Never Look Away

SEVEN

“Where’s my son?” I asked.

I was sitting in the air-conditioned reception area of the Five Mountains offices. They were tucked away, camouflaged, behind the old Colonial street front just in from the main gates. There were a number of people there. The park manager, a thirtyish woman with short blonde hair named Gloria Fenwick, a man in his twenties who was identified as her assistant and whose name I had not caught, and a woman barely twenty who was the Five Mountains publicity director. They were all dressed smart casual, unlike the other park employees in attendance, who were dressed identically in light tan shirts and slacks with their names embroidered on their chests.

But I wasn’t asking any of them about Ethan. I was speaking to an overweight man named Barry Duckworth, a police detective with the Promise Falls department. His belly hung over his belt, and he was struggling to keep his sweat-stained white shirt tucked in.

“He’s with one of my officers,” Duckworth said. “Her name’s Didi. She’s very nice. She’s just down the hall with him, getting him an ice cream. I hope that’s okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “How is he?”

“He’s good,” Duckworth said. “He seems fine. But I thought it would be better if we had a chance to talk without your son here.”

I nodded. I was feeling numb, dazed. It had been a couple of hours since I’d seen Jan.

“Tell me again what happened after you went out to the car,” Duckworth said. Fenwick, her assistant, and the park publicist were hovering nearby. “I wonder if I might be able to speak to Mr. Harwood alone?” he asked them.

“Oh, sure, of course,” said Fenwick. “But if you need anything…”

“You already have people reviewing the closed-circuit TV?” he asked.

“Of course, although we don’t really know who or what we’re looking for,” she said. “If we had a picture of this woman, that would help a lot.”

“You’ve got a description,” he said. “Mid-thirties, five-eight, black hair, ponytail pulled through baseball cap with… Red Sox on the front?” He looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. “Red top, white shorts. Look for someone like that, anything that seems out of the ordinary.”

“Certainly, we’ll do that, but you also know that we don’t really have all the public areas equipped yet with closed-circuit. We have cameras set up on all the rides, so we can see any technical problems early.”

“I know,” Duckworth said. “You’ve explained that.” Now he looked at them and smiled, waiting for them to clear out. Once they had, he pulled out one of the reception chairs so he could sit looking straight at me.

“Okay,” he said. “You went out to the car. What kind of car is it?”

I swallowed. My mouth was very dry. “An Accord. Jan’s Jetta we left at home.”

“Okay, so tell me.”

“Ethan and I waited by the gate for about half an hour. I’d been trying to reach my wife on her cell, but she wasn’t answering. Finally, I wondered whether she might have gone back to the car. Maybe she was waiting for us there. So I took Ethan back through the gates and we went to the car, but she wasn’t there.”

“Was there any sign that she might have been there? That she’d dropped anything off there?”

I shook my head. “She had a backpack, with lunch things and probably a change of clothes for Ethan, with her, and I didn’t see it in the car.”

“Okay, then what did you do?”

“We came back to the park. I was thinking maybe she showed up when we went out to the parking lot. We showed our tickets again so we could get back in, then waited around just inside the gate, but she didn’t show up.”

“That was when you approached one of the park employees.”

“I’d talked to one earlier, who asked security if Jan had been in touch, and she hadn’t. But then, when we came back from the car, I found someone else, asked him if they had any reports of anything, like maybe Jan had collapsed, or fallen, you know? And he said he didn’t think so, and he got on his radio, and when he couldn’t turn up anything, I said we had to call the police.”

Barry Duckworth nodded, like that had been a good idea.

“I need a drink of water,” I said. “Are you sure Ethan’s okay?”

“He’s fine.” There was a water fountain in the reception area. The detective got up, filled a paper cone with water, and handed it to me before sitting back down.

“Thank you.” I drank the water in a single gulp. “Are you looking for that man?”

“What man is that?” he asked.

“The man I told you about.”

“The one you saw running away?”

“That’s right. I think he might have had a beard.”

“Anything else you can tell me about him?”

“It was just for a second. I really didn’t get a close look at him.”

“And you think this man was running away from your child’s stroller.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you see this man take the stroller?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see him pushing it away?”

“No.”

“How about when you found the stroller, was he holding on to it, standing by it, anything?”

“No, I told you, I just caught a glimpse of him running through the crowd when I found Ethan,” I said.

“So he could have just been a man running through the crowd,” the detective said.

I hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I just had a feeling.”

“Mr. Harwood,” Duckworth said, then stopped himself. “Your name. David Harwood. It seems familiar to me.”

“Maybe you’ve seen the byline. I’m a reporter for the Standard. But I don’t cover the police, so I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Yeah,” Duckworth said. “I knew I knew it from someplace. We get the Standard delivered.”

Suddenly something occurred to me. “Maybe she went home. Could she have gone home? Maybe she took a taxi or something?”

I expected Duckworth to leap up and have someone check, but he said, “We’ve already had someone go by your house, and it looks like no one’s home. We knocked on the door, phoned, looked in the windows. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”

I looked down at the floor, shook my head. Then, “Let me call my parents, see if she might have gone there.”

Duckworth waited for me to fish out my cell and place the call.

“Hello?” My mother.

“Mom, it’s me. Listen, is Jan there?”

“What? No. Why would she be here?”

“I’m just-we kind of lost contact with each other. If she shows up, would you call me right away?”

“Of course. But what do you mean, you lost-”

“I have to go, Mom. I’ll talk to you later.”

I flipped the phone shut and put it back into my pocket. Duckworth studied me with sad, knowing eyes.

“What about her own family?” he asked.

I shook my head. “There isn’t anyone. I mean, not anyone she’d go see. She’s an only child and she’s estranged from her family. Hasn’t seen them in years. For all I know, her parents are dead.”

“Friends?”

Again, I shook my head. “Not really. No one she spends time with.”

“Work friends?”

“There’s one other woman in the office, Leanne Kowalski, at Bertram’s Heating and Cooling. But they aren’t close. Leanne and Jan don’t really connect.”

“Why’s that?”

“Leanne’s a bit rough around the edges. I mean, they get along, but they don’t have girls’ nights out or anything.”

The detective wrote down Leanne’s name just the same.

“Now, some of these questions may seem insensitive,” Duckworth said, “but I need to ask them.”

“Go ahead.”

“Has your wife ever had episodes where she wandered off, behaved strangely, anything like that?”

I took probably one second longer to answer than I should have. “No.”

Duckworth caught that. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How about-and my apologies for asking this-an affair? Could she be seeing anyone else?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Have the two of you had any arguments lately? Cross words between you?”

“No,” I said. “Look, we should be out looking for her, not sitting around here.”

“There are people looking, Mr. Harwood. You sure you don’t have a picture of her on you? A wallet shot? On your cell phone?”

I rarely used my phone for pictures. “I have some at home.”

“By the time you get home, maybe we’ll have found her,” he said reassuringly. “If not, you have some you could email me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so, in the meantime, let’s put our heads together to see whether there’s a way to narrow down this search.”

I nodded.

Duckworth said, “Let’s go back to my earlier question. The one about whether your wife has had any episodes lately.”

“Yes?”

“What weren’t you telling me there? I could see it in your eyes, you were holding something back.”

“Okay, I was telling you the truth, she’s never wandered off or done anything like that. But there is something… this is very hard for me to even think about, let alone talk about it.”

Duckworth waited.

“Are there any bridges around here?” I asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Not big ones, like on the interstate, but smaller ones, over creeks or anything?”

“I’m sure there are, Mr. Harwood. Why would you be asking that?”

“The last couple of weeks, my wife… she hasn’t totally been herself.”

“Okay,” he said patiently.

“She’s been feeling… depressed. She’s said some things…”

I felt myself starting to get overwhelmed.

“Mr. Harwood?”

“I just need… a second.” I held my hand tightly over my mouth. I had to hold it together. I took a moment to focus. “The last couple of weeks, she’s been having these thoughts.”

“Thoughts?”

“About… harming herself. Suicidal thoughts. I mean, I don’t think she’s actually tried to do it. Well, she had this bandage on her wrist, but she swears that was just an accident when she was peeling vegetables, and she did go out to this bridge, but-”

“She tried to jump off a bridge?” Duckworth asked straightforwardly.

“She drove out to one, but she didn’t jump. A truck came along.” I felt I was rambling. “Jan’s been feeling like… like everything was too much. She told me the other night she thought Ethan and I would be better off without her.”

“Why do you think she would say something like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s like her brain just short-circuited these last few days. It was yesterday she told me about driving out to that bridge, standing on the railing until the truck showed up.”

“That must have been very hard to hear.”

I nodded. “It was.” I was holding back tears. “Very.”

“Did you suggest that she go talk to someone?”

“I already had. I’d been to see our doctor, Dr. Samuels.” Duckworth seemed to recognize the name and nodded. “I told him about the changes in Jan’s behavior, and he said she should see him. So I talked her into it, and she saw him the other day, but this was before the bridge incident. She says she did that after she went to see the doctor.”

“Was she on any kind of medication?”

“No. In fact, I asked her about that. I was hoping he might prescribe something for her, but she said she didn’t want drugs changing who she was. She said she could deal with this without taking anything.”

“Would you excuse me a moment?” Duckworth said, reaching into his jacket for his cell phone. He slipped outside the door before placing a call. I couldn’t hear everything he said, but I made out the words “creek” and “suicide.”

I just sat there, rubbing my hands together, wanting to get up and leave that room, do something besides wasting my time while-

Duckworth came back in, sat back down.

“Do you think it’s possible that’s what she did?” he asked. “That she may have taken her own life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope to God not.”

“We’re doing an extensive search of the grounds, of the park itself,” he said. “As well, we’re searching beyond the park, looking at the other cars out there, talking to people.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m confused about one thing.” I shook my head. “I’m confused about a lot of things.”

“What is it?”

“My son. Why did someone run off with my son?”

“I can’t say,” Duckworth said. “It’s a good thing he’s okay.”

I felt a minor wave of relief. It was true. At least Ethan was safe. There was no indication anyone had done anything to him.

“Isn’t it a hell of a coincidence that someone would take off with Ethan at the same time as my wife goes missing?” I asked.

The detective nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said.

Fenwick, the park manager, had reappeared. “Detective?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“We have something you might want to see.”

“What?” I said. I was on my feet. “You’ve found her?” But she wouldn’t look at me, only Duckworth.

“What?” I asked again.

She led Duckworth, with me following, to a cubicle with fabric-covered partitions. The young publicist was sitting at a computer with some grainy black-and-white images on the screen.

She said, “Our people in security were reviewing some images from the gate around the time the Harwoods arrived.”

I looked at the screen. The camera must have been mounted just inside the park, looking at the gate. I recalled that there were half a dozen booths, lined up in a row, where guests bought tickets, or showed the ones they’d bought online. The image on the screen showed one booth, and there, in the crush of people arriving for a day of fun, were Ethan and I.

“It was actually not that tricky,” the young woman at the keyboard said. “They entered the name ‘Harwood’ into the system, which brought up the ticket info, and that showed the time of entry into Five Mountains.”

“Yeah, that’s us,” I said, pointing.

“Where’s your wife?” Duckworth asked me.

I started to point, then said, “She wasn’t with us then. Ethan and I entered the park on our own.”

Duckworth’s eyes seemed to narrow. “Why was that, Mr. Harwood?”

“She forgot the backpack. We were almost to the gate, and then she remembered, and she told us to go on ahead, we’d meet up later by the ice-cream place.”

“And that’s what you did? You and your son came in on your own?”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s not the last time you saw your wife.”

“No, she came in later and joined us.”

Duckworth nodded, then said to the publicist, “Can your people get some pics from the area of the ice-cream stand?”

She half-turned in her chair. “No,” she said. “We don’t have any cameras there at this point. Just on the gates and the rides. Our plan is to put in more cameras, in more locations, but we’re still relatively new, you understand, and we’ve been prioritizing where CCTV is concerned.”

Duckworth didn’t say anything. He studied me for a moment before saying he wanted to check in with his people. He was moving for the door.

“I want to get Ethan,” I said.

“Absolutely.” he said, nodding his head in agreement. Then he went into the hall and closed the door behind him.

EIGHT

Barry Duckworth walked down the hall and turned into a room gridded with cubicles. The Promise Falls police detective guessed that on a weekday, these desks would be filled with people conducting the business end of things for Five Mountains park, but unlike the workers who actually ran the rides and sold the tickets and emptied the trash, they got Saturday and Sunday off.

The park manager didn’t have to be called in. Five Mountains was still a new attraction in the upper New York State area, and Saturdays were always the busiest. Fenwick had called in her publicist the moment she suspected this could turn into a public relations nightmare for the park. If Jan Harwood had somehow wandered into the mechanism of a roller coaster, or drowned in one of the shallow waterways that ran through the grounds, or choked on a Five Mountains hot dog, they needed to be on top of that.

As if that weren’t enough, there was this business of a kid in a stroller being wheeled away from his parents. Once that news started getting out there, hold on to your hat, buster. Before you knew it, parents would be hearing that some tot had been carved up for body parts at the face-painting booth.

There were only two people in this other office. Didi Campion, a uniformed officer in her mid-thirties, and Ethan Harwood. They were sitting across from each other on office chairs, Campion leaning over, her arms on her knees, Ethan sitting on the edge of his chair, legs dangling.

“Hey,” Duckworth said.

All that remained of an ice-cream treat Ethan had been eating was an inch of cone. His tired eyes found Duckworth. The child looked bewildered and very small. He said nothing.

“Ethan and I were just talking about trains,” Didi Campion said.

“You like trains, Ethan?” Duckworth asked.

Ethan nodded. He drew his lips in, like he was doing everything he could not to say anything.

“We’re going to get you back with your dad in just a minute,” Duckworth said. “That okay with you?”

Another nod.

“Would you mind if I talked with Officer Campion over here for just a second? We’re not going anyplace.”

Ethan looked from Duckworth to Campion and his eyes flashed with worry. Duckworth could see that the boy had already formed an attachment to the policewoman.

“I’ll be right back,” Campion assured him and touched his knee.

She got out of the chair and joined Duckworth a few feet away.

“Well?” he asked her.

“He wants to see his parents. Both of them. He’s asking where they are.”

“What else did he tell you? What about the person who took him away in his stroller?”

“He doesn’t know anything about it. I think he slept through the whole thing. And he said he and his father were waiting and waiting for his mother to come but she didn’t.”

Duckworth leaned in. “Did he say when he last saw her?”

Campion sighed. “I don’t know if he quite got what I was trying to ask him. He just keeps saying he wants to go home, that he doesn’t want to go on any of the roller coasters, not even the small rides. And he wants his mom and dad.”

Duckworth nodded. “Okay, I’ll take the kid back to his father in just a second.” Campion took that as a sign that they were done, and she went back to sit with Ethan.

The door edged open. It was Fenwick. “Detective?”

“Yes.”

“I know you have your own people out combing the grounds, but Five Mountains personnel have searched every square inch of the grounds and they’re reporting back that they haven’t found any sign of this woman. I mean, in any kind of distress. No woman passed out in any restrooms, not in any of the areas that are off-limits to guests, no indication that she fell or came to any kind of harm anywhere at all. I really think, at this point, it would be best if the police presence in the park were scaled back. It’s making people nervous.”

“Which people?” Duckworth asked.

“Our guests,” Fenwick said defensively. “They can’t help but think something’s wrong, with all these police around. They’ll start thinking terrorists have put bombs on the roller coasters or something like that.”

“How about the parking lot?” Duckworth asked.

“It’s been searched,” Fenwick said confidently.

Duckworth held up a finger and got out his cell, punched in a number. “Yeah, Smithy, how ya doin’. I want someone at the exit scoping out every car as it leaves. See if there’s anyone in any of them matches the description of this missing woman. You see someone like that, if she’s acting funny, you hang on to that car till I get there.”

Fenwick looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Tell me you’re not going to search every car that leaves here.”

“No,” he said, but he wished he could. He wished he had the authority to make everyone pop their trunk as they left for home. Duckworth had a feeling that anything he did about cars in the lot amounted to doing too little too late. If Jan Harwood had run into trouble, if someone had stuffed her into a trunk, they could have left the lot a couple of hours ago. But you did what you could.

“This is terrible, just terrible,” Fenwick said. “We don’t need this kind of publicity. If this woman wandered off because she has mental problems or something, that’s hardly our fault. Is that man planning to sue us? Is this some setup to get money out of us?”

“Would you like me to convey your concerns to Mr. Harwood?” Duckworth asked. “I’m sure, as a writer for the Standard, he’d love to do a piece on your outpouring of sympathy for his situation.”

She blanched. “He works for the paper?”

Duckworth nodded.

Fenwick moved around the detective and dropped to her knees in front of Ethan. “How are you doing there? I bet you’d love another ice cream cone.”

Duckworth’s cell, which was still in his hand, rang. He put it to his ear. “Yeah.”

“It’s Gunner here, Detective. I’m down in the security area. We patched that video of the guy and his kid going through the gates a few minutes ago up to the main office.”

“I just saw it.”

“They couldn’t pick out the wife in those, right?”

“That’s right. Mr. Harwood says his wife had gone back to the car to get something and told him to go on ahead.”

“Yeah, okay, so she would have come into the park a few minutes later then, right?”

“Yeah,” Duckworth said.

“So what we did before was, because the Harwoods ordered their tickets online, and printed them out, we were able to pinpoint at what time those tickets got scanned and processed at the gate.”

“I got that.”

“So then we thought, we’ll look for when the third ticket, the wife’s, got processed at the gate, and then when we had that we could find the closed-circuit image for that time.”

“What’s the problem?” Duckworth asked.

“Nothing’s coming up.”

“What do you mean? You saying she never came into the park?”

“I don’t know. Here’s the thing. I’ve got them checking their ticket sales records, all the stuff that gets bought in advance online, and they only show two tickets being purchased on the Harwoods’ Visa. One adult and one kid.”

NINE

The door opened and Ethan ran in. I scooped him up in my arms and held on to him tight, patted the back of his head.

“You okay?” I asked. He nodded. “They were nice to you?”

“I had an ice cream. A lady wanted to get me another but Mom would be mad if I had two.”

“We never really had any lunch,” I said.

“Where’s Mommy?” Ethan asked, but not with any sense of worry.

“We’re going home now,” I said.

“Is she home?”

I glanced at Duckworth, who had followed Ethan into the room. There was nothing in his expression.

“Let’s just go home,” I said. “And then maybe we’ll see Nana and Poppa.”

Still holding Ethan, I said to Duckworth, my voice low, “What do we do now?”

He breathed in and then exhaled, his belly going in and out. “You head home. First thing, you send me a picture. If you hear anything, you get in touch with me.” He had already given me his card. “And we’ll call if there are any developments.”

“Of course.”

“Maybe start making up a list, anyone your wife might have called, anyone she might have gotten in touch with.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Tell me again how you bought your tickets for today?”

“I told you. From the website.”

“You ordered them?”

“Jan did,” I said.

“So it wasn’t actually you who sat down at the computer to do it, it was your wife.”

I didn’t understand the point of this. “That’s what I just said.”

Duckworth seemed to be mulling this over.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“Only two tickets were bought online,” he said. “One adult ticket, one child.”

I blinked. “Well, that doesn’t make much sense. There must be some mistake. She was in the park. They wouldn’t have let her in the gate without a ticket. There’s been some kind of mix-up.”

“And I’m asking them to look into that. But if it turns out only one adult ticket was purchased, does that figure?”

It didn’t. But if that was what had happened, I could think of at least one possible explanation.

“Maybe Jan made a mistake,” I offered. “Sometimes, ordering online, it’s easy to do that. I was booking a hotel online once, and the website froze up for a second, and when I got the confirmation it said I’d booked two rooms when I only wanted one.”

Duckworth’s head went up and down slowly. “That’s a possibility.”

The only problem with my theory was that, on the way into Five Mountains, Jan had taken out of her purse all our tickets. She had handed me mine and one for Ethan, and made a point of keeping one for herself so she could get into the park after she went back to the car for her backpack.

She hadn’t mentioned any ticket problem when she’d found us inside the gate.

I was about to mention this to Duckworth, but stopped myself, because I suddenly had another theory that was too upsetting to discuss aloud, certainly not in front of Ethan, who had wrapped his arms around my neck.

Maybe Jan never bought a ticket because she was thinking she might not be around to use it. Maybe that piece of paper she was flashing wasn’t a ticket after all.

No point buying a ticket if you know you’re going to kill yourself.

But could Jan have seriously thought that if she killed herself, we’d head off to Five Mountains to celebrate?

“Something?” Duckworth said.

“No,” I said. “I just, I don’t know what to say. I really need to get Ethan home and get that picture to you.”

“Absolutely,” he said and moved aside to let me leave.

Leaving Five Mountains was a surreal experience.

Once I had Ethan in his stroller, we exited the offices and were back in the park, not far from the main gate. We were surrounded by the sounds of children and adults laughing. Balloons bobbed and, when the children holding them loosened their grips on the strings, soared skyward. Upbeat music blared from food stands and gift shops. Above us, roller-coaster passengers screamed with terrified delight.

Fun and pandemonium everywhere we looked.

I held on tight to the stroller handles and kept on pushing. We went past a couple of Promise Falls uniformed cops, but they were doing more ambling than searching. Perhaps there was no place else to look.

At least not here.

Ethan swung around and tried to eye me from his stroller seat. “Is Mommy home?” It had to be the fifth time he’d asked.

I didn’t answer. First of all, I didn’t have an answer to his question. And second, I did not have high hopes. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something very bad had happened to Jan. That Jan had done something very bad to herself.

Don’t let it be true.

Once we got to the car, I placed Ethan in his seat, buckled him in, dumped his toys within reach. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Can I have a sandwich?”

“A sandwich?”

“Mom put sandwiches in her backpack.”

There was no backpack. Not now.

“We’ll get something to eat when we get home,” I said. “Just hang in there. It won’t take long.”

“Where’s Batman?”

“What?”

Ethan was sorting through his action figures. Spider-Man, Robin, Joker, Wolverine. A melding of the Marvel and DC universes. “Batman!”

“I’m sure he’s there,” I said.

“He’s gone!”

I searched around his safety seat and down in the crevices of the car upholstery.

“Maybe it fell out,” Ethan said.

“Fell out where?” I asked.

He just looked at me, like I was supposed to know.

I searched under the front seats, thinking Batman could have fallen and gotten tucked under there.

Ethan was crying.

“Damn it, Ethan!” I shouted. “You think we don’t have enough to worry about right now?”

I reached my hand an inch farther and got hold of something. A tiny leg. I pulled out Batman and handed it to Ethan, who took the Caped Crusader happily into his hands, then tossed it onto the seat next to him to play with something else.

There was a huge traffic backup getting out of Five Mountains. Everyone was being stopped by the police on their way out, a cop peering inside, doing a walk-around like it was a border crossing. It took us twenty minutes to reach the exit, and I powered down my window when the cop leaned forward to talk to me.

“Excuse me, sir, we’re just doing a check of cars as they leave. Just take a moment.” No explanation offered.

“I’m the guy,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“My wife is the one you’re looking for. Jan Harwood. I have to get home so I can email a photo of her to Detective Duckworth.”

He nodded and waved us on.

From the back seat, Ethan said, “The police lady told me a joke.”

“What?”

“She said you would like it because you’re a reporter.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“What’s black and white and red all over?”

“I give up,” I said.

“A newspaper,” Ethan said and cackled. He waited a beat, and said, “I don’t get it.” Another pause. “Is Mom making dinner?”

As we came in the door Ethan shouted, “Mom!”

I was about to join in and shout out Jan’s name, but I decided to wait and see whether Ethan got a reply.

“Mom?” he yelled a second time.

“I don’t think she’s home,” I said. “You go in and watch some TV and I’ll just make sure.”

He trundled off obediently to the family room while I did a quick search of the house. I ran up to our bedroom, checked the bathroom, Ethan’s bedroom. Then I was back to the main floor and down the steps into our unfinished basement. It didn’t take more than a second to realize she wasn’t there. The only place left to check was the garage.

There was a connecting door between the kitchen and the garage, and as I put my hand on it I hesitated.

Jan’s Jetta had been in the driveway when we’d pulled in. So her car was not in the garage.

So at least she couldn’t have-

Open the damn door, I told myself. I turned the knob and stepped into the one-car garage. It was as messy and disorganized as always.

And there was no one in it.

There were two large plastic Rubbermaid garbage containers in the corner. It had never occurred to me before that they were each large enough to hold a person, but my mind was going places it had never gone before. I approached the cans, put my hand on the lid of the first one, held it there a moment, and then lifted it off.

Inside was a bag of garbage.

The second can was empty.

Back in the kitchen, I found our laptop, folded shut, beside the phone, half buried in mail from the last couple of days and a handful of flyers.

I took it over to the kitchen table, hit the on button, and drummed my fingers waiting for it to do its thing. Once it was up and running, I opened the photo program. We had gone to Chicago last fall, and it was the last time I’d moved pictures from the digital camera into the computer.

I looked through the photos. Jan and Ethan standing under the passenger jet at the Museum of Science and Industry. Another one of them in front of the Burlington Zephyr streamlined passenger train. The two of them wandering through Millennium Park, eating cheese corn from Garrett’s, their fingers and mouths orange with cheese powder.

Most of the pictures were of Jan and Ethan, since I was the one who usually took the pictures. But there was one shot of Ethan and me together, down by the water, sailboats in the background, him sitting on my lap.

I zeroed in on two shots that were particularly good of Jan. Her black hair, longer last fall than now, partly covered the left side of her face, but not enough to obscure her features. Her brown eyes, soft cheekbones, small nose, the almost imperceptible L-shaped scar on the left side of her chin, the one she got falling off a bike when she was in her teens. At her throat, a slender necklace with a small pendant designed to look like a cupcake, with diamondlike frosting and cake of gold, something Jan had had since she was a child.

I dug Detective Duckworth’s card from my pocket and sent the picture to the email address that was embossed on it. I added two more pictures-not quite as good, but from different angles-to the email, just to be sure he had enough.

I added a note to the last one. “I think the first shot shows her best, but I added a couple more. I’m going to look for more and will send them to you. Please call if you hear anything.” I also printed out a couple dozen copies of that first shot.

I reached over for the phone and set it on the kitchen table. I didn’t want to wait for Duckworth to check his emails. I wanted him to know he had the photos now, so I dialed his cell.

“Duckworth,” he said.

“It’s David Harwood,” I said. “I just sent you the pictures.”

“You’re home?”

“Yes.”

“Any sign of her? Phone message, anything?”

There’d been no flashing light, and there were no new email messages. “Nothing,” I said.

“Okay, well, we’ll get those pictures of your wife out right away.”

“I’ll talk to the Standard,” I said, thinking that my next call would be to the city desk. There was still time to get Jan’s picture in the Sunday edition.

“Why don’t you let us handle that,” Duckworth said. “I think it might be better if any releases about this are funneled through a single source, you know?”

“But-”

“Mr. Harwood, it’s only been a few hours. In a lot of cases we don’t even move on a missing-persons case this quickly, but given some of the circumstances, the fact that it happened at Five Mountains, well, that kind of raised the priority level, if you get what I’m saying.”

I listened.

“The fact is, your wife might just walk in the door tonight and this will all be over. That happens, you know.”

“You think that’s what’s going to happen this time?”

“Mr. Harwood, we don’t know. I’m just saying we might want to give this a few more hours before we issue a release. I’m not saying we won’t, I’m just saying we’ll revisit this in another hour or so.”

“In an hour or so,” I said.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “And thank you for these pictures. This is a real help. Absolutely.”

I found Ethan on the floor, sitting on his haunches, watching Family Guy.

“Ethan, you’re not watching that.” I picked up the remote and killed the TV. “I’ve told you not to watch that!”

He whispered, “I’m sorry.” His lower lip protruded.

It was the second time I’d screamed at him since all of this had started. I took him into my arms, pulled him in close to me. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry.”

I looked into his face and tried to smile. “You okay?”

He nodded, sniffed. “When’s Mommy coming home?” he asked, probably thinking she wouldn’t be so mean to him.

“I just sent some pictures of Mommy to the police so if they see her they can tell her we’re here waiting for her.”

“Why are the police looking for her? Did she rob something?” Worry washed over his face.

“No, she didn’t do anything like that. The police aren’t looking for her because she did a bad thing. They’re looking for her to help her.”

“Help her what?”

“Help her find her way home,” I said.

“She should have taken her car,” Ethan said.

“What?”

“She has the TV map in it.”

The navigation screen.

“I don’t know if it’s that kind of lost,” I said. “You know what I think we should do? I think we should head over to see Nana and Poppa, see what they’re up to.”

“I just want to stay here in case Mom comes home.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “We’ll write her a note so she knows where we are. Would you help me with that?”

Ethan ran up to his room and returned with some blank paper and his box of crayons.

“Can I write it?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I set him up at the kitchen table. He got his face right down to the paper, watching the path of his crayon. He’d been working on his letters, even though he wasn’t yet in school.

He randomly printed several capital letters, some of them backward.

“Great,” I said. “Now let’s go.” When he wasn’t looking, I wrote at the bottom of the page: Jan. Gone to my parents with Ethan. PLEASE call.

I had to wait while he ran around gathering a different collection of figures and cars. I wanted to get moving, but didn’t have it in me to speak harshly to him again.

I got him belted in once again and we drove across town to my parents’ house. I didn’t often arrive unannounced. I usually gave them some sort of courtesy call. But I knew I couldn’t talk to them on the phone about this.

“When we get there, you go on in and watch TV. I need to talk to Nana and Poppa for a while.”

“But not Family Guy,” Ethan said.

“That’s right,” I said.

My mother happened to be looking out the front window when we pulled into the driveway. Dad was holding the door open by the time Ethan was bounding up the stairs to the porch. He slipped past my father and ran into the house.

Dad stepped out, Mom right behind him. Dad was looking at the car.

“Where’s Jan?” he asked.

I collapsed into my father’s arms and began to weep.

TEN

Dr. Andrew Samuels hated to think of himself as a cliché, but couldn’t shake the feeling that that’s exactly what he was.

He was a doctor, and he was golfing. Cops ate donuts, postal workers shot each other, and doctors played golf.

He hated golf.

He hated everything about it. He hated the walking, he hated having to put on sunscreen when it was a blistering hot day. He hated waiting for the dumb bastards on the next green dicking around, taking their time when he was ready to shoot. He hated the tacky clothes you were expected to wear. But more than anything else, he hated the whole idea of it, using up thousands upon thousands of acres of land so men and women could chase around little balls and drop them into tiny holes in the ground. What a fucking ridiculous idea.

But despite his feelings about the game, Samuels had an expensive set of clubs and the spiked shoes and he even maintained a membership at the Promise Falls Golf and Country Club because it was more or less expected in this town that if you were the mayor or a doctor or a lawyer or a prominent businessman, you were a member. If you weren’t, all anyone could assume was that you were sliding inexorably to the bottom of the Promise Falls food chain.

So here he was, on a glorious Saturday afternoon, on the fifteenth hole with his wife’s brother, Stan Reeves, a Promise Falls councilman, first-class gasbag, and all-around asshole. Reeves had been suggesting for months that they get out and play eighteen holes, and Samuels had been able to hold him off up to now, but had finally run out of excuses. No more out-of-town trips, no weddings, and, sadly, no weekend funerals to attend.

“You’re slicing a bit to the right, there,” Reeves said after Samuels took his tee shot. “Watch me.”

Samuels put his driver back into his bag and pretended to watch his brother-in-law.

“You see how the center of my body never moves when I’m swinging? Let me just do it for you in slow motion here.”

Only three holes left after this one, Samuels thought. You could see the clubhouse from here. He could get in his cart, cut across the seventeenth and eighteenth fairways, and be back in the air-conditioned restaurant in four minutes, an ice-cold Sam Adams in front of him. It was, he admitted, the one thing he liked about the game.

“Did you see that?” Reeves said. “Perfect drive. I don’t even know where yours ended up.”

“Somewhere,” Samuels said.

“This is good, huh?” Reeves said. “We don’t do this enough.”

“It’s been a while,” Samuels said.

“Takes your mind off things. I’m sure you’ve got your share of stress being a doctor, but let me tell you, running a city, that’s a twenty-four/seven kind of thing, you know?”

Reeves was such a jerk, it made Samuels wonder whatever happened to the former mayor, Randall Finley.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Samuels said.

And then his cell rang.

“Aw, come on, you didn’t leave that on, did you?” Reeves whined.

“Hang on,” Samuels said, reaching eagerly into his pocket for his phone. Let it be an emergency, he thought. He could be at the hospital in fifteen minutes.

“Hello?” he said.

“Dr. Samuels?”

“Speaking.”

“My name’s Barry Duckworth, a detective with the Promise Falls police.”

“Detective, how are you today?”

Reeves perked up at the mention of the word.

“Not too bad. I gather you’re out on the course someplace. I called your service and they told me and gave me your number when I leaned on them.”

“No problem. What’s up?”

“I’d like to talk to you in person. Now.”

“I’m at the Promise Falls Golf and Country Club, fifteenth hole.”

“I’m already at the clubhouse.”

“I’ll be right there.” He put the phone back into his pocket. “You’ll have to finish without me, Stan.”

“What’s going on?”

Samuels put up his hands in mock bafflement. “I guess I’m going to get a taste of what it’s like for you, this being on call at all hours.”

“Hey, if you take the cart, I’m going to have to-”

But Samuels was already driving away.

Barry Duckworth was outside waiting by the pro shop, where golfers dropped off their carts. He shook hands with Dr. Samuels, who said, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Don’t have time,” Duckworth said. “I need to ask you about one of your patients.”

Samuels’s bushy gray eyebrows shot up momentarily. “Who?”

“Jan Harwood.”

“What’s happened?”

“She’s disappeared. She and her husband, David Harwood, and their son went to spend the day at Five Mountains, and she went missing.”

“Dear God,” said Samuels.

“A thorough search has been done of the park, although I’d still like to take another run at it.” Duckworth led Samuels into the building’s shade, not just to get out of the heat, but to distance themselves from other golfers who might be listening.

“Mr. Harwood thinks it’s possible his wife may have killed herself.”

Samuels nodded, then shook his head. “Oh, this is just terrible. She’s a very nice woman, you know.”

“I’m sure she is,” Duckworth said. “Mr. Harwood said she’s been depressed the last couple of weeks. Mood swings, talking about how the rest of her family would be better off without her.”

“When was this?” Samuels asked.

“A day or two ago, if my understanding of what Mr. Harwood said is correct.”

“But it’s still possible that she’s just missing, that she hasn’t killed herself or anything,” the doctor said. “You haven’t found her.”

“That’s right. That’s why there’s a sense of urgency about this.”

“What is it I can do for you, Detective?”

“I don’t want to violate patient-doctor confidentiality here, but if you have any idea where she might go, what she might do, just how serious the threat is that she might kill herself, I’d really appreciate it.”

“I don’t think I can be much help here.”

“Please, Dr. Samuels. I’m not asking you for personal details, just something that might help us find this woman before she does any harm to herself.”

“Detective, if I knew anything, I’d tell you, I really would. I wouldn’t stand behind some privacy shield. I want you to find her, alive and well, as much as anyone.”

“Did she tell you anything, anything at all, that would indicate to you whether she might take her own life, or whether she was just, I don’t know, trying to get attention?”

“She didn’t tell me anything, Detective.”

“Nothing? A place she might go to think things over?”

“She didn’t tell me anything because she hasn’t been to see me.”

The detective blinked. “Say again?”

“I saw her… maybe eight months ago? Just routine. But she didn’t come see me about being depressed or suicidal. I wish she had.”

“But Mr. Harwood says he went to see you about her. That you told him to convince his wife that she should make an appointment with you.”

“That’s all true. David came in last week, very concerned. And I told him I needed to talk to her myself to make an assessment, and possibly refer her to someone else for counseling.”

“And she never came in?”

The doctor shook his head.

“Because Mr. Harwood,” Duckworth said, “told me she saw you.”

Samuels shook his head. “I kept waiting for her to make an appointment, but she never did. This is just terrible. I should have called her myself, but then she would have known her husband had been to see me. Oh shit. If I’d called her, maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.”

ELEVEN

Once I’d pulled myself together, Mom and Dad and I sat down at the kitchen table to talk things out. Ethan was in the living room, having a heated discussion with the various vehicles he owned from the Cars cartoon movie.

“Maybe she’s just gone to think things over,” Dad said. “You know how women can be sometimes. They get a bee in their bonnet and have to go sort things out for a while. I’m sure she’ll be getting in touch any minute now.”

Mom reached out a hand and placed it over mine. “Maybe if we put our heads together, we can think about where she might have gone.”

“I’ve been doing that,” I said. “She wasn’t home, she didn’t come here. I don’t know where to begin.”

“What about her friends?” Mom asked, but even as she asked it she must have known what my answer would be.

“She doesn’t really have any close ones,” I said. “She’s never been a joiner. She probably talks more to Leanne at the office than anyone else, and she doesn’t even like her.”

Ethan walked in, ran a toy car across the table, going “Vroom!”

“Ethan,” I said, “scoot.” He did two laps of the kitchen, “vrooming” the whole time, then returned to the living room.

“We should call her anyway,” Mom said, and I agreed that was a good idea. I didn’t know her number, so Mom grabbed the book and opened it to the K’s.

She found a listing for an L. Kowalski and I dialed as she called out the number to me.

Two rings and then, “Yep?”

“Lyall?”

“Yep.”

“Dave Harwood here. Jan’s husband.”

“Yeah, sure, Dave. How’s it going?”

I dodged the question. “Is Leanne there?”

“She must be out shopping,” he said. He sounded hungover. “And taking her time getting back. Anything I can help you with?”

Did I want to get into it with him, about Jan’s disappearance? There was nothing in Lyall’s voice to suggest he had even an inkling anything was wrong, but he must have found it odd that I’d be calling for his wife.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll try her later.”

“What’s this about?”

“I wanted to bounce a gift idea off her, something for Jan.”

“Okay,” he said, satisfied. “I’ll tell her you called.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment after I hung up the phone. Then Dad said, very matter-of-factly and just a little too loud, “I just can’t believe she’d kill herself.”

“For God’s sake, Don, keep your voice down,” Mom hissed at him. “Ethan’s just in the other room.”

It wasn’t likely Ethan would have heard over all the car noises he was making.

“Sorry,” Dad said anyway. He had a habit of talking louder than he had to, and it had nothing to do with hearing loss. He heard everything fine, but always assumed no one else was ever really listening. With Mom, it was often the case. “But still, she doesn’t seem the type to have done it.”

“The last couple of weeks, though,” I said, “this change came over her.”

Mom used her hand to wipe away a tear running down her cheek. “I know what your father is saying, though. I just didn’t see any signs.”

“Before a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t either,” I said. “But I’m guessing they must have been there and I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Tell me again what she said to you at the restaurant,” Mom said.

I took a moment. It was hard to say these things out loud without getting choked up. “She said something along the lines of I’d be happy if she was gone. That Ethan and I would be better off. Why would she say something like that?”

“She wasn’t in her right mind,” Dad said. “Any fool can tell that. For the life of me, I can’t figure what she’d be unhappy about. She’s got a good husband, a wonderful boy, you’ve got a nice house, you both got good jobs. What’s the problem? I’m telling you, I just don’t get it.”

Mom sighed, looked at me. Her face said, Pay no attention to him. She turned to Dad and said, “Just because you’ve got a man and a roof over your head doesn’t mean your life is perfect.”

He made a face. “What are you getting at?”

Mom shook her head and looked at me. “I didn’t think he’d get that one.” It was her attempt to lighten the mood.

“I was only making a point,” Dad said. He frowned, stared down at the table. It was then that I noticed his eyes were welling up with tears.

“Dad,” I said, clutching his hand.

He pulled it away, got up from the table, and walked out of the kitchen.

“He doesn’t want to show how upset he is,” Mom said. “Any time you have problems, it tears him apart.”

I wanted to get up and go after him, but Mom held on to my hand. “He’ll be back in a minute. Give him a second to pull himself together.”

In the other room, I heard him say to Ethan, “Hey, kiddo. Did I show you the train catalogues I picked up?”

Ethan said, “I’m watching TV.”

“How much does Ethan know?” Mom asked me.

“Not much. He knows his mother hasn’t come home, and he knows the police are looking for her. He thought that meant she’d robbed a bank or something, but I told him she hadn’t done anything like that.”

Mom smiled in spite of everything, but only for a moment.

Something had been niggling at me. “There’s somewhere I have to go,” I said.

“What? Where?”

“That bridge.”

“Bridge?”

“The one Jan talked about jumping from. I mentioned to the police that they should check bridges near the park, and I think they did, but the one she told me about, it’s up that road that goes to Miller’s Garden Center, west of town.”

“I know the one.”

“The police won’t have checked it. I never mentioned it specifically.”

“David,” Mom said, “call the police and let them check.”

“I don’t know how soon they’ll get to it. I have to do something now. You’ll watch Ethan?”

“Of course. Take your father.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“Take him,” she said. “It will make him feel like he’s doing something, too.”

I nodded. “Hey, Dad,” I called into the living room. He came back, composed. “Take a ride with me.”

“Where we goin’?”

“I’ll explain on the way.”

We took my car, which made Dad fidgety. He’d never been a good passenger. If he wasn’t behind the wheel, he figured there was a pretty good chance we were going to die.

“You got a red up there,” he said.

“I see it, Dad,” I said, taking my foot off the gas as we approached the light. It turned green before we got there, and I tromped on it.

“You get bad mileage that way,” Dad said. “Hitting the accelerator hard, then hitting the brake instead of slowing down gradual. That’s what sucks up the gas.”

“You’ve said.”

He glanced over at me. “Sorry.”

I gave him a smile. “It’s okay.”

“How you holding up?”

“Not so good,” I said.

“You can’t give up hope,” he said. “It’s way too early for that.”

“I know,” I said.

“So you know just where this bridge is?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. We were out of Promise Falls now, heading west. Only a couple of miles out I found the county road I was looking for. Two-lane, paved. The road went through a variety of topography. There was wide-open farmland, then dense woods, followed by more farmland. The bridge spanned a creek that flowed through a heavily treed area.

“Up ahead,” I said.

It wasn’t much of a bridge. Maybe fifty or sixty feet across, asphalt over cement, with three-foot-high concrete railings along the sides. I pulled the car as far onto the shoulder as I could this side of the bridge and killed the ignition.

It was quiet out there except for the sound of the water running under the bridge. We got out of the car and walked to the center of it, Dad staying close to me.

I went to the west side first and looked down. It wasn’t more than twenty feet down, not much of a drop, really. The creek was shallow here, rocks cropping up above the surface. It probably wasn’t much more than a foot deep any place under the bridge. A summer or two back, when we hadn’t had any rain for weeks, this creek bed was dry for a spell.

I looked at the water, hypnotized almost as it coursed around the rocks. Everything was serene.

“Best check out the other side, huh?” Dad said, touching my arm. We crossed the road and leaned up against the opposite railing.

There wasn’t a body in the creek. And if someone did jump off this bridge, there wasn’t enough depth, or force, to move one farther downstream. If someone took his life jumping off this bridge, he’d be found.

“I just want to get a good look underneath,” I said. It wasn’t possible to see everything that was under the bridge while standing on it.

“You want me to come?” Dad asked.

“Just stay here.”

I ran to the end, then cut around and worked my way down the embankment. It didn’t take more than a moment, and once there all I found were a few empty beer cans and some McDonald’s wrappers.

Anything?” Dad shouted.

“No,” I said, and climbed back up to the road.

The thing was, a person would probably survive a jump off this bridge, unless they plunged headfirst.

“This is a good thing, right?” said Dad. “Isn’t it?”

I said nothing.

“You know what else I was thinking?” Dad said. “She didn’t leave any note. If she was going to do something to herself, she’d have left a note, don’t you think?”

I didn’t know what to think.

“If I was gonna kill myself, I’d leave a note,” he said. “That’s what people do. They want to say goodbye somehow.”

“I don’t think people always do that,” I said. “Only in the movies.”

Dad shrugged. “Maybe there were some other people she wanted to see before she did anything too rash.”

“Like who?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Like, maybe her own family.”

“She doesn’t have any family. At least not any that she talks to anymore.”

Dad knew Jan was estranged from her parents, but it must have slipped his mind. If he’d thought about it a moment, he would’ve recalled that it was never an issue whose folks we spent every Christmas with.

“Maybe that’s where she went,” Dad said. “Could be she felt she needed to look them up after all these years and make some sort of peace with them. Tell them what she thinks of them, something like that.”

I stood on the bridge, looking off into the woods.

“Say that again?” I said.

“She could be trying to find her family. You know, after all these years, she wants to clear the air or something. Give them a piece of her mind.”

I walked over and surprised him with a pat on the shoulder. “That’s not a bad idea,” I said.

“I’m not just good-looking,” Dad said.

TWELVE

Ernie Bertram was sitting on the front porch of his Stonywood Drive home, nursing a long-necked bottle of beer, when the black car pulled up at the curb. The owner of Bertram’s Heating and Cooling knew an unmarked police cruiser when he saw one. The tiny hubcaps, the absence of chrome. An overweight man in a white business shirt with tie askew got out of the cruiser. He stood, then reached back into the car for his jacket, which he pulled on as he walked up the driveway. The man glanced at Bertram’s van, then looked up to the porch.

“Mr. Bertram?” he said.

Bertram stood up and set his beer on the wide railing. “What can I do for you?” He was about to add “Officer,” but considering that this man wasn’t wearing a uniform, he wasn’t sure that was appropriate.

“Detective Duckworth, Promise Falls police,” he said, mounting the steps. “Hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Bertram pointed to a wicker chair. “Just finished dinner. Have a seat.”

Duckworth did. “Get ya a beer?” Bertram asked, grabbing his own from the railing and sitting back down. Duckworth noticed that the man had unbuttoned the top of his pants and let his zipper down an inch. A little post-dinner pressure release.

“Thanks, but no,” he said. “I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

Bertram’s eyebrows went up. “Sure.”

“Jan Harwood works for you, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her today?”

“Nope. It’s Saturday. Won’t be talking to her till Monday morning.”

The front door eased open. A short, wide woman in blue stretch pants said, “You got company, Ern?”

“This is Detective…”

“Duckworth,” he said.

“Detective Duckworth is with the police, Irene. He can’t have beer but maybe you could have a lemonade or something?”

“I’ve got some apple pie left over,” Irene Bertram said.

Detective Duckworth considered. “I probably could be persuaded to have a slice,” he said.

“With ice cream? It’s just vanilla,” she said.

“Sure,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

Irene retreated and the door closed. Ernie Bertram said, “It’s just a frozen one you heat up in the oven, but it tastes like it was homemade.”

“Sounds good to me,” Duckworth said.

“So what’s this about Jan?”

“She’s missing,” the detective said.

“Missing? Whaddya mean by missing?”

“She hasn’t been seen since about midday, when she was with her husband and son at Five Mountains.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ernie said. “What’s happened to her?”

“Well,” said Duckworth, “if we knew that, we’d probably have a better chance of finding her.”

“Missing,” he said, more to himself than to Duckworth. “That’s a hell of a thing.”

“When’s the last time you talked to her?” Duckworth asked.

“That’d be Thursday,” he said.

“Not yesterday?”

“No, she took Friday off. She’s been taking a few days off here and there the last couple of weeks.”

“Why’s that?”

Ernie Bertram shrugged. “Because she could. She had some time built up, so she asked if she could take an occasional day, instead of everything all at once.”

“So they weren’t sick days,” Duckworth said.

“No. And it was okay with me because it’s been a fairly quiet summer. Which is actually not that okay. Haven’t sold an air conditioner in two weeks, although it is getting late in the season. You sell them mostly in the spring or early summer, when it starts getting hot. But with this recession, homeowners aren’t willing to put down a couple thousand or whatever for a new unit. Paying the mortgage is hard enough, so they’re getting as much out of their old ones as they can. And the last few days haven’t been that scorching, so there hasn’t been that much to do repair-wise.”

“Uh-huh,” said Duckworth.

The door opened. Irene Bertram presented Barry Duckworth with a slab of pie that had a scoop of ice cream next to it the size of a softball.

“Oh my,” he said.

“Jan’s missing,” Ernie said to his wife.

“Missing?” she said, plunking herself down in a third chair.

“Yup,” Ernie said. “Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“She was up at that new roller-coaster park and disappeared.” He zeroed in on Duckworth. “She get thrown off one of the coasters?”

“No, nothing like that,” he said.

“Because those things, they’re not safe,” Bertram said.

Duckworth put a forkful of apple pie into his mouth, then quickly followed it with some ice cream so he could let the flavors mingle. “This is amazing,” he said.

“I made it myself,” Irene said.

“I already told him,” Ernie said.

“You bastard,” she said.

“How would you describe Ms. Harwood’s mood the last few weeks?” the detective asked Ernie Bertram.

“Her mood?”

Duckworth, his mouth full of a second bite of pie, nodded.

“Fine, I guess. What do you mean, her mood?”

“Did she seem different? Maybe a bit down, troubled?”

Bertram took another drag on his beer. “I don’t think so. Although I’m on the road a lot. I’m not in the office much. The girls could be turning tricks out of there and I wouldn’t know it.”

“Ernie!” said Irene, punching him in the shoulder.

“That was just a joke,” he said to Duckworth. “They’re fine women who work for me.”

“You shouldn’t make jokes like that,” Irene said.

“So if, say, Jan Harwood had been depressed of late, you might not have noticed,” Duckworth said between forkfuls.

“Only one depressed in that office is Leanne,” he said. “Has been ever since she showed up five years ago.”

“But not Ms. Harwood?”

“If anything,” Bertram said, suddenly very thoughtful, “I’d say she was more excited.”

“Excited?”

“Well, maybe that’s the wrong word. Agitated? That’s not right, either. But acting like something was just around the corner.”

Duckworth set down his fork and rested the plate on the broad arm of the wicker chair. He noticed that the ice cream was melting, and if he didn’t deal with it soon, it would start dribbling over the edge of the plate.

“What was just around the corner?”

“Beats me. But when she came to me, asking about taking a day off here and there, or maybe just half a day, there was something-I don’t know how to describe it-like she was looking forward to something, expecting something.”

Irene said, “Ernie is very good at reading people. You go into people’s homes, fixing their furnaces and air conditioners, you get to know what people are really like.”

Duckworth smiled at her, as though he actually appreciated the contribution.

“How much time had she taken off lately?” Duckworth asked.

“Let me think… Leanne-the other girl at the-”

“They don’t call them girls anymore, Ernie,” Irene said. “They’re women. And you got some ice cream about to make a break for it there.”

Duckworth used his fork to move the melting ice cream away from the edge, then mashed another forkful of pie into it and popped it into his mouth.

Anyway,” Ernie said, “Leanne might have an idea how many days. There was yesterday, and another day earlier in the week, and a couple the week before.”

Duckworth had taken out his notepad and was writing things down. When he was done, he looked up and said, “I want to go back to something you said a moment ago.”

“Yeah?”

“About Jan being excited. Tell me more about that.”

Ernie thought. “Maybe it was a bit like when women are getting ready for something. Like a trip, or having relatives in to visit.”

“But you wouldn’t have characterized her as suicidal at all?”

Irene put a hand to her breast. “Oh my. Is that what you think happened?”

“I’m just asking,” Duckworth said.

Ernie said, “I don’t think so. But who knows how people think, what they keep bottled up inside.”

Duckworth nodded. He finished off the last of the pie and ice cream in three more bites.

“Where did they go yesterday?” Ernie asked.

“Where did who go yesterday?” Duckworth asked.

“Jan and David. They went on some outing yesterday. Jan mentioned it before she left work on Thursday.”

“You sure you don’t mean their trip to Five Mountains today?”

He shook his head. “She said David was taking her somewhere Friday. It was all really mysterious, she said she couldn’t talk about it. I got the idea that maybe it was a surprise or something.”

Duckworth made another scribble on his pad, then put it into his jacket. He was about to thank Ernie for his time and Irene for the pie when a phone rang inside the house.

Irene jumped up and went inside.

When Duckworth rose out of his chair, Ernie did the same. “David must be beside himself,” Ernie said. “Wondering what’s happened to his wife.”

Duckworth nodded. “Of course.”

“I sure hope you find her soon,” he said.

Irene was at the door. “It’s Lyall,” she said.

Ernie shook his head. “What’s he want?”

“He hasn’t seen Leanne all day. Actually, not since yesterday.”

Duckworth felt a jolt. “Leanne Kowalski?”

Ernie went into the house and picked up the receiver sitting by the phone on the front hall table. Duckworth followed him in.

“Lyall?” Ernie listened a moment, then said, “Nope, I didn’t… Since when?… That’s a long time to be shopping, even for a woman. Did you hear about Jan? Police are here-”

“May I take that?” Duckworth said and took the phone away from Ernie. “Mr. Kowalski, this is Detective Barry Duckworth with the Promise Falls Police Department.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s this about your wife?”

“She’s not home.”

“When were you expecting her?”

“Hours ago. She went out to do some shopping. At least that’s what I think. That’s what she usually does on a Saturday. She was going to the mall and then she was going to do the groceries.”

“Your wife and Jan Harwood work together?”

“Yeah, at Ernie’s. Can you put him back on? I want to ask whether he called her in on an emergency or something.”

“He didn’t,” Duckworth said.

“What’s this about Jan? Her husband called here a while ago looking for her. What are you doing at Ernie’s place? Everything okay there?”

Duckworth had his notepad out again. “Mr. Kowalski, what’s your address?”

THIRTEEN

There was something I’d never been totally honest about with Jan.

It wasn’t that I lied to her. But there was something I’d done I’d never told her about. If she’d ever flat out asked about it, maybe then I would have lied. I think I might have had to. She’d have been too furious with me.

It wasn’t that I cheated on her. I’d never done anything like that, not even close. This had nothing to do with another woman.

One time, about a year ago, I drove by her house.

This would be the house she grew up in, her parents’ place, a nearly three-hour drive from Promise Falls. It was in the Pittsford neighborhood of southeast Rochester, on Lincoln Avenue. A long, narrow two-story. The white paint was peeling from the walls, and a couple of the black shutters-one on the first floor and one on the second-hung crookedly. The screening in the metal storm door was frayed, and there were chunks of brick missing from the chimney. But while the house needed some attention, it was far from derelict.

I had been driving back from Buffalo, where I’d gone to interview a city planner who felt that conventional ideas to slow residential traffic-speed bumps, four-way stops-didn’t do anything but anger drivers to the point of road rage, and thought roundabouts, traffic circles, and landscaped medians were a better way to go. It was on the way back that I decided to take 490 north off 90 and head into the Rochester neighborhood I knew to be the one where Jan grew up.

I think I knew, even before leaving for Buffalo, I was going to take this side trip.

It never would have been possible if we hadn’t had the leak behind the bathroom sink several days earlier.

Jan was at work and I had taken the day off as payback for several late-night city council meetings I’d recently covered-this was before we’d turned that beat over to Rajiv or Amal or whoever in Mumbai. I’d gone down to the unfinished side of our basement, where the furnace and hot water tank are, and noticed a steady drip of water coming down from between the studs. That was where the copper pipes turned north to feed the upstairs bathroom.

I did what I always did when I had a household emergency. I called Dad.

“Sounds like maybe you’ve got a pinhole leak in one of your pipes,” he said. “I’ll be right over.” He couldn’t disguise the joy and excitement in his voice.

He showed up half an hour later with his tools, including a small propane torch for welding.

“It’s going to be in the wall somewhere,” he said. “The trick is finding it.”

We thought we could hear a hissing sound behind the bathroom sink, about a foot up from the floor. It was a pedestal sink, so it was easy to get up close to the wall for a listen.

Dad pulled out a saw with a pointed end on the blade that would allow him to stab right into the drywall and start cutting.

“Dad,” I said, looking at the floral wallpaper and not looking forward to tearing it all up, “would it be worth going in from the other side?”

“What’s over there?” he asked.

“Hang on,” I said. As it turned out, the linen closet was on the opposite side of the wall from the bathroom sink. I opened it and started clearing out everything on the floor below the first shelf-a basket for dirty laundry, a stockpile of toilet paper and tissue boxes-until the wall was clear. I thought, if the pipe could be reached from here, it made more sense to hack through in a place where it wouldn’t be noticed.

Once I had everything out, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the closet and listened for the leak.

The baseboard that ran along the inside of the closet looked loose along the back. I touched it, and noticed that it seemed to be fitted into place and not nailed. I got my fingers in behind it, and felt something.

It was the top edge of a letter-sized envelope, which was perfectly shaped to hide behind baseboarding. I worked the envelope out. There was nothing written on it, nor was it sealed, but the flap was tucked in. I opened it, and inside I found a single piece of paper and a key.

I left the key inside and removed the paper, which was folded once, and was an official document of some kind.

It was a “Certificate of Live Birth.”

Jan’s birth certificate. All the details she had never wanted to share with me were on this piece of paper. Of course, I already knew her last name was Richler-rhymes with “tickler”-but she’d gone to great lengths never to speak her parents’ names or even say where they lived.

Now, at a glance, I knew that her mother’s name was Gretchen, that her father’s name was Horace. That she had been born in the Monroe Community Hospital in Rochester. There was an address for a house on Lincoln Avenue.

I committed the details of the document to memory, folded it and put it back into the envelope. I didn’t know what to make of the key. It was a type I didn’t recognize. It didn’t appear to be a house key. I left it in the envelope, and put it back where I’d found it, pushing the baseboard back into place.

By the time I got around the other side of the wall, Dad had already made a hole. “I’m in!” he said. “And there’s your leak right there! You want to turn off the main valve?”

Before the Buffalo trip, I went to the online phone directories and found only five Richlers listed in the Rochester area, and only one of them was an H. Richler.

He was still listed as living on Lincoln Avenue.

That told me at least one of Jan’s parents was still alive, if not both. If Horace Richler was dead, it was possible his wife, Gretchen, had left the listing unchanged.

I made a call from my desk at the Standard in a bid to clear that up. I dialed the Richler number and a woman who sounded as though she could be in her sixties or seventies answered. Gretchen, I was betting.

“Is Mr. Richler there?” I asked.

“Hang on,” she said.

Half a minute later, a man said tiredly, “Hello.”

“Is this Hank Richler?”

“Huh? No. This is Horace Richler.”

“Oh, sorry. I’ve got the wrong number.”

I offered another apology and hung up.

It was hard not to be curious about them when Jan had so steadfastly refused to talk about them.

“I don’t want anything to do with them,” she’d said over the years. “I don’t ever want to see them again, and I don’t imagine they’ll be too destroyed if they never see me.”

Even when Ethan was born, Jan was adamantly opposed to letting her parents know.

“They won’t give a rat’s ass,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, “knowing that they have a grandchild will change things. Maybe they’ll think it’s time for some sort of reconciliation.”

She shook her head. “Not a chance. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

What I’d learned since first meeting Jan at a jobs placement office when I was interviewing some unemployed people for a story six years ago was that her unnamed father was a miserable son of a bitch, and her mother spent most of her time drunk and depressed.

Jan didn’t like to talk about it. The story of her parents, and her life with them, spilled out in bits and pieces over the years.

“They blamed me for everything,” Jan said one Saturday night two years ago when my parents had taken a very young Ethan for a sleepover. We’d gone through three bottles of wine-a rare event considering that Jan drank very little-and there’d been every indication we were headed upstairs for some long-overdue debauchery. Unexpectedly, Jan began to talk about a part of her life she’d never shared with me.

“What do you mean, they blamed you?” I asked.

“Him, mostly,” Jan said. “For fucking up their lives.”

“What, by being a kid? By existing?”

She looked at me through glassy eyes. “Yeah, pretty much. Dad had a nickname for me. Hindy.”

“Hildy?”

“No. Hindy.”

“Like the language?”

She shook her head, took another sip of wine, and said, “No, with a ‘y.’ Short for ‘Hindenburg.’ Not just because I went through a bit of a pudgy period, but because he thought of me as his own personal little fucking disaster.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, well, that was true love compared to my tenth birthday.”

I was going to ask, but decided to wait.

“He promised to take me to New York to see an actual Broadway musical. I always dreamed of going there. I’d watch the Tonys when they were on TV, saved copies of the Sunday Arts section of The New York Times whenever I found one, looking at all the ads for the shows, memorizing the names of the stars and the reviews. He said he got tickets for Grease. That we were going to take the bus down. That we were going to stay in a hotel. I couldn’t believe it. My father, he’d been so indifferent to me for so long, but I thought maybe, because I was ten…”

She had another sip of wine.

“So it got to be the day that we were supposed to go. I got my bag all packed. I picked out just what I was going to wear to the theater. A red dress and black shoes. And my father, he wasn’t doing anything to get ready. I told him to get moving, and he smiled, and he said, ‘There’s no trip. No bus ride. No hotel. No tickets for Grease. Never was. Disappointment’s a bitch, isn’t it? Now you know how it feels.’”

I was speechless. Jan smiled and said, “Bet you think I caught a lucky break. You’d rather die than sit through Grease.”

I found some words. “How’d you deal with that?”

She said, “I went to another place.”

“Where? Relatives?”

“No, no, you don’t get it,” she said. Jan put her hand to her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

The next morning she refused to talk about it.

She did tell me, over time, that she left home at seventeen and for nearly twenty years had had no contact with either of her parents. She had no brothers or sisters who might have let her know, whether she wanted to or not, what had happened to her mother and father.

For all she knew, they were both dead.

Except I knew they weren’t, because of the phone call I’d made.

I’d never told Jan about what I’d found behind the baseboard. I didn’t want her to know I’d violated her privacy. I was troubled that she’d gone to such lengths to keep me from knowing about her background, but maybe she was right not to trust me. Finding the birth certificate was leading me to do the very thing she had always wanted to prevent.

Driving back from Buffalo, I took a detour to the north and found the Lincoln Avenue home, and stared at its peeling paint and shutters askew, as if some meaning could be drawn from it all. I wondered whether one of the two second-story windows had been Jan’s bedroom, or if her room had been at the back of the house.

I pictured her as a child, going in and out of that front door, perhaps playing in the front yard. Jumping rope on the sidewalk, playing hopscotch on her driveway. Maybe those images were too idyllic. Perhaps, growing up in a household where love was displaced by anger and resentment, such simple pleasures were elusive. Maybe for Jan, every time she came out that door was like being released from prison. I could picture her running to a friend’s house, returning home only when she had to.

Staring at the house really didn’t tell me anything. I don’t know what I was expecting.

Then her parents showed up.

I had been parked across the street and two houses down, so I didn’t attract the attention of Horace and Gretchen Richler as they got out of their twenty-year-old Oldsmobile.

Horace opened his door slowly and put his foot on the ground. It took some effort for him to turn in his seat and bring himself out. He was slowed by arthritis or something similarly disabling. He was in his late sixties or early seventies, a few wisps of hair, a couple of liver spots. He was short and stocky, but not fat. Even at this age, it looked like you’d have to take a good run at him to knock him over.

He didn’t look like a monster. But then, monsters often don’t.

Horace was going around to the trunk as Gretchen got out. She moved slowly, too, although she wasn’t quite as creaky as her husband. Even though he was out of the car before her, she was to the trunk before him, and waited for him to fit the key into the lock and pop it.

There wasn’t a lot to her. She was tiny, under five feet, probably no more than eighty or ninety pounds. Wiry. She reached into the trunk and looped her fingers through the handles of half a dozen plastic grocery bags, lifted them out and headed for the door. Her husband closed the trunk and followed, carrying nothing.

They went into the house, and they were gone.

They didn’t appear to have spoken a word between them. They’d run their errands, and they’d come home.

Was there anything I could read into what I’d seen? No. And yet I was left with the impression that these were two people going through the motions, living out the rest of their lives a day at a time without purpose. While I picked up no hostile body language from Horace toward Gretchen, I did detect an overall sadness about them.

I hope you’re sad, I thought. I hope you’re fucking miserable for what you did.

When the Oldsmobile had pulled into the driveway, I’d initially had an impulse to get out, march over, and tear into Horace Richler. I wanted to tell him what a terrible man he was. I wanted to tell him that a man who would abuse his daughter-even if that abuse was limited to emotional-didn’t deserve to be called a father. I wanted to tell him that his daughter had turned out well despite his attempts to sabotage her. I wanted to tell him that he had a wonderful grandson, but because he’d been such a miserable bastard he was never going to meet him.

But I didn’t tell him anything.

I watched Horace Richler go into the house with his wife, Gretchen. I watched the door close behind them.

Then I drove home, and never told Jan about the stop I had made along the way.

FOURTEEN

I thought about my visit to the Richler home on the way back from the bridge with Dad.

What if Jan had been wanting, for years, to say to her parents what I’d wanted to say when I’d parked out front of their home? What if the way her father had treated her had been eating her up for years, in ways she’d never let on? Revealing how much her father’s actions still hurt her might have made her feel vulnerable. And yet, Jan had told me over the past two weeks how fragile, how potentially self-destructive she had been feeling.

I just didn’t know anything anymore.

I tried to put myself in Jan’s position. I’m in a bad place, thinking about taking my own life. Before I do such a thing, do I want to confront my father, tell him what I think of him? Tell my mother she should have stood up for me? Tell both of them how they ruined my life before I end it?

I shuddered.

“You okay there?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s a good thing,” he said. “That we didn’t find her there. Under that bridge. That’s a good thing. Because if that’s the place she was talking about doing herself in, well, stands to reason that she didn’t.”

Dad was trying really hard. Driving out to that bridge, it had been a long shot at best. The fact that Jan wasn’t there just meant that Jan wasn’t there. The fact was, we didn’t know where she was. But I didn’t want to make my father feel bad by dismissing his hunt for a silver lining.

“I suppose,” I said. “I suppose.” Jan had also mentioned the much taller bridge in downtown Promise Falls, but if she’d tried something there, I told myself, there would have been witnesses. The police would have heard almost immediately.

Dad pointed up ahead. “You see that? Guy didn’t signal. How hard is it to put your blinker on? Christ almighty.”

Not long after that, we were riding behind a driver who moved into the oncoming lane in preparation for a left turn into a driveway, allowing us to scoot past.

“What the hell is that?” Dad said. “People in the country pull that stunt all the time. What if someone was passing us, or someone suddenly showed up in the oncoming lane? I swear to God, how do these people get their licenses?”

When I didn’t respond to either of these observations, Dad decided to dial it down a bit. Finally, he said, “So, you been thinking about my idea? About Jan looking up her parents?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“You got any way to get in touch with them? Your mother’s told me Jan doesn’t talk about them, that she’s never even told you who they are or where they live.”

“I think I could find them,” I said.

“Yeah? How would you go about that?”

“They live in Rochester,” I said. “I know the address.”

“So she did tell you?”

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Well, if I was you, I’d call them up, see if she’s been in touch. If they’re in Rochester, Jan would have had plenty of time to drive there by now.”

In what? I was in my car, and Jan’s was at home.

“How long a drive is it? Three, four hours?”

“Under three,” I said.

“So when we get back, we’ll give them a call. It’s long distance but I don’t care about that.”

That was a major concession on Dad’s part. He hated long-distance calls being made on his phone.

I glanced over and smiled. “Thanks, Dad. But I’m afraid the moment I say Jan’s name, they’ll hang up on me.”

He shook his head at the thought of it. “How can parents be like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, you didn’t always do what we wanted but we never disowned you,” Dad said, forcing a smile. “You could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“You have to let your kids make their own decisions in life, good or bad.”

“Is that why you’re so reluctant to offer advice?” I asked.

Dad shot me a look. “Smart-ass.”

We were getting back into Promise Falls, only a few blocks from my parents’ house. It was nearly dark, and the streetlights had come on. I felt a sense of imminent doom as we rounded the corner, expecting to see one or more police cars parked out front. But there were no unfamiliar cars parked at the curb.

My mother was standing at the door. She opened it and came out as we pulled into the driveway. She had a hopeful, expectant look on her face, but I shook my head.

“Nothing,” I said. “We didn’t find Jan.”

“So she wasn’t-she didn’t-”

“No,” I said. “Any news here? Anything from the police?”

She shook her head. We all went into the house, where I saw Ethan on the third step of the stairs, preparing to jump.

“Ethan, don’t-”

He leapt down to the main floor, hitting it with a thump. “Watch!” he said, ran up to the third step, and did it again.

“He’s been a madman,” Mom said. “I let him have half a glass of Coke with his macaroni.”

Mom always liked to blame Ethan’s rowdiness on something he’d had to eat or drink. It had been my experience that it didn’t much matter.

I gave her a kiss and went into the kitchen to use the phone. I had Detective Duckworth’s card in my hand and dialed his cell.

“Duckworth.”

“It’s David Harwood,” I said. “I know you’d probably have called if you knew anything, but I wanted to check in.”

“I don’t have any news,” Duckworth said. His voice sounded guarded.

“You still have people searching?”

“We do, Mr. Harwood.” He paused. “I think, if there are no developments overnight, if Mrs. Harwood doesn’t come home, we should put out a release in the morning.”

I pictured her coming through the door here, into my parents’ house. There was a loud thunk from the other room as Ethan hit the floor again.

“Okay, good,” I said. “How about a news conference?”

“I don’t know that we’re at that stage,” he said. “I think a picture and a description of your wife and the circumstances of her disappearance will do for now.”

“I think we need a news conference,” I said.

“Let’s see where we are in the morning,” he said. There was something in his voice. It sounded controlled, held back.

“I might not be here in the morning,” I said.

“Where are you going to be?”

“Jan’s parents are in Rochester.”

Mom’s eyes widened when I said it. I’d never told her about the trip I’d made to see Jan’s childhood home.

With Duckworth, I continued, “She hasn’t had any contact with them in probably twenty years. They didn’t come to our wedding, they’ve never met their grandson. But I’m thinking, what if Jan decided to go see them? What if, after all this time, she had some reason to get in touch that she didn’t share with me? Maybe she just wanted to finally tell them what she thinks of them.”

Duckworth was quiet, saying only, “I suppose.”

“I’d phone them, but I’m worried about doing this any way but face-to-face. I mean, they’ve never set eyes on me. What are they going to think, some guy phones them and says he’s their son-in-law and oh, by the way, their daughter’s missing and is there any chance she might have dropped by? And if Jan is there, and doesn’t want me to know, I’m worried that if I call, she’ll take off.”

“Maybe,” Duckworth said with little conviction.

From the other room, Mom shouted at Ethan, “Enough!”

I said, “I’m probably going to hit the road in a couple of minutes, get a hotel in Rochester, and see Jan’s parents first thing in the morning.”

Instead of addressing my plans, Duckworth said, “Tell me again about your wife and Leanne Kowalski.”

The question threw me. “I told you. They work together. That’s about it.”

“What time did you and your son get to Five Mountains, Mr. Harwood?”

Why did he ask it that way? Why didn’t he ask when Ethan and I and Jan got to Five Mountains?

“I guess it was about eleven, maybe a little after. Didn’t they have it right down to the minute, when they scanned our ticket at the gate?”

“I think you’re right,” Duckworth said.

“Is something going on?” I asked. “Please tell me if something’s going on.”

“If I have any news, Mr. Harwood, I’ll be in touch. I have your cell number.”

I hung up the phone. Mom and Dad were both standing there, watching me.

“Jan told you about her parents?” Mom asked.

“I figured it out.”

“Who are they?”

“Horace and Gretchen Richler,” I said.

“Does Jan know you know?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to get into this. I leaned against the kitchen counter. I was exhausted.

“You need to get some rest,” Mom said.

“I’m going to Rochester,” I said.

“In the morning?”

“No, now.” I realized it was suddenly very quiet. “Where’s Ethan?”

“He collapsed on the couch,” Mom said. “Thank God.”

“Can he stay here for the night?”

“You can’t drive anywhere now,” Mom protested. “You’ll drive off the road.”

“Why don’t you make me a thermos of coffee to go while I say good night to Ethan,” I said.

Without waiting for any further protest, I went into the living room, where Ethan was resting his head on the end of the couch. He’d pulled a throw around himself.

“Gotta go, sport,” I said. “You’re staying here for the night.”

No reaction. His eyes suddenly looked heavy. “I’ll bet Mommy’s at the mall.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, and his eyelids drifted down like flower petals closing for the night.

FIFTEEN

Barry Duckworth closed the phone and said to Lyall Kowalski, “Sorry about that.”

“Was that Jan’s husband?” he asked. He and the detective were sitting in his living room. Lyall was in a black T-shirt and dirty, knee-length shorts with pockets all over them. Duckworth wondered whether Lyall had gone prematurely bald at age thirty-five, or whether he shaved his head. Some guys, once they started losing some hair, decided to go the whole nine yards with it, make a fashion statement.

Even before he saw the pit bull coming out of the kitchen, Duckworth knew there was a dog here. The house was permeated with the smell of pooch.

“Yes, that was him,” Duckworth said.

“Has he seen my wife?”

“No,” Duckworth said, but thinking, At least he’s not saying he has. There were things about this case that were starting to bother him, even before he’d learned that Jan Harwood’s workmate was missing, too.

“Tell me again what time your wife left the house,” Duckworth said.

Lyall Kowalski was leaning forward on the couch, elbows on his knees. “Okay, so she was actually gone before I got up. I got in kind of late last night and was sleeping in.”

“Where had you been?”

“I was at the Trenton.” A local bar. “With some friends. We had a few, and Mick gave me a lift home.”

“Mick?”

“Mick Angus. We work together at Thackeray.”

“What do you do at the college, Mr. Kowalski?”

“We’re both in building maintenance.”

“So you got home when?”

Lyall scrunched up his face, trying to remember. “Three? Or maybe five.”

“And your wife was here when you got home?”

“As far as I know,” he said, nodding.

“What do you mean, as far as you know?”

“Well, there’s no reason to think that she wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t actually talk to her. I didn’t make it as far as the bedroom. I camped out on the couch.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Leanne gets kinda bitchy when I come home drunk. Actually, she’s kind of bitchy even when I’m sober. Plus, I kinda forgot I was supposed to take her out to dinner last night. So I didn’t want to have to deal with that, so I didn’t get into bed with her.”

“Were you at the Trenton all night?”

“I think so. Except after they closed, I had a couple of drinks in the parking lot with Mick.”

“Who drove you home?” Duckworth said disapprovingly.

Lyall waved his hands at Duckworth, like it was no big deal. “Mick can drink a lot and still drive better than most people sober.”

“Where were you supposed to go for dinner?”

“Kelly’s?” he said, like he was asking Duckworth for confirmation. “I know I said something on Thursday about taking her there for dinner but it slipped my mind.”

“Did you talk to your wife at all last night, while you were at Trenton’s?”

“My cell was dead.”

“So you fell asleep on the couch. Did you see your wife in the morning?”

“Okay, that’s the thing? I think I might have heard her saying something to me while I was sleeping it off, but I can’t exactly swear to it.”

“So what does your wife usually do on a Saturday?”

“She kind of has a routine. She goes out around eight-thirty. Most weekends, she goes out by herself, even if I haven’t been out with my buds the night before. I’ve offered to go with her sometimes, but only because I know she’ll say no. She kinda likes to go on her own. I don’t take any offense or anything.”

“Where does she go?” Duckworth asked.

“To the malls. She likes to go to all of them. Every damn one between here and Albany. She likes Crossgates and Colonie Center. How much clothes and shoes and jewelry and makeup does one woman need?”

“She drops a lot of money on Saturdays?”

“I don’t know how she affords it. We’re kind of on a limited budget,” Lyall said. “What I don’t get is if all the malls have exactly the same stores, what’s the point in going to one after another?”

“I don’t know,” Duckworth said, thinking it was the first thing Lyall Kowalski had said that bordered on insightful.

“So after she’s done with the malls, she makes the grocery her last stop, because she doesn’t want all her Lean Cuisines melting while she’s wandering around JCPenney.”

“But you don’t actually know where, exactly, she would have gone.”

“No.”

“Where does she buy groceries?”

Lyall shrugged. “Grocery store?”

The dog, built like a three-foot cross section of a punching bag with legs, walked through the room, nails clicking on the uncarpeted wood floor. He collapsed on a square of area rug in front of an empty chair.

“If this were like other Saturdays, what time would you be expecting her back?”

“Three or four? Five at the latest.”

“When did you get up?”

“Around one,” Lyall said.

“And did you try calling your wife at all?”

“I tried her cell but it goes straight to message. And she hasn’t called here to say she was going to be late or anything.”

Duckworth nodded slowly. He asked, “When was the last time you actually saw or spoke to your wife, Mr. Kowalski?”

He thought a moment. “I guess, middle of yesterday? She called me from work to check what time we were going out for dinner.” He winced, as if someone had stuck a pin in his arm.

“So you didn’t speak to her later yesterday or last night, not at all?”

Lyall shook his head.

“And you didn’t actually talk to her this morning?”

Another shake.

“When Mick dropped you off here last night, did you notice whether Leanne’s car was here?”

“I wasn’t all that observant at the time.”

“For all you know,” Duckworth said, “she wasn’t even here last night.”

“Where would she be if she wasn’t here?”

“I don’t know. What I’m asking is whether you can actually say, with any certainty, that your wife was here when you got home in the middle of the night, or was here this morning.”

He looked slightly dumbstruck. “I’m just assuming she was here. Wouldn’t make sense for her not to be here.”

“Do you have a list of the bank and credit cards your wife uses?”

“What for?” he asked.

“We could check, see where she used them, it would tell us where she’s been.”

Lyall scratched his head. “When Leanne buys anything, she tends to use cash.”

“Why’s that?”

“We kinda had our cards canceled.”

Duckworth sighed. “Has Leanne ever done this before? Gone out and not come back until late, or maybe stayed over with a friend for the night? Is it possible-and I’m sorry to have to ask this-that she might have a boyfriend?”

Lyall shook his head, clenched his fists, and pressed his meaty lips together. “Shit no, I mean, no, she wouldn’t do that.”

Duckworth sensed something. “Mr. Kowalski?”

“She’s my girl. She’s not going to mess around on me. No way.”

“Has she ever done anything like that before?”

He waited a beat too long before answering. “No.”

“I need you to be straight with me here,” Duckworth said. “This kinda stuff, it happens to the best of us.”

Lyall’s lips moved in and out. Finally, he said, “It was years ago. We were going through a rough patch. Not like now. Things are pretty good now. She had a thing with some guy she met in a bar. Just a one-nighter, that was all there was to it. Some guy passing through.”

“Who was the man?”

“I never knew. But she told me. Not to confess, but to stick it to me, you know? Saying things like if I wasn’t going to show her a good time, there was plenty of guys who would. I cleaned up my act after that.”

Duckworth looked around the room, then let his eyes settle back on Lyall.

The man was on the verge of tears. “I’m real scared something’s happened to her. Like maybe she had a car accident or something. Have you checked on that? She drives a Ford Explorer. It’s blue and it’s, like, a 1990, so it’s kind of eaten up with rust.”

“I don’t have any report of an accident involving that make of vehicle,” Duckworth said. “Mr. Kowalski, how close are your wife and Jan Harwood?”

He blinked. “They work together.”

“Are they friends? Do they get together after work? Have they ever, I don’t know, gone on a girls’ weekend away?”

“Shit no,” he said. “Just between you and me, Leanne thinks Jan’s a bit stuck-up, you know? Think she’s better than everybody.”

Last thing, Duckworth asked Lyall Kowalski some basic questions, wrote down the answers in his notebook.

“What’s your wife’s date of birth?”

“Uh, February ninth. She was born in 1973.”

“Her full name?”

Lyall sniffed, then said, “Leanne Katherine Kowalski. Well, her name before she met me was Bothwick.”

Duckworth kept scribbling. “Weight?”

“Whoa. One-forty? No, one-twenty? She’s kind of skinny. And she’s around five-six or -seven.”

“Hair?”

“Black. It’s kinda short, with some streaks in it.”

Duckworth asked for a picture. The best Lyall could come up with was a wedding photo of the two of them, a ten-year-old shot of them jamming wedding cake into each other’s mouths.

Before he pulled away from the curb out front of the Kowalski house, Duckworth got out his phone, waited for someone to answer, and said, “Gunner.”

“Yeah, hey, Detective.”

“You still at Five Mountains?”

“I’ve been here all day,” he said. “Just finishing up now.”

“How’d it go?”

“Okay, so, the first thing we did was check a couple more times to see if we could track down that third ticket bought online.”

“Right.”

“We thought maybe there was a glitch in the system, but we’ve pretty much ruled that out. If she came into the park, she didn’t do it with a ticket purchased over the Internet.”

“Okay,” Duckworth said.

“Then, with the pictures the husband provided, we spent the rest of the day looking at all the people coming in and going out through the gates, trying to spot the wife. We narrowed it down to the time frame basically established from when the husband and the kid got there, and when he called the police.”

“I’m with ya.”

“It’s not easy. There’s so many people, sometimes you can’t make them out, sometimes they’re wearing hats that cover half their face, so the thing is, she might have been there and we didn’t see her. But we looked for a woman matching her description, dressed the way the husband described her.”

“And nothing.”

“Nothing. If she’s there, we can’t find her.”

“Okay, look, thanks, I appreciate it. Go home.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” he said.

“Is Campion still around?”

“Yeah, she’s been here all day. I can see her outside the door.”

“You wanna put her on?”

Duckworth heard Gunner put down the phone and call out to Officer Didi Campion. Twenty seconds later, the phone was picked up.

“Campion here.”

“It’s Barry, Didi. Long day, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want to ask you again about the time you spent with the kid this morning.”

“Sure.”

“Did he actually say the mother was there with them at the park?”

“What do you mean?”

“Had the boy seen Mrs. Harwood that morning?”

“He was asking about her. He was asking what had happened to her. I certainly got the sense he’d seen her at the park.”

“Do you think-how do I put this-he could have been convinced his mother had been there even if she hadn’t?”

“You mean like, the dad says we’re just going to meet your mom now, your mom just went into the bathroom, something like that?”

“That’s kind of how I was thinking,” Duckworth said.

Campion said, “Hmmm.”

“I mean, the kid’s only what, four years old? Tell a four-year-old enough times that he’s invisible and he’ll start believing it. Maybe the dad made him think his mother was there even if she wasn’t.”

“The kid was kind of dozy,” Campion said. “Like, tired, not stupid.”

“This Harwood guy, he says the three of them are going to Five Mountains for the day, but he only gets two tickets. He says his wife has been talking suicide, tells us his wife went to the doctor about it, but turns out she never went.”

“She didn’t?”

“No. I talked to Dr. Samuels today. And her boss, who runs the heating and cooling company? He says he didn’t see any signs that she was depressed the last couple of weeks. If anything, she was excited about something. Kind of, I don’t know, anticipating something.”

“Weird.”

“So far, the only person who’s saying the wife’s suicidal is the husband. Doctor never saw her, her boss says she was fine.”

“So the husband, he’s laying the groundwork.”

“This Bertram guy, the wife’s boss, said Harwood took his wife for a drive someplace on Friday. When Bertram asked her where they were going, she said it was a secret or something, a surprise.”

“So where you going with this, Detective?”

“You still on shift?”

Campion sighed. “I’m kind of doing a double. Wanna make it a triple? Having a life is hugely overrated.”

“You’ve put out news releases before, right?”

“I’ve worked that end, yeah.”

“I told Harwood we’d put out a release tomorrow, but I think we need to put one out tonight. Shake the bushes, you know? We’ve still got time to make the eleven o’clock news. Something simple. A picture of Jan Harwood, believed last seen in the vicinity of Five Mountains. Police seeking any information about the woman’s whereabouts, contact us, blah blah blah, the usual drill.”

“I’m on it,” Campion said.

Duckworth thanked her and closed the phone. He was starting to wonder whether Jan Harwood ever even made it to Five Mountains. He was starting to wonder just what her husband might have done with her.

How the hell that fit in with Leanne Kowalski, he had no idea. But two women who worked together, going missing at the same time-that was one hell of a coincidence. He decided to put his focus, for now, on Jan Harwood. Maybe he’d turn up Leanne Kowalski along the way.

SIXTEEN

I was about a half an hour out of Rochester when my cell rang.

“It was on the news,” Mom said. “They had it on the TV.”

“What?” I said. “What did they have?”

“They had a picture of Jan, and that the police were looking for help to find her. That’s good, right, that they did that?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “But the detective, he said they were going to make a decision about that tomorrow. I wonder what made him change his mind. How much did they say?”

“Not much,” my mother said. “They gave her name and age and height and what she was last seen wearing.”

From some distance away, my father shouted, “Eye color!”

“That’s right. They said what color eyes she has and hair and that kind of thing.”

“And where it happened?”

“Just a mention,” Mom said. “It said she was last seen near Five Mountains. But they didn’t have anything about that man trying to take Ethan. Shouldn’t they have had something on that?”

I said, “I wonder why Detective Duckworth didn’t call me. You’d think, if he was deciding to change the timing of the release, he would have let me know.”

I wondered how long it would be before someone from my own paper called, asking what the hell was going on, how the Standard could get scooped on the disappearance of the spouse of one of its own staff members. Even if we didn’t have an edition until the next day, it could have gone up on the website.

I didn’t have time to worry about that now.

“Are you almost there?” Mom asked. Dad yelled, “Tell him to keep drinking coffee!”

“Pretty close,” I said. “I was going to get a hotel, go see Jan’s parents in the morning, but now I’m thinking maybe I should just knock on the door tonight. I can’t lay in my hotel all night thinking about her. I have to do something right away.”

I didn’t hear anything on the other end.

“Mom?”

“I’m sorry. I was just nodding. I guess I was thinking you could see me.” She laughed tiredly.

“How’s Ethan?”

“I just left him on the couch. I’m afraid if I move him he’ll wake up and never settle down again. Your father and I are going to turn in now. But if something happens, if you have any news, you call us, okay?”

“I will. You too.”

Before putting the phone back into my jacket, I considered calling Detective Duckworth and asking him why he’d decided to go ahead with releasing Jan’s picture now. But I was almost to Rochester, and I needed to focus on my upcoming meeting with Jan’s parents.

I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, not after all the things Jan had said about them. But I wasn’t there to criticize them for how they’d raised Jan. I wasn’t there to lay blame, decide who was right and who was wrong.

I wanted to know if they’d seen Jan. Plain and simple. Had she been there? Had she called them? Did they have any idea where she might be?

Just after midnight I got off 90 and headed north on 490. Not long after that, I got off at the Palymra Road exit and quickly found my way to Lincoln Avenue.

The streetlamps were the only thing casting any light at 12:10 a.m. You might have thought, on a Saturday night, that there might have been a house or two with the lights on, a party going on. But maybe this was a street made up mostly of older residents. No lights on after ten on a Saturday night.

I rolled down the street and came to a stop out front of the house I had seen only once before. The Oldsmobile was in the driveway. The house was dark save for one light over the front door.

I killed the engine and sat in the car a moment, listening to the engine tick as it cooled.

I wondered if Jan could be in that house.

If Jan had returned here, it was hard to imagine the kind of confrontation she was likely to have had that could have ended with an invitation to spend the night.

“Let’s do this,” I said under my breath.

I got out of the car and closed the door as quietly as I could. No sense waking any more people on Lincoln than I had to. I walked across the empty street, up the driveway, and onto the front porch of the home of Horace and Gretchen Richler.

I stood in the glow of the single bulb, looking for a doorbell button. I found it mounted in the right side of the doorframe and pushed on it, hard, with my thumb.

No bell went off inside the house, at least none that I could hear. I glanced over at the metal mailbox hanging from the wall, noticed the “No Flyers or Junk Mail!” sticker. Maybe the Richlers didn’t like to be troubled with nuisance callers or mail. One way to deal with that was to disconnect the doorbell.

Or it could just be broken. To be certain, I leaned on the button a second time, but still heard nothing from inside the house.

I opened the metal storm door and saw a tarnished brass knocker on the main door. I rapped it five times. I didn’t know whether it would wake the Richlers, but it sounded like five gunshots out here on the porch.

When I didn’t see any lights going on after fifteen seconds, I did it again. I was about to do it a third time when I could see, through the window, light cascading down the stairs.

Someone was up.

I rapped two more times, lightly, so they wouldn’t think whoever was at the front door had taken off before they’d made the decision to come downstairs. In another moment Horace Richler appeared, in a bathrobe and pajamas, what hair he had pointing in several directions.

Before he got to the door, he shouted, “Who is it?”

“Mr. Richler?” I called out. Not shouting, but loud enough that I hoped he could hear me through the door. “I need to speak to you.”

“Who the hell is it? You know what time it is? I gotta gun, you know!”

If he really did, it wasn’t in his hands at this moment.

“My name is David Harwood! Please, I need to speak to you! It’s very important.”

There was someone else coming down the stairs now. It was Gretchen Richler, in a nightgown and robe, her hair also in disarray. I could just make out her asking her husband who it was, what was going on.

“It’s about Jan!” I said.

I thought I saw Horace Richler hesitate for a second as he reached for the door, wondering if he heard me correctly. I heard a deadbolt turn back, a chain slide, then the door opened about a foot.

“What the hell is this all about?” Horace Richler asked, his wife pressed up against his back. I didn’t know whether she was using her husband to protect herself, or to keep me from seeing her in her nightclothes. Probably both.

“I’m so sorry to wake you up, Mr. Richler, Mrs. Richler. I truly am. I wouldn’t do this if it weren’t an emergency.”

“Who are you?” Gretchen Richler asked. Her voice was high and scratchy, like an old record playing too fast.

“My name’s David Harwood. I’m Jan’s husband.”

The two of them stared at me.

“It would never have been my choice for us to meet this way, believe me. I’ve driven here tonight from Promise Falls. Jan’s missing and I’m trying to find her. I thought, maybe, there was a chance she might come here to see you.”

They were still both staring. Horace Richler’s face, at first frozen, was turning into a furious scowl.

“You’ve made some kind of mistake, mister,” he said. “You better get your ass off my goddamn porch.”

“Please,” I said. “I know there’s some history between you and your daughter, that you haven’t talked to her in a long time, but I’m worried that something bad has happened to her. I thought, if she didn’t actually come here, she might have called, or you might have an idea where she might go, some old friends she might try to get in touch with.”

Horace Richler’s face grew red with fury. His fists were clenching at his sides.

“I don’t know who you are or what the fuck your game is, but I swear to God, I may be an old man, but I’ll kick your ass all the way down Lincoln Avenue if I have to.”

I wasn’t ready to give up.

“Tell me I haven’t got the right house,” I said. “You’re Horace and Gretchen Richler and your daughter is Jan.”

Gretchen came out from behind her husband and spoke to me for the first time.

“That’s right,” she whispered.

“My daughter’s dead,” Horace said through gritted teeth.

The comment hit me like a two-by-four across the side of the head. Something horrible had happened. I’d gotten here too late.

“My God,” I said. “When? What happened?”

“She died a long time ago,” he said.

I breathed out. At first, I thought he’d meant something had just happened to Jan. Then I assumed he meant that because he and his daughter were estranged, it was as though Jan was dead to him. “I know you may feel that way, Mr. Richler. But if you ever loved your daughter, you need to help me now.”

Gretchen said, “You don’t understand. She really is dead.”

I felt the wallop all over again. I really had gotten here too late. Had Jan already been to see her parents? Had she taken her life here? Was that her final act of revenge against them? To come to Rochester and kill herself in front of them?

I managed to say, “What are you talking about?”

“She died when she was a little girl,” Gretchen said. “When she was only five years old. It was a terrible thing.”