“Don,” Tim said when he reached the rest of the team, “what have we got?”

Bogle’s face was white as milk. His wide body blocked the sign, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t see past him. I tilted my flashlight to expose the rest of the scene. The yellow beam gave the faces around me an unearthly glow. The searchers were shuffling forward now, straining to see over the investigators’ heads, frenetic energy radiating from their bundled bodies. McIntyre spun away from the team to help manage the volunteers, and when she realized I was among them she gestured for me to come forward.

“Jesus,” Sol said just as I reached the huddle. His deep-set eyes, perpetually ringed in tawny circles, seemed to retreat further into his skull. Bogle had finally stepped aside, exposing the sign in full. Behind him parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends grew quiet.

I shouldn’t mind the sight of blood. Detectives are like surgeons that way; the frequent exposure is meant to make us immune. We can’t allow ourselves to be diverted from the task at hand, so we ignore the visceral reaction that fills our mouths with bile, tune out the stench and ghoulish sheen inherent to the gore. It shouldn’t bother me.

When I finally got a good look, I had to hold a finger to my lips to keep from vomiting into the grass.

“Get an evidence bag,” said Tim, his voice cold as he reached for the blood-soaked Purple Pirates baseball hat, sticky and black in the half-light.

* * *

I couldn’t go back to the station.

Believe me, I wanted to. In the next few hours, someone would deliver that bloody hat to our forensic analyst and confirm what we all suspected was true: the blood belonged to our lost boy, and there was lots of it. Tim would hold a debriefing tonight, and my colleagues would gather around a table cluttered with coffee cups and crumpled bags of chips from the vending machine to pool their collective knowledge and hatch a plan. I was already pushing my luck by being at the press conference and out in the woods with the team. I knew that if my supervisor got wind of my involvement with Trey’s case, there was no way he’d green-light my return to the force. All I could do was reluctantly accept that while Tim, Mac, Sol, and Bogle headed back to A-Bay, I would be going home to Mac’s place in Watertown, alone.

Minutes ago, when we’d disbanded the search party and the good people of A-Bay drifted stunned and silent back to their cars, I’d heard some of the searchers talking. Everyone believed they knew the lay of the land. The hat was a good sign, they’d said, much better than finding a body. Even bloodied, it meant Trey stood a chance. It took no time at all for Sol and Bogle to convince themselves a ransom note was imminent. I wasn’t so sure. On the way back to the country road where we’d parked, Tim promised to feed me as much information as possible, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread as I watched him drive away.