“We’re already doing it,” he said.

“You think I’ve hidden Jan in our house? Are you serious?”

As if on cue, my cell phone rang. I flipped it open, recognized my parents’ number.

“Hello?”

“David?” My mother.

“Yes?”

“They’re towing away your car!”

“I know, Mom, I just found out that-”

“I went out and told them they couldn’t do that, that you can park for free for three hours on that side of the street, but-”

“Mom, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“You need to get here fast! They’re loading it onto the back of another truck right now! Your father’s out there telling them they’ve made a mistake but-”

“Mom! Listen to me! I’m at the police station and I need a ride-”

“One of my men can give you a lift,” Duckworth said.

I glanced at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

“What?” said Mom.

“Send Dad down here,” I said. “Can you do that?”

“Are you okay? Are you in some kind of-”

“Mom, just send Dad and I’ll explain it when I get there.” I closed the phone and slipped it back into my coat.

“You son of a bitch,” I said to Duckworth. “You goddamn son of a bitch. I’m not the bad guy here. You’re going to have people searching my house when they should be searching all over Promise Falls. What if my wife’s tried to take her life? What if she’s somewhere and needs help? What if she needs medical attention? And what are you doing? Turning my life upside down?”

Duckworth opened the door for me and I went through it. I was heading for the main lobby, with Duckworth following, making sure, I supposed, that I got out of the building without causing any trouble. I was nearly to the front doors, people going this way and that, when I stopped suddenly, turned, and said to him, “You didn’t even ask anyone to check the witness protection thing, did you?”

Duckworth said nothing.

“You have to look into Jan’s background. I know, at first, I thought maybe Jan had killed herself. That’s the way it was looking to me. But there’s more going on here than I realized. And I don’t even know what the hell it is.”

“I can assure you, Mr. Harwood, that I’ll be following this investigation wherever it goes.”

“I’m telling you,” I said, leaning in close to him, getting right in his face, “I did not kill my wife.”

“Well,” said a familiar voice off to one side.

Duckworth and I both turned to see Stan Reeves, the city hall councilor, standing there. A grin was creeping across his face.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, looking at me. “If it’s not the holier-than-thou David Harwood of the Standard. The things you hear when you’re just dropping by to pay a parking ticket.”

I broke away from Duckworth and headed for the door, glancing back only once to see Stan Reeves talking to the detective.

Dad pulled up to the curb in his blue Crown Victoria about five minutes later. I got in the passenger side and slammed the door.

“Watch it, you’ll shatter the glass,” he said.

“What’s happening at the house?” I asked.

“It’s like your mother told you on the phone. They took it away.”

I had the keys on me, but the police wouldn’t need them to remove the car, or get into it.

“It wasn’t parked illegally,” Dad said.

“That’s not why they towed it,” I said.

Dad looked at me with disappointment. “They repossessed it? Jesus, you didn’t keep up your payments?”

I suppose it was a sign of faith in me that Dad would suspect me of being a deadbeat before he’d think of me as a murderer.

“Dad, the police are looking for evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“I think the police are… I think the police are looking at me as a suspect.”

“A suspect in what?” he asked.

“They think maybe I did something with Jan.”

“Jesus!” he said. “Why the hell would they think that?”

“Dad, take me by my house.”

“She’s your wife, David! What’s wrong with them? You’d never hurt Jan. And why do they think something’s happened to her?” Suddenly it registered. “Oh my God, son, they haven’t found her, have they? Have they found a body?”

“No,” I said. “Cops, they always look at the husband when a wife goes missing.” Was I trying to make Dad feel better, or myself? Maybe my interrogation by Duckworth was just standard operating procedure. Something the cops did as a matter of course.

No. There was more to it than that. The circumstances of Jan’s disappearance were working against me. The fact that only two tickets had been ordered online. The fact that no one-other than Ethan and me-had seen Jan since before the trip up to Lake George. The fact that Jan had not disclosed to anyone else how depressed she’d been feeling the last couple of weeks.

I believed most of those things could be explained. What I couldn’t figure out was why the person working at Ted’s Lakeview General Store was lying. Why would someone tell police Jan had said she didn’t know where she was going, that her husband had brought her up there for some sort of surprise?

That was crazy.

Jan had gone in to buy a couple of drinks. Nothing more, nothing less. How likely was it that she would strike up a conversation with whoever was behind the counter about anything, let alone why she was up there with her husband? I could imagine a short exchange about the weather, but what possible reason could Jan have for telling someone she’d been brought up there for reasons unknown? Given that I’d gone up there to meet a source, it stood to reason that Jan would have said very little, even if asked what she was doing up at Lake George.

If that’s what the proprietor at Ted’s told the police, he or she was lying.

Unless, of course, Detective Duckworth was lying.

Was he making the whole thing up to rattle me? To see how I’d respond? But how did he know in the first place that we’d been up there, that Jan had gone inside to buy drinks? The person she’d bought them from must have contacted the police, after seeing the news reports about Jan.

“What?” Dad said. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “Just get me home.”

I saw the police cars out front as we turned the corner. Jan’s car was no longer in the driveway, so they must have scooped it the same time as they were taking mine from my parents’ house. Dad barely had the car stopped before I was out the door, running across the lawn and up the steps. The front door was open and I could hear people talking inside.

“Hello!” I shouted.

A woman, in uniform, appeared at the top of the stairs. I recognized her as the officer who had looked after Ethan at Five Mountains yesterday while I talked to Duckworth. Campion, her name was.

“Mr. Harwood,” she said.

“I want to see the warrant,” I said.

“Alex!” she called, and a small, slender man who couldn’t have been much more than thirty emerged from the bedroom I shared with Jan. His hair was bristle short, and he was dressed in a sport jacket, white dress shirt, and jeans.

“This is Mr. Harwood,” she told him.

The man came down the stairs but didn’t extend a hand. I supposed those sorts of pleasantries were dispensed with when you were turning a man’s house upside down for evidence that he’d offed his wife. “Detective Alex Simpson,” he said, reaching into his jacket. He handed me a paper folded in thirds. “This is a warrant to search these premises.”

I took the paper from him and glanced at it, unable to see through my anger to the words on the page. “Just tell me what the hell you’re looking for and I’ll show it to you,” I said.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Simpson said.

I bounded up the stairs. Campion was looking through my and Jan’s dresser, rooting through socks and underwear. I saw her linger a moment on a garter belt in one of Jan’s drawers, then keep going. “Is this necessary?”