“Carpenter,” I tell her, giving her a card. “The parents are missing. Been gone for a few weeks now. Supposed to be in Mexico at an orphanage. Never got there.”

“Orphanage? What for? To get another worker?”

I look at her eyes. They’re slits now, but she’s studying me.

“No, to do some work for charity.”

Maxine lets Cotton slide from her arms to the ground.

“That’s a crock,” she says. “That man had a mouth like a sailor. Always yelling at those kids, especially his wife and the boy. Charity? What a joke that is. I bet they were headed down there to get another boy. Joshua wanted to bolt.”

Cotton is back to rubbing against my legs.

Help me, I think.

“He told you that?” I ask.

“Yes, he did,” Maxine went on. “He told me that he didn’t want to live out here. It’s not for everyone. Kids don’t have a choice. Parents get to decide everything. My husband moved us out here and I hated it for the first twenty years; now I wouldn’t trade places with the Queen of England.”

I imagine the queen would feel the same way.

I ask her if there are any other neighbors up the road, off the grid.

“Not anymore. Since marijuana became legal in Washington, our local growers packed their tent—and I do mean a tent—and moved on. Nice couple. No one else up this far. Few folks back the way you came. Saw ’em a time or two, but don’t know them by name. Not even by sight. Sorry.”

I thank her, nudge Cotton away, and head to the car.

“Come by again, Detective. Haven’t had a visitor out here for a year or so.”

I tell her I will, but I hope I don’t ever have to. I’m sure I smell of cat pee.

I wind my way down the bumpy road, stopping at a couple of places. No one seems to be home. One mobile looks abandoned. Yet it hasn’t been. I peer through the window after I knock and see a sweet potato vine growing suspended by three toothpicks over some water. The water’s full. I leave my card with a note to tell them to call, though I doubt whoever lives there has a phone.

When I get to my office, I fill out the paperwork for the lab work on the samples. The courier hasn’t left, so Joshua’s cheek swab and his mother’s hair will be in Olympia tonight.

I write an email to the crime lab:

RUSH NEEDED.

The DNA samples I’m sending your way need your urgent attention. Looking for evidence of a familial match. Please do it first thing. We have a dead woman and a missing man out here and we need confirmation from you.