And why not believe him? Everything he had said was true. And he had told them all that they could possibly believe.
Afterward, physically and emotionally drained, he fell asleep in front of the TV in the living room before Letterman got to the top ten list.
Next day he phoned his Virginia lawyer and asked him how to go about reporting a missing person. He explained that his wife had left him in New York State, but he had come home to Herndon assuming that she would find her own way back to one of their residences, only she wasn't answering the phone anywhere and until he located her he had to assume that something might have happened to her and he wanted the police to be on the lookout just in case—wasn't that the right thing to do? And his lawyer assured him, definitely, that was the right thing to do.
So he did it, but they didn't seem to think there was any urgency. "She'll turn up, Mr. Fears. Just give her time to cool down."
"I'm sure you're right," he answered. "But please just put out the word, won't you? Call the police up there and ask them to be on the lookout?" They assured him they'd see to it. He knew that the New York police would assume he was launching his own search because of the phone message from Ray Cryer, but if he didn't start searching it would look even worse.
That afternoon he boarded a flight to San Francisco and by evening he was in his lawyer's office.
"Only for you do I cancel dinner at my favorite restaurant in San Rafael and drive down into the city."
"You should have told me," said Quentin. "I would have come up and joined you there."
"I didn't want you there," said Wayne Read. "I wanted me and my wife there. Being married to me wouldn't be easy for any woman, and it's particularly hard for my wife. So this is costing me, Quentin."
"Madeleine left me."
"Oh." Wayne looked nonplussed for a moment. Then he put his head down on his desk. "I'm trying really really hard, Quentin."
"Go ahead and say it. You told me so."
"Quentin, I'm not happy to be right. I wanted you to be right."
"Yeah, well, she's gone. And I need your help."
"I assume she's got a lawyer. Do you know who yet? Because I'm not a divorce lawyer and—"
"Wayne, you're not getting it. She's gone. Not just leaving-me gone, I mean gone. I've filed a missing persons report in Virginia. I got a phone message from a man claiming to be her father, and he says they've also got the police looking for her up there."
Wayne's demeanor changed. A little bit more serious. A little bit suspicious, too, though he was trying to conceal it. Well, Quentin didn't blame him.
Quentin gave him the whole story he had told his parents.
"Well, somebody's bound to have seen her leave the house. She'll turn up somewhere."
"I doubt it."
"Why?" Again the suspicion.
"Because I never met this Ray Cryer but he left me a phone message implying that we knew each other. He had the code that let him switch off my answering service and leave a taped message on my machine in Herndon—and only Madeleine had those codes. Well, besides you and my parents."
"So she's not missing."
"Let's just say that this guy who calls himself Ray Cryer knows more about her disappearance than I do."
"Then let's find her," said Wayne. "Between the investigators we can hire and the police, we'll find her."
"No we won't. Nobody will ever find her."
Wayne thought for a while, tapping his pencil. "Quentin, are you telling me the truth?"
"Everything I've told you is true."
"That's not exactly what I asked." Then, as Quentin was about to speak, Wayne raised his hand to stop him. "Wait a minute, Quentin. Don't get mad at me, but I have to tell you. If you have committed some crime, and you wish me to be involved with your defense in any way, don't confess that crime to me. If you confess a crime to me, then my advice to you will be to turn yourself in and make a full confession, and I will not represent you in your defense. Do you understand me?"
"Relax, Wayne," said Quentin. "I didn't kill her. As far as I know she's as alive as she ever was."
Wayne relaxed a little.
"And I do want to begin a search. But not some little penny-ante search. It's going to have to cover every city where I have residences, which is a long list, as you well know. But she might have gone to any of those places and I have to at least go through the motions of a serious search. Don't I?"
"Go through the motions?"
"I told you. We won't find her."
Wayne shook his head. "I really hate paradoxes, Quentin. Do you know where she is or don't you?"
"I know she's nowhere."
"If she's buried in the basement of that house, Quentin, the police are going to find her."
"She's not buried anywhere because she's not dead. She's also not alive. She never existed."
"That must have been an interesting wedding, Quentin."
"The real search is for her true identity, Wayne. I want to be able to prove that the Madeleine Cryer I married has no birth certificate in any of the fifty states. That she never went to school anywhere, that she never had a job. The other investigations are because I have to look like a worried husband searching for his vanished wife. But my attorney has to know that what I'm really searching for is the identity of the person who deceived me. Or someone who might know the truth about her."
Wayne leaned back in his chair. "Now, that's interesting. I wonder where the investigator should start."
"There's almost nowhere he can start, Wayne. Like you said, I was a fool. The whole time we were engaged, back in Virginia, she claimed she was staying with friends, moving from house to house. We talked on her cellular phone. I never had a phone number for any of those friends. Never met one. Never heard a single name. She said she was in a job somewhere in the bureaucracy, but I don't know what it was, and frankly I don't believe she ever had such a job, though of course I'll pay to have the federal personnel files searched to see if she worked for them."
"What about this Ray Cryer?"
"Whoever he is, I doubt he'll be real helpful to us—if he talks to our people at all."
"But we can investigate him and his background," said Wayne. "Either he really is her father or he's faking, and either way, checking up on him will help us."
"And the house, Wayne. The deeds. And I mean going back generations. She knows that house. That wasn't a fake. She knows it in the dark. She's connected to it somehow."
"We'll do it, Quentin. In the meantime, you won't mind if I strike her name off your insurance policies and out of your will?"
"Write it up and I'll sign everything."
"The police are going to be so suspicious of you."
"Of course they are. You are, and I pay you handsomely and listen to your wise and intensely personal advice. Think how much less likely they are to think I'm telling the whole story."
"Though of course you are telling the whole story." The irony in Wayne's voice was palpable.
"I've told you the whole story I'm going to tell the police and the whole story I told my parents and the story I'm going to tell everybody else forever, and every bit of it is true."
"But there are some bits you sort of left out?"
"Maybe."
"Are you going to tell me?"