Long lost

Bitterness twisted my voice. "Yeah, Petey has a habit of vanishing."

"You mean Dant."

"Sure… Dant."

"We'll get him," Gader said. "The money he took from you won't last long. Eventually he'll have to steal again. One mistake. That's all he has to make, and we'll get him."

"Eventually." The word that Gader had used stuck in my throat. I tried not to think about what was happening to Kate and Jason.

6

So a man who was my brother or who wasn't my brother but who was pretending to be him had abducted my family and torn my world apart. He'd covered his trail by fooling me and the police into thinking he was going to Butte, Montana. Then he'd vanished off the face of the earth. No other motorists were reported missing for that time period, which meant that the police didn't have a license number and a description of a carjacked vehicle to focus their search. There were numerous reports of stolen cars. Hundreds in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. Thousands nationwide. But when any of these were located, Petey (I still couldn't bring myself to call him Dant) was never linked to them. Perhaps he'd switched license plates with another vehicle. The owner of the other vehicle might have taken quite a while to notice that the plates had been switched, by which time Petey might have stolen another car or switched plates again. Or perhaps Petey had taken the money he got for the things he stole from my house to buy an old car and then showed a fake ID to register the car under an alias that the police didn't know he had. Perhaps. Could have. Might have.

The local TV stations repeated the story. The networks picked it up, especially CBS, which included excerpts from the Sunday Morning segment that Kate, Jason, and I had been in. They emphasized the sick twist that a man who claimed to be my long-lost brother had vanished again, this time with my family. I got calls from men who claimed to have taken Kate and Jason. In graphic detail, they described the torture they inflicted. The police traced the calls, but nothing was learned, except that some people love to aggravate the suffering of others. Several of the callers were charged with obstructing the investigation, but none ever went to jail.

Despair and lack of sleep gave me headaches. I went through the motions of working, but my staff ran the business. I spent most of my time in a trance. As the search lost momentum, it became obvious that unless Petey-again I tried to substitute Dant's name, but I couldn't manage to do so-unless Petey stumbled into a policeman, he was never going to be found, especially if he grew a beard to cover the scar on his chin so his mug shot would no longer resemble him.

Blurred photos of Kate and Jason appeared on milk cartons and in mailers. Have you seen this woman and this boy? the caption read. But if I couldn't recognize the indistinct faces, I couldn't imagine anyone else being able to. I'd never paid attention to the faces on those milk cartons and those mailers when it was someone else's wife or child who was missing. How could I hope that anyone would pay attention when it was my wife and child who were missing?

Friends were supportive initially: phone calls of encouragement, invitations to di

A few remained loyal, though, and it was from my next-door neighbor, Phil Barrow, that I learned how things could get worse. I was listlessly raking dead leaves in my front yard, vaguely aware that autumn had once been my favorite time of year, frost in the air, wood smoke, the rattle of dead leaves, and now it meant nothing, when I happened to look up and see Phil hug his sweater tighter to his chest, then step off the sidewalk and approach me.

"How are you doing, Brad?"

Kate had once told me that no matter how shitty either of us felt, we should always answer "Never better."

Phil's shoulders moved up and down as if from a bitter chuckle. "Yeah, I can see that. You've been raking that same pile of leaves for about an hour."

"Neatness counts."

Phil looked down at his hands. "I don't know if I should tell you this."

"Oh?" I felt a cold breeze.

"Marge says I shouldn't upset you, but I figure you've got enough trouble without getting more trouble from the people who are supposed to be helping you."

The breeze got colder. "What are you talking about?"

"An FBI agent came to see me at work yesterday."

"John Gader?"

"Yeah, that was his name. He asked me if you and Kate got along. If there were a lot of family arguments. If you ever hit your son."

"What?"

"He wanted to know if you lost your temper when you drank. If you had a girlfriend."

"The FBI suspects me?"

7

"You son of a bitch."

Gader faltered when I stepped in front of his car in the parking garage of Denver's Federal Building. "Calm down."

"You think I killed my wife and son!"

"I gather that some of your friends told you I'd been asking them questions about you."

"Destroying my reputation is more like it!" Fists clenched, I stepped toward him.

"Take it easy," Gader said.

Its engine echoing, a car drove past in the garage, the driver frowning at us.

"This area has security cameras. It's patrolled," Gader said. "You don't even want to think about assaulting a federal agent on federal property."

"It'd be worth it!"

Gader held up his hands in surrender. "I'm not going to fight you. If you'll calm down and listen…"

Behind him, a door banged open. A guard stepped into the garage's harsh lights. His hand was on his holstered gun. "Is everything all right, Mr. Gader?"

"I'm not sure." Gader's lean face was stern. "Is everything all right, Mr. De

I squeezed my fists so tightly that my knuckles ached.

"If you go to prison, how's that going to help your wife and son?" Gader asked.

I trembled, feeling anger burn my face.

"Think about what your family needs," Gader said.

I relaxed my fists.

"It's going to be fine, Joe," Gader told the guard. "You can leave us now."

"I'll watch the monitor," the guard said.

"Good idea." Gader waited until the door rumbled shut.

"How could you possibly think I killed my wife and son?"

"It's a standard part of an investigation. When a family member's missing or killed, a lot of times the person responsible is another family member."

"Jesus, how could I have driven the Volvo to Wyoming, then stolen a car and abandoned it in Montana, and somehow have gotten back here to maroon myself in the mountains?"

"You could have if this guy Dant had been working for you."

The depth of Gader's suspicion shocked me. "Why would I have asked Petey to do that?"

"Dant. If you had money troubles and needed the payout from a life-insurance policy, or if you had a girlfriend who made your wife an inconvenience."

I clenched my fists again.

"But there weren't any unusual withdrawals from your bank accounts or your stock portfolio, and there wasn't a hint of scandal about your relations with your family. Besides, I couldn't figure out how you'd have crossed paths with Dant after he got out of jail in Butte and… Quit staring at me like that. The investigation wasn't going anywhere. I had to try a different approach."

"You son of a bitch, you made my friends think I'm responsible for my family's disappearance."

"It wasn't personal. I told you, I was following standard procedure. The point is, you came through the investigation perfectly. You're in the clear."

"Thanks. Thanks a fucking lot."