In the living room he instructed Trevor to sit back down on the sofa and met the white-haired man at the patio door. Trevor strained to hear what the men were saying, but couldn’t make out words. After what felt like an hour but was probably just a few minutes, Officer Cross and the white-haired man came back into the living room.

“I’m going to need you to come with me,” said the officer.

The jail on the island was housed inside a small building with white wood siding and green shutters. It could have been any of the houses he’d seen on the drive from Claudia’s, except for the bars on the windows, the perfunctory landscaping, and the aluminum handicapped ramp. Trevor was taken to an empty holding cell on the second floor, with wooden benches lining the walls. They took his phone, so he could measure the passing time only by the light and the growing discomfort in his empty stomach. He was preparing his story. It was mostly true. She’d told him he could come. She’d given him the address. Why had he said she was there? He was going to have to walk that back and that was going to make him look suspicious. But of course he would look suspicious. He was suspicious. He was a desperate boy with blood on his hands. And his brother was right: He wasn’t even a boy anymore. At least in the eyes of the law, he was a man.

Eventually Officer Cross and a woman with a gun clipped to her belt and a folder under her arm came to the cell and escorted him through a series of locked doors, down a flight of stairs, and into a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along three walls and a table so massive and old it looked like it might have been used to sign the Constitution. The woman introduced herself as Lieutenant Lucinda Braga. She folded her hands on the table, leaned forward, and looked Trevor directly in the eye.

“Claudia’s family is on their way from Manhattan,” she told him. “They haven’t seen or heard from her in nearly two weeks.”

She paused and watched his reaction.

“Did you know that?”

“That Claudia hadn’t seen them? Yeah. She was sort of avoiding them. Actually she thought they were avoiding her.”

“Well, they’re extremely concerned,” Lt. Braga said gravely. “If you tell me where she is I think we can make all this go away.”

“I don’t know where she is,” said Trevor.

She let him sit with that.

“I don’t,” he said.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“On Saturday. In Manhattan.”

“You told Officer Cross she was at the house but that she left.”

“I misspoke. I meant she told me I could come visit. She told me she was coming here.”

“You misspoke.”

“I was nervous. I’m sorry.”