“Do you have a cell phone?” Kateri asks.

“You just saw me use it,” Shannon says.

“What kind is it?” Hurt asks.

“An untraceable track phone,” Shannon says, edgy. He pulls it from his pocket. “We don’t have a landline at the house,” he says, “and my mother doesn’t trust cell phones. This is all I have,” he says. “It’s forty bucks a month.”

He holds it out, an old-style Samsung with a slide-out keyboard.

“How long have you had it?” Kateri asks.

Shannon shrugs. “A year?” he says. “I had a different one before, but I broke it.” His foot bounces, and he slouches in the chair.

“How’d you break it?” Hurt asks.

“In a murderous rage,” Shannon says, his face unbreakable. He stares at Hurt.

“Is this funny to you?” Hurt asks.

“Not at all,” Shannon says.

“Look,” Hurt says like he’s leveling with him. “Don’t take this the wrong way.” Shannon huffs. “But you look clean,” Hurt says. “You look pretty well cared for and put-together. Not like someone who was living without water or electricity.”

Shannon’s face is clean-shaven; his hair is clean, shiny, and well cut. His clothes are fresh and neat. He smells like laundry and men’s deodorant and, now, like a lingering cigarette.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Kateri asks.

“Ha,” he says with one sharp laugh. “No.”

She doesn’t know what to make of his reaction, but she needs to find out who has taken him in, or at the very least, who he has been seen with recently.

Hurt leans against the wall. “Do you know Craig O’Neil?” he asks.

“No,” Shannon says.

“You didn’t go to high school together?” Kateri asks.

“I mean, sure,” Shannon says, “but he was older. Chris O’Neil was in my grade.”

“You said you didn’t know the O’Neils,” Hurt says.

“I didn’t,” Shannon says. “Just because we went to school together doesn’t mean I know them.”

“Someone bound Craig O’Neil and put him in the trunk of his own car,” Hurt says. “The same day that your sister was taken from the hospital.”

“When was my sister in the hospital?” Shannon asks.

Kateri holds up her hand to Hurt.

“Why was she in the hospital?”

Then she holds up her hand to Shannon. “Excuse us a moment,” she says, and nods at Hurt to the hall outside the room.

Outside, she leans her head against the tile wall, the cool ceramic on her skin.

“He’s admitted the sister,” Hurt says.

“Yes,” she says. “But we haven’t gotten very far.”

“How much of it do you think is an act?” Hurt asks.

“I can’t tell,” Kateri says, turning her face sideways.

Hurt smirks. “How do you feel?” he says. “Miss You Don’t Outweigh Me?”

“Shut up,” she says, and breathes slowly, warding off panic.

“Rattle him,” Hurt says. “He’ll spill. And let me know if you want help.”

They go back in, and Hurt takes the sheet with the phone number from the desk and slides it back into the folder. “Whose dog?” he asks.