16 when his knuckles brush the ceiling

Shane. That’s the name on the card. Randall Shane. Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t think why.

Soon after giving me the card, Ms. Savalo locks her briefcase and prepares to leave, eager to return the borrowed Honda and, no doubt, to get on with her regular life, whatever that might be. I’ve no idea if she’s married (no ring, but that’s hardly conclusive) or if she has children of her own. She’s given no indication of any desire to share personal information, and I’m not inclined to pry. For all I know, she lives in a file cabinet and pops out when innocent clients are framed for horrible crimes. Which is fine by me, so long as she continues to pop up whenever I need her.

Last thing she does before leaving is promise to arrange a car rental for me. It seems my minivan has been impounded, and will not be released for several days, assuming they don’t find any evidence linking it to Fred Corso’s murder.

“You don’t want to be driving a vehicle with known plates anyhow, not for a few days,” she says. “The media folks aren’t geniuses, but they know how to run plate numbers.”

“I thought there was a law against that.”

“You’re joking, right? That’s good. When bad things happen to good people, you need a sense of humor.”

“So you think I’m a good person?” I ask, really wanting to know. “You believe I’m innocent?”

Ms. Savalo pauses at the door, looking up at me, considering my question. Even with her high heels, our height difference is a crucial inch or two. “It’s not important what I believe about a client’s guilt or innocence,” she says. “But in your case, actually, yes, I do believe you.”

I fumble in the purse that has been returned with my personal effects. “You’ll want a credit card,” I tell her. “For the car.”

She shakes her head. “We’ll take care of it and bill you later. The vehicle will be in someone else’s name, but will be valid for your driver’s license.”

“Oh.” I shut the purse.

“I always use Enterprise,” she says with a wry smile. “Because they deliver.”

“You’ve done this before.”

“Standard procedure for keeping a low profile. Look, Mrs. Bickford, you’ve been through a lot in the last few days. Try to get some sleep and call Randall in the morning.”

I’m at the point of asking her to stay—the prospect of being left alone in this dreary motel is suddenly daunting—but realize that’s silly, not to mention inconsiderate. So I thank her yet again and then lock and chain the door when she’s gone.

I can always call a friend. It’s not as if I don’t have girlfriends galore, right? Okay, maybe not a go-to, call-in-the-middle-of-the-night best friend. But I’m on friendly terms with all the Little League moms—well, most of them—and there’s Connie, who runs the day-to-day operations for the catering business, and who must be totally flipped out by what she’s no doubt heard on the news. At the very least I should give Connie a call, tell her what has happened, my version. But I can’t bring myself to call her for the same reason I can’t call closer friends: because I’m ashamed to tell them what has happened. As if I’ve somehow brought this upon myself. As if part of me wants to take the blame.

Totally absurd. But that’s how it feels. Deeply shameful and humiliating. What it boils right down to is, the only person I really want to talk to is Ted, and he’s no longer available, at least not for a normal two-way conversation. I still tell him things in my head—surely everyone who has lost a loved one does that—but if anything, it only makes me feel more alone. And I’ve never felt so alone in all my life, not even in the empty-bed days that followed Ted’s passing. Of course, I had Tommy to hold and comfort, and that helped. My son who may have a birth mother out there after all, one who wants him back. What would he think of such a thing? Would he want to see her? Or, and here’s a terrifying thought, has he already met her and decided to abandon life in the suburbs with boring old Mom?

The line of thought is so painful I attempt to banish it from my mind. And fail, of course. Thinking that a distraction might help, I turn on the television but find I can’t focus on the images. I see them clearly enough, heads yakking, cars crashing, more heads yakking, but can’t make sense of the story, if there is one.

Switching off the TV, I take a quick shower in the mildewed stall. After toweling my hair more or less dry—I look like a water rat, no doubt, but lack the courage to check the steamy mirror—I lay back on the ruptured bed and close my eyes. And keep seeing my son in his uniform, and the frost-burned face of poor Fred Corso, the two blurring together until I want to scream myself unconscious.

Sleep is out of the question. I have to do something.

Randall Shane. What is it about that name?

One way to find out. These are hardly normal business hours, but recovering abducted children isn’t a normal business, is it? Anyhow, that’s my excuse for dialing the number on the card.

Rings three times. Answering machine with three words, Leave a message. I hang up and then decide to try again, having formulated a message to leave on the machine.

This time, much to my surprise, an actual voice responds.

“Randall Shane. State your business.”

Now I’m really flustered, and therefore speaking too fast, rushing the words. “Um, Mr. Shane? My name is Kate Bickford. My son, Tommy, has been kidnapped. Tomas, really, that’s what he prefers, but I can’t seem to stop calling him Tommy.”

“Who gave you my number?” he responds, making it sound like an accusation.

“My lawyer, Ms. Savalo. Maria Savalo. She, um, said you could help me.”

“Address,” he says abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“Where are you, Mrs. Bickford?”

Lions have kinder growls. He sounds like he wants to come right over and rip the phone out of my hands. I’m trying to make my hand hang up the receiver when he snarls, “Tell me where you are, lady! How am I supposed to help you if I don’t know where you are?”

I search around for something that will give me the motel address, can’t seem to find anything relevant. No pens, notepaper, or matchbooks. Feeling helpless and intimidated by the rudeness in his voice, I manage to describe the motel, its location near the traffic circle.

“I’ll find it,” he says. “What room?”

That much I do know.

“Ninety minutes,” he snaps, and hangs up.

For the next hour or so I contemplate going down to the front desk and asking to change my room. At about the same time, my brain solves the riddle of the familiar name. Shane happened to be one of Ted’s favorite movies. You know, mysterious gunslinger protects a boy and his homesteader family from a hired killer, mostly seen from the boy’s point of view. Alan Ladd and Jack Palance. In the end, having gunned down the really creepy bad guy, Shane rides off into the sunset, mortally wounded perhaps, but not wanting to let the boy see him hurting.

I never connected with the story quite the way Ted did, but I loved to watch him watch it, if only to glimpse the ten-year-old boy inside the man I loved.

I’m not sure what to expect of Randall Shane, but after being a victim of his rude and abrupt phone manner, I’m not expecting a hero in a white hat, that’s for sure.

An hour crawls by. Sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour. No wonder it takes so long to get through an hour. We pass ninety minutes and head toward two hours. The son of a bitch has stood me up. How dare he?