Then, on the morning of the thirty-fourth day, someone came to see him. It was Sykes, but he was different. The man he’d met a year ago was all spit and polish. This man, though he was wearing the same uniform, looked like he’d slept under a highway overpass. His uniform was wrinkled and stained; his cheeks and chin were glazed with gray stubble; his eyes were as bloodshot as a boxer’s after a few rounds of a badly mismatched fight. He sat heavily at the table where Wolgast was. He folded his hands, cleared his throat, and spoke.

“I’m here to ask a favor.”

Wolgast hadn’t uttered a word in days. When he tried to answer, his windpipe felt half-closed, thickened from disuse; his voice emerged as a croak.

“I’m done with favors.”

Sykes drew in a long breath. A stale smell was rising off him, dried sweat and old polyester. For a moment he let his eyes drift around the tiny room.

“Probably this all seems a little … ungrateful. I admit that.”

“Fuck yourself.” It pleased Wolgast enormously to say this.

“I’m here about the girl, Agent.”

“Her name,” Wolgast said, “is Amy.”

“I know her name. I know a great deal about her.”

“She’s six. She likes pancakes and carnival rides. She has a toy rabbit named Peter. You’re a heartless prick, you know that, Sykes?”

Sykes withdrew an envelope from the pocket of his coat and placed it on the table. Inside were two photographs. One was a picture of Amy, taken, Wolgast guessed, at the convent. Probably it was the same one that had gone out with the Amber Alert. The second was a high school yearbook photo. The woman in the picture was obviously Amy’s mother. The same dark hair, the same delicate arrangement of the facial bones, the same deep-set, melancholy eyes, though suffused, at the instant that the shutter opened, with a warm, expectant light. Who was this girl? Did she have friends, family, a boyfriend? A favorite subject in school? A sport she loved and was good at? Did she have secrets, a story of herself that no one knew? What did she hope her life would become? She was positioned at a three-quarter angle to the camera, looking over her right shoulder, wearing what looked like a prom dress, pale blue; her shoulders were bare. At the bottom of the photo was a caption: “Mason Consolidated High School, Mason, IA.”

“Her mother was a prostitute. The night before she left Amy at the convent, she shot a trick on the front lawn of a frat house. For the record.”

Wolgast wanted to say, So? How was any of that Amy’s fault? But the image of the woman in the photograph—not even really a woman, just a girl herself—belayed his anger. Maybe Sykes wasn’t even telling the truth. He put the photo down. “What happened to her?”