Alan shifted the folded linens to the floor and sat next to Edward. “What happened?”

“You know what happened, Alan,” Edward said. “You know as well as I do! Dave took him in the night. He followed us here and he came in the night and stole him away.”

“You don’t know that,” Alan said, softly stroking Edward’s greasy fringe of hair. “He could have wandered out for a walk or something.”

“Of course I know it!” Edward yelled, his voice booming in the hollow of his great chest. “Look!” He handed Alan a small, desiccated lump, like a black bean pierced with a paperclip wire.

“You showed me this yesterday—” Alan said.

“It’s from a different finger!” Edward said, and he buried his face in Alan’s shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Have you looked for him?” Alan asked.

“I’ve been waiting for you to get up. I don’t want to go out alone.”

“We’ll look together,” Alan said. He got a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, shoved his feet into Birkenstocks, and led Edward out the door.

The previous night’s humidity had thickened to a gray cloudy soup, swift thunderheads coming in from all sides. The foot traffic was reduced to sparse, fast-moving umbrellas, people rushing for shelter before the deluge. Ozone crackled in the air and thunder roiled seemingly up from the ground, deep and sickening.

They started with a circuit of the house, looking for footprints, body parts. He found a shred of torn gray thrift-store shirt, caught on a rose bramble near the front of his walk. It smelled of the homey warmth of Edward’s innards, and had a few of Frederick’s short, curly hairs stuck to it. Alan showed it to Edward, then folded it into the change pocket of his wallet.

They walked the length of the sidewalk, crossed Wales, and began to slowly cross the little park. Edward circumnavigated the little cement wading pool, tracing the political runes left behind by the Market’s cheerful anarchist taggers, painfully bent almost double at his enormous waist.

“What are we looking for, Alan?”

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