Here She Lies

house to hand-deliver two important pieces of news. He came through the kitchen door and sat us down at the table so we could hear him out.
    “We found Soiffer’s van,” he said, pacing, “behind an abandoned barn in New Hampshire. Now listen closely to this next part. A preliminary inspection found nothing of Lexy in that van. Nothing.”
    Bobby and I glanced at each other. Something more was coming.
    “The van had a lot of blood in the back part. It’s already been typed, and the type does not match your daughter’s. It does match Zara’s, so that’s where we’re going with this. Unfortunately DNA analysis can take a couple of weeks, and we won’t know for sure until then, but we seem to be heading in some direction now.”
    “Where’s Soiffer?” Bobby asked.
    “Good question.” Lazare stopped at the far end of Julie’s kitchen counter and appeared to contemplate her squat black espresso machine, but I knew his mind was deep in the morning’s developments and the satisfactionthat his plan, on some level, was working. “We’ve heard from Jason Soiffer, Thomas’s son, to broker the safe emergence of his father.”
    It was incredible news. As Lazare spoke, it became apparent that negotiations had been going on for hours.
    “Son’s a straight shooter,” he continued. “No record, avoided his father’s criminal path completely. Jason Soiffer is a plumber, union guy, hard worker, salt of the earth. He is adamant that his father has nothing to do with Lexy’s abduction. Adamant. I sat back and let him talk and he told me all about his father’s problems. Said the identity theft took Tom by surprise about a year ago, and by the time he discovered it, he was on a mudslide, hitting bottom. Said his father was doing his best to keep out of trouble and rebuild his life on parole. He’d been out of jail almost two years and was doing well. Even the ex-girlfriend he’d assaulted was talking to him again — not the brightest move on her part, but the point is, the guy was hanging in there. He went to his local police about the identity theft, but they did nothing for him.” Lazare paused at that and shook his head. “Local police departments only started getting trained on ID theft recently, ours among them, so I believe these people that they didn’t get the help they needed. No one knew how to help. So Tom hired a private investigator, who found Julie for him, and then he lost it. He started stalking her. Jason said he’d known about it since late winter and tried to convince his dad to try the police again, but Tom refused. He was convinced the police wouldn’t work too hard to help an ex-con. He felt he had to deal with it himself. Big mistake. With all the new attention, and now withthe van being found, Tom figured he couldn’t hide anymore. Jason says he can’t explain the bloody van, but he believes that his father knows nothing about Lexy’s abduction and that he did not kill Zara Moklas — but he was there, and he saw it.”
    “He saw it?” I leaned across the table and reached for Bobby’s hand. “What did he see?”
    “We don’t know yet.” Lazare pulled out a kitchen chair and joined us, finally coming to rest. “He’ll come forward if we get him immunity. I said I could look into some kind of limited immunity, pending the results on that blood, if he agreed to be photographed with me. I want Julie to see that we’ve got him. Jason said his dad wouldn’t like the publicity, but he’d see what he could do. We’re waiting to hear.”
    “So it’s working,” Bobby said. “Just like you hoped.”
    One side of Lazare’s mouth crooked up. “Looks like it, so far. I’m calling another news conference for eight o’clock tonight in the hope I can get him out of hiding that fast.”
    The eight p.m. news conference — this one held outside Julie’s house — came and went with nothing but a tepid update on the case in which Detective Lazare basically stated that nothing had changed. The reporters seemed only mildly disappointed; apparently Lazare had succeeded in making Lexy’s disappearance a top story of the day and any exposure of the players was grist for the hungry media content mill. That was a bonus for us, because now the whole country cared and was watching for Lexy. At the end of the news conference, as planned, Bobby and I joined Lazare in theglare of lights so we could beg and cry in public. We did. I hated for Julie to see us this way, since I suspected