my own problems.
With a vein throbbing in my throat, I read a small news item about a young man, a successful software engineer, and his sudden disappearance. It told of how his parents were killed and he was raised by his aunt in a town just outside of Prague during communism, how he came to the U.S. and made good, realized every immigrant’s dream of America. And just as the rags-to-riches tale came to its happy ending-he’d met a girl and fallen in love, had asked her to marry him-Marcus Raine disappeared. Didn’t come to work one day. When his girlfriend reported him missing, police gained entry into his apartment. There was no sign of a struggle. Some items-keys, wallet, a watch he wore every day-were missing. The article confirmed what I had learned about missing men: No one waged much of an effort to find them. No one heard from him again. His whereabouts were still unknown.
I looked up at the detective. I don’t know what he expected to see on my face, but I could tell by the way his eyes went soft that he felt sorry for me suddenly.
“Someone else with the same name,” I said weakly.
“And the same life story,” he said. “Possible. But how likely?”
I found myself looking at his shoes. I could tell they were expensive. From the leather and stitching, I’d say Italian. He couldn’t afford shoes like that; I figured he was in debt, maybe a lot of debt. My brain switched off like this when I didn’t want to deal with what was in front of me.
“Isabel.”
I looked up at him. He held out a photograph, and I took it from him.
“Do you know this man?” asked Detective Crowe.
For a second, I thought I was looking at a picture of my husband. But no, this man was narrower at the shoulders, the features of his face weaker, eyes hazel, not haunting blue. Really, as I looked closely, he was nothing like Marc except for his coloring, his nearly shaved head and blond goatee.
“That’s Marcus Raine, born June 9, 1968, disappeared January 2, 1999.”
Same name, same life story, same birthday as my husband-but not my husband.
I guessed the photograph was taken on the observation deck of the Empire State Building; the city lay tiny and spread out behind him. This strange man with my husband’s name had his arm draped around a pretty blonde. They both wore stiff tourist smiles.
“Do you know him, Isabel?”
Was there something vaguely familiar about him? It seemed as if I could have seen him before, somewhere, though I couldn’t have said when or where. I’d never met anyone from Marc’s life before me, not family, friends, or even colleagues.
“There’s a resemblance, wouldn’t you say?” said Crowe.
“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to give Detective Crowe anything. “Maybe.”
“What about the girl, Camilla Novak?”
The girl in the photo had that kind of hard-featured, lean beauty that seemed to characterize Czech women. I remembered noticing in Prague how gorgeous they all were in the way of gems or metals, stunning but not inviting. She had that same aura to her-
“No. I don’t know either of them.”
I had a thought that caused me to get up quickly. Too quickly; I almost sank to my knees but Detective Crowe steadied me with a hand to my elbow.
“Take it easy,” he said, leading me back to the bed. “What is it?”
“There was a small photo album, really a canvas-bound book with old photographs, letters, and recipes from his mother. He kept it in the back of his closet.”
“I’ll get it. Where is it?”
I pointed to the closet, battling a terrible nausea and dizziness. When he opened the door, I saw that all Marc’s designer clothes remained untouched, arranged by color, meticulously maintained. Suits and collared shirts were hung, sweaters and knits were folded. It was an oasis of order in the chaos. It felt like an insult. But, of course, the album and all the personal items within were gone. Detective Crowe turned to show me his palms.
“There’s nothing here.”
I felt a rush of sadness and fear. That album, with its worn edges and yellowed pages coming loose from their binding, was the only piece of the past Marcus had, he claimed-a couple of grainy black-and-white pictures of himself as a child, a picture of the parents I’d never meet, recipes in a woman’s pretty handwriting. There were letters in Czech from his aunt. I used to look at these things when he wasn’t home, when we were fighting. It comforted me to know that he was a boy once, fragile, vulnerable, that there were reasons he seemed so closed off now. Was it a fabrication? I wondered now. Were those pictures of someone else?
“Seems Marcus Raine was a bit of a loner-no family, no friends really, other than the girl,” said Detective Crowe. “One of those guys, I guess. Even his former colleagues at Red Gravity said he kept to himself, didn’t party after work or go to lunch with anyone. He worked hard but didn’t socialize. According to the notes in the file.”
“What are you getting at, Detective Crowe?” I asked.
“Before I answer you, let me ask you a question.” He went on without waiting for a response from me. “Last night you told me that you didn’t know anything about his business, didn’t have much to do with it at all.”
“That’s right.”
“Then why is everything in your name? Why was your Social Security number used to establish the EIN?” Another bomb dropping, another structure crumbling like powder.
“It wasn’t.”
“But it was.”
We held each other’s eyes, both of us disbelieving, both of us watchful. I saw Detective Breslow come stand in the doorway to my bedroom. I think she’d been standing just outside the whole time. I broke Crowe’s gaze to look at her.
“We think he used your information to avoid using his own, Mrs. Raine,” said Detective Breslow.
A thin, dark film started to stain the lens of my memory. Our meeting, our passionate courtship, how quickly we married. How he waited until we returned from our honeymoon-three weeks in Italy-before he devoted himself full- time to starting up Razor Technologies. So many new beginnings; it was thrilling. When he told me that he hoped I’d be part of the business, a partner, I was touched that he wanted to share that with me. I signed a flurry of documents without really looking twice.
He insisted we change accountants, use someone who knew about his industry. I fired a man I’d worked with most of my career and let Marcus take over everything with the help of a firm with which I wasn’t familiar. I signed papers quarterly and at year end for both the company and my own earnings.
When was the last time I’d looked at any of it, really perused it? Numbers frightened me, literally shut me down. I was happy someone else took it all over. My accountant left multiple messages: “Isabel, you must return my call. We need to talk about this new firm you’ve hired.” I’m ashamed to say I ignored the voice mails, never gave him the courtesy of answering.
Dread was coming on like a bad flu. I thought of Linda. She’d done the same with Erik, put her signature where her husband asked. Two smart women who knew better, who should have learned early, the hard way, not to surrender our power, our financial security to any man. Detective Crowe was still talking.
“It’s easy enough to walk around with someone else’s name and resume, especially if he had all the documents, the driver’s license, the green card,” Breslow went on. “They look alike enough that he-whoever he is or was-could just become Marcus Raine, especially if neither of them had any real ties.”
Breslow cut in. “The afternoon of January 2, 1999, Marcus Raine, or someone posing as him with all the necessary documentation, cashed out his accounts,” she said, handing me another photograph.
A man in a blue baseball cap, jeans, and a sweatshirt stood at a bank teller’s window. His face was partially obscured by the brim. It could have been Marcus, true. But it could have been anyone with his build and coloring.
“This is
“Maybe someone
