“Would you mind repeating the information for the others, sir?” Carl asked. “In case I missed anything when I told them.”

“The two of us were hiking, yes,” said the elder Van Laar. “Bear had been begging to go for a hike. We left the house around three o’clock. We walked through the woods—there’s a shortcut, about a quarter mile long, that connects our house to the trailhead at the base of Hunt. But as soon as we reached the trailhead, Bear said he’d forgotten his pocketknife. He wanted to turn back for it.”

“How come?” asked Dick Shattuck—unable to keep quiet any longer, it seemed. Carl was relieved.

“He said he wanted to show me something,” said the elder. “I don’t know what it was.”

For a moment, Carl felt dizzy. Firewood, he thought. Loose and light and floppy. He wanted to show you how to figure out what wood was good for starting a fire, thought Carl. And then he thought, I taught him that. He had, in fact, taught Bear many things: How to whistle with an acorn cap. How to whittle an owl and a bear and a fox’s head. How to tell when rain was coming. The same things he had taught his own Scotty.

“And you said all right,” said Shattuck, prompting Mr. Van Laar.

“Yes,” said Mr. Van Laar. “I was impatient. But I said yes.”

“You watched him head back toward the house,” said Shattuck.

“Yes.”

“When did you lose sight of him?”

The elder considered. “Almost immediately,” he said. “There’s a turn that the path takes”—here Van Laar demonstrated with his hand—“about a hundred feet from the trailhead, back in the direction of the house. I watched Bear until he reached that point, and then he turned left, and was gone.”

“What’s the trailhead like?” asked Shattuck.

Carl knew. He’d been there himself a handful of times with Bear, who’d been given permission from his parents to go as far as the base of the mountain whenever he liked, but no farther than that. The trailhead was a turnaround at the end of a dirt road that led to Route 29, the main paved road into town. Hunt Mountain, by virtue of its small size, wasn’t among the most popular peaks in the Adirondacks, but when the weather was good there were usually a half-dozen cars parked here and there in the lot.

“What do you mean,” asked the elder.

“I mean—is it a busy place? Active?”

“Not usually,” said the elder.

“And today? Were there other people on the mountain, do you think?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said the elder. “There were no cars in the lot, but I never got as far as the mountain. I stood at the trailhead, waiting for Bear, until it began to rain.”

There was silence then. Uncomfortable.

Carl watched Bob Lewis. Of the four of them, he was the cynic, the pessimist. He had a paranoid streak that sometimes caused him to leap to conclusions about bad actors and questionable motives. Twice, he had made the case for arson when a fire’s cause couldn’t easily be explained. (So far, there had been no actual cases of arson in Shattuck Township—not on their watch, anyway.)

On cue, Bob L. spoke up.

“Why were you going for a hike in a storm?” he asked the elder Van Laar.

The question was abrupt. Lewis tempered himself. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir.”

“The storm was sudden,” said Mr. Van Laar. “It came from nowhere. The sky was clear when we left the house. The sun was out. Not a hint of moisture in the air. And then,” he said. But he didn’t continue.

Dick Shattuck cleared his throat. “Mr. V,” he said, “how long would you say you waited for Bear at the trailhead, after he turned back?”

“Difficult to say,” said the elder Van Laar. “Fifteen minutes, maybe. Twenty. I didn’t check my pocket watch when he left, but I did when the rain began. That was at three thirty-five. That’s when I lost patience and headed back myself. The path through the woods is short. As I said. It shouldn’t have taken him so long.”

•   •   •

The conversation continued, but Carl stayed silent. Calculating. Mr. Van Laar had said Bear had set off on a hike with his grandfather at three p.m. Carl had left work early that day, at half past three. That was when he saw the boy bent down in front of the house, tying a shoe, about to set off someplace.

If he was doing his math correctly, it was possible that he, Carl Stoddard, was the last person to see the boy before he disappeared.

He thought of speaking up about it. Decided against it, for now.

Both Van Laars simultaneously leaned their weight against the countertop behind them, suddenly exhausted. In general, they moved as a pair. Same height, same eyes, same steady fluid movements. There was an athleticism to them that Carl didn’t generally associate with rich people. He had once seen Peter III playing an impromptu game of baseball on the lawn during a different year’s Blackfly Good-by. He had knocked a ball completely out of sight and then run around the improvised bases in a casual lope that concealed what Carl, from his football days, immediately understood to be an impressive reserve of speed.

“Did anyone see him after that? Anyone aside from you, I mean,” said Shattuck.

“No one that I know of,” said the elder.

“Do you think he ever reached the house?”

“Unclear,” said the younger. Bear’s father. “No one saw him there, but many of the guests were resting at that time. Or outside, I suppose.”

Carl swallowed hard. He wanted to speak up. To say, I saw him. He was tying his shoes. It was half past three. But he understood what would change the moment he revealed it.

Shattuck continued, and the moment passed.

“Who do you believe was inside the house?”

The younger Van Laar nodded. “I was,” he said. “My wife was. Certain guests, as I said. Certain members of the staff.”

“And when did you start searching for Bear?”

The two Van Laars glanced at one another.

Then the younger spoke. “Dad found me at the house,” he said. “Around a quarter to four. I’d been resting in my bedroom. He told me he couldn’t find Bear.”

On saying the name, his voice rose.

Carl looked away, afraid suddenly that he would cry.

“And then,” said Shattuck, more gently.

“We went out, the two of us, into the rain,” said the elder. “We didn’t want to alarm anyone just yet. We began—calling for him. For Bear. And I suppose people heard us. And slowly a group formed. We fanned out. We all wandered in the woods for a while. We split into smaller parties. One group went all the way up Hunt, all the way to the top of the mountain. Another went down to the beach to walk along the waterline. Another searched Camp Emerson, all the cabins, every building. There were twenty of us searching, or thereabouts. We spent about three hours searching, all told. Got thoroughly soaked in the process.”

The four volunteers nodded collectively.

“When did you let the boy’s mother know?” asked Bob Lewis. Again, the question felt wrong, too abrupt, the subject too tender.

It was the younger Van Laar who answered. “She heard us calling,” he said. “She came outside.” His voice was tight.

Carl had stopped looking in the Van Laars’ direction altogether. If he cried now—