One of Dr. Politsky’s questions in therapy was “Can you name one thing that made you happy today?” I don’t know why a question that always really bugged me won’t get out of my head. So if I have to find a ray of sunshine in my current state, I’d have to say that after all, it is a relief to tell Shay that I’ve had a little episode of breaking and entering.
She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t move. She listens without talking, which is a highly unusual trait in a person, if you ask me. Diego is there for support. We sit in the living room, which feels weird and formal, because we’re always in the kitchen. And after I am through and Shay looks sort of pale and shaken, she says we need to go to the police, which is exactly what Diego said would happen.
But she doesn’t get up. She looks at me. “You have to trust me,” she says. “You have to now, Gracie. It’s too dangerous for you not to. You have to tell me what you know, and even what you suspect. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“I can’t believe that Zed has anything to do with this,” Shay says, shaking her head. “I’ve known him since he was a boy.”
“You have to admit he’s a weird guy, Mom,” Diego says.
Shay looks reluctant to call anyone weird. “He’s…different, okay,” she says. “He’s had it tough. His mother died when he was seven, and his dad works all night at the restaurant. He was raised by his dad’s girlfriends. I can’t imagine him kidnapping Emily, or being involved somehow.” She shakes her head. “I hate going to the police, but we have to. This could be all my fault.”
“What do you mean?” Diego asks, because Shay looks stricken. I see a vein throb in her forehead I’d never noticed before.
“Don’t you remember?” Shay looks at Diego. “I’m the one who recommended that Rocky hire Zed in the first place.”
We must have interrupted Detective Fusilli’s late dinner, because there’s a plastic bowl half-filled with salad on his desk. I see slivered chicken, I see noodles, I see red pepper, I see green beans. I thought police detectives were supposed to live on junk food.
He looks up and meets Shay’s eyes. I feel the surge that he feels. I could have lived without knowing that Detective Joe Fusilli thinks that, if this were a different time and a different place, and he wasn’t in charge of a missing-child case, he would like to experience what it would be like to really kiss Shay Kenzie.
You would never know it by his face, or his voice, or the way he looks at Shay, but the feeling is so strong I can pick it up like a megawatt radio station on a clear night. I also pick up that although he is glad to see Shay again, he is not particularly happy to see me.
We sit. Shay very calmly hands him the copy of the e-mail I found at Zed’s shack, explaining that I, well, climbed inside.
“I can’t take this,” he says. “If it’s evidence, it will be thrown out. I can’t even read it,” he says, reading it. He rubs his forehead.
“Did you know that Emily had a relationship with Zed Allen?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “She never mentioned him. But thinking back, I remember something she said…”
“What?” Obviously, Detective Pasta is not one of those listeners who doesn’t interrupt with questions.
“That she liked the sightseeing at her father’s studio,” I say. “I didn’t pick it up at the time. I thought she was talking about boats. You can see boats from the windows,” I add lamely. “But I think she was talking about Zed.”
He taps the paper against the desk.
“He might still have the original on his computer,” I say.
“I realize that,” he says. “There’s this thing I need called probable cause. Is there anything else you can give me to go on?” He speaks gently now. “I know it’s not easy, Gracie. But just now, you told me something that’s important, something you remembered and saw in a different light. Can you think of anything else like that?”
At first, I’m impatient with this question. I don’t see how I can reinterpret something that didn’t stick in my mind. I can’t just pluck a sentence from my memory that Emily has said and shout, “That’s it!”
But suddenly, I do remember something.
“The library,” I blurt out. “Emily wanted to go to the library that day, the day she disappeared.”
“Yes?” Detective Fusilli said.
“Emily wasn’t a reader,” I say.
“And? You think she was meeting someone?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But the library has computers. If she wanted to send a message that she didn’t want traced, she could go there.”
Joe Fusilli nods slowly. I can see two things—frustration that he didn’t think of this already, and relief that he has something to go on now.
I’ve given him a lead.