28

Samsa drank his coffee quickly. Darcy said, ‘You really ought to eat something, you know.’

‘I’m rushed.’

‘You need cereal. Fresh fruit. You look wan. You don’t get enough sleep.’

The portable TV was playing on the kitchen counter. Samsa saw a picture of the Purchase land and the blonde reporter from Channel 5, Linda Kisminski, talking into the camera. A caption along the bottom of the screen read, 5 LIVE AM in orange letters. He got up to switch off.

Darcy said, ‘No, wait. I’m watching this. Is this what kept you out last night?’

Samsa said yes, it was, and fidgeted with his cup.

‘How did she die?’

He told her. She made a face and continued to look at the picture. For as long as she could remember homicides had been part of her daily life. Her father never talked about the specifics, the blood details, but he carried the burden of them. You could tell when he was brooding: he’d disappear before your eyes, lost in God knows what investigation, what pieces of evidence, what ambivalent phrase from an interview with a suspect.

‘How old was she?’

Samsa drained his coffee before he said, ‘Thirteen. She was a runaway.’ He looked at Darcy and there was uneasiness in his expression. ‘You’d never do that, would you?’

‘Run away from home? Come on. I can’t imagine the circumstances.’

Linda Kisminski was saying ‘… from the details we’ve been able to gather, the dead girl worked as a prostitute in the city’s sleazy and shameful sex trade, which continues unabated despite local complaints. Unless something is done about the situation, how many more girls like this one will be at risk? I talked earlier with Police Chief Al Brodsky, who says this tragic case has top priority, and the department is – I quote – “determined to find this girl’s killer”. Linda Kisminski, Five Live a.m.’

Darcy had seen the place, known locally as Flesh Row, sometimes Skin Street. She’d driven past there once or twice with Nick and looked at the girls on the sidewalks, and she’d wondered what they were thinking, what they felt when they were in some stranger’s car or bed, if they distanced themselves and everything was mechanical.

‘She was on drugs,’ Samsa said. ‘Have you ever … you know?’

She laughed, shook her head, no. It was a lie. She’d smoked dope a few times, and tried cocaine at a party a couple of months ago. She’d gone into the bathroom with Ginny Flagg and a college girl she knew only as Spyder – a Goth with torn black leggings and a pin in her earlobe and scarlet lipstick – and Spyder had produced a little brown bottle and a tiny spoon. For twenty minutes or so Darcy had felt a lift of exultation and energy, but then she’d wanted more. By that time Spyder had disappeared upstairs with a boy.

‘Any leads?’ she asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Some sicko picked her up and killed her,’ Darcy said.

He rose, touched her under the chin. ‘I have to run.’

She sipped her orange juice. She watched her father take his sports coat from the back of the chair.

‘You’re not cutting classes again, are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m being dutiful and conscientious today.’

‘Good.’ He leaned to kiss her on the top of her head. She thought there was something a little tentative about him, a lack of the adrenalin he usually had when a new homicide occurred. Maybe you just got tired of death after so many years. She was about to mention the phone call she’d received last night, but the idea of a stranger calling out of the blue like that would bother him, and he was clearly flustered anyway. Why add to his concerns? The good daughter, considerate to Dad. Sometimes.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he said.

‘I’ll be fine. Call me when you have a chance.’

He hesitated in the kitchen doorway. ‘We should spend more time together, Darcy.’

‘Yeah. On your retirement,’ she said, and smiled.

She listened to him drive away, dumped her cereal bowl in the dishwasher and threw in a couple of cups and glasses. She brushed her hair in the bathroom. She thought about changing her hairstyle, which she wore short. Let it grow out, maybe shoulder-length. Sometimes you got bored with the same face in the mirror. She thought her eyes her best feature – deep brown, almost black, like her father’s. ‘Eyes like Hershey pools,’ Nick had told her once. Mancuso, master of imagery.

She picked up her books from the table in the kitchen and left the house, locked the door, headed toward the corner of the block where the schoolbus arrived. Lately Nick had been in the habit of giving her a ride, but she’d told him she’d rather bus it. It was a small act of rebellion and pretty pathetic really, but it was a start. If she was to dig out a claim to her independence and free herself from Nick without cruelty, it would need to be accomplished in small steps.

She heard the car cruising behind her before she saw it. She turned her face. The driver had one arm hanging from the window as he brought the car alongside her and said, ‘Lovely morning, don’t you think?’

She turned and continued to walk. The car – a pale-blue Mercury, finned, prehistoric – kept pace with her, which she found irritating. She stopped.

‘Something I can do for you?’ she asked.

‘What’s wrong with saying a simple hello,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong: I don’t know you, I’ve never seen you before, and you’re disturbing me.’

‘You going to school? Hop in. I’ll drive you.’

Fat chance. She walked a few paces, stopped again and stared at him. ‘What is it you want exactly?’

‘Why do people always leap to the conclusion that other people always want something? It’s an unhealthy way of looking at life. It’s a sign of the paranoid times we live in. Everybody’s scared. Nobody wants to connect. We live in our own sealed boxes.’

She shaded her eyes against the brightness of sun. She saw how sunlight was reflected from his shirt and his hair and the windshield.

‘Hey, I’m harmless,’ he said. ‘Ask any of my friends.’

‘I don’t know any of your friends.’

‘I’ll introduce you to some,’ he said.

‘Yeah, right,’ and she turned and kept moving. The car slid along beside her.

She said, ‘You’re being a nuisance.’

‘You want to tell me your name?’

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You’re the one that phoned! I recognize your voice.’

‘I didn’t phone you,’ and he stopped the car and got out, leaving the engine running. ‘Carry your books in time-honored fashion?’

‘I can manage.’ Just walk, she thought. He’s lying about not phoning.

‘Your heart is spoken for? Don’t tell me.’

‘Jesus. What business is it of yours?’

‘You think I’m too old for you?’

‘I think you’re goddam presumptuous,’ she said.

He was in step with her now. ‘You’re not exactly keeping company with the Ancient Mariner. So your heart isn’t taken, huh?’

‘What will it take for you to leave me alone,’ she said.

‘I’m just compelled by curiosity. You quit being curious, you might as well be dead.’

‘This is where I catch my bus.’

‘I’ll drive you to school in my chariot.’

‘Uh, don’t think so.’

‘Come on. Do I look menacing? Do I look like somebody who goes round offering rides to unfamiliar young women?’

She stared at him. ‘Yeah, I think maybe you do.’

‘Your father warned you against guys like me. Right? Candies-from-strangers syndrome.’

‘I don’t always listen to my father,’ she said. Why had she said that? Why had she sounded so … defensive? She could hear the school bus rattling a block away. ‘I make my own decisions.’

‘I bet you do. So why won’t you let me drive you?’

‘No way.’

‘I am crushed.’

‘Good,’ she said, and glanced at him.

He feigned an inconsolable look and laid a hand across his heart. He had an expressive face and gestures. The eyes were bright and smart and – yeah, all right – attractive. He exuded an energetic confidence, as if life was something to be taken lightly, nothing was too serious, problems were just tiny obstacles you skipped around.

‘Here’s my bus,’ she said.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Sit with the clones. Conform. Be like everyone else. Ride the bus. Sit in classrooms. Take notes. Regurgitate. Blah-blah.’

‘You don’t know the first thing about me.’

‘I’d say you’re intelligent. You’re independent. You don’t like school. You know there’s more to life than books and teachers. You’re a prisoner of the system. You’re not free. You haven’t tasted liberty.’

She smiled at him, didn’t really want to. The way he pinned her down, defined her. Accurate enough.

She said, ‘You’re guessing now.’

‘I’m a great guesser,’ he said. ‘I do a lot of things well, as a matter of fact.’

The big yellow bus drew up and the doors opened.

‘Here,’ he said, and shoved a piece of paper into her hand. Puzzled, she closed her fingers around it and boarded the bus, and saw him watch her from the sidewalk with a curious smile on his face as the doors hissed shut.