Long lost

"I don't understand."

"He's saying he doesn't want the damned.thing anymore. Because he's got something better."

"Slow down, Mr. De

As a technician pressed my fingertips on an inky pad and then onto a sheet of paper that had a place for each digit, I tried as hard as I could to make them understand.

2

"Long-lost brother?"

"God help me, yes."

"But how did you know he really was your brother?"

"He told me things only my brother could have known."

The detectives gave each other that look again.

"What's wrong?"

"Just a thought," Webber said. "Maybe you heard what you wanted to hear. Some con men are good at making general statements sound specific. The people they're trying to fool fill in the gaps."

"No. I tested him. He got every detail right."

"They can be awfully clever."

"But it doesn't make sense. A con man's motive would have been robbery. All he'd have needed to do was wait until Kate and I went to work and Jason was at school. He'd have had all day to loot the house. He wouldn't have needed to try to kill me. That was personal. That was Petey getting even!"

Pendleton made a calming gesture. "We're just trying to get a sense of the man we're after."

"For God's sake, a con man wouldn't be stupid enough to add murder and kidnapping to a burglary charge."

"Unless he enjoyed violence."

The direct look Webber gave me was dizzying in its effect. All along, I'd worked to assure myself that Jason and Kate were alive. Now, for the first time, I admitted to myself that Jason might be dead in the mountains, that Kate's body might be lying in a ditch somewhere.

I almost threw up.

Pendleton seemed to sense my panicked thoughts. His tone suggested an attempt to distract me. "You don't happen to have a photograph of him, do you?"

"No."

"With the excitement of the homecoming, you didn't take any pictures?"

"No." I wanted to scream. If only I hadn't let a stranger into my house…

But he isn't a stranger, I tried to tell myself.

What the hell's the matter with you? I thought. After twenty-five years, Petey is a stranger!

"Mr. De

I looked over at Pendleton, realizing that he'd said my name several times in an effort to get my attention.

"If you're able, we'd like you to walk through the house and tell us if anything's missing."

"Whatever I have to do."

They handed me latex gloves and put on their own. Unsteady, I began in the downstairs rooms, and immediately I noticed that the silverware Kate had inherited from her grandmother was no longer on the sideboard in the dining room. A silver tea set was missing also. In the TV room, the DVD and videotape players were gone, along with an expensive audio/video receiver.

"He'd probably have taken the TV, too," I said bitterly, "except that it's forty-six inches and wouldn't fit in the Volvo. I don't understand why he didn't keep the Expedition. It's got more room. He could have stolen more things."

Webber looked uncomfortable. "We'll talk about it later. Finish checking the house."

The microwave and the Cuisinart food processor were missing from the kitchen. Numerous compact power tools were gone from the garage. My laptop computer wasn't in my office.

"What about firearms?" Pendleton asked. "Do you have any in the house? Did he take them?"

"No guns."

"Not even a hunting rifle?"

"No. I'm not a hunter."

I made my way upstairs and froze at the entrance to Jason's room, seeing his drawers pulled out, his clothes scattered on the floor. It took all my willpower to step inside and look around.

"My son saves his loose change in ajar on his desk," I said.

It wasn't there.

I had an even harder time going into the chaos of the master bedroom. Stepping over some of Kate's dresses on the floor, I stared toward the back of the walk-in closet. "Four suitcases are gone."

As the implication hit me, my knees weakened so much that I had to lean against the doorjamb.

I'd assumed that Petey had ransacked the bureaus and closets because he was in a rush to find things to steal. Now, daring to hope, I took a closer look and realized that Kate's and Jason's clothes weren't just scattered-some of them were missing.

"If they're dead, he wouldn't have packed clothes for them," I told the detectives. "They're alive. They've got to be alive."

In a daze, I followed Webber's instructions and kept looking. Some of my clothes were gone, too. My emergency stash of five hundred dollars was no longer at the back of my underwear drawer. Kate's jewel box was missing, along with a gold Rolex that I wore on special occasions. None of it mattered; only Kate and Jason did.

Throughout, the technicians kept photographing the chaos in the bedrooms and checking for fingerprints. To get out of their way, the detectives took me downstairs. Again I had the sense that the house no longer belonged to me.

"Why the Volvo?" I managed to ask. My voice seemed to come from far away. "You said we'd talk about why he took it. The Expedition would have allowed him to steal more things."

"Yes." Pendleton spoke reluctantly. "But the Volvo has something that the four-wheel-drive vehicle doesn't."

"I don't know what you mean."

"A trunk."

"A…" Understanding forced me to sit.

"Maybe it isn't a good idea to go into the details."

"Tell me." My bandaged hands ached as I clutched the sides of the leather chair. "I need to know."

Webber glanced away, as if he couldn't bear to see my eyes. "The way it looks, he came back here with your son and then subdued your wife. We have to assume they were bound and gagged."

A rope seemed to cut into my wrists.

"He wouldn't have risked driving with them scrunched down in the backseat. Sooner or later, someone would have noticed," Pendleton said.

"So he put them in the…"

"With the garage door closed, nobody would have seen him do it."

"Jesus." Imagining the stench of gasoline and car exhaust, I felt nauseated. "How could they breathe?" I suddenly remembered Petey's haunted look when he'd described how the man and woman had forced him into a trunk.

A shrill beep startled me. Webber reached beneath his blazer and unhooked his cell phone from his belt. As he turned his back and walked toward the piano that Kate enjoyed playing, I barely heard his muted voice.

He put away the phone.

"Something?" I straightened, nervously hoping.

"The Volvo's been found. At a rest stop off Interstate Twenty-five."

"Kate and Jason? Are they-"

"Not with the car. He left the state. Wyoming troopers found the Volvo north of Casper."

"Wyoming?"

"For all he knew, he had plenty of time, and the Volvo wouldn't have been missed for several days," Webber said. "But suppose your wife was expected somewhere Saturday night, or suppose friends were going to arrive, and no matter what he did to persuade her, she wouldn't tell him about it?"

My skin turned cold at the thought of the pain Kate would have suffered.

"His best choice was to get your wife and son away before anyone suspected something was wrong," Webber said. "The nearest ATM for your bank has a record of a six-twenty-one p.m. withdrawal of five hundred dollars, the most that the machine is allowed to take from an account on any one day. The videotape shows a man making the withdrawal, but his head's bowed so his face is hidden."

Sweat chilled me when I realized that Petey had forced Kate to tell him our ATM number.

"It looks like he drove until nightfall, then used the cover of darkness to carjack another vehicle at the rest stop outside Casper. The likely target would have been someone traveling alone, but the driver wasn't found near the rest stop, so we assume that he or she is in the car with your wife and son. Until the driver's reported missing, we won't know what kind of car to search for."