The American, George Stratton, had proved invaluable in leading Ridgeway through the diplomatic and bureaucratic jungles that surrounded an American making unofficial and therefore irregular inquiries about his missing wife in a foreign country. Stratton also turned out to be a regular, if somewhat unchallenging, tennis partner.

At first, Ridgeway had been put off by Stratton’s solicitous manner, thinking perhaps the man was gay or maybe a consulate baby-sitter assigned to make sure the former cop didn’t do anything rash. But over the course of the summer Ridgeway realized that Stratton was just another lonely American, unmarried and more than a little homesick for the good old USA.

Through Stratton’s help. Ridgeway got permission to look over the ruins of the Kreuzlingen estate before the cleanup crews moved in. For three weeks he sifted through the ashes and rubble, growing more convinced by the day that the local police had been right

But at the end of every day something about the ruins had still nagged at him. Finally, the day before the bulldozers were ready to clean up the blackened mess, it came to him: the estate’s owner had been a wealthy German art collector with one of the most precious collections in Switzerland, yet there were no picture frames in the ashes, no glass, no charred bits of pictures or frames, no evidence of hanging wires or brackets. Fire, Ridgeway knew from investigating arson homicides, rarely consumed everything. But at the Kreuzlingen estate there were none of the bits and pieces—a corner of a frame here, a scrap of hanging wire there. It was as if all the art had been removed from the estate before it burned.

The local authorities discounted Ridgeway’s newfound proof that the fire must have been arson and refused to halt the bulldozers and their cleanup operation. Their patience had run thin and their sympathy for the bereaved American no longer restrained their annoyance. They told him they were sure all of his questions would be answered and would he please stop second-guessing them and poking his nose into matters that didn’t concern him.

There was nothing else he could do. He watched the bulldozers raze the only clues he had to Zoe’s disappearance, paid his bills, told Stratton good-bye, and then came home to teach his classes.

Ridgeway dumped the cold grounds from the coffee-maker basket and poured beans into the grinder. His classes were going poorly. Before Zurich he had been highly praised for his classroom work; by his students and by other faculty members. He never missed classes, always prepared fresh, interesting materials, never delivered boring lectures.

Zurich had changed that. This year he was delivering halfhearted lectures using the previous year’s notes… when he managed to make it to class at all. Tony Bradford, the department head who had originally hired him eight years before, had taken to asking him if he had a drinking problem.

But it was worse than a drinking problem. It was the wondering. The wondering had made him old. If he only knew if she was dead or alive he could get on with his life.