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right?”
    We went through forty images of just eyes until I saw them.
    â€œThose are his,” I said.
    â€œNot his really. They’re computer generated. But it’s a start. Now we have to come up with a face. You say you saw this guy without the mask?”
    â€œYeah.”
    Solway said, “I’m going to run ‘J.L.’ through the system and see if anything comes up.” He left the room.
    Jack put me through a series of head shapes, chins, noses. It was slow and tedious and eventually we came up with a face that was not quite right. Over an hour had passed.
    â€œCan I take a break?” I asked.
    â€œSure,” he said.
    I went out of the room. My father was still in the waiting room, looking nervous. “Everything okay?” he asked.
    â€œI think so. But I’m having second thoughts.”
    â€œMe too,” my father said, and he gave me a hug. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
    Solway came our way just then. He had a handful of manila files with him. He pretended he didn’t see us. “No J.L. came up, but I’ve got a dozen or so here with first-name and middle-name initials that match that. Ready to look at them?”
    We went back into the room and Jack Kacer showed me a newly revised face. “What about this one?” he asked.
    â€œCloser,” I said.
    â€œGood,” Solway said. “At least now we have some pieces. Look at these.”
    The eighth file was that of someone named James Leroy Pender. It wasn’t a recent photo, but I was pretty sure it was him. I looked up at the computer likeness, then at the real photo.
    Kacer did a quick scan of the file photo with a wireless hand scanner and pulled it up on his screen almost instantly. “Now we’re cooking,” he said. “What do we need to do to it?”
    I didn’t realize at first what he was asking me. “Um...make his face a little thinner. The eyes a little crazier. Shorter hair.” Kacer was clicking away with the mouse. “Now give him three or four days of not shaving.”
    It was him. It was J.L.
    â€œWe still don’t know if he’s our target,” Solway told Kacer. “But this is the guy Sean thinks is the one. We haven’t seen him in a while. All I have here is petty theft, selling marijuana and a break-and-enter. But it could be he got himself in deeper with the drugs. That’s what sometimes makes them more reckless. Some of them get hooked on the risk in a holdup. We’ll bring in this James Leroy Pender and see what he has to say.”
    Jack Kacer looked even more tired than before. “Good work, kid,” he said to me.
    Solway’s look didn’t say anything of the sort. He turned to me. “All this is based on what you say, Sean. You know that, right? Things have just gotten a bit more serious. What are the odds that this J.L. person will know it was you who made the connection?”
    â€œI don’t really know but I think the odds are pretty good.”
    â€œIf we get anything at all to work with, we can detain him. If not, he may be back on the street in no time. I’d steer clear of him if I were you. And even if we keep him, he may have friends.”
    I was thinking of Keeg, Vicente and Robert. Maybe even Monroe. Was it possible they were in on these robberies too? “What do I do?”
    â€œGo home. Go to school. Avoid being alone anywhere. And avoid going anywhere near South Main for a long, long while.”

Chapter Seventeen
    Later that day I got a call from Solway. My father and I picked up the phone at the same time, and I know he stayed on the line.
    â€œWe found J.L. and we found a gun— looks like it’s the gun he used to kill the kid working at the gas station,” Solway said. “This means that you will be a whole lot less important in his conviction. It means the whole case doesn’t hang on just you. You see what I’m saying?”
    â€œSo