“Locked up?”

Mom actually laughed. “He and your father are in the basement talking about building a train set.”

“Okay. I’m going to go by the house on the way. Then I’ll come and pick up Ethan.”

“I love you,” Mom said.

“Love you, too.”

The interstate’s a pretty good place to let your mind wander. You can put your car on cruise, and your brain as well, if you want. But my thoughts were all over the place. And they all circled around one thing.

Why did my wife have the name and birth certificate of a child who had died years ago at the age of five?

It was more than some crazy coincidence. This wasn’t a case of two people having the same name by chance. Jan’s birth certificate details had led me to the Richlers’ front door.

I thought about the things I’d speculated to Gretchen. That maybe Jan had been required to take on a new identity.

I tried to work it out. Jan Richler, the Jan Richler I’d married, the woman I’d been with for six years, the woman I’d had a child with, was not really Jan Richler.

It was hardly a secret that if you could find the name of someone who’d died at a young age, there was a good chance you could build a new identity with it. I’d worked in the news business long enough to learn how it could be done. You applied for a new copy of the deceased’s birth certificate, since birth and death certificates were often not cross-referenced, certainly not several decades ago. With that, you acquired other forms of identification. A Social Security number. A library card. A driver’s license.

It wasn’t impossible for someone to become someone else. My wife had become Jan Richler, and when she met and married me, Jan Harwood.

But before that, she had to have been someone else.

And what was the most likely reason for someone to shed a past life and start up a new one?

Two words came to mind immediately: Witness protection.

“Jesus Christ,” I said aloud in the empty car.

Maybe that was it. Jan had witnessed something, testified in some court case. Against whom? The mob? Was it ever anyone but the mob? Bikers, maybe? It had to be someone, or some organization, with the resources to track her down and exact revenge if they managed to do it.

If that was the case, the authorities would have had to create a new identity for her.

It was the kind of secret she might feel she could never tell me. Maybe she was worried that if I knew, it would expose me-and more important, Ethan-to risks we couldn’t even imagine.

No wonder she’d hidden her birth certificate. The last thing she wanted me to do was nose around and blow her cover. Not because of what it would mean to her, but because of what it might mean to us, as a family.

And if she was a protected witness, relegated to living out a new life in some new location, what, if anything, did it have to do with her disappearance?

Had someone figured out where she was? Did she believe she was about to be discovered? Did she run to save herself?

But if she did, why couldn’t she have found a way to tell me something?

Anything?

And if Jan’s life was in danger, was I doing the right thing in trying to find her? Would I end up leading the person or persons who wanted to do her harm right to her?

Assuming, of course, that any of my theories about Jan being in the witness protection program were anything other than total horseshit.

I’d have to tell Barry Duckworth what I’d learned. He’d no doubt have connections, people he could talk to who might be able to reveal whether Jan-under another name-had ever been a star witness in an important trial. Maybe-

My phone rang. I’d left it on the seat next to me so I could grab it quickly.

“Yeah?”

“Dave?”

“Yes.”

“David, Jesus, you’re the biggest story on the news and you don’t let your own goddamn paper know about it?”

Brian Donnelly, the city editor.

“Brian,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“I-90. I’m coming back from Rochester.”

“Man, this is terrible,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Jan’s been gone since about-”

“I mean, shit, by the time the cops issued their release, the paper had already gone to bed, so TV and radio have it, but we haven’t got anything in the edition, and it’s about one of our own people! Madeline’s totally pissed. What the hell? You couldn’t call us with this?”

“Sorry, Brian,” I deadpanned. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Look, I want to put Samantha on the line, she can get some quotes from you for the main story, but I want to know whether you could write a first-person. ‘Mystery Hits Close to Home for Standard Reporter.’ That kind of thing. I don’t mean to come across as an asshole or anything, but-”

“No worries there,” I said.

“But a first-person perspective would be really good. We haven’t gotten much from the cops about what actually happened, and you could give us some of that, and you know, this kind of play, it might help you find… uh, find…”

“Jan,” I said.

“Exactly. So if you-”

I flipped the phone shut and tossed it back over on the passenger seat. A few seconds later it rang again. I flipped it open and put it to my ear.

“Dave? It’s Samantha here.”

“Hi, Sam.”

“I just heard what Brian said to you. My God, I am so sorry. He’s the King of Doucheland. I can’t believe he said those things.”

“Yeah, he’s something.”

“Is Jan still missing?”

“Yes.”

“Can you talk about it? Is there anything you can say, for the record?”

“Just… that I’m hoping she’ll be home soon.”

“The cops are being real weird about it, I have to tell you,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They’re just not saying much. Duckworth’s the head of the investigation. You know him?”

“Sam.”

“Oh yeah, stupid question. He’s releasing very few details, although we learned that something happened at Five Mountains, right?”

“Sam, I’m on the way home. I’m going to see Duckworth when I get back, and maybe then we’ll have a better idea what we’re dealing with. I honestly hadn’t expected them to release anything until this morning. The news last night, that caught me off guard.”

“Okay, off the record. How are you holding up?”

“Not so good.”

“Listen, I’ll call you later, okay? Give you some time to get your shit together.”

“Thanks, Sam.”

I pulled into my driveway shortly before noon.

Once I was in the door, I called out Jan’s name. Just in case.

Nothing.

For the last twenty miles, all I could think about was the birth certificate I had found. I needed to see it again. I needed to prove to myself that I hadn’t imagined it.

Before I went upstairs, I checked to see whether there were any phone messages. There were five, all from different media outlets asking for interviews. I saved all of them, thinking at some point I might be willing to give as many as I could if it meant more people would know Jan was missing.

Then I went upstairs.

I opened the linen closet and dragged out everything from the bottom. I crawled into the closet and pried away the baseboard along the back wall with a screwdriver I’d found in the kitchen drawer.

The envelope, the one that had contained a birth certificate for Jan Richler, and a key, was gone.