At about half past ten on that Thursday night a police lieutenant stood up at a shift briefing and told his platoon about a boy called Julian Vance.

And at about half past eleven, two floors up, a detective looking at a list of the week’s pawn tickets read a surname he had heard an hour earlier in a corridor.

And the thumbprint on the ticket was not Charlene Otsuka’s, and was not my son’s either, because my son had never been asked for one.

Part Twenty-Five: Dusty Vandermolen

The thumbprint belonged to the clerk.