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department who’s seen this,” Williams says stiffly. “And the coroner’s office is pretty good about keeping their mouths shut.”
    “Good,” Doug says. “Because sullying her memory won’t serve any useful purpose. Someone out there kidnapped her and killed her. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, Mr. Lancaster. That’s what this is all about.”
    Doug and Ray Logan talk on the phone. Logan extends his heartfelt condolences. He hopes to God the police catch the sonofabitch who did this.
    The autopsy report regarding the death of Emma Lancaster is sealed, in the public interest.
    After the first few weeks, when no suspect in what is now a kidnapping and murder is found, the media frenzy subsides. Doug goes back to work, Glenna starts going out into the world again, they try to patch together the pieces of their splintered lives.
    A few months go by. Despite the allure of Doug’s reward offer, there are still no legitimate leads.
    The ongoing strain is taking its toll on their marriage. The knowledge that Emma had been sexually active haunts Glenna. She can’t stop talking to Doug about it. She tells him that not knowing about such an important part of her daughter’s life, when she had thought they were so close, so mother-daughter bonded, tears at her insides. And she can’t stop talking about her persistent conviction that Emma’s being sexually active was in some way tied to her abduction. In her wild fantasies, she tells Doug, she imagines Emma being a willing partner in her disappearance, imagines that the whole thing wasn’t a kidnapping at all.
    Doug doesn’t want to hear that. He’s in denial about it. You don’t sneak out to have sex while two of your friends are sleeping in your room, then wind up being found murdered five miles away, hastily buried off a virtually inaccessible trail. This was a kidnapping, pure and simple.
    More and more they find themselves going in different directions.
    Sheriff Williams comes to the house on a Saturday afternoon after lunch. It’s a few days before the beginning of summer. Their gardens, tended to perfection, are in full color—the only brightness in their lives anymore.
    The three sit by the pool. “So far we haven’t been able to develop any leads, nothing useful at all,” Williams tells them somberly.
    Their faces register dismay and despair. “So her killer’s never going to be found,” Glenna says dully. She’s lost fifteen pounds since this ordeal began. Her face, although still striking to look at, is all bones and angles.
    “Never say never,” Williams says. “Sometimes things come up. Later.”
    “By accident. Chance.”
    He nods slowly. “We can’t manufacture something that doesn’t exist.”
    Doug sees him out. “Thanks for all your help,” Doug says.
    “I’m sorry we haven’t done better,” the sheriff apologizes. “Truly sorry.”
    “You’ve done your best. And like you said, something could still turn up. My reward still stands. Make sure people don’t forget that.”
    The two men shake hands. “Good luck, Mr. Lancaster,” Williams says.
    Luck will have nothing to do with this, Doug thinks. He keeps the thought to himself.
    Glenna files for divorce the week after Labor Day and moves to a condominium on Butterfly Beach, near the Biltmore Hotel. They put the house up for sale. Doug stays in the house until it’s sold. The sale is finalized the week before Christmas.
    Emma Lancaster’s kidnapping spawned a multiple tragedy: one life gone, two others ruined.
    A year goes by. Whoever abducted and murdered Emma is still at large. No leads have ever panned out, no perpetrator has ever been arrested.

A YEAR LATER
    J OE ALLISON, CRUISING DOWN Coast Village Road after midnight in his Porsche turbo, is styling. Earlier in the evening he had dinner with Nicole Rogers, his girlfriend, a stunning woman befitting a star newscaster, who is finishing the last semester towards her law degree at Pepperdine,