“To me and you?” the detective asked. “I can understand him speaking for himself, but why did he include you?”
Detective Martinez had an uncanny way of not blinking until her question was answered. She had zeroed in on my discomfort right away.
“When Ezra and I were younger,” I told her, “he wanted to be a novelist, and I was going to be an artist. Off and on, he was still working on something, but I stopped painting after college—”
“You gave up on it.”
“I was never very good at it. I’d have a picture of something in my mind, but then anything I made fell far short of that image. But painting led me to art history, which led to architectural history, and when I imagined becoming an architect, I became so much happier.”
“But Ezra thought you’d left something behind,” Detective Martinez said. “Maybe he thought that you thought he should likewise give up his writing, too—”
“No. I always encouraged him.”
“Earn a real living—”
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” I said.
Ezra used to say that there were two kinds of people: those who looked completely different when they had wet hair, and those who looked exactly the same when their hair was wet or dry. For some reason he never explained, he didn’t trust the people whose hair looked the same wet or dry. The detective likely fell in that category.
“It’s my job to come up with a line and follow that line,” she said. “I don’t always get it right. Then I try to find a better line. It’s an imperfect method, I admit.”
I accepted her apology, if that was what it was, with a nod.
“So you stayed for dinner and were looking at this art book, and he suggested that you and he were alike in your inability to realize your dreams, even if that wasn’t an accurate representation of the situation for you.”
I could have pointed out that for every artist who found his voice early on, there was the genius who created great work later in life. Plus Ezra and I were not that old—maybe no longer young, but only forty. He had time. But I didn’t say these things that night.
“And that was that,” Detective Martinez said. “Nothing else happened?”
I didn’t answer.
“Ms. Crane?”
“We talked some more, but yes, that was that,” I said.
Detective Martinez was staring at me again without blinking. She knew I was lying. I glanced around her office, void of personal effects. No photos, no mementos.
“I keep thinking about a documentary we saw,” I said. “It was about a man who disappeared and was found a month later at a hospital not too far from home, but without any ID. He had amnesia. No one would ever figure out what triggered it. The only thing he had with him was a book with a phone number scribbled on the inside cover, which belonged to an ex-girlfriend. She was traveling and unreachable. When she finally came home, she was able to identify the man. The man had retained the ability to do physical things, like ride a bike or surf or make love—even speak French. But he remembered no people or places or experiences. The first time he saw snow after his amnesia, he was both awestruck like a child might be, and analytic like an adult, trying to figure out what it consisted of.”
“Amnesia is pretty rare.”
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting—”
“Mr. Voight liked this film?”
“He saw it several times when it came out.”
The detective wrote this down, although I didn’t know how it would be useful. Then she set down her pen and laced her fingers.
She said, “Mr. Voight has been gone only one month, but—”
“Only one month?”
“But you need to consider the possibility that he doesn’t want to be found.”
“You’re saying you don’t think we’ll find him?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m saying it’s possible he doesn’t want you to find him.”
This was a sharp arrow; it went in deep. I already knew that, yes. How could I not have thought about that? She didn’t need to say it aloud, not yet anyway.
“I’ll start in on the databases right away,” Detective Martinez said, softer. “Let’s see if we can learn anything.”
Protocols were followed: I provided photos, descriptions of physical attributes (including the location of the moles along Ezra’s chin that his scruff usually masked), and lists of friends and relatives (although like me, he wasn’t close to his family). I filled out an exhaustive questionnaire about what he might be wearing and carrying in the leather shoulder bag that we could say was missing, and per Detective Martinez’s request, I arranged to have his dental records sent over. I dropped off a pair of shoes, too. That part was disconcerting, walking into the precinct with my right index and middle fingers hooked into the heels of Ezra’s worn chukkas, like I was cleaning up after him and returning his things to our closet.
Meanwhile the detective was funneling information into the web of databases operated by various agencies and hospital systems—and morgues. I tried not to think about the morgues. I could access his bank account because he hadn’t changed his password since college, but I could see he wasn’t withdrawing cash. (I’d started paying his rent because I didn’t want to move his belongings to my house; that seemed to suggest he’d never be found or never come back.) According to the bookstore, he had cashed his last paycheck, so he had some money. (At the bookstore, they thought he’d quit without giving notice, which was out of character, but plausible.) We tracked his credit cards, but he wasn’t using them. He wasn’t using his cell phone either. He didn’t appear on any closed-circuit cameras in local shopping malls or major intersections. He’d never much tapped into social media. I was supposed to tell my friends and colleagues about what was going on to cast a wider net, and I did; they weren’t surprised Ezra would pull a stunt like this—a stunt, as if his disappearance were a performance. The detective wanted me to post flyers. Perro perdido, please wander home. I didn’t end up posting anything, and besides, the police had already canvassed nearby shop owners and neighbors about whether they’d seen him.
After a month (which meant Ezra had been missing for two), I showed up at the police station unannounced and demanded to see Detective Martinez. She met me at the front desk because she had someone in her office and guided me to a free bench.
“I haven’t heard anything from you in weeks,” I said.
“Rebecca—”
“You haven’t taken me seriously this whole time. You’ve implied more than once that there’s something peculiar about my history with Ezra.”
“I don’t think I ever said anything like that.”
“I don’t think you’ve been harnessing the full force of the department