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“I apologize if you’ve felt put on the spot, but … Win’s mother
and I are getting desperate. She’s having a very difficult time,” he said. Allowing me space to imagine what that might mean for her. “We’re told that there’s a limited window of sorts in situations like these. The further you get from the last sighting, the more the chance of a successful recovery diminishes.”

Despite his careful, professional choice of words, his voice seemed to falter a little. I sneaked a glance at his face. The folds of skin beneath his eyes were shadowy, and his hair had grown a little longer than I’d ever seen it. I was beginning to feel sorry for him.

“Win’s not as mature as you are, Chris. He wouldn’t do well out there on his own. The only reason I let him go was because he was with you.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or indignant on Win’s behalf.

“Oh, he’s a bright boy, but he never applied himself. He’ll allow himself to be taken advantage of. Or anger the wrong people. He enjoys his own antics, but other people tend to tire pretty quickly of his little tricks,” he said.

“Yeah, but on the trip …,” I began, before a thought came screaming at me sideways, derailing my reply.

Tricks
.

Tricksey
. The Hobbit reference from the first day of our trip.

Win was alive.

Win had sent that postcard. Even the handwriting was familiar now. I’d seen Win write left-handed cursive all through school, imitating his mother’s signature for report cards and disciplinary notices. I was sure that’s what he’d done on that card. I must have
jumped or nodded or something, because Mr. Coggans’s voice brought me back to myself.

“Chris?” he said.

“Sorry,” I said, my cheeks burning. “I was just trying to think if I’ve forgotten anything.”

He eyed me carefully. “As I was saying, I only tell you this so you understand that Win’s safe return is the sole objective here,” he said.

Win was alive. Or had been when he sent me that card. I tried to remember the date on the postmark. It couldn’t have been more than a week or so ago. Unless it had been at Mom and Dad’s for a while, waiting for me. He probably hadn’t bothered to find my address here before sending it. Or maybe he thought it was somehow safer to send it to my house.

I tried to pay attention to Mr. Coggans, but the postcard in the pocket of my pack seemed to be calling out to me. I could hand it over to him now. He’d give it to the FBI, and they would use it to find Win somehow. Everybody could stop freaking out. I could get on with my life. I could stop worrying about Win and let someone else take care of him for a change.

“We only want him home safe,” his father repeated.

“What about getting him back for school?” I asked.

“That’s secondary at this point. And in light of recent events, I’m not sure he’s ready to be away at college. He might need to spend some more time at home, or in a place where he can learn some discipline, before he’s allowed to make these kinds of choices again.”

“Discipline?” I asked.

He ignored me. “So you’ll understand that I’m prepared to take this to the next level.”

“The next level?” Why was I only able to repeat what he was saying?

He leaned over me. “I don’t believe you killed my son. But you can’t expect me to believe that Win hasn’t contacted you.”

The postcard wasn’t begging to be handed over anymore. If anything, I could picture it slipping deeper into the tangle of junk in the pocket of my pack. “Contacted how? You can check my e-mail or phone records if you want. He hasn’t tried to reach me.” I paused, then added, “Mr. Coggans,” while studying a chipped corner of the tile beneath my feet.

After a beat he spoke again. “Be careful, Chris. I think you’ve seen enough to know what I can do here.”

I had. I’d seen him yell at a senator. I’d seen how nervous he made my adviser. I’d seen him chip away at Win for the last ten years. I knew exactly what he could do.

“Where is he?” he demanded.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. All I know is what I told you. We’ve been over what happened that last day a hundred times. …”

More details about the postcard began to knit themselves together. Those letters must have been cut from those stupid bumper stickers he’d bought that day in the grocery store. He never did figure out how to attach them to his bike. And the card was probably one of the ones he’d bought that day. And the “special time” reference was classic Win.

“I’m going to ask that question once more. Before you answer, I want you to consider what you’ve seen so far. The FBI, your professor, my access to you here at your school … those are just the tip of what I can do, Chris. You’ve no idea the
resources at my disposal. So before you answer, weigh carefully what you’re prepared to sacrifice for my son.”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. The bell tower in the quad pealed. I popped up.

“Where is my son?” he asked, his voice sounding desperate now instead of threatening.

“I have to go,” I said, bolting for the door.

Coggans’s voice followed me out. “I’ll expect to hear from you soon, Chris,” he said. “There’s only so long I’ll wait, you understand.”

I did. Perfectly. I understood I couldn’t let him know about the postcard. Not yet. As angry as I was at Win, as afraid of his father as I was now, there were answers I needed. Something told me that if I shared that postcard with anybody else, I wasn’t likely to get them.

“You know, they’d get a lot more visitors back in Pepin if they had more interesting crap in the gift shop,” Win said as he rode beside me in the gathering dark.

“Stop talking about it,” I muttered, tugging down on the zipper of my rain jacket. “It’s bad enough you conned me into it. Now have the decency to at least let me block the memory.”

It was nearly nine o’clock and I was starving. I was still wearing my rain jacket from this morning, the first time I’d tugged it out of my pannier since we left. Clouds swelled above us. We’d seen very little rain throughout the trip, and even that was usually so brief and violent we could wait it out for a few minutes before hopping back on our bikes. But this morning, after riding only eight miles or so after breakfast, the rain opened up and left us
stranded in Pepin, Wisconsin, birthplace of that lady who wrote
Little House on the Prairie
. Apparently Win had been a closet fan of the TV show based on the book.

“I still can’t believe you watched that crap,” I said to Win as I swerved left around a puddle that had gathered in the gravel shoulder of Highway 35.

“Only reruns when I was sick,” he said. “That girl that played Laura had these crazy teeth when she was a kid, but she was hot when she got older.”

“The museum would probably be a lot more popular if they had her around, then,” I said.

“And pig-bladder beach balls in the gift shop,” he added quickly.

I’d let Win talk me into paying two bucks for the only qualifying tourist attraction in Pepin—a reproduction of a log-cabin pioneer homestead. The only interesting trivia that Win picked up was that when Pa Ingalls used to slaughter a hog, he’d make a balloon out of the bladder. He was so impressed by this fact that he asked the nervous little old man volunteering in the small gift shop if they kept pig bladders in stock.

We ate lunch at ten thirty in the morning as the rain ran in sheets off the edge of the cabin roof. As soon as the torrent eased, we hopped back onto our bikes and began riding, intent on making up the miles we’d sort of wasted the past few days. We’d been moving kind of slowly, leapfrogging back and forth over the Mississippi as we made our way north from Iowa into Wisconsin, angling north toward Route 2, the road we planned to follow for our big westward push. We went swimming a lot. Stayed a
night with this really nice family we met outside the library, and generally cut back on our mileage as we goofed off. We’d vowed today would be different, but the weather hadn’t been part of our agreement.

Riding in the rain was vastly more appealing than covered wagons and calico, but it had been a long day. Now the oily pavement still glistened beneath the streetlights. My jacket stuck to my arms beneath, wet on the outside by rain, and inside by sweat from cycling hard with an extra layer on. The temperature had been dropping, and steam rose off my legs as I stroked down on my pedals. If I stopped riding, I might actually be cold for the first time on the trip.

Sixty miles now lay between us and Pepin, but it was getting dark and we needed a place to sleep. More importantly, we needed a place to let the bikes dry out a bit so we could reoil the chains and gears in the morning. That meant we’d need to find a city park or a picnic shelter we could crash in.

“So, you think Hudson’s going to have anything half as cool as Pepin?” Win asked.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We can’t go any farther in the dark. And we need food.”

He nodded. A few miles back, we passed under the interstate that led to Minneapolis. The presence of a bigger city meant that even on back roads, night traffic couldn’t be counted on to dry up like it did when we were in more rural areas.

“Sleep here in Hudson, right?” Win said, pointing at the green-and-white road sign announcing the city limit.

“Have to,” I said. “Even though I don’t see anything on the
map for a campground in town. There’s a state park and a lake about five miles farther out, but we don’t have enough light to make it. We’ll have to figure something out.”

“Scamping?”

I nodded. “Yeah. But it might be tricky,” I said, surveying the quiet streets. “Town looks pretty packed in. They’d notice a tent just about anywhere.”

“No real chance of meeting anybody this late who’ll take us in,” he pointed out.

Most of the storefronts were closed, and only a few windows of houses flickered from television light inside. “Wait here,” I told Win as I turned into the city park, scanning for a dark corner where we could hide, or a building where we might be able to set up the tent and maybe even keep the bikes from getting any wetter. Nothing. Even the playground was in full view of the main street.

I circled back to find Win where I’d left him. But he wasn’t alone.

A St. Croix County sheriff’s car was idling beside him, Win leaning over his handlebars, talking to the cop seated inside.

I shook my head. Great. On top of everything else Win had gotten himself pulled over. On a
bike
. I rode over, hoping I wasn’t too late to keep Win from pissing off the law.

“Hey,” I said nervously as I braked next to him.

“Chris!” said Win. “I was just explaining to Deputy Lindt the day we’ve had and how we’re looking for a place to sleep.”

The deputy stepped out of the car. He couldn’t have been more than four or five years older than we were. Skinny as me too.

“State park’s sort of full,” he said. “Bass Fishing Derby this week.”

I nodded. “Too far for us to make tonight anyway,” I said, relieved that Win wasn’t working on getting himself thrown in jail.

“So he called in on the radio, and they said they have a spot for us down in front of the station,” Win said.

“That way we can keep an eye on you … look out for you … that sort of thing,” Lindt said.

“Great,” I said.

Win smiled.

The deputy climbed back into his car. “Follow me,” he said. He drove slowly through the town center, giving Win and me plenty of time to keep up.

“Nicely done,” I said to Win.

“Yeah. I figured instead of trying to dodge the cops, maybe asking for a change might work. Protect and serve, right?”

“I just never figured you for the law-abiding type,” I said as we rolled through a four-way and followed the cruiser two more blocks away from the river to a small brick building.

“It is Eagle territory, I admit,” he said, “but I can fake it.”

We pulled up behind the cruiser as Lindt emerged, a wry smile on his face. “I just got off the line with the sheriff,” he said.

“Are we in trouble now?” I asked.

The deputy laughed. “No. He said it was fine if you guys camped on the lawn here. But he also said you can have the empty holding cell if you want.”

I didn’t process what he was saying at first. “Excuse me?”

He smiled. “This place is like Mayberry, you know?” he said,
his accent growing more pronounced as he relaxed. “My uncle’s the sheriff. He said if you wanted, I could put you in the empty cell, and you could have the bunks and even take your bikes inside the garage. Your gear’s probably soaked.”

“Um, yeah,” I said, still trying to get my head around staying a night in a jail cell.

“Sounds perfect,” Win said as he stepped off his bike and unclasped his helmet.

Lindt nodded and said something about heading in to open it up. He pointed us toward an open garage door and instructed us to stow our bikes inside.

“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” I asked Win when we were out of earshot.

He stopped and turned to me, his face only half illuminated by the light spilling from the garage into the small parking lot. “It’s more than a good idea,” he began, “it’s necessary. As your best friend, it’s my job to make sure you take advantage of an opportunity like this. You will never again see the inside of a jail cell, Eagle,” he said solemnly. “We both know that it’s likely I may once again spend a night in the slammer—rich men’s sons are obligated to get at least a DUI or something. My dad would probably be disappointed if I didn’t. But I won’t allow you to let
your
moment pass you by.”

“Yeah, but he said the
empty
cell,” I pointed out. “That means that the others are, you know,
not empty
.”

Win considered this for a moment. “Well, I doubt they’d let us sleep next to a murderer or anything. The guy probably just has a bunch of unpaid parking tickets,” he said. “I mean, look at
this place. Do you really think they’re going to keep hardened criminals in there?”

He was right. The outside of the little brick building did look pretty much like a regular house, except for the size and infrequency of the windows, crisscrossed with reinforcing wire. And the garage was occupied by only one police car and a bunch of normal garage stuff: a few basketballs, a lawn mower, and some random tools.