I returned to the reference department, where I’d spent such a satisfactory hour the week before. I shed my windbreaker and hung it across the back of a chair while I pulled the Santa Teresa city directories for the years in question. Again, a fingertip search turned up no trace of the guy. I cross-checked the address in the Haines and Polk and came up with nothing. Well, wasn’t that a kick in the pants?

I was on my way out of the building when I remembered the dog tag. I took it out again and studied it, tempted by the phone number on one side. It wouldn’t take five minutes to look it up in the Haines. Maybe I’d never know the whole story, but I might glean the odd bit of information. The issue wasn’t pressing. My curiosity was idle and wouldn’t have warranted a separate trip to the library. However, I was already on the premises and the effort required would be minimal.

I returned to the reference department, which I was beginning to regard as my adjunct office. I took out both the 1966 and 1967 Polk and Haines directories and sat down at what I was beginning to think of as my personal table. I put the tag down beside me and leafed through the Haines until I found the same three-digit prefix. I worked my way down the sequence of numbers until I found a match. In both directories, the number was assigned to a P. F. Sanchez. By flipping back and forth between the Haines and the Polk, I found an address for him, though it wasn’t a street name I recognized. His occupation was contractor; no indication of a wife.

I returned the directories to the shelf and then crossed to the section where the telephone directories were lined up. I pulled the current Santa Teresa phone book and looked in the S’s, running down the listings until I came to “Sanchez, P. F.” His telephone number was the same, as was his address on Zarina Avenue. Where the heck was that?

I walked back to my office, sat down at my desk, and hauled out my Thomas Guide to Santa Teresa and Perdido Counties. Zarina Avenue was actually in Perdido County, one of half a dozen streets that formed a grid in the tiny coastal town of Puerto, a name that had morphed into the longer Puerto Polvoriento, which was then shortened to P. Pol and from there to Peephole. I sat and pondered the geography. I’d hoped to feel better informed, which in some ways I was. What puzzled me now was why a man who lived in Peephole would bury his dead dog in Horton Ravine, a good fifteen miles north. There must have been some quirky set of circumstances to explain the digging of the dog’s grave at such a remove.