“At his age, a lot of kids gamble too much. A lot more experiment with drugs and become addicted. Suppose he was in debt? How would your father and mother have reacted to that?”

I found myself reluctant to answer. Then I reminded myself that these were questions my mother and father had undoubtedly been asked ten years ago. I wondered if they had been evasive. “My father would have been furious,” I admitted. “He had no use for people who threw away money. My mother has a private income from an inheritance. If Mack needed money he could have gotten it from her, and she wouldn’t have told Dad.”

“All right. Ms. MacKenzie, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. I don’t think we have a crime here, so we can’t treat your brother’s disappearance as a crime. You can’t imagine how many people walk out of their lives every day. They’re stressed. They can’t cope, or even worse, they don’t want to cope anymore. Your brother calls you regularly-”

“Once a year,” I interrupted.

“Which is still regularly. You tell him you’re going to track him down, and he responds immediately. ‘Leave me alone’ is his message to you. I know it sounds rough, but my advice is to make yourself realize that Mack is where he wants to be, and the most connection he wants to have with you and your mother is that one Mother’s Day call. Do the three of you a favor. Respect his wishes.”

He stood up. Clearly our interview was over. Clearly I should not waste the time of the police department any longer. I picked up the note and as I did, reread the message. “UNCLE DEVON, TELL CAROLYN SHE MUST NOT LOOK FOR ME.”

“You’ve been very-honest, Detective Barrott,” I said, substituting the word “honest” for “helpful.” I didn’t think he had been helpful in the least. “I promise I won’t bother you anymore.”

F or twenty years, Gus and Lil Kramer, now in their early seventies, had been the superintendents of a four-story apartment building on West End Avenue that the owner, Derek Olsen, had renovated for student housing. As Olsen explained when he hired them, “Look, college kids, smart or dumb, are basically slobs. They’ll have boxes of pizza piled up in the kitchen. They’ll amass enough empty beer cans to float a battleship. They’ll drop their dirty clothes and wet towels on the floor. We don’t care. They all move out when they graduate.

“My point,” he had continued, “is that I can raise the rent as much as I want, but only as long as the common areas look sharp. I expect you two to keep the lobby and hallways looking like Fifth Avenue digs. I want the heat and the air-conditioning always working, any plumbing problems fixed on the double, the sidewalk swept every day. I want a quick paint job when a space is vacated. When the new arrivals come with their parents to check out the place, I want all of them to be impressed.”

For twenty years the Kramers had faithfully followed Olsen’s instructions, and the building where they worked was known as upscale student housing. All the students who passed through it were fortunate enough to have parents with deep pockets. A number of those parents made separate arrangements for the Kramers to regularly clean the lodgings of their offspring.

The Kramers had celebrated a Mother’s Day brunch at Tavern on the Green with their daughter, Winifred, and her husband, Perry. Unfortunately, the conversation had been almost completely a monologue from Winifred, urging them to quit their jobs and retire to their cottage in Pennsylvania. This was a monologue they’d heard before, one that always ended with the refrain, “Mom and Dad, I hate to think of you two sweeping and mopping and vacuuming after those kids.”

Lil Kramer had long since learned to say, “You may be right, dear. I’ll think about it.”

Over rainbow sherbet, Gus Kramer had minced no words. “When we’re ready to quit, we’ll quit, not before. What would I do with myself all day?”

Late Monday afternoon, as Lil was knitting a sweater for the expected first child of one of the former students, she was thinking about Winifred’s well-meant but irritating advice. Why doesn’t Winifred understand that I love being with these kids? she fumed. For us, it’s almost like having grandchildren. She certainly never gave us any.

The ring of the telephone startled her. Now that Gus was getting a little hard of hearing, he had raised the volume, but it was much too loud. You could wake up the dead with that racket, Lil thought as she hurried to answer it.

As she picked up the receiver, she found herself hoping that it wasn’t Winifred following up on her retirement speech. A moment later, she wished it had been Winifred.

“Hello, this is Carolyn MacKenzie. Is this Mrs. Kramer?”

“Yes.” Lil felt her mouth go dry.

“My brother, Mack, was living in your building when he disappeared ten years ago.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Mrs. Kramer, we heard from Mack the other day. He won’t tell us where he is. You can understand what this is doing to my mother and me. I’m going to try to find him. We have reason to believe that he’s living in the area. May I come and talk with you?”

No, Lil thought. No! But she heard herself answering the only way possible. “Of course, you can. I…we…were very fond of Mack. When do you want to see us?”

“Tomorrow morning?”

Too soon, Lil thought. I need more time. “Tomorrow’s very busy for us.”

“Then Wednesday morning around eleven?”

“Yes, I guess that’s all right.”

Gus came in as she was replacing the receiver. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Carolyn MacKenzie. She’s starting her own investigation into her brother’s disappearance. She’s coming to talk to us Wednesday morning.”

Lil watched as her husband’s broad face reddened, and behind his glasses, his eyes narrowed. In two strides his short, stocky body was in front of her. “Last time, you let the cops see you were nervous, Lil. Don’t let that happen in front of the sister. You hear me? Don’t let it happen this time!”

O n Monday afternoon, Detective Roy Barrott’s shift was up at four P.M. It had been a relatively slow day, and at three o’clock he realized that he had nothing to command his immediate attention. But something was bothering him. Like his tongue roving through his mouth to find the source of a sore spot, his mind began to retrace the day searching for the source of the discomfort.

When he remembered his interview with Carolyn MacKenzie, he knew that he had found it. The look of dismay and contempt he had seen in her eyes when she left him made him feel both ashamed and embarrassed now. She was desperately worried about her brother and had hoped that the note he’d left in the collection basket at church might be a step toward finding him. Although she hadn’t said it, she obviously thought he might be in some kind of trouble.

I brushed her off, Barrott thought. When she left she said she wouldn’t bother me again. That was the word she used, “bother.”

Now, as he leaned back in his desk chair in the crowded squad room, Barrott shut out the sounds of the ringing telephones that surrounded him. Then he shrugged. It wouldn’t kill me to take a look at the file, he decided. If nothing else, to satisfy myself that it’s nothing more than a guy who doesn’t want to be found, a guy who will one day change his mind, and end up on Dr. Phil being reunited with his mother and sister while everybody has a good cry.

Wincing at a touch of arthritis in his knee, he got up, went down to the records department, signed out the MacKenzie file, brought it back to his desk, and opened it. Besides the pile of official reports, and the statements from Charles MacKenzie Jr.’s family and friends, there was a legal-sized envelope filled with pictures. Barrott pulled them out and scattered them on his desk.