How to Find a Lost Dog in the Woods, by Steve Hamilton

 "How to Find a Lost Dog in the Woods," by Steve Hamilton, in The Strand Magazine, Issue 77, 2026.

The magazine says this is Issue LXXVII, which is 77 if my Roman numeral scores are up to snuff, but Amazon says it is Issue 53.

Gordie Loudon is on a memory trip, visiting a place he hasn't seen in fifty years.  But it's not just a nostalgic visit.  Gordie is in a Twelve-Step Program, and this is part of trying to make amends to people he hurt.

But this is will be a particularly difficult action because the person he hurt was a boy who disappeared fifty years ago.  I suspect most of us have at least one childhood memory like this: the kid who couldn't catch a break, who didn't fit in.  If you had reached out to him could you have made a difference to his life, to his fate? 

Gordie was the last person to see luckless, lonely Jimmy McCray alive. He disappeared from the lake where they both lived.  Gordie has a special burden, because Jimmy had asked him for help.

Can he get closure fifty years later?  Let's just say the conclusion is satisfactory.

An aside: I have commented in the past that almost every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has a story that could have been titled "The Cabin on the Lake." That hasn't happened lately, but this story would have qualified.