Nine

SOMEHOW WE GET through the day, a maelstrom of emotion, interrupted by what seems like hundreds of telephone calls.

I speak to Shoffler half a dozen times, but there’s nothing new except his change of schedule; instead of “sometime today,” he’ll come by “sometime tonight.”

On the advice of several friends, I call an investigative agency and talk to a guy I interviewed once for a story about the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. Before I get to why I’m calling, he puts two and two together: “Oh, my god, the missing twins. Jesus, that’s you, I didn’t think …”

He gives me the name of the firm’s best missing-person investigator – a woman named Mary McCafferty. We set up a meeting for the following day. She gives me a list of information she’d like. “We’re going to cut you a break,” she tells me, “and do the work for half the normal rate.”

But it’s still not going to be cheap. Seventy-five dollars an hour instead of one hundred fifty dollars. Plus expenses.

I speak several times to Krista at the station – which, she tells me breathlessly, has pledged ten grand to a reward fund. The boys’ pictures, an announcement of the reward, and the hotline number will be shown at the top of every hour.

I talk to a woman at the missing children’s center. They’ve set into motion an e-mail “locater” search, which, through an elaborate network of electronic address books, might reach – with its attachment containing a picture of the boys, physical description, and hotline information – as many as three million people.

Friends and acquaintances call by the dozen.

At five o’clock, I realize that the boys have been missing for twenty-four hours. I don’t mention this to anyone.

At six thirty, a bewildered Hispanic kid delivers the food Liz ordered from Sala Thai. My father regards the food with suspicion. Jack eats with gusto, encouraging his daughter to do the same: “Important to keep your strength up, sweetheart.” My mother takes a bite of the Pad Thai and says to my father, “Really, Bob, it’s just linguini.”

It’s seven, it’s eight, it’s nine.

Sleeping arrangements. I’ve been awake for so long, I’m approaching an altered state of consciousness, although I can’t imagine actually falling asleep. Liz bustles around, making up the sleep-sofa in the study for her father, changing the sheets in the master bedroom, which she has assigned to my folks. I trail her, carrying towels and sheets. It’s her intention to sleep in the boys’ room, but she stops in the doorway, frozen. “I can’t … I can’t sleep in here,” she says. “Oh, God … Alex …” She begins to sob and I put my arm around her shoulder, but she stiffens under my touch, pulls away, composes herself. “I’ll take the futon in the family room,” she announces. “You get the living room couch.”

She heads into the bathroom. I follow, with my stack of towels. She stands in front of the vanity and looks into the mirror; then her eyes slide down toward the sink. I see the expression on her face in reflection for a moment before she turns and I see the puzzled frown straight on.

“What’s the deal with these dimes?” she asks.

The vanity has a faux-marble top with a backsplash. On the upper edge of that backsplash and perfectly centered between the faucets rests a row of Liberty head dimes. Seven of them, precisely aligned.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Do these belong to the boys? Did they start a collection?”

“I don’t think so.”

But the ambiguity is only notional. I’ve never seen the dimes before – and I would have seen them. It’s my habit to stand and watch Kev and Sean brush their teeth, to make sure they stay at it for more than two seconds, to see that they rinse their toothbrushes and sluice down the spit and toothpaste. It’s not that dental hygiene is such a big thing with me. My vigilance is due to Liz. I knew I’d be called to account for any evidence of a lapse. No way I would not have noticed a line of coins on the sink. And the sight of them spooks me. They seem like some kind of crazy sign or message.

“Someone put them there,” I tell Liz.

“Who? What?”

“The kidnapper.”

“Oh, God. Alex …?”

“Come here for a sec,” I say, pulling her toward the boys’ bed room. “I want you to take a look at something.” I point out the little origami rabbit on the dresser. “Does this belong to Kevin or Sean? Because I never noticed it before …”

“No,” Liz says, “I never saw it before.” She looks at me with a little worried frown. “Alex… that rabbit. The dimes. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Tears well up in her eyes, but she shakes me off when I try to comfort her. I follow her back to the bathroom, where she blows her nose, splashes cold water on her face, buries her face in a towel.

When I hear the loud rap at the door, I’m in the family room down on my hands and knees, still trying to get the rickety futon frame to fold down. Jack and my father have been taking turns on door duty, and I hear my father’s husky voice, and another voice, in counterpoint. I’m still extricating myself from behind the futon when my father and the detective arrive at the door.

“How you holding up?” Shoffler asks me.

I manage a sort of shrug. Shoffler himself looks terrible. He wears a crumpled linen sports jacket, one button dangling by a thread. A battered pair of khakis rides low on his hips, forced there by his belly. His weary eyes make it clear he needs sleep. A nap in the car on the way to Ordway Street, in fact, would explain the spiky explosion of hair on the right side of his head. “The press gives you too much trouble,” he says, “I can get D.C. to post an officer.”

I shrug. “I’ll let you know.”

“That the kind of thing you do?” he asks, nodding toward the front of the house.

“I’ve done it,” I say. “It’s just their job.”

“Bob – do I have that right?” Shoffler says, looking at my father. He hooks a finger in his belt and hitches up his pants.

“Yes, you do. Robert J. Callahan.” My father gives a little whinny of high-pitched laughter, a sign of nerves to those of us who know him well.

“You mind calling the others to come in here?”

A gush of fear blooms in my chest. “You have something? You have … news?”

Shoffler shakes his head, and bends to help me, yanking on one of the futon frame’s recalcitrant legs. The whole thing unfolds with a crash. “There you go,” he says.

Between us, we manage to maneuver the awkward futon into position. “My son had one of these doohickeys when he was at Bowie State,” the detective says. “Slept on it once. Pretty comfortable.”

Once Liz and the others are in the room and seated, Shoffler tells us he’s going to give us an update on what’s been happening. The search in the woods outside the fairgrounds proceeds, he tells us, with more volunteers than they can “shake a stick at.” The hotline is swamped with calls, but it’s going “to take time to sort things out.” The questioning of fair employees, he says, “is slow, but it’s coming along. As I told Alex earlier, we’re having some trouble finding reliable witnesses who remember seeing the boys, but we’re making progress.”

An image of Kevin and Sean at the fairgrounds, laughing at a comic juggler, swims up in my mind. I shake my head, as if this motion might dispel the picture. As the hours go on, I can no longer think of the boys without a panicked rush of loss. It’s like falling off a cliff, over and over again.

The one bit of real news Shoffler offers is that the candle-selling pedophile has been cleared of suspicion. “Although the fair, of course, has closed him down. So he’s not going to be selling any magic wands to any little kids for a while. But as for abducting your boys, he can account for every minute of the time in question.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Liz says, pressing her hands against her thighs.

“I thought if an alibi was too rock solid, that was suspicious,” Jack puts in. “In and of itself.”

Shoffler exhales. He doesn’t dismiss Jack’s comment, but responds patiently, as he has to every question asked. In ten minutes, he’s managed to charm and reassure Liz and my mother and to impress Jack and my father. He has a knack for listening that would put most reporters to shame.

“Too good an alibi?” he says. “Well, there’s really no such thing, Jack. I know what you mean, but in this case, we have a whole boatload of witnesses as to this guy’s whereabouts.”

“And what was he doing?” my father asks. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

Shoffler pats at the explosion of hair on the side of his head, manages a weary smile. “He wasn’t at the fair all day. He spent the entire afternoon from one to six at” – he opens his notebook, pages through – “the Bayside Motel in Annapolis, where he was participating in a defensive driving course.” He looks up at them. “After that, he went to” – again he consults his notebook – “a support group potluck for persons who’ve recently lost a parent – his mother died three weeks ago. This potluck was also in Annapolis. Trinity Episcopal Church.” Shoffler closes his notebook.

“So this guy – he’s out of the picture,” Jack says.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good,” Liz says again, throwing a glance at me. “Isn’t it?”

“Definitely,” Shoffler says. “It eliminates a possibility, and that’s always positive. Means resources can be focused elsewhere. So—” He rubs his hands together. “You folks have any more questions?”

“There’s been no ransom call,” my dad says with a worried glance my way. “Isn’t that, I mean – why do you think that is?”

“Well, it’s early days,” Shoffler tells him, “but I don’t expect you’re going to get one.”

“No? But, but – why not?” Jack demands.

Shoffler screws up his face, sighs. “First off, if you’re after money, why take two kids? It’s not like it’s a bake sale, if you see what I mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do,” Jack says.

Shoffler shrugs. “Two kids’d be twice the trouble, but they wouldn’t get you twice the payoff. Desperate parents – my opinion is they’d pony up just as much for one child as for two. And then” – he hesitates, but in the end doesn’t tiptoe around it – “fact is, there’s plenty of rich folk in the world. Somebody with a profit motive? I think they’d go for parents with … ah … greater resources than Alex and Liz here. Unless” – he looks inquiringly from Jack to my father to my mother – “the boys’ grandparents …?”

“I’m a high school principal,” Jack says. Uncharacteristically, he follows this statement with a nervous laugh. His relative lack of means is the only subject known to make Jack defensive. “Maybe Bob here is one of those secret millionaires next door.” He laughs again, and looks at my father.

“No,” my father says. “I’m not saying we” – he looks at my mother – “couldn’t come up with a good piece of change if we liquidated everything. Which we would do, of course, but it would take time. But—” He shakes his head, conceding Shoffler’s point.

“Well,” Shoffler says, “you see what I mean.” His hands float up into the air and then come back down on his thighs with a slap.

“What about a nonmonetary reason?” my father asks.

Shoffler frowns. “Such as?”

“My son, the kind of stories he does—” A glance my way. “He makes enemies.”

Shoffler raises his eyebrows, looks at me. “That so?”

I get that rush in my chest, the adrenaline burn of alarm. I hadn’t thought of this. The idea that whoever took the boys did so because of me – it’s sickening. I tend to go for edgy pieces. Gangbanging, money laundering, arms trafficking. Stories like that. So maybe …

“My father’s right,” I tell Shoffler. “I didn’t think of it.”

“Well,” Shoffler says. “If you can come up with anybody who might take a grudge that far …”

“But why go after the kids? Why not me?”

“Just get with your files and see if anything jumps out at you. Make a little list for me. Can’t hurt.”

I promise to do that, after which Shoffler looks at each of us in turn. No one seems to have anything else to say.

Jack gives in to a mighty yawn. “Excuse me.” He stands up. “Well, thank you very much.”

“Would you like some iced tea?” my mother asks, also getting to her feet. “Or coffee?”

“Actually,” Shoffler says, “I know it’s late, but we’d like to conduct the search now.”

“The search?” Liz asks. “What search?”

“The search of the residence,” Shoffler says. He shoots a glance at me. “Your husband and I have talked about it. He thinks the kidnapper was here. In this house. That maybe we’ll find something. Anyway, it’s routine.”

“I don’t think he was here,” I correct Shoffler. “He was here.”

“Did you tell them about the dimes?” Liz says. “And that rabbit?”

“What’s this?” Shoffler asks.

When I explain, he nods, pulls out the notebook, makes a notation. “We’ll take those into evidence.”

“I don’t get it,” I tell Shoffler. “There’s no question Kevin was here. He called me from this number,” I say. “I turned over my telephone to you guys. You know that.”

Shoffler nods in a noncommittal way, hitches up his pants. “Right. And we’ve asked Verizon for the records.”

“What?”

“Just to backstop the log on your cell phone. Make sure the call from Kevin wasn’t forwarded, you know, from somewhere else.”

“But—”

Shoffler ignores me. “It’s late and we’d like to get started,” he says. “I’m guessing it will take a couple of hours. So you all – you’re welcome to – go for a drive or something.”

“A drive?” my mother says, in the same incredulous tone she might have used if the detective had said “a swim” or “a manicure.”

“Some folks find it upsetting,” Shoffler explains to her in his patient voice, “strangers going through their house. Their things.” He shrugs. “If you decide to stay, you’ll all have to remain in this room until we’re done with the rest of the house. Then we’ll finish up in here.” He makes a clicking sound, snapping his tongue away from the roof of his mouth. It seems unnaturally loud.

“Well, I don’t want to go for a drive,” my mother says.

“I think we’ll stay put,” I say.

“Good enough,” Shoffler says. “In that case, we could cross something else off the list. Get everybody’s fingerprints.”

“What?” Jack says.

“Strictly routine, Mr. Taggart. We need the prints of the people who have been in the house, so we can exclude them. Eventually, we’ll have to print everyone else who’s been in here – house-keeper, babysitter, handyman – for the same reason.” He looks at his watch.

“Why can’t this be done tomorrow?” Jack asks, his arm around Liz’s shoulder. “My daughter is exhausted.”

Shoffler wags his head. “I know. It’s very late – believe me, I’m aware of that. But I’m sure you understand that if there is any evidence here, anything that might provide a lead, we want to know about it right away. Not only can we act on it sooner, the longer we wait, the more the scene becomes contaminated. Plus, the team’s already here, outside, ready to go—”

“They’re outside right now?” I hear myself say. I don’t know why this bothers me, but it does.

Shoffler looks at his watch. “You mind if we get started?”