I braced my feet and tried Sam on his cell, but didn’t get an answer. I waited until the sheriff’s deputy and Sam drove up, told Sam what had happened, and wished I could start the day all over again.

Lauren was planning to hang out with Grace on Saturday morning and then the two of them were going to do some clothes shopping at Flatiron. Later in the day, winds permitting, they were planning a mother-daughter “tablecloth restaurant” visit someplace Gracie kept insisting was a big secret. I spent the morning hoping to hear from Raoul or Sam. Didn’t. I filled the time writing a couple of reports that were long overdue, and did a few chores around the house before I cleaned up, hopped in my car, drove the few miles west to my office, and prepared to see Bill Miller.

I wasn’t looking forward to the visit, and half hoped he would bag the session because of the Chinooks.

Bill was waiting for me.

His car was parked where Diane usually left her Saab, not too far from the doors that led from our offices to the backyard. He was standing between the taillights, leaning back against the trunk, his arms folded over his chest. The January sun was already low over the southwest mountains and the fierce wind gusts were blowing anything that wasn’t bolted down from the west side of town to the east. Some day soon, one of these Chinook events was going to propel our rickety garage from our side of downtown to the other.

I stopped my wagon parallel to his car-but a few feet farther from the rickety garage than usual-and stepped out. I didn’t like that his car was parked in back. I didn’t like that he wasn’t waiting for me by the front door.

He greeted me with, “You knew.”

I chose defensiveness. Wise? Probably not. “I’d given my word to the police, Bill. I also knew you’d find out what happened soon enough. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. It would have made things easier for both of us.”

He nodded; he’d probably traversed that territory himself. “What’s your role in all this?” he asked. “Why were you at Doyle’s last night? And those other times?”

His voice seemed to carry better in the wind than mine did; mine felt like it was being swallowed up like spit in the ocean. “It has to do with what was making me concerned about the dual-relationship problem I talked about.”

Bill nodded as though he understood. But I wondered how he could even hear, let alone understand. The nod must have meant something else.

“When we talked last night did you know that Doyle was dead?” he asked. I had the sense that he was methodically going down a list of questions. I also had the sense that he didn’t really expect to learn anything novel in my responses.

“Same situation, Bill; I couldn’t talk about it with you. I knew you would find out this morning anyway.”

He turned his head momentarily so he was gazing west toward the mountains, frankly into the wind. His hair flew back behind him like he was a character in the cartoons. “Do you know where my daughter is?” he asked.

I half heard him, half read his lips. “No, I don’t. I wish I did,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“I am.” Almost reflexively, I asked him the same question. “Do you know where she is, Bill?”

“No.”

“What’s the third option? The other night you suggested the possibility that running and kidnapping weren’t the only options.”

“Hiding.”

“Hiding? From what?”

He surprised me by taking a quick step closer to me, closer than I liked. “Life. Yes, hiding. I have a story to tell you.”

In retrospect, that was the point when I should have stopped him. Walked away. Told him therapy was over, or that it had never really begun. Handed him my license and let him use it for a coaster. Given him the phone number of the state board that censures wayward psychologists, like me. Something.

But I didn’t. I still had a scintilla of hope that Bill knew something that would help me find Diane.

“One day last spring,” he began, “I came home from work and found Doyle Chandler inside my house, sitting at my kitchen table drinking a beer. My beer. My records-my files, my bills, my checkbook, you name it-were spread out all over the table in front of him.”

“Bill, I-” I tried to interrupt him. Why? Something visceral was still telling me to get him to stop.

“I’m not done.” He raised both eyebrows and through a hissing exhale said, “Give me this. I deserve this.” I stepped back involuntarily. He immediately closed the distance between us. “Doyle knew everything about me. Said he’d spent almost a month going through my things. Paperwork, letters, tax returns, computer files. Passwords. Everything. He knew about Rachel, her… problems. He knew the kids’ grades, their teachers’ names. Knew I have a swollen prostate, that my LDL’s too high. Everything that makes our family different from the Crandalls across the street, everything that makes us who we are, he knew.”

I had an incongruous impulse to comfort, to tell Bill the truth about Doyle Chandler, his neighbor, and the truth about Doyle Chandler, the boy who’d died in a car accident in Roanoke with his parents back in 1967. I wanted to try to placate Bill with the fact that he’d been had by a damn good con man.

A blast of wind sandblasted my skin. The impulse passed.

Bill went on. “I was irate. I asked him what he was doing in my house. He just laughed. I demanded that he get out, that the kids were coming home any minute. He stood up and walked over to the refrigerator and pointed at our family calendar. He said, ‘No, they’re not. Reese is at hockey practice till seven. Coach usually keeps them late, you know that. And it’s Kyle’s mom’s turn to drive, anyway. Last time she stopped and got the kids dinner at Pizza Hut, remember? She’ll probably do something like that again-Frannie’s like that, such a sweetheart. And Mallory is studying at Kara’s. Cute kids, Mallory and Kara. Really cute kids.”

“He knew it all. Everything. Take a minute, try to imagine it. Go ahead, try. What that would be like. He knew every secret. Every intimacy. Every dirty detail. When you think you know how bad it feels, double it. Then double that. That’s what it was like.”

I tried to digest what that kind of intrusion would feel like to a father. Surreal.

A huge piece of Styrofoam jumped the fence to the west and crashed into the side of Bill’s car. I ducked; he continued to seem oblivious to the fierce gales. I forced myself to observe him, to try to read what I could about his affect. I wasn’t getting a clear sense of where he was at that moment. It was apparent that he had no trouble summoning the rage he felt at Doyle Chandler. But there was something else present in the mix, some other emotional component that I couldn’t put a finger on.

“Doyle had already gone through every last thing I owned and decided that simply stealing my identity wasn’t enough of a payoff for all his effort. He wanted money, of course,” Bill said. “Lots of it.”

“Why didn’t-”

“-I go to the police? Because I have things to hide. He knew by then that I couldn’t go to the police. Same reason I couldn’t turn over Mallory’s diary when I found it after she disappeared.”

“Things to hide?”

“Everybody has something they don’t want the world to know. Everybody. For some people, it’s something embarrassing. Maybe even humiliating. For some, it’s something… worse. To save my family, I did some desperate things years ago. I made hard choices. For me it was something worse.”

“Rachel and Canada?” I said, guessing that Bill’s secret had to do with money. Instantly, I wished I hadn’t guessed, at least not out loud.

“Do you know? I’m not sure… doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you.”

“Bill, it’s not-”

“Shhhh. I’m not done.”

For a fleeting second, right then, I felt menace from him. The scent of peril was fleeting, like a waft of perfume as a lovely woman waltzes by. I allowed myself the luxury of believing that I’d misread him, and I somehow convinced myself that it was okay to dismiss the menace as an illusion, to allow it to be carried away on the wings of the Chinooks. In retrospect, that was a bit of a mistake.