In Anchorage there was another car waiting. Smitt took the front seat while Dorian slumped into the back. He’d spent a day here with his family just before they’d left on their fatal cruise, and he remembered the drive into town, the freeway curving beside a blue waterway, a handful of white office buildings set against whiter mountains, the blue-green luxuriance of trees. They pulled into an underground parking lot beneath one of those white buildings and took an elevator up to a floor where anonymous beige hallways mazed away in all directions.

Smitt led Dorian around several turns. His eyes were still empty, but his smirk kept getting tighter, as if someone were steadily pulling on a drawstring threaded through his mouth. After a few minutes he opened a door onto a small room where a brown plastic table sat surrounded by blue plastic chairs. An older, thickset man looked up at them expectantly. He had tan skin—maybe he was Italian or Hispanic—gray hair, and large sympathetic eyes. His smile struck Dorian as genuine and even reassuring.

“Thank you, Agent Smitt. And this is Dorian, of course. I’ve seen your picture. I’m Ben Ellison.”

“Hi.” Dorian smiled back awkwardly and shook the proffered hand. Ben Ellison waved him to a chair, and Dorian sat down while Smitt leaned against the door. Ellison pulled a file folder out of a laptop bag and opened it, and Dorian caught his breath.

“Your mother really liked to post pictures online, didn’t she? It’s wonderful to see a strong relationship like this between a boy your age and his little sister. I wish my kids could get along half this well.”

The picture in the folder showed Emily sitting on his shoulders. They were in a park, the pale sky laced by bare black branches. She was wearing a bright polka-dotted jacket and mittens made to look like duck faces. She held her hands up menacingly on either side of Dorian’s face, thumbs flared to show that the ducks were quacking furiously. His own gloved hands wrapped her legs, and he was laughing so hard that he couldn’t quite stand up straight.

Dorian turned his eyes away, only to find himself confronting Smitt’s contorted smile.

“You must miss her very much,” Ben Ellison said. Now his voice sounded too warm, almost gluey.

“Of course I miss her,” Dorian said. It came out harsh, rasping. He didn’t know where to look; definitely not into Emily’s giddy face.