Dewey sighed. “Wendell Cole,” he finally said. “He left an address on the ticket. Out on Route 79, past the grain elevator.” I wrote it on the back of an envelope. Cole. Jimmy’s last name. I drove there before I could think, the locket on the seat beside me, and pulled up in front of a small white house with a wheelchair ramp and a porch swing that needed paint.

The man who opened the door had Jimmy’s eyes in an older, harder face. He looked at the locket in my hand and then at me, and the color left his cheeks. “Ruth Ellen Mayer,” he said slowly. “You’ve got some nerve.” I held up the wristband. “My mother told me he left with a girl from Quincy.” Wendell’s jaw tightened. “Your mother,” he said, “told my brother you were dead.”