They Disappeared

“Jeff?”

What was happening?

“Did you accuse Neil Larson of having an affair with your wife?”

Brewer watched Jeff swallow hard before answering. “Yes.”

“And did you confront him in a school parking lot where he worked with your wife, to the point others had to restrain you?” Brewer asked.

Jeff hesitated at the twisting of the truth.

“Yes.”

“And did that form part of your argument with Sarah just before you reported that she and Cole had been abducted?”

“Yes.”

“So you confirm these facts?” Brewer said.

“Yes.”

“What’s your relationship with Donnie and Sheri Dalfini?” Brewer asked.

“Relationship? I don’t know them. It’s their SUV.”

“How did you get their address in the Bronx?”

“I went to a store, Metro Gifts or something, and got them to let me look at their security camera. It was pointed at where Sarah and Cole were standing and I got the plate. Then I searched the plate online and took a cab to the address.”

“Why didn’t you check with the police first?” Brewer asked.

“I had the feeling that no one was looking for my family.”

Brewer and Klaver paused to consider Jeff’s answer.

“Jeff,” Brewer said, “as a firefighter you’ve been to death scenes. You probably know a lot of people in law enforcement back home in Montana. You probably know something of investigative procedures.”

Jeff said nothing, uneasy at the picture being drawn around him.

“You seemed to get out to Steeldown Road very fast to talk to Sheri Dalfini about her stolen SUV. Almost as if you wanted to get to the Dalfini residence before police but immediately after you’d reported Sarah and Cole’s abduction. And then you got to the fire at the speed of light.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It just doesn’t look right to us at this stage,” Brewer said. “It just doesn’t add up.”

The floor shifted under Jeff as realization rolled over him with seismic force.

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

Brewer shifted his lower jaw. In all his time and over all the cases he’d worked he’d come to respect one abiding rule: at the outset of an investigation everyone lies, and when the facts and pieces of evidence emerge, the lies melt like dirty snow in the rain.

“Jeff, I want you to be straight with me here,” Brewer said. “When you believed your wife was maybe fucking Neil Larson and going to leave you I bet it hurt, what with just losing your baby and all. And I’m thinking that maybe you fantasized about making sure Sarah never left you, that maybe you came up with an elaborate foolproof plan. You take her to a location, step away, the cameras record it—”

“What! That’s crazy!”

“Maybe something went wrong, or you didn’t know who you were dealing with.”

“This is insane! Tell me who was in that SUV!”

Glaring at Jeff, Brewer reached for his BlackBerry, entered a command.

“This was in the SUV, Jeff. It matches the description in your report.”

He slid the device to Jeff, carefully studying his reaction as Jeff looked at the crisp photograph of what remained of a New York Jets ball cap. Only a ball cap. Half consumed by fire, half scorched, but clearly identifiable, small, white with the green jet patch on white, familiar to Jeff as the one they bought for Cole.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ, no.

Jeff looked at it until it blurred.

They’re gone.

Jeff ached to pull Cole and Sarah from the darkness.

Sitting there in that small police room, the shock of seeing Cole’s burned ball cap propelled him back to Montana and the morning he’d found Lee Ann.

Her little face all blue, her mouth a tiny O.

His futile efforts to save her.

He thought of his baby daughter with Sarah and Cole and that moment he saw the three of them through the window from his pickup in the driveway.

That perfect moment.

He struggled to hang on to those images but they were gone.

Jeff put his face in his hands and in that cold, hard room he never felt the heat of Brewer’s and Klaver’s stares as Brewer slowly slid back his BlackBerry. Chairs scraped; the detectives gathered their files.

“We’ll leave you alone to consider matters,” Brewer said.

The door opened to ringing phones, conversations and the squawk of walkie-talkies. Above the din Jeff recognized Cordelli’s voice in a fragment of conversation. “Brewer! Did you get my message? My supervisor called yours and—”

The door closed, leaving Jeff alone, adrift in a sea of torment. Minutes passed with the same questions hammering against his skull: Who would steal his wife and son? Who? Why? His confusion and grief coiled into anger.

He would find them.

Whoever did this, he would hunt them down.

The door handle clicked.