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southward, toward The Spree .
    Simultaneously, the motorcycle ringtone inside Pasquale’s cell phone roared again. Robert Torrez’ voice was still unexcited and a near-whisper.
    â€œStay away from the car. I’m just around the corner. Be there in a minute. Go to channel three.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Pasquale settled back and took a deep breath. With just the hint of possible action, his pulse had come awake. He switched the radio to the car-to-car frequency where there were fewer police-monitoring freaks, then gripped the steering wheel with both hands and pushed hard, squaring his shoulders. Through painful experience, he knew that his best course of action was to do exactly as the sheriff requested.
    Before he had time to dwell on the “what ifs,” he saw the sheriff’s rolling wreckage, his long-of-tooth Chevy pickup, burble into the parking lot from the north side. The thirty-year-old truck, with its sun-bleached paint and large spots of gray primer, was the perfect undercover unit—had ninety percent of the county’s population not been well aware of the veteran vehicle. At the same time, three people left The Spree , heading in three different directions.
    Across the lot, close to where he’d first seen Stacie Willis Stewart, an elderly woman stood by the open trunk of her Toyota sedan, frowning at her own cell phone. The Ace 1 Plumbing and Heating utility truck had left, leaving a slot between the woman’s Toyota and Stacie Stewart’s Volvo.
    â€œWhere’s the Illinois car?” the sheriff’s disembodied voice murmured from the radio.
    â€œThird row, dead ahead. About halfway down toward me.”
    â€œGot it.” His pickup truck idled down the row, and he regarded the Fusion with no particular display of interest. In a moment, he pulled up window-to-window with Pasquale’s unit.
    â€œLook, do you know Helen Barber?”
    â€œSure I do.” Pasquale pointed. “She’s standing right over there by her car. The Toyota with the open trunk.” On numerous occasions long ago, the now-elderly and retired elementary schoolteacher had swatted then-second-grader Thomas Pasquale, had even shaken him until his teeth rattled. She bore him no grudge, but was certainly pleased to see him advance to third grade, yet another child in a long line of hyper, attention-deficit-disordered youngsters who needed to be outside raising hell, rather than cooped up indoors.
    His truck already rolling, Torrez said, “She’s the one who reported the abandoned child. I got an ambulance comin’, just in case. Stay put here. If the folks show up at the Fusion, just detain ’em for a little bit until you get the answers.”
    â€œSir, that Volvo…the blue station wagon right by Ms. Barber’s Yote-tote? That’s Stacie Stewart’s. I saw her go into the store a little bit ago.”
    â€œWe’ll see,” Torrez said. At the same moment, the flashing lights of one of the EMT units appeared, and as he kept watch for the owners of the Fusion, Pasquale glanced toward the action now and then, surprised to see the sheriff’s pickup truck and the ambulance stop directly behind Stacie Willis Stewart’s Volvo, partially obscured by other vehicles.
    Did Stacie Stewart have a child? Pasquale couldn’t remember, but why wouldn’t she? A little dog yapped incessantly, and now Pasquale could see it leaping up and down in frantic excitement, locked along with the infant in the Volvo station wagon, seeing danger with all the strangers gathering around the car.
    The brilliant sun could turn the insides of a closed car into a suffocating oven in minutes. Stacie Stewart had to know that. If she had hustled into The Spree for just a moment, she was long overdue back outside. And why not just carry the child in with her?
    Pasquale knew that Sheriff Robert Torrez would pop a window without hesitation, either with a slim-jimmy