Confront the man. But not, you know, is a really confrontational way. Approach him in a semi-public place, ask him flat out whether he was the one who’d done that horrible thing to his son. Of course, he’d deny it either way, but if Albert got the sense he was lying, at that point, he’d go straight to Duckworth with his suspicions.

No matter how Brian felt.

The thing was, Monica was right. Albert did not like confrontations. Wasn’t that why he’d had so much trouble standing up to his own wife all these years? But this—this was different.

This was about his son.

This was about Brian.

By the time he got up the next morning, he had decided what he would do. He would, first of all, tell them he was not coming into the bank today. Albert Gaffney was the assistant manager of the Glens Falls branch of the Syracuse Savings and Loan, north of Promise Falls. An excruciatingly boring job in a mind-numbing office, it suited Albert Gaffney just fine. He went in every day, added up numbers, made sure things balanced, checked to make sure the pens at the tellers’ windows had ink in them.

In the twenty-two years he had worked there, they had had not one single holdup. They had discussed firing their security guard, an elderly man who slept through most of his shift, to save some money, but when the guard got wind of it, he offered to do the job for fifty per cent less.

“It’s better than sitting at home,” he said.

Albert believed that his time at the bank had taught him how to read people. So if this Frommer character lied to him, Albert figured he would know.

When Constance heard her husband booking off work, she assumed it was so that he could spend the day at the hospital with Brian, who had been readmitted to finish the tests he’d walked out on the day before, and to be treated for his bruises. That was, in fact, the reason Albert had given for not coming to work. But when Constance asked what time they were going to go over, Albert said he had some errands to run first.

“What errands?” she wanted to know.

“Just errands,” he said, and fled the house before a full-fledged interrogation was under way.

He drove to the address Brian had given him the day before for the Frommers. By seven thirty in the morning, he was parked on their street, a few houses down. Fifteen minutes later, a man Albert assumed was Ron Frommer came out of the house, got into a pickup truck, and backed it out of the driveway. Albert was able to make out the words “Frommer Renovations” on the door.