Then, a little after six—he later told the investigators between 6:05 and 6:15 p.m.—he put the violin back in its case for the last time, closed the clasps, put the case on the bureau, below the TV, where he always set it. He shucked off his T-shirt and jeans, padded naked into the bathroom for a shower before dinner. Nicole, who’d showered, was right outside, putting on her makeup in the bathroom mirror.
They were meeting Leonid Molchalin and his partner, Gary Broussard, a science writer for the New York Times, for dinner on the Upper West Side. They would rather have taken the subway—cheaper, and faster during rush hour—but Ray was always very conscious of the violin and would rather take a car instead. If he had only taken the subway, despite his own instincts.
Dinner at a fancy Indian restaurant: Ray sat on the banquette, his back to the room, violin next to him. They talked about music, of course, and the Tchaikovsky Competition, and Gary held forth about some theories about what gave the Stradivarius its unique sound—some thought it wasn’t the wood or the perfect proportions but actually the varnish that coated the instrument.
Ray, several glasses of wine in, asserted that it was none of those physical characteristics—that Antonio Stradivari had, magically, somehow managed to imbue his instruments with a life of their own, with soul. They could laugh at him all they wanted, but he was convinced of this—his violin was vastly more than the sum of its parts.
The four of them together polished off three bottles of wine—they were musicians, okay? everyone knew musicians like to drink—as well as assorted cocktails, so that when they staggered out into the balmy May night, the streetlights spun slightly, and Leonid barely avoided a delivery guy biking on the sidewalk without headlights.
“Watch it, buddy!” Gary yelled after the cyclist, who zoomed off, unconcerned.
Ray couldn’t remember ever being parted from the violin case the entire time they were at the restaurant. He did indeed take it with him when he went to the bathroom （twice）。 The police and CCTV further confirmed the route they took after dinner to an Irish pub on the corner of Eighty-Third and Columbus, where Ray tucked himself into a booth, the violin in the corner, and where they continued to drink until almost midnight, when Ray and Nicole caught a cab south to the hotel.
No, he didn’t open the case when he was out at the restaurant or the bar or in the cabs. At least he didn’t think so.
Had he opened it back in the hotel? There was that one bit of fingering that Leonid kept drilling him on: Had he practiced briefly before putting the violin back?
He’d had too much to drink. He didn’t think he’d opened the case. He wasn’t sure. He never locked it when it was with him. It was always with him. The keys to the lock were on his keychain. He had his keychain. The case had not been locked when he opened it in Charlotte.
The next morning they woke after 7:00 a.m. Both their flights were around eleven o’clock, so they ordered room service, and a woman named Pilar Jiménez set out their breakfast on the small dining-room table, inches from his unopened violin case.
She left, they ate, they packed, they took cabs to the airports—Nicole flying out of Newark to Erie and Ray heading to Charlotte via LaGuardia.
That afternoon, back in Charlotte, he’d opened the violin case for the first time in twenty-four hours and, instead of his violin, found only a white Chuck Taylor tennis shoe and a ransom note.
How do you remember to keep breathing when the most important piece of your life—a violin-shaped marvel that defines who you are, that organizes your day, that completes you as a human being—is stolen? How do you keep the blood moving in your veins? How do you make sure your eyes blink, your throat swallows?
You just do. You lie on your bed for hours, you pull out the Lehman that you have to practice on. You try to recapture the magic of music, the emotion of the moment, the days and weeks of practicing. You try because, after all these years of practicing, you’re hardwired to try.
The world swims in unreality, and for a moment you believe that your violin is in its case—you only have to open it. The next moment, reality crushes you: the case is empty, miles away, in some police warehouse somewhere.
This happens all day, forty or fifty or two hundred times: opening a door or pouring a bowl of cereal or flushing the toilet. A knock on the door is someone returning the violin: no, it’s the mailman with a Bath & Body Works coupon. You open your closet and expect to see a violin hanging from a hook or propped on a shelf. You turn on your TV and anticipate that the newscaster will talk not about the latest stock market updates but about a violin miraculously restored to its owner.