Kat couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I thought you never got a hit on it.”

“Not while the case was live. It was no big deal, Kat. We got an ID a few months after Leburne confessed, but the case was already closed.”

“So you just let it go?”

He looked crestfallen by her question. “You know Rinsky and me better than that. No stone unturned, right?”

“Right.”

“Like I said, Stagger checked it out for us. Turns out it was some homeless guy who offed himself. A dead end.”

Kat just stood there.

“I don’t like the expression on your face, Kat.”

“The fingerprints,” she said. “Would they still be in the file?”

“I guess so. I mean, sure. It would be in the warehouse by now, but maybe—”

“We need to run them again,” Kat said.

“I’m telling you. It’s nothing.”

“Then do it for me, okay? As a favor. To shut me up, if nothing else.”

Across the room, the speaker finished up. The crowd applauded. The tuba started up. The rest of the band followed.

“Suggs?”

He didn’t reply. He left her alone then, winding his way through the crowd. His friends called out to him. He ignored them and headed toward the exit.

Chapter 20

Brandon needed to walk it out.

His mom would be proud of that. Like every parent, Brandon’s mom bemoaned the time her child spent in front of screens—computers, televisions, smartphones, video games, whatever. It was a constant battle. His dad had understood better. “Every generation has something like this,” he’d tell Brandon’s mother. Mom would throw her hands up. “So we just surrender? We let him stay in that dark cage all day?” “No,” Dad would counter, “but we put it in perspective.”

Dad was good at that. Putting things in perspective. Offering a calming influence on friends and family. In this case, Dad would explain it to Brandon like this: Way back when, parents would bemoan the lazy child who always had their nose in a book, telling the child they should get out more, that they should experience life instead of reading it.

“Sound familiar?” Dad would say to Brandon.

Brandon would nod his head.

Then, Dad said, when he was growing up, his parents were always yelling at him to turn off the television and either get outside or—and this was kind of funny when you remember the past—read a book instead.

Brandon remembered how his dad had smiled when he told him that.

“But, Brandon, do you know what the key is?”

“No, what?”

“Balance.”

Brandon hadn’t really understood what he meant at the time. He’d been only thirteen. Maybe he would have pressed the point if he knew that his father would be dead three years later. But no matter. He got it now. Doing any one thing—even something fun—for too long isn’t good for you.

So the problem with taking long walks outside or any of that nature stuff was, well, it was boring. The worlds online may be virtual, but they were constant stimuli in constant flux. You saw, you experienced, you reacted. It never bored. It never got old because it was always changing. You were always engrossed.

Conversely, walking like this—in the wooded area of Central Park called the Ramble—was blah. He looked for birds—according to the web, the Ramble “boasted” (that was the word the website used) approximately 230 bird species. Right now, there were zero. There were sycamores and oaks and plenty of flowers and fauna. No birds. So what was the big deal about walking through trees?

He could, he guessed, understand walking through city streets a little better. At least there was stuff to see—stores and people and cars, maybe someone fighting over a taxi or arguing over a parking spot. Action, at least. The woods? Green leaves and some flowers? Nice for a minute or two, but then, well, Dullsville.

So no, Brandon wasn’t walking through this Manhattan woodland because he suddenly had an appreciation for the great outdoors or fresh air or any of that stuff. He did it because walking like this bored him. It bored him silly.

Balance for the constant stimuli.

More than that, boredom was a kind of thinking tank. It fed you. Brandon didn’t take walks in the woods to calm himself or get in tune with nature. He did it because the boredom forced him to look inward, to think hard, to concentrate solely on his own thoughts because nothing around him was worthy of his attention.

Certain problems cannot be solved if you are constantly entertained and distracted.

Still, Brandon couldn’t help it. He had his smartphone with him. He had called Kat, but the call had gone to her voice mail. He never left messages on voice mail—only old people did that—so he sent her a text to call him when she could. No rush. At least, not yet. He wanted to digest what he had just learned.

He stayed on the winding pathways. He was surprised at how few people he saw. Here he was in the heart of Manhattan, ambling between 73rd and 78th Street (again according to the website—he really had no idea where he was), and he felt virtually alone. He was missing school, but that couldn’t be helped. He had let Jayme Ratner, his lab partner, know that he was currently out of commission. She was okay with it. Her last lab partner had something like a nervous breakdown last semester, so she was just happy he wasn’t down at mental health like, it seemed, half their friends were.

His cell phone rang. The caller ID read Bork Investments. He answered.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice asked, “Is this Mr. Brandon Phelps?”

“Yes.”

“Please hold for Martin Bork.”

The hold music was an instrumental version of “Blurred Lines.” Then: “Well, hello, Brandon.”

“Hello, Uncle Marty.”

“Nice to hear from you, son. How’s school?”

“It’s fine.”

“Wonderful. Do you have plans for the summer?”

“Not yet.”

“No rush, am I right? Enjoy it, that’s my advice. You’ll be out in the real world soon enough. You hear what I’m saying?”

Martin Bork was nice enough, but all adults, when they start with the life advice, sound like blowhards. “I do, yes.”

“So I got your message, Brandon.” All business now. “What can I do for you?”

The pathway started down toward the lake. Brandon got off it and moved closer to the water’s edge. “It’s about my mother’s account.”