“We don’t know for sure. The nurse said he was adopted by a Greek family, but she didn’t know the name. That was handled by a different department. But it was the day he left with his new parents that the place burned down and just about everyone else was trapped and killed.”

Gurney was silent.

“What are you thinking, Sherlock?”

“I’m thinking that someone paid a hundred grand to turn this little monster loose on Carl Spalter.”

“And on Mary Spalter and Gus Gurikos and Lex Bincher,” added Hardwick.

“Peter Pan,” mused Gurney. “The kid who never grew up.”

“Very fanciful, ace, but where does this leave us?”

“I’d say it leaves us in the middle of nowhere, drifting into total confusion. We’ve got some colorful stories, but we know almost nothing. We’re looking for a pro hitter whose name might be Petros Panikos or Peter Pan or something else. Birth name unknown. Passport name unknown. Date of birth unknown. Nationality unknown. Birth parents unknown. Current address unknown. Arrests and convictions unknown. In fact, just about everything that could lead us to him is unknown.”

“I don’t disagree. What now?”

“You need to go back to your Interpol guy and beg for whatever crumbs might still be lurking in the corners of their Panikos file—especially anything more about the Panikos family, their neighbors, anyone in that village who might have known anything about little Petros, or whatever the hell they named him—anything that might give us a better handle than we have now. The name of anyone we could talk to …”

“Fuck, man, that was twenty-five years ago. Nobody’s going to remember anything, even if we could find them. Get real.”

“You’re probably right. But get in touch with your Interpol guy anyway. Who knows what he might come up with?”

After ending the call, Gurney sat with his notebook open on his lap, gazing out over the reservoir. The low water level was exposing the rocky slopes that extended from the water’s edge up to the tree line. Driftwood littered the stones. Across a small inlet, in the deep afternoon shadows, a pair of gnarled branches reached up from the water onto the slope in a way that stirred a chilling memory of one of his first murder scenes as a rookie—the body of a naked child washed up against a stony outcropping on the shore of the Hudson River.

It wasn’t a memory he wanted to dwell on. He picked up his notebook, where he’d jotted down most of what Hardwick had told him, and went over it one more time.

He was frustrated with himself. Frustrated with having gotten involved in the case to begin with. Frustrated with not having made more tangible progress. Frustrated with the lack of official standing. Frustrated with all the question marks.