The boy jerks his head away, turns it to the wall, defiant.

“I’m going away for a while. Ten, fifteen minutes. Then I’ll be back with warm water and soap. Clean you up. Check you out. Fix what needs fixing.”

“Fuck you,” says the boy, speaking to the wall.

“That guy you hit with the drawer? You fucked him up good. He deserved it. You know why he deserved it? Because he’s a dumb asshole.”

“You’re an asshole,” the boy says. Turns to look at him, meeting his eyes. Showing his courage, his strength, his defiance.

“Yes,” Cutter agrees. “But I’m on your side. And that’s a good thing.”

27 sine pari

Shane’s place is not what I expected. Having envisioned an unkempt bachelor pad inhabited by a man who never sleeps, complete with duct-taped recliner, big-screen TV and empty refrigerator. There were sure to be stacks of empty pizza boxes, the moldy walls would be decorated with old swimsuit calendars, and the floor littered with unopened junk mail.

So much for women’s intuition.

To my surprise, the modest, one-story ranch in New Rochelle feels like an actual home. Elegant but comfortable-looking furniture, accented with a hint of oiled teak. Glowing cherry floors, recently refinished, with several lovely oriental rugs that could be collectable. No swimsuit calendars on the off-white walls; instead, there are museum-quality reproductions of watercolors by Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, each piece illuminated by soft cove lighting. Custom-made bookcases line most of the walls, and the books themselves look not only well read, but well dusted.

My first impression is that great care has been taken to preserve order in this place. Second impression is that with the exception of the coffeemaker, the kitchen has a seldom-used look to it. For all his domestic talents, evident in the home he has created, Randall Shane spends very little time preparing food. Something in me wants to spill flour on the neatly trimmed countertops, which have never, from the look of them, been appropriately christened.

Obviously there are no women in Shane’s life, or if there are, none that cook.

We’ve come here to view the promised surveillance tape, since my motel room lacks a VCR, and because Shane’s place, unlike Ms. Savalo’s Westport waterfront condo, is thus far free from media intrusion.

“Be it ever so humble,” says Shane as we enter. “Coffee?”

“Not for me,” says Savalo. “I’m high on life.”

“I’ve got ‘SleepyTime Tea’ if you can’t hack the caffeine.”

The attorney shakes her head, bemused, apparently, by this domestic version of Shane.

“Mrs. Bickford?”

“Coffee, please.”

Mostly I want to urge him to hurry up and show us the tape, see if there’s anything on it that will connect us to finding my son. But Shane is acting purposeful and deliberate and it’s clear he’ll get to the viewing in his own time, and not before playing gracious host. I also get the impression he rarely has visitors and isn’t quite sure how to behave, which may explain his oddly formal manner. The man has gray in his beard, and the years of sleep disorder show in his watery blue eyes, but at home he has the energetic mannerisms of a much younger man.

Savalo and I glance at each other while our host, humming contentedly to himself, brews a pot of coffee. The petite attorney rolls her eyes, makes a point of looking at her watch.

“I saw that,” says Shane. “Someday your eyes are going to get stuck. Didn’t your mother warn you about that?”

“Mom-warnings were mostly about men. Guys with clean houses and Mr. Coffee machines were not to be trusted.”

“You’d rather I lived in a dump?” asks Shane, sounding amused.

“Just repeating what Mom said. But hey, she’s on her third husband, what does she know?”

Handing me a mug of black coffee, Shane leads us to a room he calls “the workshop.” Looks to me like an artist’s studio, and at least part of it serves as exactly that, complete with easel and a small, wheeled table loaded with brushes and tubes of watercolors. A piece of muslin is draped over the easel, hiding whatever it is he’s working on.

“Sunday painter,” he says dismissively. “I’m terrible.”

Somehow I doubt that—whatever he is, Randall Shane is not a hobbyist—but I don’t do the polite thing and beg him to show us an example of his work because I’m focused on seeing the surveillance tape.

About half of the room is taken up by a long, sturdily built bench filled with computer gear. There are several impressive-looking hard-drive stacks, a couple of monitors, VHS and DVD recorders and players, and black boxes that may or may not be cable and satellite modems. My son, Tommy, would know exactly what they are, but my own computer expertise is pretty much limited to e-mail and online shopping. The wall above the bench is festooned with shelves and wire baskets holding various techie gadgets, whose functions can’t even be guessed by the likes of me.

Shane has already alluded to utilizing the internet for research, and for hunting down suspects. I recall him saying that as an FBI agent his expertise had to do with software—was it fingerprint-identification software?—and this bench is obviously where he does most of his in-house work.

“Welcome to Geek City,” he says. “Who wants the chair?”

There’s only one chair at the bench, so rather than fight over it we all opt to stand. Shane slips a tape into a player, keys a control panel and switches on a flat-screen monitor.

“First tape is taken from inside the parking garage,” he tells us.

The image on the screen is in black and white but very sharply focused on the entrance to the garage, from an angle inside the structure. Beyond the gate, the image brightens and flattens out into white static, as if overwhelmed by daylight.

“Here he comes,” Shane announces in a hushed voice.

Sure enough, a silhouetted figure emerges from the wash of daylight and then rapidly comes into focus as he advances in the direction of the camera. A man wearing a baseball cap, a long-sleeved shirt, jeans and running shoes. He seems to be looking down at his feet as he walks, so that the visor of the cap completely obscures his face. He’s carrying something in his right hand, but I can’t make out what, exactly. Not a gun, though. An object small enough to be almost obscured by his hand.

Just as the figure is about to pass directly under the surveillance camera, something happens and the image is suddenly blurred.

“What did he do?” I want to know.

“Sprayed the lens with some sort of oil. Probably WD-40, available in palm-size cans in any hardware store.”

“Why oil and not paint?” I want to know. “In the movies the bank robbers always spray the surveillance cameras with paint.”

Shane nods. “Paint works. But oil is better if there’s a chance that someone is checking the monitors from a remote location. The lens just looks like it’s out of focus. No reason to assume foul play.”

As we watch, the now-blurred figure walks back out toward the entrance and is swallowed up by the wash of light and static.

“Bruce?” Shane asks me.

I nod. “That’s the man I saw in the garage. That’s what seemed familiar, the way he walks. Plus, he was dressed the same way. You can’t really tell on the tape, but he moves like a very powerful, confident man. An athlete. Maybe a soldier. Someone who’s used to being in charge.”

Shane nods with satisfaction. “That’s what I’m picking up, too. Military bearing. Even with his head down, he’s keeping his shoulders back.”