair blinked, evidently offended that his demand was so quickly ignored. “I’m an advocate,” he said.

“Uh, an advocate for what?” Duckworth asked. “Or should I ask whom?”

“Both,” he said. “For decades, my wife Annette and I directed campaigns for countless individuals and agencies in areas of social justice, environmental protection, the wrongly accused and convicted, freedom-of-speech violations, the list goes on.”

“I see. How would you advocate, exactly?”

“Is this really important, Detective?”

“Just getting a sense of things, Mr. Calder.”

“Our company mapped out strategies, guided these organizations through courses of action. We got our start in advertising and public relations, so we were well grounded in the arts of persuasion and advocacy. We used those skills to make this a better world, rather than trying to sell things to people they probably didn’t need in the first place.”

“And you did all this from Promise Falls?”

“No,” he said. “From New York. My wife had roots in this part of the state, and when we retired—although it’s never been a complete retirement—we moved up here. That was seven years ago. But as you can see,” and he waved his arm across the study, “I’m still engaged in things.” He leaned forward, his arms resting on the desk. “Tell me my son is not in some kind of trouble.”

“I don’t know,” Duckworth said. “Why don’t you tell me about him.”

Another sigh. “He lives in the shadow of his brother and sister,” he said. “They’ve gone on to do great things, to make a difference. Like their parents. Cory has struggled in that regard.”

“How?”

“He . . . he looks for shortcuts. He’s impatient. The road to success is not a superhighway. It has plenty of bends and detours, and sometimes the bridge gets taken out in a flood. Many of us find another route, even if it takes us hundreds of miles out of our way. Cory turns the car around and goes home.” His face saddened. “Annette said I couldn’t expect him to have the same drive as the others. We had to let him be who he was, whatever that turned out to be. And that’s turned out to be a kid—a young man—who spends a lot of time on the computer, arguing with the world.”