Lavin patted him on the arm-a shocking gesture from what Boldt knew of him-waved good-bye into the backseat, and walked back into the house.

Boldt sat motionless, the tingling sensation only now receding, well aware that this was one of those moments in life he would never forget-a minute-long conversation through a car window. An entirely new world unfolding before him: his son, a musical wizard.

He couldn’t wait to tell Liz.

By midnight, Boldt, LaMoia, Bobbie Gaynes, and Daphne Matthews had all made calls, had driven the streets, had checked with Liz’s friends. LaMoia reported that he’d spoken to Danny Foreman, who had professed to know nothing of Liz’s whereabouts. “But the way he said it, Sarge. He may not be lying, but he isn’t solid. Something’s up with him.” Boldt had the same feeling about Foreman, though there wasn’t much to be done about it. Initiating anything like a formal complaint would require a good deal more than suspicion and bad feelings.

The Boldt kitchen served as the command center, with Boldt acting as both dispatcher and babysitter.

Memories of her imposed themselves, an involuntary reaction to her absence: making a vegetable face for the kids, cucumber eyes, orange mouth. Driving Miles and Sarah amid fits of laughter; to school, to church. Arriving to bed playful and daring. A woman who attacked life, sometimes to the detriment of her popularity. A woman unafraid. Tested, by cancer, by faith, by degrees. Her resolute composure inspired him like wind to a sailor. Not long ago she had suggested that should he want to retire from policing and take up his jazz piano full-time, she would support such a decision even if it meant downscaling their lifestyle. A partner, in full.

Matthews and Boldt shared a volatile history as co-workers who had, for a single night, been much more. The lingering sensations of that night had carried forward years into their relationship. With Matthews now testing a live-in arrangement with LaMoia-no two more opposite people existed on earth, in Boldt’s opinion-new lines had been drawn. The teasing and subtle flirtation was gone for now, and that somehow didn’t feel right. Boldt considered her his closest female friend after Liz, a person he could share himself with honestly. There was no end to his appreciation for her and what she gave back to him. But the spark that existed there now flickered instead of glowed.

Matthews stopped by the house, running out of ideas of where to find Liz. A blue Gore-Tex rain jacket, tight jeans, and a crisp white shirt. Her hair damp, but not stringy. A little more fatigue around her eyes than her office hour cosmetics allowed. She stood just inside the kitchen door, having turned down a chair, not wanting to stay. Boldt knew this had more to do with the current state of their friendship-tested by her decision to be with LaMoia-than it did her schedule. They knew each other a little too well.

When she brought up the unmentionable, he thought it so appropriate to come from her. Only she could ask him such a thing.

Daphne asked, “Have you tried her doctor-the hospital?”

“I’m still hoping Foreman knows where she is.”

“Lou? Have you checked? Have you called?”

“Is that the psychologist or the friend asking?”

She fired back, “Is that the detective or the husband asking?” her skill at twisting things around second only to her ability to keep a straight face.

“I have not.”

“Listen, Lou-”

“Don’t!” he said sharply. “She would have told me. That’s not something she would hide.”

“You have to turn cell phones off in hospitals,” she explained, repeating an argument he’d given Liz earlier that same day. Emotional mirrors. “Things drag out and take twice as long as you thought.”

“She and I went over the arrangements for picking up the kids twice. This is not something she would have forgotten to do. It’s not that it’s just unlike her; it’s impossible.”

“Maybe the first place you should have called was her doctor.”

He checked his watch to see that only a few minutes had passed since his last check. He’d never learned how to wait well. He assigned other people to wait in place of him; he ordered people to wait for him; but he did not wait himself.

“Now it’s midnight, and you’re not going to reach her doctor even if you tried. And you know that,” she said, interpreting his expression.

Busted.

“You did this intentionally, didn’t you? Waited like this?”

“She turns her phone off when she’s praying, too,” he said. “She could have gone to a reading room, a library, any place quiet.”

“And you believe that.” Daphne made it a statement, just to sting him.

When a pair of headlights bumped into the driveway at 12:15, and they both identified Liz’s minivan, Daphne offered to leave by the front door, her car parked out on the curb. She said, “I’ll call off the others,” already moving for the front door. “She won’t be thrilled to discover you called out the bloodhounds. I’ll make sure it’s zipped up on our end, and left between the two of you to handle as you want.” She’d reached the front door, talking softly for the benefit of the sleeping kids. Daphne could juggle a dozen balls at once while riding a unicycle.

“I owe you,” he called out.

“Shut up.” She closed the front door quietly behind her.

Boldt was about to charge out back when he thought better of it, schooling himself to show concern, not anger. Waiting up for her was fine-expected even. Attacking her was unforgivable.

Five long minutes passed and Liz had still not appeared. Boldt finally succumbed and headed outside. On the back steps, he stopped abruptly as the garage door pushed open and Liz staggered out.

As drunk as a skid-row bum.

Liz sputtered as she walked unsteadily forward, unable to enunciate, barely able to walk. “If I don’t pee in about five seconds… ” She looked up, took in Boldt as if just now noticing him, and cocked her head, saying, “Oh, shit.” She crushed a hydrangea on her way to hoisting her skirt and running her panties down to her ankles. She squatted right there and urinated in the garden, then rocked forward, falling onto her knees, and vomited.

He’d nursed her through the evils of chemotherapy, the drain of radiation, the indignities brought on by childbirth, but he’d never seen her stone-cold drunk. Inside the back door he got her out of her suit coat and shirt, both messed with vomit, and left them at the top of the stairs for the basement laundry. He undressed her in the bedroom and placed her sitting up in the tub with a warm shower running. She never said a word, resigned to a dull, stupefied embarrassment. She threw up again in the tub, and yet again into the toilet after he made her drink a full glass of water. When the water finally stayed down, he got three more glasses into her as well, shunning the aspirin that would have helped a good deal but went against her convictions.

She passed out in bed as her head hit the pillow. Boldt stayed awake another forty minutes, adrenalized, making sure she slept on her side in case she vomited in her sleep. He drifted off some time past three.

When Boldt awoke to Miles shaking him at 7 A.M., Liz was already gone from the house, having fled the humiliation.

Flipping pancakes, washing faces, changing clothes, making sandwiches, Boldt worked himself into an angry lather. Isolation. Desertion. Betrayal? Was this about David Hayes? Thirty minutes late for work by the time he’d dropped the kids, he felt he deserved an explanation, believed it up to her to call.

He snatched up the receiver with every incoming call, barking into the phone while expecting to hear Liz’s apologetic voice. Over the past twelve hours, burdened by little sleep and challenged by an emotional abyss, Boldt had traveled through concern, worry, anger and into the depths of infuriation. It now spilled out of his pores as an acrid smell and registered in his bloodshot eyes as venom. Quickly moving silhouettes slipped by the glass wall of his office like shadow puppets, his squad desperately avoiding him.