We eat the pizza, watch an O’s game, and shoot the breeze for a while before he gets around to the reason for his visit.

“I hate to tell you this, Alex,” he starts, then stops. He’s uncomfortable, tapping his fingers against the top of the pizza box, jiggling his foot. At the look on my face, he pushes his hand toward me. “Don’t worry. It’s not about the boys. There’s nothing new. It’s about… me: I’ve been taken off the case.”

“What?” Shoffler is known as a bulldog, who never lets go, who sacrificed two marriages to work, who spends any spare moment pounding away at his cold cases. “What do you mean? You don’t ever close a case. You’re famous for that. Taken off the case? Why?”

A big sigh. “Here’s the deal. It’s not just you – all my cases are being reassigned. There’s this new thing been in the works ever since 9/11 and it’s finally happening: Metro Area Counter-Terrorism Unit.” His hands fall open, like a book. “Officers from every jurisdiction, plus a coupla Bureau designates, folks from Customs and INS. I’m the guy from Anne Arundel. Look, I’m sorry.”

I say nothing. It’s a real blow.

“Your case has been handed over to a young detective named Muriel Petrich. I may be a bulldog, but she’s as smart as they get. And ambitious. That’s a good combo.”

“Right.”

“Look, I know…” He shakes his head. “You can count on me to keep my hand in, right? And call me anytime, any reason. You get an idea, a lead, whatever, I’ll do what I can. But give Petrich a chance – she’s a tiger.”

“Right.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I feel Kevin and Sean are being abandoned.

I’ve fallen into the habit of sleeping in the family room. Half the time, I crash on the futon, dozing off while still in my clothes, to wake at two or three or four, the TV still playing, the lights still blazing. Tonight, as soon as Shoffler leaves, I clear away the beer bottles and pizza debris, I put all the dishes in the dishwasher, turn it on, wipe the counters. Then I make the rounds of the house, turn off the lights, lock the doors, then strip down to my underwear and get into bed.

This is the white iron bed Liz scrimped and saved for. She ought to have it in Maine. It seems terrible that I can’t picture where she lives or the things that surround her, that I should be in the midst of all the objects she so lovingly accumulated. The bed: I remember nights when one of the boys or even both would come in at night, waking from bad dreams, or lonely or sick, and stand at the foot of the bed and say, “Mom?” Not “Dad,” never “Dad,” I can’t fool myself about this. It was always Liz they turned to because she was always there. I remember weekend mornings when the kids came in to wake us, piling onto the bed, the four of us launching into a brand-new day.

I lie in the dark. Every now and then, a car turns up Ordway and a pair of lights slides up the wall and across the ceiling. I lie in the dark and come to a decision. Going back to work, stumbling through the hours in a preoccupied fog – I can’t do that.

I’m going to find my sons.

When I turn in my resignation, everyone tries to talk me out of quitting. I should give it more time, etc. I guess they think I’ll fall apart entirely without the structure of work.

Big Dave wags his huge head and turns my written resignation over, placing it facedown on his desk. “I’m going to call this a leave of absence,” he says. “Let’s say three months.”

“I can’t promise that,” I tell him. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

When Dave says something he really doesn’t want to say, he lowers his head, furrows his brow, and peers up at you, something like a giant turtle. I prepare for some kind of ugly comment when I see his head go down, but what he says is this: “What are you planning to use for money?”

Dave is familiar enough with my financial situation to realize this is going to be a problem. We’re close enough that he’s been to the house a few times for Liz’s carefully crafted dinner parties. He knows we’re not rolling in it and that the separation has been an additional hardship.

“Look, if you get pressed,” he says, “just ask.” The way he squeezes this offer out tells me it’s causing him pain.

I thank him. “I’ve got a little set aside,” I say.

In fact, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about money. There’s no way I can ask Liz to let me open an equity line on the house, for instance. Technically, according to the terms of our separation agreement, I can’t even take a leave of absence because it diminishes my ability to provide support for her. I have to find a way to search for the boys and keep up the support payments for Liz. I can’t leave her short.

I’ll have to hit up my father for a loan – even though, like everyone else, he’ll think leaving my job is a mistake. I’ve got a couple of friends, Michael and Scott, good for a few grand.

And that’s how I’m going to have to do it. Beg. Borrow. Whatever it takes.

“I still think you’re making a mistake,” Dave says, shaking my hand. I can tell, though, that behind his discomfort, he’s relieved that I’m off his hands.

It starts with Dave, but it doesn’t stop there. Everyone tells me I’m making a mistake. What can I do that hasn’t already been done? What goes unsaid is that most of them think I’m chasing smoke, that my children are dead and that I should face that likelihood – while not abandoning hope, of course.

Miracles do happen. Elizabeth Smart comes up a lot.

Even Shoffler tries to dissuade me. “Alex,” he says, sounding like a disappointed parent. “Don’t do it. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll tell you, it’s nothing but heartbreak. You do this and you’re gonna burn yourself out – emotionally and financially.”

“So what?” That’s the thing. The second I decided to abandon the idea of “work,” I couldn’t believe I waited this long to do it.

The detective sighs. “Most of these cases, if they get solved – which most of them don’t, I’m sorry to say – it’s something coming in from the outside, you know? You can investigate the hell out of it and still get nowhere. And then some guy mutters something to a cell mate, or the perp gets caught in another jurisdiction committing a similar crime and the computer makes the match, and there you go.”

“I know that.”

“I know what you’re thinking – that you’re gonna bring more energy and focus to the search than any professionals could and so you’ll succeed where all the rest of us have failed. You think that just because you care more, you’ll find your boys. What I’m saying-”

“I will find them,” I interrupt. “Or I’ll find out what happened to them. And if it burns up all my resources, if it burns me out – so be it.”

Shoffler lets out a long sigh, but doesn’t speak for a long moment. In the background, I can hear people talking, phones ringing, the clacking of computer keyboards. “Well,” he says finally in a weary voice, “keep in touch.”

Kevin and Sean. Sean and Kevin.

In many ways, I’m much better equipped for the task of searching for them than most parents would be. I’m a reporter: finding out things is what I do.

But before I start asking questions, or seeking advice, the first thing I do is try to think about the why, not that I haven’t thought about it a thousand times. Still…

I go over it all again.

Starting with The Piper. By the time the cops were done, they’d found more than a dozen witnesses who saw them – the boys and The Piper – heading out into the parking lot.

The Piper. I still think of him that way, despite Shoffler’s caution about the costume being a disguise. The problem is that he has no dimension for me. He’s an idea, not a person. He’s not real.