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anticipation. Judge loved Chinese food and expected to eat in the den with the humans. Dog food insulted him.
    After a couple of bites, Mr. Boone asked, “So, Theo, any news on April?”
    “No, sir. Just a lot of gossip at school.”
    “That poor child,” Mrs. Boone said. “I’m sure everyone at school was worried.”
    “That’s all we talked about. A total waste. I should stay home tomorrow and help with the search.”
    “That’s a pretty lame effort,” Mr. Boone said.
    “Did you guys talk to the police about Mrs. Finnemore and explain to them that she’s lying about being home with April? That she wasn’t home Monday or Tuesday night? That she’s a weirdo who’s taking pills and neglecting her daughter?”
    Silence. The room was quiet for a few seconds, then Mrs. Boone said, “No, Theo, we did not. We discussed it and decided to wait.”
    “But why?”
    His father said, “Because it won’t help the police find April. We plan to wait for a day or two. It’s still being discussed.”
    “You’re not eating, Theo,” his mother said.
    And it was true. He had no appetite. The food seemed to stop halfway down his esophagus, where a dull throbbing pain blocked everything. “I’m not hungry,” he said.
    Later, halfway through a rerun of
Law & Order
, a local newsbreak blasted out the latest. The search for April Finnemore continued, with the police still tight-lipped about it. They flashed a photo of April, then one of the MISSING posters Theo and his gang had distributed. Immediately after this, there was the same ominous mug shot of Jack Leeper, looking like a serial killer. The reporter gushed, “The police are investigating the possibility that Jack Leeper, after his escape from prison in California, returned to Strattenburg to see his pen pal, April Finnemore.”
    The police are investigating a lot of things, Theo thought to himself. That doesn’t mean they’re all true. He had thought about Leeper all day, and he was certain that April would never open the door for such a creep. He had told himself over and over that the kidnapping theory could be nothing but one big coincidence: Leeper escaped from prison, returned to Strattenburg because he lived there many years ago, and got himself caught on videotape at a convenience store at the exact same time that April decided to run away.
    Theo knew April well, but he also realized there were many things about her he didn’t know. Nor did he want to. Was it possible that she would run away without a word to him? Slowly, he had begun to believe the answer was yes.
    He was on the sofa under a quilt, with Judge wedged close to his chest, and at some point, both fell asleep. Theo had been awake since four thirty that morning and was sleep deprived. Physically and emotionally, he was exhausted.

Chapter 6
    T he eastern boundary of the city of Strattenburg was formed by a bend in the Yancey River. An old bridge, one used by both cars and trains, crossed over into the next county. The bridge was not used much because there was little reason to travel into the next county. All of Strattenburg lay west of the river, and when leaving the city almost all traffic moved in that direction. In decades past, the Yancey had been a fairly important route for timber and crops, and in Strattenburg’s early years the busy area “under the bridge” was notorious for saloons and illegal gambling halls and places for all sorts of bad behavior. When the river traffic declined, most of these places closed and the bad folks went elsewhere. However, enough stayed behind to ensure that the neighborhood would maintain its low reputation.
    “Under the bridge” became simply “the bridge,” a part of town that all decent people avoided. It was a dark place, almost hidden in the daytime by the shadows of a long bluff, with few streetlights at night and little traffic. There were bars and rough places where one went only to find trouble. The homes were small shacks built on stilts