His chin dips, his good eye seeming to bulge. “I told you. I don’t know shit about no missing girl. Now get the hell out of my way. I gotta work.” Then he stares me down, posturing, until I have no choice but to step aside.

I stand in the yard and watch him climb into a maroon Ford Taurus, feeling almost nauseated because I’ve blown it. Cameron lived here. Somewhere nearby are missing pieces, maybe, ones that might show the whole of her. And what now? I can try to canvass the neighborhood and pray someone is here who either still remembers her or has anything to tell me about the Gilberts that will help in some way. But I’m not feeling overly optimistic.

The Taurus accelerates through the turn from Willow onto Fig, nosing dangerously close to a stand of mailboxes, and then the kid on the Big Wheel is back, coming around for another lap on his circuit, his gaze on Cricket. Kids always seem to zero in on dogs.

I give him a small wave, but his eyes are stony. They graze right over me, and then he brightens. Behind me, the door has opened silently.

“Hey Kyle,” a voice says.

“Hey Hector,” the kid says. “Can I come in for a while? My mom’s not home.”

I look back and forth between the two, too surprised to say a word.

“In a minute, okay? I gotta talk to this lady.”

(forty-two)

Familiar shag carpeting stretches through the living room and into the tiny kitchen, threadbare and pea green. A table and chairs and a tired-looking sofa with a dark stain across the back are the only furniture. Cricket parks herself at my side while Hector stands with his hands on his hips, studying me studying him. I’m guessing he’s twenty-one or -two, with muscled, tattooed forearms under his faded blue work shirt. His neck is inked, too, a band of interlocking shaded bubbles, like python skin. Dark, cuffed jeans hang from his waist over black steel-toed, ass-kicking boots.

He’s a rough-looking character, and yet I don’t feel threatened. Instinctively I believe he’ll at least listen to my questions. His age and coloring make him a good bet for the boy in the photo or another sibling of Cameron’s. Plus he opened the door.

“Hector, my name is Anna Hart. I’m trying to find a missing girl from Mendocino.”

A shadow passes through his dark eyes. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know for sure. She vanished from her home on the night of September twenty-first, and no one’s heard from her since. I’m worried that someone might have taken her.”

“I heard about that other girl in Petaluma. She’s not mixed up in something like that, is she?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”