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cautious. She did not mention Craig’s desk with its unpaid bills, scribbled numbers and overdrawn notices from the bank. Instead she told them, truthfully, that her husband had not changed in the ten years they’d been married; that he was generous to his family but careful with money; that he did not gamble, drank very little, dressed simply and did not use drugs.
    After an hour, the policemen exchanged glances. “We have to know about his private life, Mrs. Fraser,” said one. “We’ve issued a warrant for his arrest, and of course we’ll find him if he’s alive, but it would be easier, especially for you and your children, if we had the names of his friends.”
    â€œYou mean women.”
    â€œThat’s what it usually comes down to.”
    â€œThere are no women,” she said without emotion. She seemed to have none left. Like an automaton, she repeated her denials, looking at her hands, feeling the room slide away as waves of sleep lapped at her.
    â€œWell, we’ll be off,” they said at last. “Unless there’s something more you want to say.” Katherine did not move. “You know where to reach us if you think of something.” She nodded. “Well, then, we’ll be talking to you. And Mrs. Fraser.” At the altered voice, she looked up. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t leave town.”
    *  *  *
    In less than an hour the first reporter rang her doorbell. Katherine, as wary now as a trapped animal, stood in thedoorway, keeping him on the front porch. “I have nothing to tell you,” she said.
    He waved his pencil as if conducting with a baton. “Mrs. Fraser, did you and your husband quarrel? Did you have—um—intimate problems? Did your husband buy jewelry? Give gifts to friends? Did he travel often? Where did he stay when he traveled? Hotels, or—um—with a friend?”
    Katherine clung to the doorjamb, shaking her head. “It’s none of your business,” she said and slammed the door in his face.
    But on Tuesday morning, her husband’s picture with his faint, sad smile looked up at her from the front page of the Vancouver News. “Craig Fraser,” she read, “a partner in Vancouver Construction, a firm that has built some of Vancouver’s major office buildings and residences, is wanted by the police for questioning in connection with a seventy-five-thousand-dollar embezzlement from his company. He has been missing since last Tuesday, when, according to his wife in a statement to the police, he said he was going to Toronto. Mrs. Fraser refuses to speak to reporters. Police in Canadian provinces and the border cities of the United States are searching for him; an arrest, they say, is expected shortly.”
    The stark words and Craig’s picture—a public figure, a wanted man—were like a strong wind slamming shut a door Katherine had tried to keep open. For the first time she let the thought form and settle within her. He is not coming home.

Chapter 3
    R OSS Hayward put down his newspaper and looked out the window as the plane descended over Vancouver. Bordered on two sides by water, the city’s skyscrapers seemed to float in the early morning sun with a haze of mountains on the horizon. It reminded Ross of the city he had just left; someone from San Francisco could feel at home here. The thought made him glance again at the newspaper in his lap. He had read and reread the story of embezzlement and flight, but it was the photograph that he had been studying for two days: the bearded man with his faint, sad smile. “Possibly,” he murmured. “But probably not; too incredible to believe . . .”
    In the terminal, he found a telephone directory and looked up Craig Fraser’s address. He did not call ahead; he had to surprise the wife and watch her face; otherwise, he’d have had no reason to make the trip.
    â€œYou