People tell you things like this, this is the way it is, and you still just couldn’t believe. From a file drawer, the clerk at 4-D had pulled out page after printed page of official police notifications of the missing, the sheets spilling out onto the floor at one point, a sheaf of them. God. On each sheet, a picture of the individual was centered below MISSING in bold, black type. Their name, their age, and last known location was listed at the bottom, along with an MPD phone number. There were more than a hundred, could have been two. They were in no particular order, and the database was not much more than a computerized mess. Some of the cases were closed out, with marks for “Reunited” or “Dead.” Some listed the precise date they went missing; others just read “Summer 1998.” Some went back to the late 1980s. One—he took this one—had been filed the week before. Others listed an address for the missing, not the place where they were last seen.
