He tore the tab off a can of Budweiser and took a seat at the table. “I don’t suppose you’ll sit, either,” he said.

“I’m fine where I am,” I said. I wanted to be ready to make a quick getaway if necessary.

Czarnecki lit a cigarette and contemplated the match after he’d blown it out. “How long have you been looking for your boy’s killer?” he said.

“It’s been a year now,” I said.

“Got any suspects?”

“No, but I have some theories.”

“The circumstances do make a man ponder,” Czarnecki said. “Abducted somewhere. Killed and drained of blood somewhere else. Body left somewhere else. That’s not a robbery, that’s a ritual. I like to drove myself nuts ruminating over it.”

He paused to take a hit off his cigarette, a long, deep drag he released with a hiss.

“Then I found Mr. Otto,” he said. “Or, rather, Mr. Otto found me. He turned up one day at my old place in Carson City, the house I shared with Marjorie, my wife. This was a couple years after her murder, a couple years where I hadn’t been doing much but drinking. Drinking and pondering. ‘I’d like to talk to you about your wife,’ Mr. Otto said. ‘What about her?’ I said, skeptical, like you.”

He paused again, and I realized he was fighting tears. “Everything changed for me that day,” he said. “And everything’s gonna change for you today.” He finished his beer in a gulp. “Come with me.”

I followed him outside. The jay was still squawking. A warning, I now realize. Nature raising an alarm. I should have heeded it. I should have gotten into the Econoline and driven away as fast as I could. But Czarnecki had hooked me, piqued my curiosity. We went to a concrete-block shed with a thick wooden door. Czarnecki opened a padlock and folded back a steel hasp. The door creaked when he pushed it. Blood was racing through my veins. I could feel it in my wrists, in my throat.

The big, orange afternoon sun shot fire into the windowless shed. In the middle of the tomblike space was a cot; on the cot, a blanket; under the blanket, what?

Czarnecki stepped into the shed and yanked off the cover. The sun shone on a figure lying on the cot. A white man—a kid, really—naked except for underwear. He was in handcuffs, and his feet were shackled, too, at the ankles. The restraints were attached by a chain to an eyebolt embedded in the concrete floor.

When the sunlight hit him, he screamed like a wounded animal and writhed in agony. “What the fuck?” he wailed. “What the fuck?” He threw his arms up to protect his face from the glare, and his flesh started to smoke.