If you were to walk the mile and a half between the basketball court in San Antonio and the house where Nicholas’s family lived — the distance he was supposed to have walked on the night of June 13, 1994 — you would pass through a neighborhood, ordinary streets, ordinary houses, ordinary San Antonio.

Nothing about the route announces what happened there.

Nothing marks the place as significant.

But something happened in that mile and a half, on that June night, to a thirteen-year-old boy who never arrived home.

And whatever it was, no one has yet found out what.

The basketball court is ordinary.

The route home is ordinary.

The houses on either side are ordinary.