It went on from there. Kids yawned, rolled their eyes, and I thought it was a terrible state of affairs when you couldn't be earnest about Abraham Lincoln without seeming like a dweeb. But even as she read her letter, I found my mind wandering to the Bob Newhart routine, the phone conversation between the savvy Madison Avenue type and the president, how he tells Abe maybe he should unwind, take in a play.

I asked a couple of other kids to share, and then tried Jane.

"I'll pa.s.s," she said.

At the end of cla.s.s, on her way out, she dropped a sheet of paper on my desk. It read: "Dear Anyone: This is a letter from one anyone to another anyone, no names required, because n.o.body really knows anybody anyway. Names don't make a h.e.l.l of a lot of difference. The world is made up entirely of strangers. Millions and millions of them. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Sometimes we think we know other people, especially those we supposedly are close to, but if we really knew them, why are we so often surprised by the s.h.i.t they do? Like, parents are always surprised by what their kids will do. They raise them from the time they are babies, spend each and every day with them, think they're these G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king angels, and then one day the cops come to the door and say hey, guess what, parents? Your kid just bashed some other kid's head in with a baseball bat. Or you're the kid, and you think things are pretty f.u.c.king okay, and then one day this guy who's supposed to be your dad says so long, have a nice life. And you think, what the f.u.c.k is this? So years later, your mom ends up living with another guy, and he seems okay, but you think, when's it coming? That's what life is. Life is always asking yourself, when's it coming? Because if it hasn't come for a long, long time, you know you're f.u.c.king due. All the best, Anyone."

I read it a couple of times, and then at the top, with my red pen, I printed an "A."

[image]

I wanted to drop by Pamela's at lunch again to see Cynthia, and as I was walking to my car in the staff parking lot, Lauren Wells was pulling into the empty spot next to mine, steering with one hand, a cell phone pressed up against her head with the other.

I had managed not to run into her the last couple of days, and didn't want to talk to her now, but she was powering her window down and raising her chin at me while she kept talking on the cell, signaling me to hold on. She stopped the car, said, "Hang on a sec" into the phone, then turned to me.

"Hey," she said. "I haven't seen you since you went back to see Paula. Are you going to be on the show again?"

"No," I said.

Her face flashed disappointment. "That's too bad," she said. "It might have helped, right? Did Paula say no?"

"Nothing like that," I said.

"Listen," Lauren said, "can you do me a favor? Just for a second? Can you say hi to my friend?"

"What?"

She held up the cell. "Her name's Rachel. Just say hi to her. Say, 'Hi, Rachel.' She'll die when I tell her you're the one whose wife was on that show."

I opened the door to my car and before I got in said, "Get a life, Lauren."

She stared at me openmouthed, then shouted, loud enough for me to hear through the gla.s.s, "You think you're hot s.h.i.t but you're not!"

[image]

When I got to Pamela's, Cynthia was not there.

"She called in, said the locksmith was coming," Pamela said. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly one. I figured that if the locksmith showed up on time, he'd have been gone by ten, eleven at the latest.

I reached into my pocket for my cell, but Pam offered me the phone on the counter.

"Hi, Pam," Cynthia said when she answered. Caller ID. "I'm so sorry. I'm on my way."

"It's me," I said.

"Oh!"

"I dropped by, figured you'd be here."

"The guy was late, left only a little while ago. I was just heading over."

Pam said to me, "Tell her not to worry, it's quiet. Take the day."

"You hear that?" I said.

"Yeah. Maybe it's just as well. I can't keep my mind on anything. Mr. Abagnall phoned. He wants to see us. He's coming by at four-thirty. Can you be home by then?"

"Of course. What did he say? Has he found out anything?"

Pamela's eyebrows went up.

"He wouldn't say. He said he'd discuss everything with us when he gets here."

"You okay?"

"I feel kind of weird."

"Yeah, me too. He might be telling us that he hasn't found a thing."

"I know."

"We seeing Tess tomorrow?"

"I left a message. Don't be late, okay?"

When I hung up, Pam said, "What's going on?"

"Cynthia hired-we hired someone to look into her family's disappearance." hired someone to look into her family's disappearance."

"Oh," she said. "Well, it's none of my business, but you ask me, it happened so long ago, you're just throwing your money away. No one's ever going to know what happened that night."

"See you later, Pam," I said. "Thanks for the use of the phone."

[image]

"Would you like some coffee?" Cynthia asked as Denton Abagnall came into our house.

"Oh, I'd like that," he said. "I'd like that very much."

He got settled on the couch and Cynthia brought out coffee and cups and sugar and cream on a tray, as well as some chocolate chip cookies, and then she poured coffee into three cups and held the plate of cookies for Abagnall and he took one, and inside our heads both Cynthia and I were screaming: For G.o.d's sake, tell us what you know-we can't stand it another minute! For G.o.d's sake, tell us what you know-we can't stand it another minute! Cynthia glanced down at the tray and said to me, "I only got two spoons, Terry. Could you grab another one?" Cynthia glanced down at the tray and said to me, "I only got two spoons, Terry. Could you grab another one?"

I went back into the kitchen, opened the cutlery drawer for a spoon, and something caught my eye down in that s.p.a.ce between the edge of the Rubbermaid cutlery holder and the wall of the drawer, where all sorts of odds and ends collect, from pencils and pens to those little plastic clips from the ends of bread bags.

A key.

I dug it out. It was the spare house key that normally hung on the hook.

I went back into the living room with the spoon, and sat down as Abagnall got out his notebook. He opened it up, leafed through a few pages, said, "Let me just see what I've got here."

Cynthia and I smiled patiently.

"Okay, here we are," he said. He looked at Cynthia. "Mrs. Archer, what can you tell me about Vince Fleming?"

"Vince Fleming?"

"That's right. He was the boy you were with that night. You and he, you were parked in a car-" He stopped himself. "I'm sorry," he said, looking at Cynthia and then at me and then back at Cynthia again. "Are you comfortable with me talking about this in front of your husband?"

"It's fine," she said.

"You were parked in his car, out at the mall, I believe. That was where your father found you and brought you home."

"Yes."

"I've had a chance to go over the police files on this case, and the producer at that TV show, she showed me a tape of the program-I'm sorry, I never saw it when it originally ran, I don't much care for crime shows-but most of the information they got was from the police. And this Vince Fleming fellow, he has a bit of a checkered history, if you get my drift."

"I'm afraid I didn't really keep in touch with him after that night," Cynthia said.

"He's been in and out of trouble with the law his whole life," Abagnall said. "And his father was no different. Anthony Fleming, he ran a rather significant criminal organization back around that time."

"Like the Mafia?" I said.

"Not quite that extensive. But he had his hand in a significant portion of the illegal drug market between New Haven and Bridgeport. Prost.i.tution, truck hijackings, that kind of thing."

"My G.o.d," Cynthia said. "I had no idea. I mean, I knew Vince was a bit of a bad boy, but I had no idea what his father was involved in. Is his father still alive?"

"No. He was shot in 1992. Some aspiring hoodlums killed him in a deal that went very badly wrong."

Cynthia was shaking her head, unable to believe it all. "Did the police catch them?"

"Didn't have to," Abagnall said. "Anthony Fleming's people took care of them. Ma.s.sacred a houseful of them-those who were responsible, and a few who were not but happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time-in retaliation. They figure Vince Fleming was in charge of that operation, but he was never convicted, never even charged."

Abagnall reached for another cookie. "I really shouldn't," he said. "I know my wife will be making me something nice for dinner."

I spoke up. "But what does all this have to do with Cynthia, and her family?"

"Nothing, exactly," the detective said. "But I'm learning about the kind of person Vince turned out to be, and I'm wondering about the kind of person he might have been, that night when your wife's family disappeared."

"You think he had something to do with it," Cynthia said.

"I simply don't know. But he would have had reason to be angry. Your father had dragged you away from a date with him. That must have been humiliating, not just for you, but for him as well. And if he did have anything to do with your parents' disappearance, and that of your brother, if he..." His voice softened. "If he murdered them, then he had a father with the means, and the experience, to help him cover his tracks."

"But surely the police must have looked into this at the time," I said. "You can't be the first person this has occurred to."

"You're right. The police looked into it. But they never came up with anything concrete. There were only some suspicions. And Vince and his family were each other's alibis. He said he went home after Clayton Bigge took his daughter home."

"It would explain one thing," Cynthia said.

"What's that?" I asked.

Abagnall was smiling. He must have known what Cynthia was going to say, which was, "It would explain why I'm alive."

Abagnall nodded.

"Because he liked me."

"But your brother," I said. "He had nothing against your brother." I turned to Abagnall. "How do you explain that?"

"Todd may simply have been a witness. Someone who was there, who had to be eliminated."

We were all quiet for a moment. Then Cynthia said, "He had a knife."

"Who?" Abagnall asked. "Vince?"

"In the car that night. He was showing it off to me. It was a-what do you call it-one of those knives that springs open."

"A switchblade," Abagnall said.

"That's it," Cynthia said. "I remember...I can remember holding it...." Her voice trailed off, and her eyes were starting to roll up under her eyelids. "I feel faint."

I quickly slipped my arm around her. "What can I get you?"

"I just, I just need to go...freshen up...for a minute," she said, attempting to stand. I waited a moment to see that she was steady on her feet, then watched worriedly as she made her way up the stairs.

Abagnall was watching, too, and when he heard the bathroom door close, he leaned closer to me and said quietly, "What do you make of that?"