I went down on one knee in the wet grass and brushed a layer of pine needles off the small granite footstone.

Every official grave marker in Oak Creek County had a four-digit bronze registry code stamped into the bottom right corner.

The metal plate on this footstone was perfectly smooth, polished brass without a single number or official seal pressed into it.

No county clerk had ever recorded a burial in this spot.

I took the loose photo out of my inside coat pocket and held it flat in the narrow yellow beam of the flashlight.

The color had faded a little along the top edge, but the clear light picked out every detail of the two faces in the picture.