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this.   You could’ve kept it.   You’re an honest boy.   If I give this to you will you be careful not to shine it in your eye?”
    “I would be very careful.”
    “I can’t give it to you right now.   I have to use it this afternoon but—”
    “Why?”
    “I lost something in a tunnel and I have to find it with this.”
    It made me sad that I couldn’t have it right now.
    “But maybe…   No, I shouldn’t.   Your parents probably wouldn’t let you have—”
    “Yes they would.”
    “No I don’t think—”
    “They would too.”
    “Ben, if I give this to you you can’t show it to your parents.   Or your brother.   He would steal it and play with it.   Your parents would take it and throw it away.”
    “I won’t tell them.”
    “You promise?”
    “ Yessir , I promise.”
    “You can’t tell them about me either.”
    “I won’t.”   He got up and looked down at me.
    “Later tonight I’m going to come knock on your window.   You have to go to your backdoor and open it so I can give this to you.   Can you do that, Ben?”
    “ Yessir .”
    “You have to do it very quietly.   If anyone wakes up and sees me I’ll have to leave and you won’t be able to have the laser pointer.   Do you want to have it?”
    “ Yessir .”
    “Say that you want to have it.”
    “I want to have it.”
    “Say it again.”
    “I want to have it.”
    “You’re obedient.   That’s a good boy.   I have to go now.   I’ll see you tonight.”
    “Can I do the laser again?”   The long-haired man sighed.  
    I didn’t think he was going to let me but then he said, “All right, once more.”

8
     
    LUTHER Kite straddles the thickest limb of the pine fifteen feet off the ground.   It is suppertime on Shortleaf Drive, quiet now that the children have been called home, each house warm with lamplight and lively with the domestic happenings of a Sunday night.
    His stomach rumbles.   He has not eaten.   He will eat afterward because this is North Carolina, land of Waffle Houses that never close.   He’ll consume a stack of pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage links and torched bacon and grits and he’ll drown it all in maple syrup.   Especially the bacon.  
    A breeze stirs the branches and the vivid dying leaves sweep down in slowmotion upon the street.   The sky has darkened so that he can no longer see the silhouette of the water tower that moments ago loomed above the rampart of loblollies across the lake.   Only the red light atop the bowl signals its presence.  
    The October night cools quickly.  
    It will be warm inside the house he has chosen.  
    He smiles, closes his eyes, rests his head against the bark.  
    Just four hours.  
    The moon will have advanced high above the horizon of calligraphic pines, burnishing the empty street into blue silver.   He sleeps perfectly still upon the limb, the smell of sap engulfing him, sweet and pungent like bourbon.

9
     
    HORACE Boone had used credit card information to track Andrew Thomas to a postal outlet in Haines Junction, Yukon.
    But he didn’t leave right away.  
    He continued working in Anchorage from April to August, saving everything he earned.   In September he quit his job at Murder One Books, put what few possessions he owned into storage, and embarked in his stalwart Land Cruiser for the Yukon with four thousand dollars, a suitcase of clothing, and blind faith that he would find Andrew Thomas.  
    Upon arriving in Haines Junction, Horace staked out the downtown, studying the village’s sparse foot traffic for his man.  
    On the fifth morning, while wondering if he’d made a giant mistake, he watched the same long-haired man who’d graced Murder One Books several months back, enter Madley’s Store to retrieve his mail.
    Horace was elated.  
    The next day, his twenty-fourth birthday, Horace rented a rundown trailer on the outskirts of the village and began taking copious notes for the book he wholeheartedly believed was going