Or, rather, Ms. Policewoman.
“Detective Carole Evans. Would you care to take a seat?” she asks, pointing at my own couch.
Like she owns the place.
She’s taller than me, with light-blue eyes and too-tweezed eyebrows. No makeup. Her face looks undefined, as if her features have been flung onto a blank canvas and left to their own devices.
She’s wearing a black button-down blouse and tight gray pants. Nike running shoes and a wedding ring. As I’m sitting down, she says, “Would you mind if I asked you what happened to that eye?”
Which is a way of asking, isn’t it.
“What?” I put my hand beneath my glasses.
“Something hit you?”
I go to the mirror. In the bright light it looks as if I’ve recently been crying: there are streaks on my cheeks cutting rivers through a dusting of dirt.
My hands are filthy.
What went on last night?
Right, the bonfire. I close my eyes as visions of the beach at night return like scenes cut from an otherwise all-right movie.
I touch the bruise. It feels like an undercooked steak. There’s a tiny cut to the left of my right eye.
“I can’t believe it got that bad,” I say, turning around. “It was a stupid accident. Last night I opened a car door, and then my friend Stacy said something to me. I turned and said, like, one minute or whatever, and when I turned back someone had opened the door a little more, and I smacked right into it.”
“On the top corner?” Detective Evans says.
“Exactly. It didn’t look like anything last night, but it sure does now.”
I sit on the couch and try to change the subject before Detective Evans can conjure any more questions regarding my social life. “I’ll be fine. So what’s happened to Ben?”
Detective Evans pulls out a notebook. “You were with Benjamin Carter yesterday, correct?”
“All day,” I say. “What’s happened?”
“All we know at the moment is that his mother put him to bed last night, and this morning he was gone.”
“Gone?” I say. “Where would he go? He’s five years old.”
“We don’t know, Lauren. That’s why I’m here.”
“Okay,” I say, because what do I know about these things? The Carters live two blocks away, and nothing really bad ever happens in our area. It’s the suburbs! People come here to get away from bad things.
“Have you seen him today?” Detective Evans asks.
I push at my hair, a habit sent down through our DNA from mother to daughter for generations. It’s a miracle that we all aren’t bald. “I just woke up,” I say. “I dropped him off yesterday at around five, if that’s any help.”
“How did Benjamin seem yesterday?”
“Normal?” I offer.
“Did he say anything about running away?”
“No,” I say. “He’s never said anything like that.”
“Did he seem sad or upset at all?”
“No.” I realize I’m endlessly shaking my head no and put a stop to it. “We played in the park, had ice cream. He kept talking about these things called Beyblades.”
“You mean the little tops that ram into one another?”
“Yeah, those.”
“What was he saying about them?”
“Just that he wanted a couple of new ones and his mother wouldn’t get them for him. But that happens a lot. He’s five—he wants everything.”
“Was there a particular reason his mother wouldn’t get them for him?”
“Do you mean because they might be violent or dangerous or something?”
“I suppose.”
“No. Like you said, they’re just tops that ram against one another.”
Detective Evans stares at me, and I decide to fill the silence. “They all have different names and abilities. Some are attack and others are defense. So you have to decide what kind of battle you’re having and choose the right top.”
“Did you notice anything at all out of the ordinary with Benjamin?” she asks.
“He was the same old Benny.”
“How about Erin? Did you notice anything different with her?”
“Not that I can think of. She spent the day volunteering at the hospital.”
Detective Evans flips a page in her notebook, then flips it right back again. “Did you happen to see any other members of the Carter family yesterday?”
“Not while I was with Ben, no.”
“But after?”
I glance at my mother, who is sitting on the edge of a chair. She has always given me a certain amount of freedom, and though I normally am good about respecting it, I know I’ve stepped beyond my bounds recently. I mean, if she knew I was out drinking, she’d lose her mind. But she gets these horrible migraines that sometimes put her out for days. So she mostly doesn’t have a choice but to trust me.
“There was a bonfire last night, and Ben’s stepbrother and stepsister were both there,” I say quickly. My mother doesn’t react to this. I guess she is focused on the fact that Ben is missing.
“Jack Junior and Stephanie.”
“People call him JJ.”
“Did you speak to them at all about Benjamin?”
“I didn’t speak to them about anything,” I say.
“Did you notice when they left the bonfire?”
I adjust my glasses, remembering why I hate wearing them. I can’t leave them alone and am always pushing them back up my nose. “No, there were a lot of people there. I saw JJ and Steph, but that was it. We don’t really hang out.”
“What about Benjamin’s father, Jack Carter? Did you see or speak to him yesterday?”
“He was at an event, I think.”
“The mayor is a busy man,” Detective Evans says, still creeping me out with her penetrating stare. I feel like a problem she has to solve. Like she’s been a cop so long that people are no different than paperwork to her. Something you read, scribble on, then either pass along or file away.
“Do you think you can help us today, Lauren?” she says.
“How?”
“I’d like to visit all the places you were with Benjamin yesterday. If he’s run off, we’ll possibly find him somewhere he’s recently been. Would that be okay?”
I say, “Could I get something to eat first?”
“I can make you some breakfast,” Mom says.
Detective Evans stands and pockets her notepad. “Let me buy you something on the road. The sooner we get going, the better. If that is okay with you, Mrs. Saunders.”
“She wouldn’t want to be a bother,” Mom says.
“Do you really think he could have run away?” I say.
Detective Evans is flipping through something on her cell phone. That uncomfortable someone-is-staring-at-their-cell-phone silence occurs. I let it pass, waiting for her to come back to reality. Finally, she looks up. “That’s sometimes the case.”
“How’s his mom doing?” I say. “How is Erin?”
She quickly types something into the phone before finally putting it away. “As well as you might imagine. Same with the mayor.”
I grab my purse off the coffee table. “Quick teeth brush,” I say.
“I’ll meet you in the car.”
In the bathroom, I take two extra-strength pain-killers to try to cut the inevitable brain-splitting headache off at the pass. I brush my teeth, wipe the dirt from my face and step into my bedroom. I grab my cell phone from the charger, slide it into my pocket and head out of the bedroom and to the front door. I stop for a second there, looking outside. My temples are pulsing. I feel incredibly dehydrated.
My teeth ache.
I close my eyes and attempt to focus. Try to remember the night before. The afternoon with Benny. But everything is a blur.
You have to wonder about humans sometimes. The things we do to ourselves in the name of entertainment. Or because what seems like fun is really just what everyone else is doing, and our lack of imagination and courage makes us all followers.
When I come back out, my mother has disappeared into the kitchen.
“I’m leaving, Mom,” I yell.
“You’ll find him,” she calls back. “He can’t have gone far.”
“It’ll be okay,” I say.
I inhale one last deep breath and step outside.