I spent the rest of the afternoon in the park. I wiped down the side of the van and used shoe polish to reapply the messages: SON MURDERED, REWARD FOR INFO, PLEASE HELP. I put up the photos of Benny and the poster I made that lays out everything I know about his death. A path ran right past the Econoline, and everyone who used it, the bicyclists, the joggers, the dog-walkers, could see the display.

Then I lay down on my cot in the back of the van and went through the local newspapers. An alcoholic living in a boardinghouse had gone missing. I scissored out the story and pasted it in my scrapbook. The corpse of a young woman had been fished from the river, the body too decomposed to determine the cause of death. I saved that one too.

And then I came upon one about a little girl murdered a month ago. Suzy Byrd, age ten, left home to walk to school. Her body was found a week later in a junkyard. Her throat had been cut. James and Molly, her grieving parents, were begging for the public’s help in finding the killer. Anyone who knew anything about the crime was asked to call a police tip line.

Another atrocity for the book. After only a year, it’s almost full. Every city I pass through has had a mysterious death or disappearance, and I still believe that if I gather enough of these stories and peruse them closely enough they’ll lead me like a trail of blood to whoever killed Benny.

I ate a peanut-butter sandwich for dinner and drove to the Memorial Coliseum, where a rock band was playing a concert. I parked out front but a cop made me move, said I was blocking a fire lane. I found another spot and walked back to pass out flyers to the kids when the show ended.

They were an unruly bunch, mostly white, mostly high. The majority of them dropped the flyer without looking at it, and those who did take the time to read it were no help. One girl cried and hugged me and wouldn’t let go. “It’s so sad,” she kept wailing. Her boyfriend finally dragged her off, saying, “Sorry, man. She’s tripping.” Another kid raved about satanic cults. He was stoned on something too. His eyeballs wheeled, and he fidgeted like a horse tormented by flies.

“Did you know Satan was an angel?” he said. “A fallen angel. Can you dig it?”