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heard from your mother?” he asked.
    Charlotte replied that they’d been texting earlier in the evening. Steve mentioned that he’d gotten a call from Carol’s brother about the line suddenly going dead while she was on the phone with Ruth, and that Ruth was worried about her.
    That comment concerned Charlotte as well, so she texted her mother at 10:48 P.M ., asking if she was okay: I’m worried about you .
    She also tried calling Carol’s cell and home phones, around 11 P.M ., and left a message: “If you want to text me back or call me or something just to let me know that you’re okay and that everything is okay—otherwise I might drive out to your house to see if you are all right. I love you very much. Bye, Mom.”
    But there was still no response. Charlotte thought that maybe her mother had fallen asleep and just wasn’t answering her cell. However, she also knew that the ringer on the landline was so loud that Carol usually answered it.
    Steve wasn’t sitting down long before he told them that he’d gotten a call from a coworker, alerting him that he’d left his computer logged on at the office, and he needed to go back and log off. Besides, he said, he also realized that he’d left something that he needed. He put on his flip-flops and left the condo. It seemed to Jake that Steve was gone for no more than five minutes.
    Curiously, Steve used his security code to come back through the gate and into the condo three times between 11 P.M . and midnight: first at 11:04, then at 11:21 and finally at 11:51 P.M . (The gate opened on its own when cars leaving the complex approached, so a code or remote activation was only needed to open it when entering the complex.)
    After dinner, Jake and Charlotte started up the video games again while Steve made some calls, pacing back and forth between the living room and his bedroom. To Jake, Steve seemed unusually restless that night, moving around, and getting up and down. Typically, Steve was pretty calm.
    As Charlotte grew increasingly worried about her mom, she and Jake started calling emergency rooms in Prescott and Prescott Valley to see if any patients had come in under the name of Carol Kennedy or Jim Knapp. Maybe something had happened to Carol’s tenant, they thought, and she’d had to take him to the hospital. But there was no trace of either one of them.
    Charlotte and Jake thought someone should go to Carol’s house to check on her, but Steve told them the same thing he’d already told Carol’s brother. Steve felt uncomfortable going there because they’d only just gotten divorced. He’d been dating, so she might be, too, and he didn’t want to intrude. Everything was probably fine, he said. She was either out with someone, didn’t hear the phone, or wasn’t able to get to it in time.
    Steve did come up with a plan for Charlotte to go, however. She could go to the house with Jake, but a half mile before she got there, she had to call Steve and stay on the phone with him as she was pulling up. If the house was dark, if she saw an unfamiliar car in the driveway or if one of the doors was open, they were not to go inside to look for Carol. The implication was that a robbery or home invasion could be under way. Once she got there, they would decide what she should do.
    Charlotte agreed, but Jake was worried. One, they were heading to a remote area that was not well lit at night, and two, he was concerned that he might not be able to prevent his strong-willed girlfriend from going into her mother’s house if she sensed something was wrong. As she and Jake were about to head out, Steve reiterated that he didn’t want them going inside Carol’s house.
    Jake overheard Steve leaving Carol a message as they walked out the door: “People are really worried. If you wouldn’t mind calling . . . I mean, if you’re on a date or whatever, it is totally okay. I