“Have the two of you had any arguments lately? Cross words between you?”

“No,” I said. “Look, we should be out looking for her, not sitting around here.”

“There are people looking, Mr. Harwood. You sure you don’t have a picture of her on you? A wallet shot? On your cell phone?”

I rarely used my phone for pictures. “I have some at home.”

“By the time you get home, maybe we’ll have found her,” he said reassuringly. “If not, you have some you could email me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so, in the meantime, let’s put our heads together to see whether there’s a way to narrow down this search.”

I nodded.

Duckworth said, “Let’s go back to my earlier question. The one about whether your wife has had any episodes lately.”

“Yes?”

“What weren’t you telling me there? I could see it in your eyes, you were holding something back.”

“Okay, I was telling you the truth, she’s never wandered off or done anything like that. But there is something… this is very hard for me to even think about, let alone talk about it.”

Duckworth waited.

“Are there any bridges around here?” I asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“Not big ones, like on the interstate, but smaller ones, over creeks or anything?”

“I’m sure there are, Mr. Harwood. Why would you be asking that?”

“The last couple of weeks, my wife… she hasn’t totally been herself.”

“Okay,” he said patiently.

“She’s been feeling… depressed. She’s said some things…”

I felt myself starting to get overwhelmed.

“Mr. Harwood?”

“I just need… a second.” I held my hand tightly over my mouth. I had to hold it together. I took a moment to focus. “The last couple of weeks, she’s been having these thoughts.”

“Thoughts?”

“About… harming herself. Suicidal thoughts. I mean, I don’t think she’s actually tried to do it. Well, she had this bandage on her wrist, but she swears that was just an accident when she was peeling vegetables, and she did go out to this bridge, but-”

“She tried to jump off a bridge?” Duckworth asked straightforwardly.

“She drove out to one, but she didn’t jump. A truck came along.” I felt I was rambling. “Jan’s been feeling like… like everything was too much. She told me the other night she thought Ethan and I would be better off without her.”

“Why do you think she would say something like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s like her brain just short-circuited these last few days. It was yesterday she told me about driving out to that bridge, standing on the railing until the truck showed up.”

“That must have been very hard to hear.”

I nodded. “It was.” I was holding back tears. “Very.”

“Did you suggest that she go talk to someone?”

“I already had. I’d been to see our doctor, Dr. Samuels.” Duckworth seemed to recognize the name and nodded. “I told him about the changes in Jan’s behavior, and he said she should see him. So I talked her into it, and she saw him the other day, but this was before the bridge incident. She says she did that after she went to see the doctor.”

“Was she on any kind of medication?”

“No. In fact, I asked her about that. I was hoping he might prescribe something for her, but she said she didn’t want drugs changing who she was. She said she could deal with this without taking anything.”

“Would you excuse me a moment?” Duckworth said, reaching into his jacket for his cell phone. He slipped outside the door before placing a call. I couldn’t hear everything he said, but I made out the words “creek” and “suicide.”

I just sat there, rubbing my hands together, wanting to get up and leave that room, do something besides wasting my time while-

Duckworth came back in, sat back down.

“Do you think it’s possible that’s what she did?” he asked. “That she may have taken her own life?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope to God not.”

“We’re doing an extensive search of the grounds, of the park itself,” he said. “As well, we’re searching beyond the park, looking at the other cars out there, talking to people.”

“Thank you,” I said. “But I’m confused about one thing.” I shook my head. “I’m confused about a lot of things.”

“What is it?”

“My son. Why did someone run off with my son?”

“I can’t say,” Duckworth said. “It’s a good thing he’s okay.”

I felt a minor wave of relief. It was true. At least Ethan was safe. There was no indication anyone had done anything to him.

“Isn’t it a hell of a coincidence that someone would take off with Ethan at the same time as my wife goes missing?” I asked.

The detective nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said.

Fenwick, the park manager, had reappeared. “Detective?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“We have something you might want to see.”

“What?” I said. I was on my feet. “You’ve found her?” But she wouldn’t look at me, only Duckworth.

“What?” I asked again.

She led Duckworth, with me following, to a cubicle with fabric-covered partitions. The young publicist was sitting at a computer with some grainy black-and-white images on the screen.

She said, “Our people in security were reviewing some images from the gate around the time the Harwoods arrived.”

I looked at the screen. The camera must have been mounted just inside the park, looking at the gate. I recalled that there were half a dozen booths, lined up in a row, where guests bought tickets, or showed the ones they’d bought online. The image on the screen showed one booth, and there, in the crush of people arriving for a day of fun, were Ethan and I.

“It was actually not that tricky,” the young woman at the keyboard said. “They entered the name ‘Harwood’ into the system, which brought up the ticket info, and that showed the time of entry into Five Mountains.”

“Yeah, that’s us,” I said, pointing.

“Where’s your wife?” Duckworth asked me.

I started to point, then said, “She wasn’t with us then. Ethan and I entered the park on our own.”

Duckworth’s eyes seemed to narrow. “Why was that, Mr. Harwood?”

“She forgot the backpack. We were almost to the gate, and then she remembered, and she told us to go on ahead, we’d meet up later by the ice-cream place.”

“And that’s what you did? You and your son came in on your own?”

“That’s right.”

“But that’s not the last time you saw your wife.”

“No, she came in later and joined us.”

Duckworth nodded, then said to the publicist, “Can your people get some pics from the area of the ice-cream stand?”

She half-turned in her chair. “No,” she said. “We don’t have any cameras there at this point. Just on the gates and the rides. Our plan is to put in more cameras, in more locations, but we’re still relatively new, you understand, and we’ve been prioritizing where CCTV is concerned.”

Duckworth didn’t say anything. He studied me for a moment before saying he wanted to check in with his people. He was moving for the door.

“I want to get Ethan,” I said.

“Absolutely.” he said, nodding his head in agreement. Then he went into the hall and closed the door behind him.