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talks for a while and then comes back and asks me if I know
     the car because in fact I see it every day, every day on CloverlyWay, which is on the way to school, the same six blocks I walk every day, twice a day. Isn’t that where I’ve seen it?
    And I begin to feel thoughts plunking at me again, at some back corners in my head.
    “It’s a Skylark, isn’t it? A Buick Skylark?” he says and points to a picture of a shiny black car that looks like any other
     car to me.
    I start to say, “But it was maroon,” but I stop myself because I know it sounds stupid.
    I squint at the picture and press my finger on it. It’s the car. It is.
    That’s when everything scatters into a thousand pieces and reassembles with pinpoint clarity. A picture in my head of the
     car, the man, the man in the car.
    “Mr. Shaw,” I say. “It’s Mr. Shaw’s car.”

Five
    I have said the words, I have said his name and slapped my hand on the photo of the random Buick. I have said the words and
     everything springs to hectic life.
    I’m not sure what’s happening, but everyone seems to be moving, and one detective is on the phone again and Detective Thernstrom
     is talking to Mr. Verver in the corner and Mr. Verver is listening intently, his hands clenching and unclenching as he stares
     at the carpet. From the look on his face, I don’t know whether, like in the fairy tale, I’ve found magic balm from the hollow
     center of a tree, or whether I’ve opened the ground beneath us all, and we’re now plummeting fast into the dark earth.
    “ S haw’s wife called the station this morning,” Detective Thernstrom is saying to Mr. Verver.
    I’m at the dining room table, looking at pictures of cars. One of the deputies is talking to me, but I’m not listening. I’m
     listening to Detective Thernstrom’s slow, calm voice, and to Mr. Verver’s raspy uh-huhs.
    “She said her husband was supposed to be at an insurance convention upstate. When she didn’t hear from him, she startedcalling the hotel and the convention staff. They all say he never checked in. She hasn’t seen him in two days.”
    “And we know that’s his car?” asks Mr. Verver, a voice darty and hectic. “Harold Shaw. I’ve known him—not well, but known
     him—ten years. We know that’s his Skylark?”
    “That’s his make and model. If that’s the car she saw, well, this is a big break. We have two officers heading up to the convention
     hotel now. We put out the APB. We’re interviewing everyone who knows the Shaws. All our resources are on this… it’s our number
     one priority.”
    Detective Thernstrom’s voice lowers, and I strain to hear. I feel like Detective Thernstrom’s talking about me now. Like he’s
     saying,
She might know more. She might know everything.
    But that’s when the deputy starts poking me with questions again. “How fast was the car going? You’re sure you saw it twice?
     The same car?” And I can’t think of anything at all, and sometimes their voices spike again, and I hear Mr. Verver say, “But
     what can I do here? What can I do?”
    That sound, the creak at the center of his throat, it’s something I’ve never heard from him, and it hums in me, powerfully.
    N ow, in my head, when I picture that Skylark going by, I can see Mr. Shaw behind the wheel. Though in my head, it’s not even
     maroon anymore but black, like the one in the book they showed me, the picture lodging in my brain.
    I can see Mr. Shaw behind the wheel.
    Mr. Shaw carries a briefcase and wears brown loafers and tiepins. He’s my mother’s insurance agent, or was, and the Ververs’
     too. He’s old in the sport-jackety way of math teachers andprincipals and doctors, older by decades, it seems, than Mr. Verver.
    Mr. Shaw has the glass-front office on Cloverly Way, right where the street slopes down fast. When I picture him, he’s there.
     I’m on my bike, riding past, coasting, sneakers kicking up, and I turn my head, glancing in, seeing him there,