“Elvis is in the building,” the woman announced to her colleagues, a little punch-drunk from the hours of tedious viewing.

Boldt was telephoned and awakened at home.

Thirty minutes later, Boldt found himself waiting for Danny Foreman outside the First Hill brownstone belonging to one Thedona Rembrandt Wilson. He’d left two messages for Foreman, as well as sending a page, and felt confident that rain or shine, Danny Foreman would meet him there, given the gravity of the find. He tried Foreman’s cell phone one last time and finally elected to make the interview alone. He’d left Liz at home, with the kids, but not before placing a team of uniformed patrol officers, one on foot, one in the cruiser, to watch his own house. Boldt remained convinced Hayes intended to abduct her. He wasn’t about to leave her unwatched and unguarded.

Thedona Wilson, an African American woman with good bone structure and large hands, required Boldt not only to show his identification but to pass his credentials through her chained front door, allowing her to make a call downtown. By the time she admitted Boldt and showed him into the living room, she was dressed in a white satin robe tied tightly around the waist and was sipping herbal tea. She offered nothing to Boldt, viewing him with skepticism, until Boldt placed some photocopied images in front of her and happened to mention that Elizabeth Boldt was his wife. At that point she did, in fact, offer Boldt tea or coffee, but he declined, too edgy and high-strung, interested only in making some progress on the case.

“These images, captured on security video, show this man, the one in the hat, at your desk, do they not?”

“Yes, sir, they do.”

“Do you remember this man?”

“I’m a customer service representative, Mr. Boldt. I’m supposed to remember faces, make conversation, and cross-sell. This man here was in his late twenties, early thirties. Polite. Handsome. Soft-spoken.”

Boldt shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to hear Hayes described in any of these ways. “You leave your desk at one point. Then he leaves with you… ” Boldt shuffled the freeze-frame images.

“To his safe-deposit box.”

“Safe deposit,” Boldt echoed, yanking his notebook from his blazer’s inside pocket.

“That’s all I know. Don’t remember the box number. In the two hundreds I think-two-oh-six? Two-oh-eight? Or is that an area code?” She tugged her robe to ensure it stayed tightly closed at her chest. “It’ll be in the log.”

“A name?”

“Brindle? Binder?” She searched her memory.

Boldt felt all the blood settle out of him, like someone had pulled a cork. “Brimmer,” Boldt said.

She snapped her long fingers, cracking the air. “Brimmer! First initial, E. A funny name, Everest? Everett?”

“E. Brimmer,” Boldt said, this time dryly. “Not Hayes? You’re sure it was Brimmer?”

“He doesn’t gain access without signing in, without me comparing that signature card, and I’m telling you, it was Brimmer for sure.”

The signature card would allow an expert to compare handwriting. If it came back Hayes, as he was certain it would, then it would serve as probable cause for them to obtain a warrant and to drill the safe-deposit box. Boldt assumed this effort would prove fruitless: He suspected Hayes had kept the “cloaking” software-which he’d used to keep the seventeen million hidden in WestCorp’s system-in the safe-deposit box. He had it now, and with it, the ability to recover the money. Given use of the pseudonym, Brimmer, bank officers had failed to identify the box as registered to Hayes.

Boldt told Ms. Wilson he’d meet her at the bank at 8 A.M., Monday, and that together they would examine the safe-deposit logbook. An exercise in futility, he knew.

“That name, Brimmer,” she said. “Why the long face, Lieutenant?”

“It’s nothing,” Boldt answered, lying well. In fact, it was Liz’s maiden name: Elizabeth Brimmer. E. Brimmer, a false identity Hayes had established, no doubt, years ago while still a bank employee. While still infatuated. In love? Boldt wondered. That name, that safe-deposit box, connected Hayes to Liz, and Liz to the past, and Boldt’s memory to that shared past as well.

Suddenly, he felt sick to his stomach.

SEVEN

“THE STRUGGLE IS NOT IN solving this case,” Boldt told Liz, who was still half asleep. “Because to tell the truth, I don’t care about the embezzlement, this seventeen million dollars. The struggle is to protect you and to save our marriage, it’s retaining or maintaining respect for each other, making it out the other side in one piece.”

“I didn’t know he’d used my maiden name.”

“It borders on worship, that kind of thing. I’m thinking he probably had a shrine to you in his jail cell.”

“Stop it.”

“I’m serious.”

“What if he did? So what? You don’t see any shrine on this end, do you?”

“I’m telling you, the battle I face right now is forgiveness. Finding forgiveness. That and protecting you. This money? I could care less!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling up the bedcovers, experiencing a chill.

“I woke you up. It was stupid of me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she called out, as he crossed the bedroom to the bathroom door. “And don’t walk away from me.”

He turned, one foot, half of him, into the sanctuary of excusable privacy.

“You have every right to be upset,” she said.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t manipulate me like that.”

“I am not manipulating you. I mean every word of that.”

“It doesn’t help things.”

“It’s honesty. It’s what I’m thinking. It has to help.”

“I’m just telling you: I don’t care about the money.”

“Neither do I.”

“I care about you.”

“That’s important to me. To us.”

“I hate the images I have in my head. The two of you together. I’m resentful I even have them.”

“Understandable.”

“Don’t patronize,” he cautioned.

“Is there a script I’m supposed to follow?” she asked. “I’m saying what comes to my head, Lou. What comes to my heart. Don’t condition that. Let me speak.”

“So speak.”

“You’re mad at me,” she said. “I accept that.”

“There you go again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she fired back bitterly. “Are you? Is that what this is about? You’re the only one who’s walked out on this marriage, Lou. I didn’t.”

“This again?”

“Yes, I suppose so: this again. And again, and again. And I hate it as much as you do-for the record. I’d like nothing more than to rewind and erase the tape, forget it ever happened. But we can’t, right? We’re stuck with it. We’re both going to have to live with it, maybe forever. I appreciate your efforts at forgiveness, but you don’t just jump there all at once. It’s a process, not a destination.”

His mouth opened twice, and he even raised his hand as if about to speak. But then he pounded a fist against the doorjamb, his jaw muscles knotted. He choked out, “I don’t want this.”

“Well, I’ve got news for you: Neither do I.”

“I’m going to go sleep with Miles.”

“All I’m going to say is that if you start that kind of thing, it’s hard to undo it.”

“So what do you want from me?” he asked, frustrated.

She considered this deeply and finally waited for eye contact before delivering her response. “Time,” she said.

Boldt slept in their shared bed that night, and through the weekend, though fitfully, if at all. Mercifully, work saved him from his insomnia in the wee hours of Monday morning.

The alert came from his pager at a few minutes before four. The code was for an assault, the address not one he recognized. But he knew damn well that even the dumbest dispatcher would not page a lieutenant unless the reported crime was of incredible importance to either the department as a whole or the lieutenant personally. Sergeants and their squads kept on-call hours, but not lieutenants.