“You’ve got to stop this, kid,” Nix said from across the desk.
The tired dragged her mind to the dark place that told her the wheels were slowing, the grind easing, and a low acceptance was beginning to pervade.
There were no photos on his desk, no wife or kids or handshakes with monied guys and golf buddies. His focus was total. He could not find her friend.
She picked the mud from beneath her nails, fussed with her braid, and pushed her frames up a nose too small to carry such weight. She knew when he looked at her, when most looked at her, they saw a poor girl. Not poor like Patch, because her grandmother drove the bus and they owned a decent home because her grandfather had insurance, but poor in an altogether more complex way. A poor girl who had no sense of style, or femininity, no chance of finding a boy and then a man. A girl who looked to books for answers to questions that would never be asked of her. Weighed questions that had nothing to do with fashion or baking or making a goddamn motherfucking home.
“Dr. T was just there that morning, in the woods right by where it happened?” she asked.
Nix glanced behind her at the glass-paneled door like he was trying to catch the eye of someone who would come save him. “He was just there, Saint.”
She was too small, her feet stuffed into wedges that had fit her a year before, her arms scratched and cut at each elbow. She knew girls like Misty already powdered their cheeks and painted their lips and tweezed at their eyebrows.
At the door she stopped and turned. “Why was he there, though?”
“He was looking for his dog. The thing ran away. Your friend Misty was helping him search.”
She tucked her hands into her pockets, rolled remnants of tissue and lint across her fingertips and stared at the big policeman. “He doesn’t have a dog.”
“Excuse me?”
“My grandmother’s house backs onto the Tooms farm. In the winter when the trees are bare I can see the miles to his house. Me and Patch used to run through onto the farm. I didn’t ever see a dog, Chief Nix. Not ever.”
Nix was about to reply when the phone rang.
Saint watched the color drain from him.
That afternoon the news would spread through Monta Clare.
Another girl had gone missing.