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answered the door and invited the troopers inside. Although they didn’t search the house, they later reported nothing out of the ordinary.
    Kidney said one of the troopers asked Durst when he’d last spoken to his wife. Sunday night, after she returned to New York, he replied.
    When Durst was told the call could be traced, he said he spoke to his wife from a pay phone off of Route 35, which was three miles away.
    “Why would he walk that far to make a phone call?” said Struk. “It was raining that night.”
    “And snowing up here,” said Kidney. “The Najamy woman said some other friend, a Michael Burns, told her that Kathie had taken off, that she’d had enough.”
    “Enough of what?” said Struk.
    “Don’t know. He told Najamy to leave Kathie Durst alone, that she didn’t know Kathie as well as he did. What do you make of that?”
    “Sounds like he’s doing her,” said Struk. “And it sounds like she took off.”
    “That’s what it sounds like to me,” said Kidney.
    —
    Struk went to the Dublin House on West Seventy-ninth Street around 10 P.M. , the corned beef always a good choice. Struk sat alone, saying little to the waitress. He left her a three-dollar tip for a seven-dollar meal.
    Upon his return from dinner, the squad room was still devoid of any activity. Regan was back at his desk filling out paperwork for his arrest.
    Struk said nothing, hung up his black trench coat, sat down, and began typing his report, using only his two forefingers.
    An hour later he called missing persons and gave them Kathie Durst’s name, address, and phone number.
    On his notepad, he scribbled, “Wife took off . . . or possible suicide,” before signing out at exactly 1 A.M.

4
    The steam rose slowly from the manhole covers that line the middle of West Eighty-second Street, the cold morning air biting Mike Struk’s face as he walked up the front stairs of the Twentieth Precinct.
    It was 8 A.M. and he was back in the office, greeted with the smell of fried eggs. It was Regan. Like Struk, he’d been working a stay-over, only he’d decided to spend the night on a bunk in the back of the squad room. Regan was cooking breakfast on a hot plate. Along with the bed and hot plate there was a small TV and a refrigerator.
    Regan motioned to the eggs. “Want some?”
    Struk shook his head, held up a brown paper bag, placed his coat in his locker, and sat at his desk, opening the bag and pulling out a fresh coffee and hard bagel.
    The morning winter sun was bright, casting long shadows that filtered over one side of the squad room through the broken window blinds and illuminating the half-inch of dust that lined the sills.
    Two other detectives walked in just after 8 A.M. and Struk pointed to his watch.
    “I told you guys you have to get home by five A.M. when you work a stay-over, not stay out all night and stumble into work,” he said, smiling widely.
    The two detectives didn’t appreciate the humor. They needed coffee, and a lot of it.
    Struk was in better shape. He’d been in bed by 2 A.M. and up exactly five hours later. He could function on limited sleep. If he had been out drinking until dawn like his two cohorts, he’d be sitting at his desk, eyes closed, praying no one would bother him and the next nine hours would somehow whiz by.
    Struk had come to work with the Durst case on his mind. He tried to reason why a young woman, married to a millionaire, six months away from being a doctor, suddenly takes off. It didn’t make much sense. Struk was sure Durst had lied to him when he said their marriage was fine. But what self-respecting man would acknowledge that there were problems in his marriage? Struk himself wasn’t exactly standing out in the middle of Broadway announcing to the world, or even his close friends, that his marriage was over.
    And if Durst was hitting his wife, as was suggested, was there a reason? Durst spoke softly, gently. He didn’t appear to be the violent type. Maybe she was