Lance didn't watch the news when Chris first disappeared.
He hasn't seen one shot of any reporter or news anchor or even weatherman talking about Chris going missing, not one frame. That's not to say there weren't days and days of broadcasts.
His Tivo recorded hours of the stuff, different channels simultaneously, all without commercials. Lance dutifully transferred each hour onto blank tape, a stack he bought at Best Buy the morning after they got the call, and left the television off every single time.
The tapes appear at random, however, little presents from the Almighty to upset his day. No matter how many of the things he collects up, they still pop up in unexpected places. The shoe-box full of mementos from his and Joey's Bahamas vacation, under his bed with the BB guns that, for a few brief months, he toyed with collecting -- every nook and cranny of his house, no matter how many times he moves, elicits another little black tape.
None of them are labeled and yet Lance always knows what they are, can sniff them out from among the thousands of other things he's recorded over the years. He never tapes over them.
"Please, if you bring my baby back, I'll do anything, we'll pay anything."
Bev said that to a CNN anchor the night the police called it 'suspected foul play', forced entry and no ransom note. Lance was standing behind the camera, arms folded and watching Joey and JC hold Bev's hands.
Lance saw Bev like that, face pinched up in just that way in person, and just the once. He doesn't need a TV screen to remind him of that moment.
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