"It was pretty easy to believe Chester had run off, though leaving his pickup behind? I didn't think so. But he had a tough time at home, he'd broken up with his girlfriend, and he wasn't doing well in school. So maybe he was a suicide and we simply hadn't found his body. We looked, God knows. Abe figured someone would come across his remains eventually. But Tyler was a whole different kettle of fish. He had a very close family, real devout boy, one of the solid kids. There just didn't seem to be any way he would run off or kill himself, or anything like that. But by then Abe wouldn't hear a word on the subject. He'd found out he had heart trouble by then, and he didn't want to upset himself."

There was a little moment of silence.

"Then?" I said.

"Then Dylan Lassiter. Dylan didn't have a car. He told his grandmother he was going to walk over three streets to see a friend, but he never got there. A ball cap that might have been his was found here." She pointed a finger to a spot on the map. "That's Shady Grove Cemetery," she said.

"Okay, a message," I said.

"Maybe, maybe the wind blew it there. Maybe it wasn't even his, though the hair looked like Dylan's. It was just a Tarheels cap. Eventually, we sent it to SBI, and the DNA was a match for Dylan's. But it didn't do us much good to know that. It just meant wherever he was, he didn't have his hat."

This was certainly the chronology of a botched investigation. I was no cop and would never be one, but I thought Abe Madden had something for which to answer.

"Hunter Fenwick, a month later," Rockwell said. "Hunter was the son of a friend of mine, and he's the reason I ran for sheriff. I respected Sheriff Madden—up to a point—but I knew he was wrong about these missing boys. Hunter…well, his car was parked the same place Chester's pickup was found. At the trailhead. And there was a little blood inside—not enough to be able to say for sure that he couldn't have survived losing it.