“Not at all,” Fred says, in a remote voice. “Glad to be of assistance.”

Christiansen finally gets through to Shoffler just before I turn off Connecticut onto Ordway. They’re still talking when I pull into the driveway. And then I’m out of the car, running toward the house.

I yank open the screen door, turn the dead bolt, and then I’m inside, charging from room to room at warp speed, yelling the boys’ names, throwing open doors, flipping on lights, my eyes practically strip-searching the rooms. I check their bedroom last. Some demented optimist inside me continues to hold out hope that somehow I’ll find them here, asleep in their beds.

But their room is deserted. A void.

With Christiansen trailing behind, I check the attic, then the basement, then make another round of the rooms, this time opening closet doors, looking under the beds, behind furniture, anywhere, everywhere that might conceal a little boy. Again I finish in their bedroom, drifting toward the front window.

Yasmin Siegel is not just a night owl; she claims to sleep only two or three hours a night. She’s also one of those women who seems to know everything that happens in a neighborhood. Maybe she saw something – a car, the boys, whoever brought them to the house – something. She’s awake, too. I can see the bluish glow of the television through the windows of the Siegels’ family room.

I’m on my way out of the bedroom, heading for the phone in my study to call Yasmin, when my eyes catch on something I never noticed before.

It’s some kind of little rabbit, perched on the double dresser, a low-slung many-drawered thing Liz got from Ikea. It’s on Sean’s side, which, unlike Kevin’s half, is almost free of clutter – or I never would have noticed it. Up close, I see that it’s origami, the little figure maybe four inches tall, folded out of brown paper. I don’t know anything about origami, but this is not some simple cartoonlike rendition of an animal. It’s sleek and sophisticated, more like a piece of miniature sculpture.

And when I pick it up, it feels weird. It’s not made out of paper, but some kind of animal’s skin. Which spooks me, somehow.

Was this always here? I don’t think so. I would have noticed it.

But maybe not, I think, setting the little figure back on the dresser. After all, did I notice the boys’ obsession with knights? No. And Liz was always taking them to workshops… of every kind imaginable. Although… there’s no way Kevin or Sean made this thing. Their mother, maybe.

The thought of Liz hits me like wind shear.

Ohmigod. I’ve gotta call her…

She gets in late the next morning, stumbling out of the secure area at National Airport, her good looks strained by tears. After a stiff embrace, I take her elbow, pivot her to the left, and introduce her to Christiansen.

Christiansen is here as a courtesy, to – as Shoffler put it – “help escort Mrs. Callahan to your house.”

I told the detective to forget it when he first put forward this idea, but Shoffler talked me around, noting that uniformed policemen can really help get you through a media crowd. “A guy in uniform can be all business; hell, he can even be rude to reporters – and it just looks like he’s doing his job. The squad car, the uniform – they’ll help.”

“Oh,” Liz says, her eyes widening at the sight of the policeman. She throws me a wild glance, and I know what she’s thinking – even though it makes no sense, even though I would be the one to tell her. She thinks Christiansen is here in some official capacity, to deliver bad news.

“Ma’am,” he mutters, tilting forward in a kind of bow.

She waits, frozen, and when it becomes clear that Christiansen is not going to say anything else, she collapses into me, her face hot and damp against my shoulder. “Oh, Alex,” she says. “Alex?”

I’m more or less holding her up as the crowd streams around us. We just stand there, Liz weeping against my shoulder. I’m not sure what to do. But then she steps back, bats at her face to dry her tears, and starts off toward the baggage claim area, moving so fast I almost have to run to keep up. We stand together, watching the suitcases tumble down the chute toward the conveyor belt.

I open my mouth to say something, but it falls closed of its own weight. What can I say? How was your flight? Sorry I lost our sons?

The telephone call to tell her what had happened was a nightmare, but this – this is so much worse. Instead of Liz arriving to the reunion I’ve been imagining, the jumping and excited boys and their beaming please-come-back-to-me-I’ve-changed father, this is how the love of my life reenters my world. She stands not twelve inches from me, enclosed within a force field of grief and anger. Of course she was scrupulous on the telephone, as I struggled to explain what happened. She did everything she could to reassure me it wasn’t my fault, that I shouldn’t think that way, that she doesn’t blame me, of course she doesn’t blame me.

But of course it’s a lie. How can she not blame me? It’s impossible.

“What happened to your face?” she asks in a neutral tone. “You look-”

“The search,” I tell her with a shrug. “The woods.”

“That’s mine,” she says, in a tight little voice. Her hand jerks up and points toward a green suitcase. The gesture is almost mechanical, as if she’s a wind-up toy.

I don’t recognize the suitcase. The sight of it – bright lime green with leather trim – makes me sad on a number of levels. It’s one more thing acquired during our separation – the blouse she’s wearing, the boys’ new backpacks, and so on – and this accumulation of objects seems to emphasize the divergence of our lives. And then there’s the stylish, buoyant look of the suitcase, which speaks of an alternate reality, Liz off for a jaunt to someplace chic.

Instead of here with me in this nightmare.

“It has wheels,” she says, once I’ve fought through the throng and wrestled the suitcase off the belt. I carry it anyway, and if hefting its weight is not exactly a pleasure, it offers – like meeting the plane – a respite from my sense of uselessness.

Already, it’s clear that as the machinery of disaster gains momentum, I am more and more peripheral to the effort. I’ve given my account of what happened a half dozen times now, tracked down the best and most recent photographs of the boys and given consent for the broadcast and distribution of their images. I’ve supplied detailed descriptions of their clothing. I’ve called all the neighbors to see if anyone spotted anything at the house – a car, the boys, lights, anything. (Yasmin Siegel confessed that she’d fallen asleep watching The Sopranos.) I’ve given consents: the phone may be tapped, phone records accessed, computer examined by experts, house searched.

In fact, I’m irritated that they haven’t searched the house yet. I don’t understand what’s taking so long, as I complained to Shoffler over the phone right before I left for the airport. “Kevin was here,” I told the detective. “He called from this telephone. He didn’t get here on his own, that’s for sure – which means that the kidnapper was here. You should be crawling all over this place.”

Shoffler told me to relax. When there were jurisdictional issues – they had to liaise with D.C. Metro – it took a little while to get the wheels rolling.

I’ve surrendered my cell phone to a so-called communications technician dispatched by Shoffler. A woman named Natalie – the two of us went through the call lists, so I could identify the numbers, both of incoming and outgoing calls. I recognized all of the numbers. Krista, my assistant at the station. Liz. Cass Carter, whose son is in Kev and Sean’s car pool to St. Albans day camp. Dave Whitestone, my producer. My folks. And so on. Natalie affixed an evidence number to my Nokia and gave me a receipt for it. She also provided a clone – a phone with the same number – in case a repeat call comes in from Kevin or Sean. Or from someone with a ransom demand.