ANGER WAS NO LONGER the word for what was tearing at me as I headed back to the Hall. It was deeper than anger. Every time I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of my own eyes, I kept thinking, I've seen those eyes before.

On the job. On the faces of parents and wives when some-one close to them is missing. The wordless panic when something horrible has taken place but just hasn't played out yet. Stay calm, we tell them. Anything can happen. It's still early.

And that's what I was telling myself as I drove back to the office. Stay calm, Lindsay. Jill could turn up anytime....

But looking at myself in the rearview mirror, I couldn't stop thinking, Same eyes.

Back at the Hall, I put in a call to Ingrid Barros, who was Jill's housekeeper, but she was at a meeting at her kid's school. I sent Lorraine and Chin up and down Jill's street on Buena Vista Park to see if anyone had noticed anything suspicious. I even ordered a trace on Jill's cell phone calls.

Someone must have called her. Someone must have seen her. It didn't make sense that she had completely disap-peared. Jill wasn't the disappearing type.

I did my best to focus on the picture we were getting on Stephen Hardaway as it started to drift in throughout the day. The FBI had been looking for Hardaway for a couple of years, and though he wasn't on the Most Wanted, he was close enough to raise suspicions now.

He'd been raised in Lansing, Michigan. After high school, he came west and went to Reed College in Portland. That's when he began turning up in the system. Oregon records showed an arrest for aggravated assault at an anti-WTO demonstration at the University of Oregon. He was a suspect in bank robberies in Eugene and Seattle. Then in '99, he was caught in Arizona trying to buy blasting caps from a gang member who turned out to be local ATF. And that was when Stephen Hardaway disappeared. He'd jumped bail. He was rumored to be involved in a string of armed robberies in Washington and Oregon. So we kn............