This time I didn’t reply at all, just waited as Tim found his way to the inevitable conclusion on his own. After a minute, his expression soured and he said, “It was that picture of you in the paper, wasn’t it? Shit. Okay, let’s say he does know you’re living here. How could he be sure you’d find the poster?”

I saw the man with the hat clearly now, or at least the back of him, and rage bubbled up inside me. He’d been right there, that close, and I hadn’t felt so much as a tingle. I was the only one who stood a chance of picking Bram out of a crowd, and I couldn’t even get that right. After countless days of looking over my shoulder at gas station pumps and straining to see through the windshields of cars passing me in the Kinney Drugs parking lot, I’d allowed myself to become preoccupied with Sam, and I’d missed him.

I told Tim about karate, and my conversation with Sam about buying a card. “Bram must have gone straight to Smuggler’s Cargo. Who else could have put up this poster? Who else would write a taunt like that on the back?”

Tim still looked unsure, but as he eyed the poster he said, “That’s Trey, all right. I’ll run this past the parents, see if they recognize the photograph.”

“What did you find out there today?” I asked.

His sigh was heavy and rumbly with the mucus that coated his throat. “I was counting on there being surveillance footage. A historic house on an island, closed several months of the year, you’d think there’d be security cameras. The ones they’ve got point to the dock and main entrance, where we already had witnesses, so all that tells us is that Trey didn’t leave on the ferry that brought him over.”

“That’s because he was taken. Think about it,” I said. “Annette, the shop owner, is sure the guy who left the poster wore a Purple Pirates hat.”

“Tons of folks around here have those hats.”

“Including our missing boy. Trey didn’t fall into the river while his classmates and teachers twiddled their thumbs. Somebody took him, Tim, someone who knew what they were doing. Who’s abducted people before.”

Leaning back in his chair, Tim rubbed his red eyes. “I should tell you, there’s a possibility this is family-related. Turns out Trey’s adopted, and the parents think this might have something to do with his birth mother. She lives in Syracuse, but apparently she tracked them down last spring and pressured them to let her spend time with Trey.”

This was probably the outcome Tim was hoping for. He didn’t like to believe his friends and neighbors had it in them to commit reprehensible crimes, and would defend his hometown to the bitter end. The biological mother was a viable lead. But that poster. The hat. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“Less than one percent of missing kids are nonfamily abductions,” Tim said. “Meanwhile, the last known sighting of Blake Bram was three hundred and fifty miles from here.”