The thunderstorm has swept on by for the moment, leaving the black street glistening in the moonlight. Amazing how night rain makes everything look shiny and new. There’s no car in the driveway. Maybe the Cutter family keeps their minivan in the garage, out of the weather. I’ve already decided they drive a car a lot like mine. In any case there are lights on inside, glowing like yellow cat eyes, so I know someone is home. Probably watching TV and munching popcorn. It’s ten o’clock, will their son be in bed by now? Not if he’s anything like Tommy, who has to be herded to his room, no matter how exhausted.

The civilized thing would be to locate their phone number and give them a call, rather than ring the bell at this hour. No time for the social niceties, however. I’m on a mission that won’t end until I’ve cleared every name on Shane’s list.

The gate creaks shut behind me as I move up the walk to the breezeway. Making no effort to be stealthy. Look out, folks, crazy woman on the warpath, come to disturb your peaceful evening.

It occurs to me, approaching the door, that despite the benign look of the place, the Cutters may be paranoid types. New London is not without crime, and home invaders sometimes ring the bell. So there’s always the possibility that Mr. Cutter, a military man, don’t forget, will come to the door armed. Who will he see through the peephole, a desperate woman or a killer mom? A lot depends on whether or not they watch the local news and have an eye for faces.

In this case, I’m hoping that darkness will be my friend.

I’m unable to locate a doorbell button, so I raise my fist and knock. At first there is no responding sound from within. If they’re watching TV, the sound is too low to be detected from the breezeway, so my knock should be audible.

Footsteps. Light footsteps approaching, those of a woman or perhaps a child. I step back and wait for the door to open.

Nothing. I can feel a presence on the other side of the door, but nothing happens, so I knock again, louder.

“Mr. Cutter? Mrs. Cutter? Can I have a word, it’s very important.”

My voice sounds strange and threatening even to me. The footsteps retreat. I pound my fist on the door, rattling the frame. “Please! I just want a word!”

The shadows shift, as if a light somewhere in the house has been switched off. Time to go for broke, let it all out and hope for a connection.

“Mr. Cutter! My name is Kate Bickford, I need your help! Please give me a minute of your time! It’s about my son, my missing son!”

Silence.

Cold anger rises. The Cutters must know by now that I’m not a home invader, not a gang of drug addicts come to rip them off. Probably in there dialing 911, reporting an intruder. And although I’m legally released on bond, I’ve no doubt the cops will want to hold me for questioning in the assault on Randall Shane. I can’t let that happen.

Out of the breezeway I go, around the corner into the backyard. Bang my knee on the leg of a swing set obscured by the shadows. Parts of the backyard bright in the moonlight. Ignoring the thump of pain in my knee, I head for the back windows. Note the curtains tightly drawn, but not so tight as to completely obscure light from what I assume to be the kitchen.

I’m banging my fists against the kitchen window and crying, “Help me! Help me, please! It’s about my son! It’s about my boy!” when a white figure emerges from the ground, a white lady in the moonlight, floating toward me.

A thin, terrified voice asks, “Is this about Jesse? Have you come about Jesse?”

“Mrs. Cutter?”

“You said a boy. A missing boy.”

As the shock of her sudden appearance subsides, I realize that she’s come up out of a basement bulkhead, and that of the two of us, she’s by far the most frightened.

“Can we go inside?” I suggest. “It’s kind of spooky out here.”

Really I’m more concerned about alerting the neighbors, getting called in for disturbing the peace or whatever. And I’m worried that this thin, ethereal wisp of a woman could vanish into the night. A woman who approaches me with great caution, reaching out a slender hand to tentatively touch me, as if to make certain I’m real. Dressed in a thin white robe and fluffy house slippers, she has the glistening brown eyes of a frightened doe.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asks with little-girl shyness.

“I can try.”

“Stephen locks the doors,” she confides in a husky voice that barely carries above a whisper. “He thinks I can’t get out. Promise not to tell?”

“I promise.”

She takes my hand and leads me into the dark basement.

I’m no psychiatrist, but I’ve always assumed there’s a fine line between mental disturbance and full-blown insanity. Equating the former with neurotic behavior or compulsive disorders, and the latter with a disconnection from reality. My impression is that Lyla Cutter lives somewhere in between, in a netherworld where reality comes and goes. The way she keeps studying me, as if waiting for my image to dissolve into hallucination. The nervous things she does with her elegant hands, and a peculiar, affected way she has of clearing her throat. Some of the physical manifestations could be from medication, I suppose, but the important thing is that she’s taken me into her home, into her world—and she wants to talk.

“You came about Jesse,” she says in her whispery voice.

“Not exactly.”

We’re sitting in her living room. Lyla perched on the very edge of a beige divan, so frail she looks like she could be shattered by a loud noise. Her big, nervous eyes imploring me—for what exactly, I can’t quite fathom. She has lovely, waist-length hair. Dark blond streaked with silver, carefully combed—a hundred loving strokes before bed, no doubt. The premature graying is incongruous, because her elfin face is that of a child, unlined and porcelain pale. A woman-child from a nineteenth century melodrama, waiting for Heathcliff to return from the barren moors.

“I’m searching for my son,” I tell her. “Tommy Bickford. He’s been abducted.”

She nods knowingly. “You turn around and they’re gone.”

“Is that what happened to your Jesse?”

She shrugs and makes a vague gesture, as if wafting away invisible smoke. “My beautiful son.”

“I believe your son and mine were both adopted from the same agency,” I tell her. “Family Finders.”

“Stephen would know.”

“Is your husband here, Mrs. Cutter?”

Rather than answer, she leads me to the mantel of a small brick fireplace. “There he is,” she says, indicating a framed photograph of a solidly built but otherwise nondescript man in a military uniform. On closer examination he’s almost but not quite handsome. Could be Bruce, or not, it’s impossible to say. “Stephen was an English teacher, did you know that?” she asks.

“I thought he was a soldier.”

“Before the army he taught at the University of Rhode Island for a year. They let him go, that’s when he decided on an army career like his father. He’d done so well in ROTC, scored off the charts. He’s very, very smart, Stephen. Too smart.”

“Why do you say that?”

“What good does it do, being smart? Thinking he’s oh so clever. He must think I’m stupid, locking all the doors but forgetting about the basement.”

“Yes,” I say, just to be agreeable.

“Thinks I’m stupid about Jesse, too. Telling me lies. That’s what put holes in my brain. Dirty lies. Lies turn into little worms, once they get inside your head. They eat your thoughts.”

“What does your husband lie about, Mrs. Cutter?”

“Oh, just everything,” she responds airily.

“What happened to your son?” I ask. “What happened to Jesse?”

“Shh,” she cautions, holding a pale finger to her lips. “You’ll wake him.”

With that she links her hand in mine and guides me to the stairway. A braided rug on each tread, warm light spilling from the upstairs.