One Cold Night

had searched his heart out for the thirteen-year-old girl. It was a case that went from bad to worse. The first taunting phone call from the bad guy came to Becky’s mother, Marie, the morning after the abduction. That afternoon the family received a letter in handwriting forged to resemble a child’s; it was signed in Becky’s name but had obviously not been written by her. This was the one piece of evidence that had been withheld from the public and press; even Susan didn’t know about it. Dave would never forget the faint script asking for a closed-casket funeral and the instant nausea that had forced him to swallow an upsurge of bile. He would never forget Marie Rothka’s shaking hands as she read that letter. The next morning, traces of Becky’s blood were identified in a Dumpster in the Bronx. Dave’s entire squad had pitched in and searched. Becky’s Brooklyn neighborhood had rallied, and so had the area around the Bronx Dumpster. Everyone had wanted to find Becky. But to this day, she was still officially missing.
    Becky Rothka was the one case Dave had failed completely, which her abductor — they had dubbed him “the groom” for his phoned-in promise to marry Becky before he killed her — liked to remind them all of in his smarmy voice. Over the past year the groom had called Marie Rothka numerous times just for the pleasure of taunting her. He never told her whether Becky was dead or alive, just showered her with splintersof unforgettable details, like how easily the buttons had popped off her shirt or that she had seven beauty marks on her back. Marie always reported the calls, and Dave always had them traced. Each time, the trail ended in midair. It had been six months since they had heard from the groom.
    Dave often wondered if Becky was alive somewhere today. Hurt and scooped out, but alive. Lolita had survived her ordeal. Sometimes when Dave was feeling particularly grim he wasn’t sure what scared him most: finding Becky alive or dead. If she was alive, the thought of what she might have suffered and how the groom monster may have bent her to his will made Dave wonder if life was always preferable to death. But he couldn’t wish death on poor Becky, at any price. Sweet, lost Becky who floated through his consciousness at every moment of every day. Sometimes he couldn’t take his eyes off Lisa, the two girls looked so much alike.
    Now, riding up in the elevator, he felt the pinch of something brand-new: He saw what they meant when they said that the hardest thing for a cop was the feeling that you couldn’t really protect your own family.
    He glanced at the round silver face of his watch, which flashed in the mirrors as he raised his wrist. It was eleven past twelve. He stepped out of the elevator and turned right into their branch of the hallway. Susan was waiting for him in the open door.
    “She’s still not home!” Susan’s short hair was disheveled around her pale, oval face, and her eyes were bright with worry.
    Dave leaned in to kiss her. “What exactly happened between you two?” Stepping into the loft, he noticed cleaning supplies on the counter by the fridge, whichmeant Susan had been cleaning at night, which meant she was really upset.
    “She came home after rehearsal, about ten o’clock, when she said she would.”
    “And then?”
    “Then we had the argument—”
    An argument with a teenager. A teenager like Lisa: a good girl, but headstrong.
    “— and she took off,” Dave finished Susan’s sentence.
    He had three older sisters and recalled the heady drama of an average day growing up in his childhood home; one minute the girls were fighting and the next minute they were best friends. Their father, a storied beat cop who had worked the streets of the South Bronx, mediating corner drug wars and ingratiating himself with everyone from pimps to grannies, had declared himself “out of his league” when his daughters’ antipathies flared. Their mother, as Dave recalled, knew to step out of the way until the storm had passed. And it always did.
    “What was the argument about?” he asked in his calmest “Dave voice,” as Susan called it. He knew she relied on his equanimity; her moods tended to be quick and hot, whereas his boil was reliably slow and steady. It was their dynamic, their marriage dance, and so far it had served their happiness. And they were happy. Susan, without question, was the love of his life.
    “I’ve called everyone I can think of and