32

They were turned toward each other, what they weren’t saying between them like a package they were protecting, invisible but easy to break. I put my foot out idly, as though I found the floor fascinating, into a faded place in the tile where they must have had a potted plant, but an artificial one. There were no windows.

Fear turns into a numb fever after a while. But that makes it more bearable. Just as the wait was beginning to paralyze us so we couldn’t feel anything, the door to the inside opened.

Detective Waterman looked like her own sister, someone less sure of herself, a wrinkle down either side of her mouth. “They are going to take just a few minutes,” she said.

“A few minutes,” said my mother in a quiet, determined voice.

Detective Waterman buttoned her sweater, her blouse hanging out under the fisherman’s knit. So it wasn’t just me, I thought. It was cold in here.

“They don’t do anything quickly in this place,” said Detective Waterman, making a polite expression of pain to show that she cared. I wondered if that was how the English teacher Detective Waterman would have acted if she had to tell Senior English their term papers fell into the swimming pool.

Her hand searched for the doorknob. The blouse hanging down beneath the sweater was pink, a smock bunched against her body by the sweater. I wondered if Detective Waterman might be pregnant. “But I’ll go see if I can’t speed them up a little.” She didn’t move, maybe waiting for us to excuse her.

“What kind of clothes was the body wearing?” said my mother, keeping her voice strong. You could hardly guess her feelings.

“There were no clothes.” The detective paused for a split second, a little wrinkle of pain. “Sometimes when they search downhill later on, they find clothes.”

“Earrings,” said my mother. Anita had gotten her ears pierced when she was thirteen. My father hated the idea of pierced ears; my mother thought it was inevitable. A shop on Union Square in San Francisco did the hole-punching while I looked on, women with long sparkling fingernails saying what a wide range of choices Anita would have.

“There’s no apparent jewelry,” said the detective.

My mother and I could take a sifter and a tub and go up to Skyline. If there was a turquoise stud up there, we would find it.

I thought my mother was going to ask whether the lobes were pierced, but I thought: skunks, rats. Maybe coyotes. I knew why they couldn’t simply take fingerprints. Mentally I begged my mother to stop asking.

We were alone.

My father was out of his chair, touching the doorknob, listening against the interior door.

The woman behind the chicken-wire glass leaned way over, trying to see him, but he was out of her range of vision. My father’s voice sounded detached from what he was doing, pacing crazily, lunging to test the door again. “We’ll start a new chapter of Find the Children,” he said. “Focus on kids from the Bay Area. We’ll have the faces of these kids on billboards, BART, everywhere. People won’t be able to go out for a dozen eggs without seeing them.”

This was typical of my dad. He never ate eggs, hated them. But he thought of other people, normal people, as being unlike him in subtle ways, not caring about cholesterol. I had always thought my father assumed he was more competent than most people, but was nice about it, feeling it made him all the more responsible for what happened.

Gradually the woman behind the glass got used to him and didn’t bother watching him as he paced. “We’ll make it impossible for people to forget. Physically impossible.”

Detective Waterman had trouble getting into the room, and my father helped her, holding the door. She was carrying Anita’s X rays, black comic strips.

“It’s not Anita,” said the detective.

But her statement was canceled by the sound of the door gasping as it swung back, the entire building full of heavy doors that wouldn’t open and wouldn’t shut.

“There is no question,” said Detective Waterman, her voice rising a little. “It’s someone else.”

I waited, not wanting to be relieved too soon.

“I personally,” said my mother, “want to verify that whoever you have in that room is not my daughter.”

That froze everyone. “I’m sorry I brought you all the way down here,” said the detective.

My grandmother makes the same bitter smile, wise to everything. “I want to see the body,” said my mother.

Dad put his hand out, to her shoulder. He gave his head a small shake, left, right, looking hard into her eyes.

Detective Waterman had trouble yanking a paper cup from the dispenser. “Anita had very good teeth,” she said.

“Fluoride,” said my dad. “It’s putting dentists out of business.” That’s what he was saying. But I knew what he felt.

Detective Waterman did not drink, just watched it sloshing around the small paper cup. “The body we recovered has extensive dental work.”

“So,” my mother said.

We all waited.

“She can’t be Anita,” said my mother at last.

I put my arm around her. Her feelings were inside, a hive.

“It was a good idea for you to have them on file,” said the detective, her voice husky. “It saved some time.”

“It’s because I know how hard it is,” said my mother softly after a long silence. She spent a lot of time being patient with people. “If you find something. Sometimes you don’t know what it is.”

It was almost dark outside, the neon coroner’s light stuttering on, all the neon tubing bright except for the r at the end. The air was warm, and sounds were too loud, car doors slamming, a motorcycle puttering by in the street.

“When did you get her dental records?” said my father.

“A few days after it happened,” she said. She didn’t get into the Jeep, just leaned against it as another coroner’s van squeezed past, its yellow light flashing

“I wish you’d told me,” he said, on his side of the Jeep, toying with the keys as though he found them intriguing. “It’s like—”

“What’s it like, Derrick?” she asked. “You, mean it was like I was losing hope?”

My dad didn’t say anything.

We all got into the Jeep, and Dad backed it all the way out into the street and up to the intersection before he remembered to turn on the headlights. And then he had to pull over to the side of the street and wait for his composure to come back.

It was full darkness, stoplights and car lights bright, but far off, nothing real. We were all the way up Lincoln Avenue when I saw them, the red police flashers. I said, “Dad, how fast are we going?” as a hint.

He said, “Oh, Christ,” and pulled over to the curb.

The police car parked right where I could get an eyeful of flashing red.

Dad got his driver’s license out and the cop took it, shining his light on it, the size of a pen with a bright ray illuminating the cop’s wedding ring, my dad’s profile. “When were you thinking of taking care of that muffler?” the cop asked.

“I got used to that racket,” said my dad, sounding tired but perky. “Didn’t even hear it after a while.”

The cop looked at the license, a brilliant white slip in his pink fingers, the flashlight so bright.

“I could hear you four blocks away,” said the cop.

“This is undeniably possible,” said my dad.

The cop was thinking, heavy, cube-shaped cop thoughts. He pointed the light in at my mother, back at me. “You haven’t by any chance been drinking, Mr. Buchanan?”

I should have waited. Because then he straightened a little, maybe recalling the name, making sense of who we were, but it was too late.

I was out of the back of the Jeep, around the cab, face-to-face with the cop, and telling him he should know who these people were.

The cop putting his fingers on my chest, all ten of them, trying to push me away without putting any strength into it, my dad saying, “Cray, get back in the car.”

That night I could hear my mother, locked in the bathroom next to my parent’s bedroom. She was talking to Anita, as though Anita were there in the house, asking Anita where she was.