I should tell him I’m suspended. I almost do. But then I think of Truman saying things had just gotten out of hand. That there was nothing wrong with a little reshuffling. Roughhousing. Retribution. I think of Jay’s lifeless eyes, the driver with his face, and boys in suits and ties, mothers with handkerchiefs waving sons off to war, bunkers and trenches, the type of men who choose their fate with purpose and write their own creeds, and the kind who follow the footsteps of others blindly, unable to see past the hundred backs that marched before them. I was just following tradition, following orders, following my brother, never recognizing that following was also a choice—a weak man’s choice, it’s true, but still a choice after all.

“What time?” I ask.

The sky is sunless, a brilliant white, casting everything else into pale shades of gray. I drive slowly to the nondescript concrete building on the west side that houses the Missing Persons Unit. It still doesn’t seem real to me that someone crept into my bedroom while I was sleeping and set it on fire. It feels like it happened to someone else. But one look at the rearview mirror is enough to remind me—I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.

Florence Haines doesn’t resemble the woman in the family photograph. She’s lost the sun-kissed skin and the laughter in her eyes from the beach. When Ben introduces me—a colleague; he says nothing about me working Homicide—I can’t look away from her face. It’s clear she’s tried to pull herself together for this meeting—A-line skirt, silk blouse, smattering of lipstick—but I’m transfixed by the smudge of mascara on her cheek, the twitching blue vein under her eye, and the twisting of her hands. This is a woman who knows something is wrong.

She, on the other hand, pays little attention to me. Her gaze flicks from Ben, to the file on his desk, and back again as if he’s holding a lifeline and she’s treading water, as if she’s been treading water for hours, for days, for months maybe, and Ben’s her last hope. Her husband sits next to her, receding blond-gray hair, dressed in khakis and a wrinkled golf shirt, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He hasn’t said a word since I arrived and stares at a place on the wall behind Ben’s desk. Since he didn’t bother to introduce himself, I don’t know his first name.

“I made a few phone calls,” Ben says to Florence. “And the last date of attendance I could find on record was Friday, November eighth.”

“That was a month ago.” Florence’s voice rises. She looks helplessly from Ben to her husband. “Why didn’t any of his professors alert the university?” She glares at me.