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his stomach and started hitching up his belt.
    Before he could snap a salute or sing the police auxiliary anthem, I told him to expect the parking lot to be besieged by law enforcement. He decided to call the editor, Winston Wrigley III.
    Wrigley and I have a strained relationship in the best of times, and between two and three in the morning is never going to rank as one of the best of times. After a minute or two of listening to him bawl me out, I handed the phone over to Cassidy.
    “Come on down,” Cassidy drawled, a little more heavily than usual, I thought, “but be careful. Y’all might get yourselves launched outta here like a roman candle. Up to you. I gotta get going now. I cain’t talk to you and keep your building from blowing up at the same time.”
    When he hung up, the security man was bug-eyed. “Should I evacuate the building?”
    “Probably be a good idea. The bomb squad will be here any minute now. In the meantime, maybe you could ask folks to stay away from that end of the parking lot.”
    John Walters, who had recently been promoted to managing editor, arrived about the same time as the explosives experts did. His concern that subscribers would be unhappy if their morning papers were not on their driveways before breakfast time did not count for much with the bomb squad. He paced back and forth on the perimeter, where the delivery drivers and press operators waited.
    John scowled every time he saw me, but he hadn’t spoken to me yet. I took that to mean that even if nothing was found in the car, there was bound to be at least one type of explosion that morning.
    Cassidy ambled over to him, spoke with him for a moment, and John stopped pacing. He slumped a little, looking toward his shoes, but I doubted he could see them over the curve of his belly. He glanced back at me, but this time the look was different. Sympathy. An offering I refused by fixing my gaze on the car.
    Since the only way to get sympathy from John was to have something really awful happen to you, I preferred seeing him upset. I wasn’t exactly cool and calm myself. Although we were some distance away, I could see that the explosives experts had their specially trained dogs out. The two animals worked in a team, cautiously sniffing the exterior of the car. One of the dogs showed some interest in the trunk, but when the handler brought over the other one, the two dogs moved along.
    “If the dogs detect any kind of explosive, they signal it very clearly,” Cassidy said, now back at my side. “I don’t think they found anything just then.”
    I nodded. As I watched the officers go through other checks, using mirrors on long extensions and other devices, I could feel the weight of each passing moment, every delay seeming to decrease the odds of finding Frank.
    “Cut it out,” Cassidy said next to me.
    “Cut what out?”
    “You’re winding yourself up tighter than an eight-day clock.”
    “Forgive me. I’m sure if your wife was missing and the bomb squad was inspecting her car while terrorists did as they pleased with her, you’d just be sitting around whistling Dixie.”
    For a moment I imagined that I had made him angry. After putting up with his irritating calm, I’d have found it a refreshing change. But I was wrong — he smiled and looked away from me, an expression of private amusement on his face.
    “Come on, Ms. Kelly,” he said, “they’re gonna let us take a look-see.”
    We moved to the next barrier — yellow police tape surrounding the part of the parking lot where the Volvo stood.
    The bomb squad was packing up, and Cassidy was directing the uniformed officers who had been working crowd control to let people back into the building. John was avoiding me for the moment, talking to the production and circulation managers, undoubtedly trying to figure out what this interruption was going to do to press and delivery schedules. Photographs, which had been taken at several points, were now taken from closer