Even this depresses me. The pizza has been in the freezer since before my bust-up with Liz, since before my life disintegrated. It was probably bought as dinner for the boys. I have a moment during which I elevate the pizza to some kind of talismanic status. I find I’m reluctant to throw it away. I shake my head, upend the milk in the sink, and toss everything else.

I’ve been eating out most of the time. That’s got to stop; it’s too expensive. I tell myself I’ll go shopping tomorrow, get some TV dinners. And some healthy stuff. Apples. O.J.

For the first time since the boys were kidnapped, I pull on my running shoes and head out into the humid Washington night. I’m way out of shape, but running is a relief. I enjoy the sensation of moving, of the sweat collecting on me, of the labored rhythm of my breathing. I like the way the cars rumble past, the haloed lights in the mist, and how my attention focuses on basic issues: where to put my feet, how to angle my run to pass pedestrians most efficiently, how to time street crossings in such a way that I don’t have to break stride.

I go out for about fifteen minutes and then head back. I stop at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Porter and Connecticut, breathing hard, sweat pouring off me as I dig out the five-dollar bill from the key pocket of my shorts. It, too, is damp with sweat.

The clerk is the one Jack started calling Slo-Mo – as in “Oh, no, it’s Slo-Mo.” She’s a shy, thin woman, little more than a girl, with beautiful features. She does everything at such an exasperatingly deliberate pace that customers who know her have been known to turn around if they see more than one person in line.

“Two Jamaican beef patties,” I tell the clerk. These will be dinner: tasty, if greasy, meat pastries.

The clerk looks at me with enormous brown eyes and then looks down at her hands.

“You the man who children is gone,” she says.

“That’s right.”

“My uncle – he know these thing from the other world.” She presses one finger to her forehead. “He say your boys all right.”

“Your uncle? What other world? Does he know where the boys are?”

“No, no.” Her fingers twist together and she looks to the side, eyes cast down. “It’s – what you say? – spirits world. He say your boys not there, still in this world. I tell him that you live near this shop, that you come in here many day. My uncle say this – your boys all right. I think myself you like to know.” She fashions her facial expression into a shy smile that is also a kind of shrug.

“Thank you.” And I mean it. I’ll take whatever glimmer of light I can find in the world. “Thank you for telling me.”

“You welcome.” She pauses. “Spicy or plain?”

I toss the change into a big glass jar set out to collect funds for a child named Belinda, who has leukemia. Another shot in the dark – like the websites, like the milk cartons, like all of it. When it comes to children, you can’t go with percentages or probabilities; you do what you can, whatever you can.

“Thank you for telling me what your uncle said.” My gratitude is heartfelt; it’s amazing how this unsolicited bit of encouragement lifts my heart.

The Madonna of the cash register rewards me with a beatific smile.

“Hang on,” Shoffler says, “we’re just breaking up the huddle here.” I hear voices, the chime of elevators, Shoffler exchanging parting comments with someone. Then he’s back. “So what’s up?”

“The Sandling twins.”

If I didn’t know the detective so well, maybe I wouldn’t notice, but I catch the hesitation and the sudden holdback in his voice. “So – what about them?”

“The more I read the more it sounds like Kevin and Sean. The parallels are compelling. And I can’t understand why you and Judy Jones dismissed the case as irrelevant. Pretty much blew it off.”

Once again, there’s that hitch in his voice, a guarded quality. “We checked into it, Alex. We did. Look – that kidnapping took place a whole continent away. You got the ages of the boys and the fact they’re twins. That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Apart from that, there didn’t seem to be a connection.” Shoffler clears his throat. “The mother, you know – she wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community.”

“Look, Ray – I’ve read everything I can find about the case. And far as I can tell, Emma Sandling may not have been Mother Teresa but there’s no evidence she had anything to do with kidnapping her children.”

“That’s your opinion. Maybe there’s stuff you don’t know about.”

“Must be. Because as far as I can tell there wasn’t exactly a full court press to hunt down the kidnapper once the kids popped up in Eureka.”

“You’re wrong,” Shoffler says. “There was an investigation. A thorough one, too. But the mother wasn’t exactly helpful.”

“You mean-”

“I mean Emma Sandling was not cooperative. She said it was to protect the boys, but not everybody bought that. Look – the kids are safe and sound; it’s a happy ending. For a few days, that was big news, a miracle. But after? There’s no perpetrator, no charges, no story, no trial. All you got is the boys themselves and a police investigation that goes nowhere. Why? Because for whatever reason – whether she’s involved somehow or she genuinely wants to protect her kids – Mommy won’t talk and she won’t let her kids talk.”

“She could have made a buck or two out of the media, that’s for sure.”

“True, and that could mean she’s on the level. Or maybe it’s just damage control. The more the thing gets looked at, the more her part in it is exposed to the light of day.”

“If there was a part.”

“Okay, if there was a part. But the consensus out there was that she had a hand in it, that it was some kind of shakedown that got screwed up. After which, Mother Sandling made herself scarce.”

“I don’t think so.”

Shoffler says nothing for a moment. Then he says: “Why not?”

“Because the more I look at it, the more I get this creepy feeling that whoever took the Sandling kids is the same guy who took mine. They got away, so he took my kids to replace them.”

“Hunh.” A pause. “A ‘creepy feeling’?”

“It’s the same pattern. Come on, Shoff.”

“There’s gotta be a boatload of twins on the West Coast. Why would this guy come all the way across the country?”

“I don’t know, but the point is I’m looking at this Sandling thing and it sounds so much like my boys. I figure I’ll take a closer look. But I can’t, because for one thing, Emma Sandling? She’s gone; she might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.”

“You tried to find her, hunh?”

“I did. And finding people is one of my job skills. If you’re a reporter, you’ve gotta have sources and you have to find them whether they want to be found or not. But I can’t find Emma Sandling.”

“Hunh.”

“And while I’m trying to track her down, I’m also talking to the cops out there in Oregon. Well, no, that’s not accurate. I’m talking at the cops out there in Oregon.”

“I don’t-”

“I call both jurisdictions – Corvallis, where the boys went missing, and Eureka, where they stumbled out of that trailer. Eureka – they tell what they can, which is not much. But Corvallis? I get nothing, Ray. A stone wall. The cops flat out won’t talk to me. They give me some bullshit about ‘privacy issues.’”

“So this is why you called me.” He lets out a sigh.

“Yeah. I thought you might be able to talk to them out there. Let them know I’m not gonna be a problem.”

There’s a long moment before he answers. “I’m sorry, Alex. I can’t help you. I wish I could, but my hands are tied.”

“Your hands are tied? We’re talking about my sons. Ray, you can’t-”

But the detective is no longer on the line.