"Ripple rooter" is the title of this chapter. It's a quote from Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, in which the hero's fate is tied to the fate of his fellow man. In this case, it's the disappearance of a young girl. The police have received a missing child report, but they don't know who the girl was with at the time of her disappearance. They're not sure what to do, so they're just going to bury the case and move on. This is the first time that the police have gotten a missing person's report during a holiday season, and they usually get it from tourists, not local people. The whole family is missing, including the prime suspect, Clouse, and his wife. They live in a lower-class part of town, and the crime rate there is much lower than it is in the upper-class district.