“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. A fifteen-year-old boy he had living with him. Picked him up on the freeway too, as I recall.”

The sergeant’s clear implication angered Hook. “What’s a hitchhiker supposed to do, ask someone who stops for him if he’s queer or not?”

“As a matter of fact, that might not be a bad idea.” Rider lit a cigarette. “I’m just telling you. The fact that your boy stayed with him a couple of days—well, it could be construed as only confirming what the Madera woman says about him.”

“What about the girls back home? The ones I told you about.”

Rider shrugged. “If we could get statements from them—fine. That’d be on the other side of the ledger. But I’ve still got to look at both sides.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

“You don’t have to ask, Mr. Hook. We do it anyway.”

“I’m sure you do.”

They had come to the courthouse now and Rider pulled up to the curb and stopped before driving on into the building garage. Hook was being dismissed. He got out one of his motel cards and handed it to Rider.

“That’s where I’m staying,” he said. “If anything develops—”

“Yeah, I’ll get in touch,” the sergeant cut in.

Getting out, Hook looked back at the girl, who was still huddled down in the corner of the seat. She appeared to be shivering now. He said goodbye to her.

“He’s not dead,” she said. “Remember. He’s not dead.”

That afternoon Hook stopped in at the offices of the local newspaper to read the coverage of Chris’s death. The first story had appeared on Thursday, December 11, on the front page of the local news section. Transient Dies in Fall at Hope Ranch Beach, was the headline. The subhead clarified: Illinois Youth’s Death a Suicide, Witness Says. The story contained nothing new, closely followed the “facts” in the case as Rider had given them to Hook. If there was anything surprising in the story, it was its matter-of-factness, its total lack of sensationalism. Reading it, one would have thought that Chris had been simply the transient suicide of the day, a participant in a routine event. But then Hook reminded himself of what he had already witnessed himself that morning, and that this was the country of Charles Manson and the Zodiac killer. Also, Rider had told him that there had been a number of unsolved beach killings in the area over the past few years. So what was one more violent death, and of an unknown transient? It was pretty goddamn little. And on the next day it was even less. The second story appeared on the third page of the local news section and mentioned that the body had been identified by the victim’s father, David K. Hook, a farmer from Banner Hill, Illinois. The story, barely two column inches long, was the last.