"You haven't seen any lights over there? Flashlight, anything like that?"
"No."
"Okay." He wrote something. "We got a couple of calls this week from folks on the next block over, Maple, about a prowler. Somebody going through garbage cans late at night. Could be raccoons, could be kids. Could be nothing. We just want to make sure, you know, if the boy came back here—"
"You think he might have come back?"
"We think he's probably trying to get to his dad. That's what most of them do, the runaways, they go toward whoever they've got. But his dad's still in the hospital down in Knoxville, and nobody's seen him down there either." Brandt shrugged, a little helpless. "Kids come home sometimes. That's all. It's where they know."
Janet put her cup down. "There's a man," she said, and then stopped.
"Ma'am?"
"It's nothing. It's a neighbor. Arliss Haskell, at the end of the block. He walks his dog at night." She felt foolish already. "Last night—early this morning—I saw him out in front of our house. He was just standing there. Looking up at our roof. He pointed at something."
Officer Brandt wrote it down. She watched him write it, HASKELL, in neat block capitals, and immediately wished she could take it back.
"I'm sure it's nothing," she said. "He's a nice man. His wife died. He doesn't sleep."
"I'm sure it's nothing too," Brandt said. "But I'll swing by and say hello."
When he was gone, she stood at the front window and watched him walk down the street to the brick house with the green shutters and knock. The door opened. She couldn't see Arliss from here, just the officer's back, his hat in his hands again. They talked for a few minutes. Then Brandt nodded and walked back to his cruiser and drove away, and Arliss's door closed.
She felt like she'd done something shabby. She felt like she'd stood up in church and pointed at somebody.
* * *
"You did what?" Del said.
They were at supper, Swiss steak and instant mashed potatoes and green beans from a can.
"I didn't sic him on anybody," she said. "He asked if I'd seen anything strange. I told him."