Niceville

help.”
    Alf looked skyward, his black eyes rolling as he collected himself.
    “See him every weekday. He’s a lollygagger. Skinny kid, head too big, shaggy blond hair hanging down in his eyes, pale skin, snubby nose, big brown eyes like a cartoon squirrel, white shirt, tails hanging out, collar open, tie all loose, baggy gray pants, blue blazer with that Christer doodad on the pocket, dragging a Harry Potter knapsack behind him like it was full of bricks. That him?”
    “That’s him. What time was this?”
    “Already said.”
    “Just once more?”
    Alf sighed.
    “Three oh five, 3:10, maybe. Usually see him then, coming home from that Christer school.”
    Nick was judging the street view from where Alf was sitting beside his desk. He had a pretty good sweep of North Gwinnett in front of him, the people going back and forth, the traffic streaming along, flashing steel in the afternoon light.
    “You sitting here?” asked Nick.
    “Ayup.”
    “Good look at him?”
    “Ayup.”
    “Was he alone?”
    “Ayup.”
    “Did he seem in a hurry, or agitated?”
    Alf’s frown deepened as he worked that through.
    “You mean, like someone was following him?”
    “Ayup,” said Nick.
    Alf, a sharp old file, picked up on Nick’s mimicry and gave him a censorious frown, which Nick somehow managed to withstand.
    “Nope. Just lollygagging. He stood there for a while, looking at the books.”
    “He ever come in?”
    “Nope. Kids don’t have any use for books nowadays. Always on those tweeters and such. He looks in, moves off next door. Uncle Moochie’s.”
    “The pawnshop.”
    “Ayup. Every day the same thing, looks in here, waves at me, and then moves down to stare at all that crap in Uncle Moochie’s window.”
    “They spoke with Uncle Moochie. He says he saw the kid yesterday, saw him the day before, and the day before that, but not today.”
    “Moochie,” said Alf, as if that was explanation enough.
    “Moochie’s window is full of stuff a kid would like to look at,” said Nick.
    Alf considered this, blinked, said nothing.
    “Have you ever seen anyone who looked like he might be following the Teague boy? Anyone in the street who was paying too much attention?”
    “You mean like one of those peedo-philes?”
    “Yeah. One of those.”
    “Nope. I did come to the door to look at the boy, him standing there, staring in at Moochie’s window. Kid always spent a good five minutes in front of Moochie’s, looking at all the pawn stuff. I figure, what you should do, you should go stand there for a while, yourself, see what you get.”
    “You think?”
    “Ayup.”
    So Nick did.
    The store where Uncle Moochie ran what he liked to call his brokerage service had been a fairly ornate barbershop back in the thirties, and it still had faint traces of gilt lettering in an arch across the front of the glass— SULLIVAN’S TONSORIAL ACADEMY —but the window was so jammed to the ceiling with antique clocks and gilt mirrors and pocket watches and china busts of pocket dogs and rusted Art Deco lamps and cameos and brooches and gaudy costume jewelry and tiny bronze nudes that it looked like a treasure chest. Nick could see how a kid would find the window fascinating.
    According to Boot Jackson’s field report, Nick was right on top of the last place on North Gwinnett where anyone had seen the kid.
    No one in the shops farther down North Gwinnett had seen him go by, although he was a regular at Scoops in the next block, and people often saw him climbing the base of the bronze statue of the Confederate trooper in the parkette at the intersection of North Gwinnett and Bluebottle Way.
    But not today.
    Today, as far as the Niceville PD had been able to determine, this spot of sidewalk in front of Uncle Moochie’s was the farthest Rainey Teague had gotten before … before
something
happened.
    Pawnshops have security cameras
, Nick was thinking. There it was, in the top left corner, one red eye blinking down at him.
    Moochie, a morose Lebanese with a sagging face full of guile and sorrow, had once been enormous, but a severe case of ulcerative colitis had left him looking like a melting candle. He was a notorious fence but also a good street source for Nick, and he was happy to let Nick see the security video, leading him through the clutter and litter and overloaded display cases to the back of the narrow store, where, in an office that reeked of sweat and hashish, he opened up a cupboard concealing an LED monitor and