The Promise: An Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Novel by Robert Crais

company?”
    “Depends on which service she uses.”
    “That damned man probably erased them. He probably told her—”
    I hung up and turned to the file drawers. They were low and wide with files hanging left to right instead of front to back. I was hoping for banking and credit card statements, but the drawers were filled with news stories about her son’s death and the investigations that followed. She had filed hundreds of articles, news items, and reports she’d found on the Internet, and dozens of letters she’d written to the State Department, asking questions they were unable to answer. The files contained nothing about Amy, her work, or her life. The drawers were filled with Jacob.
    I photographed her office for my records and moved to the last bedroom.
    The last bedroom was Jacob’s. His clothes still hung in the closet and his desk and walls were crowded with the things boys accumulate. His high school graduation portrait hung above his bed. It showed a gawky teenager in cap and gown with a garden of angry zits exploding on his chin. Jacob had probably hated the picture and would not have put it up in his room. His mother hung it.
    I found three high school yearbooks on a shelf and an old At-A-Glance address book in Jacob’s desk. The address book contained only a few names and numbers, but I checked L for Lerner and T for Thomas. Lerner wasn’t listed, but the yearbooks gave me an idea. I went back to Amy’s office, took the prom night picture from its frame, and tucked it into the yearbooks. I brought the yearbooks and address book downstairs, left them in the entry, and quickly searched the ground floor.
    The living room, dining room, and kitchen proved to be a waste oftime. Another phone sat in the kitchen with another empty memory. I was having what we in the trade called an unproductive morning.
    The remaining room was an alcove between the living room and the kitchen. A glass breakfast table faced the kitchen with an empty cut-glass vase centered in its middle. An antique secretary’s desk with a single drawer sat against the wall. The little secretary was the last place I searched in Amy Breslyn’s home, but that’s where I found what I needed.
    Fifteen or twenty thin files hung in the drawer, labeled with handwritten tabs like
Household
,
Medical
,
Car
,
VISA
, and
AMEX
. I was proud of myself for finding the files, but Meryl Lawrence would be disappointed. None were labeled
Boyfriend
.
    I pulled the credit card files first and quickly skimmed her statements. I found no airline tickets to Dubai, no spending sprees at Tiffany’s, and no around-the-world cruises. Nothing in Amy’s past three statements suggested where she was, what she was doing, or that she had ripped off four hundred sixty thousand dollars.
    I put the credit card files aside, skipped files with labels like
Gardener
and
Insurance
, and was fingering through
Cash Receipts
when I sat up and spoke her name.
    “Amy.”
    Three months earlier, Amy Breslyn purchased a nine-millimeter Ruger semi-automatic pistol, a one-year membership at the X-Spot Indoor Pistol Range, handgun instruction, a cleaning kit, two boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition, a nylon pistol case, and ear protection. The receipt was marked ‘paid in cash.’
    I had seen none of these things, so I searched her bedroom again.
    I opened shoe boxes, checked the high shelves, and opened her suitcases and purses. I looked between the mattresses, beneath theclothes in her dresser, and in her nightstands. I searched her office, the garage, the kitchen cabinets, and even her fridge and freezer. I found nothing. No gun, no gun safe, no cleaning supplies or ammunition or accessories.
    I wondered why Amy had wanted a gun and if she had taken the gun with her.
    I took the files from the secretary, brought them to the entry, and stacked them on the yearbooks.
    Eight-year-old Jacob watched from the wall.
    “Why did she buy a gun, buddy?”
    Jacob didn’t answer.
    I wondered