Niceville

the innate brutality of the Imperium. They found nothing.
    They took Toonerville Hobby Shoppe apart.
    Nothing.
    They looked at every available frame of every available surveillancecamera video up and down North Gwinnett between Bluebottle Way and Long Reach Boulevard.
    Nothing.
    Not a trace.
    Naturally, Nick Kavanaugh went effectively nuts around the ninth sleepless day, and his wife, Kate, a family practice lawyer, at Tig Sutter’s urging, slipped a couple of Valiums into his orange juice and packed him off to their bed, where he slept like the living dead for twelve hours straight.
    While Nick was sleeping, Kate, after struggling with the idea for a time, called her father, Dillon Walker, who was a professor of military history up at the Virginia Military Institute in the Shenandoah Valley. It was late, but Walker, a widower who lived alone in faculty rooms on the edge of the parade square, answered the phone on the second ring. Kate heard his whispery bass voice in those familiar warm tones and she wished, as she often did, that her father lived closer to Niceville and that her mother, Lenore, the heart of Dillon Walker’s life, had not been killed in a rollover on the interstate five years ago. Her father was never the same after that. Something important had gone out of him, some of his amiable fire. But he was sharp enough to hear the tightness in her voice when she said hello.
    “Kate … how are you? Is everything okay?”
    “I’m sorry to call so late, Dad. Did I wake you?”
    Walker sat up in his leather club chair—while not actually asleep on his military-style cot, he
had
been dozing over a copy of
Pax Britannica
, James Morris’ history of the British Empire under Victoria. Kate’s voice had that faint quiver in it that was always there when she was stressed.
    “No, sweet. I was up late reading. You sound a little worried. It’s not Beth, is it? Or Reed?”
    Beth, Kate’s older sister, was in a toxic marriage to an ex–FBI agent named Byron Deitz, who was cordially loathed by everyone in the family. Reed was her brother, a state trooper who drove a pursuit car, a hard-edged young man who was never happier than when he was running down a speeder.
    “No, Dad. Not Beth. Not Reed. It’s about Nick.”
    “Dear God. He’s not hurt?”
    “No, no. He’s fine. To tell you the truth I sort of slipped him a mickey so he could sleep. He’s upstairs now, dead to the world. He’s been on a case for days, and he’s a total wreck.”
    There was a pause, as if she were trying to find a way to begin. Walker leaned over and stirred the fireplace embers into a soft yellow flickering, sat back in the worn leather chair, and picked up his scotch. Tepid and flat, but still Laphroiag.
    He could hear Kate’s breath over the phone, and pictured her there in their old family home, a slender auburn-haired Irish rose with sapphire blue eyes and a fine-cut, elegant face, very much the picture of her mother, Lenore. He sipped at the scotch, set it down.
    “You sound like you have a question, Kate. Is it about Nick’s case?”
    A silence.
    Then, “I guess it is, Dad. The fact is, we’ve had another disappearance.”
    She heard her father’s breathing stop, and knew she had touched a sore point between them. Several years ago her father had begun an informal personal inquiry into the high rate of stranger abductions in Niceville, only to quit the project abruptly after Lenore’s death. He never picked it up again, and he had delicately but effectively evaded the topic ever since. When he spoke again his voice was as warm as always, but perhaps a little more wary.
    “I see. And I guess this case is what’s keeping Nick from sleeping? Was it really an abduction? A stranger abduction? Like all the others?”
    “So far they seem to think so. Can I tell you about it? Would that be okay?”
    “Please, Kate. Anything I can do.”
    Kate told him what they knew so far, Rainey Teague, on his way home from school, Uncle Moochie’s pawnshop, the security camera, and the way the boy just disappeared into thin air. Walker listened and felt his throat tightening.
    “The boy’s name was Teague? Not Sylvia’s boy?”
    “Yes, Dad.”
    “God. That’s awful. How is she?”
    “Terrible. Falling apart.”
    “And Miles?”
    “You know Miles. He’s a typical Teague, and they all have that cold spot. But he gets quieter every day. They’ve both given up hope.”
    “Where does the case stand