The boys didn’t move. Aaron said, “Did you discuss this with my father?”

Decker sighed. “Look, I know you’re not allowed to use computers on yom tov, but this is an emergency. If you don’t want to do it, at least tell me how to do it.”

“No, no,” Aaron said. “I’d be making you do an aveyrah. Boruch, you do it. You haven’t been bar mitzvahed yet.”

“It’s okay?” Boruch asked Decker.

“It’s more than okay; it’s very important.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Boruch said.

Decker began with the desk. Because it was so organized, the search would be a snap. Starting on the right, he opened the top drawer. It contained notebooks of math work; the second was full of lessons in other secular subjects. The bottom drawer contained sheaves of papers written in Hebrew. The left side was a carbon copy of the first. Inside the top middle drawer were office supplies—pens, pencils, rulers, a stapler, a box of rubber bands, a box of paper clips.

So much for the desk.

Boruch announced that there weren’t any files of Noam’s on the first disk. He’d try the others. Decker told him he was doing a great job, and went on to the closet.

It was as organized as the desk. Decker thought a moment. For a room housing three teenaged boys to be this compulsively tidy, Breina must be one stern taskmaster. He remarked upon that and gauged the reaction of the boys. They smiled, didn’t appear to be resentful.

The left side was open shelves containing piles of laundered and starched white shirts. Must have been around twenty of them. The hanging rack held pressed black pants, lint-free black suit jackets. Above the rack was a shelf full of black hats. The right side was more open shelving. Underwear, undershirts, socks, and a couple of dozen talitim k’tanim—small prayer shawls worn on top of the undershirt but under the dress shirt. A belt and tie rack bisected the inside of the door. Above the rack was a small square mirror.

“What size is Noam?” Decker asked.

“Shirt or pants?” Aaron asked.

“Both.”

“We wear the same shirt size,” Aaron said. “Men’s fifteen. Pants, I wear a thirty. I think Noam’s closer to a thirty-one or -two.”

“He’s heavier than you?”

Aaron said, “Heavier and taller.”

Boruch looked up from the computer screen. “I tried all of the disks here, brought up the files. I don’t see anything that looks like his stuff. Either Noam has his own disk or he erased everything he ever wrote.”

“Thanks, Boruch,” Decker said. “It was worth a try.”

Boruch turned off the screen.

Decker said, “You wouldn’t notice if any of his clothes were missing, would you?”

The boys peered into the closet.