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fewer landowners and larger parcels out there, though in recent decades some had been subdivided and built upon. Little ranch houses plopped down in lawns the size of football fields.
    I found Aub’s spread on the county map, and matched it to his ridge on the topo. The scales weren’t exactly the same, but close; I took a ruler and measured out the old man’s land, then scaled it down and drew it in red pencil on the topo map. Wrote Aub in the middle of it. It was a huge L-shaped plot taking up much of the ridge where we’d found the kid, and the eastern half of the next ridge to the south. From there I moved concentrically out, marking off parcels. The plot westerly-adjacent to Dunigan’s belonged to the Gradys, a family that had been in the area several generations. Mrs. Grady and and her son’s family lived side by side. Their place was all hills, some field, mostly forest. From there the ridge tapered off to the west and we had a subdivided piece of real estate; three parcels of about ten acres each radiated out like fingers, belonging to Wild Thyme families of long standing—Heslin, Moore, Loinsigh (“Lynch”).
    Continuing south, I marked off what used to be the Regan dairy, and was now a horse farm belonging to people named, evocatively, Bray. Their place fit into the crook of Aub Dunigan’s L-shaped land and was bordered by Route 189 on the southern edge. To the southeast, three fifteen-acre plots got us from the southern border of Aub’s land to Route 189. I wrote the names: Nolan, Weatherall, Sawicki.
    To the east of Dunigan’s plot was an impassable swamp at the foot of the steep ravine. The summer camp owned that. Camp Branchwater owned hundreds of acres in the township, including a lake and everything north of Fieldsparrow Road for at least three miles in either direction from Aub’s house. The boys who went there came from wealthy, conservative families up and down the East Coast; they sailed and fished on a private lake, played tennis and baseball, shot skeet and target. The manly arts. I marked Camp Branchwater off on my topo map. It was a start, and I had something to bring to Sheriff Dally in the morning.
    For a while I strained to decipher cautious talk on the county’s radio channels, what I could hear through the static. I looked through missing person reports in neighboring Pennsylvania counties, but couldn’t find anyone close. Even though I saw the JD just about every time I shut my eyes, it was the position of his body, the frozen mess of blood, bone, and tissue where his shoulder used to be, the missing eye. When I tried for details I could summon only a vague idea of what the boy actually looked like. He had been tallish, skinny, pale, and had black hair—could have been white or Latino, Asian a remote possibility. After a while it felt like a waste of time. I wondered what the sheriff was up to, and how Aub was faring. A few times I flipped through our radio channels and listened. I dialed my wayward deputy’s cell but it went straight to the message.
    I locked up and got in the truck and headed out. My first stop was the High-Thyme Tavern.
    The High-Thyme is a two-story inn on Walker Lake Road. It’s old, isolated, and was likely built where it was to distance it from the piety of the county seat. The dirt lot was muddy and rutted with tire tracks. The radio car wasn’t there, and neither was George’s crappy yellow pickup among the many other spattered, rust-edged vehicles. When I pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside, I heard someone say, “Aw, shit.” I had to laugh. I took a stool next to a wrinkled old lady, who smiled at me. It took me a moment, but I eventually placed her as the seamstress who had reversed the collars on my uniform shirts when they got frayed the year before. I ordered a beer and everyone went about their business. The bartender hadn’t seen George all day. I took a turn around the bar to see if I could find any of George’s buddies