Vega was fully clothed on the beach, and it was hot and bright. She tried standing, but it was a lot of work, first to get to her knees, then upright. Was it the Pacific, that little beach near Monterey, darker as it got deeper, whirlpools spinning in the distance? But the sand was different here than she remembered, muddy, her feet in her boots sinking and sticking every time she took a step.
That’s because you’re dreaming, asshole. She tried to take off her dream clothes, but they were heavy, draped around her like towels, each second that passed making her hotter and hotter, blood roiling and bones rattling in her torso as she made her way to the water.
Then she was in, her head under, but still she was breathing, taking water into her nose and mouth and throat and lungs, and then she heard the voice of the boy in the tank.
“Can you hear me?”
That brought her back to Hyacinth Avenue, in the neighborhood where all the streets were named for flowers. It was a cute little town, except for all the meth. Trees and fences and pinwheels in the breeze.
Was it that day again? This is death, then, she thought. Reliving all the big days.
It had been three months since Perry had died, and Vega was working freelance for a couple of different bail bondsmen, guys you wouldn’t necessarily cross the street to avoid but not people she would call friends or even business partners.
She’d stopped drinking for the most part, had started and quit yoga, ran five miles every morning and did pull-ups on a bar in her closet. She’d mostly stopped talking. Ordered what she could online so she wouldn’t have to speak to people: protein bars, toilet paper, mags for her firearms. She’d started carrying a Springfield in a shoulder holster instead of the Browning rifle on jobs, kept the out-the-front knife strapped to her calf.
The neighborhood was quiet, people at school or work or locked inside watching talk shows, lifting shaking spoons of cereal to their mouths. She found the block, then the house. Not the nicest of either. She opened the gate, went up the path, and not up the porch steps but around the side. Looked in the windows but couldn’t see anything—blinds shut, frames locked.
Then a back door. She opened the screen door, doorknob jammed. Push-button lock. Took a minute or two with a paper clip. Click, then open. She drew the Springfield, held it with both hands.
She stepped into a moderately messy kitchen and smelled cigarette smoke, bacon, sweat. She could hear the television coming from another room and stepped around the table, got close to the doorway and took a little look.
There was her skip, Quincy-Ray Day, lying on the couch smoking a pipe with a girl asleep on his lap. She did not have to look at her phone to make sure it was him. Tiny brass-snap eyes, cheeks red with acne and scars, oily ginger hair. She didn’t see a gun anywhere near him, which meant a little. Could be one between the couch cushions, under the girl, stuck in the back of his pants. But if it was not immediately visible, then it was also not immediately accessible. Add that to both his hands being occupied, one with the pipe, one with the lighter, and that gave Vega a nice fat set of seconds.
She moved quickly into the living room toward Quincy-Ray, pointing the Springfield right at him. She watched his fuzzy eyes focus on her, making sure she wasn’t a hallucination, and then when he realized it, he dropped the pipe and jumped off the couch, the girl falling hard to the floor, screaming. And Quincy-Ray scrambled to his feet and raced for the door.
Oh, Jesus, thought Vega. You dumbass saltine motherfucker.
“What the fuck, what the fuck?!” yelled the girl.
Vega glanced at her, saw no features except brown teeth and a white tongue lolling around like a piece of fish.
Vega took one more step and pressed the Springfield into the back of Quincy-Ray’s neck.
“Stop,” she said. “Stay on your knees.”
He stopped and stayed. The girl kept chattering but Vega ignored her.
“Reggie Guff’s looking for you, Quincy-Ray,” she said. “Put your hands behind your back.”
Vega took one hand off the gun and reached for her belt where her cuffs were hanging. She knew a second before it happened—he was taking too long to bring his left arm back.
Vega turned around just in time. The girl was lifting a bowl, about ten inches in diameter, and had started to bring it down on Vega’s head.
Vega blocked it with one arm and dropped the cuffs but not the gun. She hit the girl in the mouth with it, while Quincy-Ray tackled her. They both fell to the ground then. He was on top of Vega for only a second. His weight was soft and heavy in a somnambulant way, and he tried to grab her gun but ignored her left hand, so she hit him in the nose with the heel of her hand, and he rolled off her. She grabbed his hair and yanked his head off the ground, blood starting to run from his nostrils, and turned him over. He flailed and she sat on top of him, gun to the back of the neck again.
“Put your hands behind your back. Again,” she said.
The girl moaned and cried in a pile next to them.
“He’s got a boy in there, bitch,” she said to Vega.
Vega cuffed Quincy-Ray.
“The fuck you talking about, Choppers?” Vega said, standing.
“He’s got a boy in the bathroom,” she said, holding a newspaper to her lips, the split in the middle gushing blood.
“Fuck you,” said Quincy-Ray. “He ain’t mine. He belongs to the guy who owns the house.”
“They’re all into some sick shit,” said the girl.
“I didn’t do nothing to that boy,” said Quincy-Ray, arching his back, trying to flip over.
Vega went to the front door and unlocked the locks, opened it up. She heard some birds and smelled the air.
“You,” she said to the girl. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m telling you the truth, bitch,” she said, her lips and cheek starting to blow up.
“Get the fuck out of here or I will break your fucking fingers in this fucking door!” Vega shouted, gripping the doorknob.
The girl jumped, grabbed a backpack, stepped over Quincy-Ray like he was a puddle, and left, dripping blood on the carpet as she went.
Vega slammed the door.
“I’m serious, girl,” said Quincy-Ray. “I had nothing to do with that boy in there. I’s just staying here a couple weeks.”
Vega left him and drew the Springfield again. She walked softly the way she’d come, moved through the kitchen except took a left, passed a room she guessed was a bedroom though there wasn’t a bed in it, only stuffed black garbage bags.
Then a narrow door that she opened slowly into a dark room that smelled rotten, the only light in the room coming from a small gray window on the other side of a filmy shower curtain.
She kept the gun in front of her and let her eyes adjust, held her breath. It was then that she realized there was someone else in the room, breathing shallowly, much lower to the ground than she was.
She kept both hands tight on the Springfield, felt around with her elbow for the light switch and flipped it.
There was a lot to see, all at once. A bathroom that wasn’t unusual. Toilet, bathtub, sink. Except under the sink, across the floor, was a tank, like a big iguana tank, open on the top. Later she would learn it was thirty by thirty by eighteen and made of acrylic.
There was not an iguana inside. There was a boy.
He was younger than a teenager but not little; he was naked, in a fetal position, covered in shit and blood. His head had been shaved, and his eyes were closed, but he was breathing, shivering. Hands cuffed with cheap restraints around the pipe under the sink, his arms stretched unnaturally above him, fingers blue.
Vega felt dizzy and remembered to breathe. She squatted and put her gun in her holster, rubbed her hands over her mouth. She looked at his face and recognized the crinkle of his bottom lip, the attached earlobes. She had seen him on TV, missing from Modesto, thirty miles south. She sifted through the trash in her mind for his name.
“Ethan?” she said. “Ethan Moreno.”
He stirred but didn’t wake up.
“Ethan, can you hear me?”
His lids fluttered, just a small beating of wings, his eyes not staying on her.
Later she couldn’t remember exactly what had happened or how she felt. She told the cops; she told CNN. It was like she’d climbed into the backseat and let someone else drive, but she was still giving directions. First the kitchen, under the sink, looking for a wrench or a hammer but found a small fire extinguisher instead. Then back to the bathroom, where she slammed it against the pipe, over and over, for ten, twenty minutes until it busted and water sprayed them both, and she untangled his hands and reached inside the tank and put her arms under and around him, feeling his cold, wet skin, the bones of his hips and back, and she lifted him out, his eyes still fluttering.
Then she ran out the back door the way she had come, to her car, curling his head toward her chest.
“Ethan, can you hear me?”
He spoke into her shirt, his breath a hot burst.
“Can you hear me?” he repeated.
She smiled without meaning to, said, “Yes, I can.”
Then: “Can you tell me your name?”
Then he was gone, and so was that street and that day, and so was Vega for that matter; she couldn’t see a thing except the flashlight in her eyes, and all she kept hearing was that doctor asking if she could hear him and if she could tell him her name. She started to speak, but the words turned to salt in her mouth, and her eyes sealed shut as she tried to get back to the boy in the tank.
Cap had never seen media like this.
Twenty or thirty vans and trucks with every three-letter and double-digit combination on their doors were parked outside the emergency room entrance. Men with cameras, correspondents in sportswear, antenna masts spinning. Cap watched them through the spotted beige blinds of a hospital administrator’s office in Frackville, a town that made Denville look downright cosmopolitan, where the sole local ambulance and one sheriff’s car had brought Dena, McKie, Bailey, and Vega to be treated.
“You can’t contain these things anymore,” said the Fed, standing a foot or so behind Cap. “When I started, twenty-five years ago? It was easy to stay five steps ahead of them. You could get someone in and out of the hospital or the courthouse. Jail. You could go through a back door and throw a coat over their head. Now one person takes a picture with a phone and you get this shit.”
Cap scrolled through the flipbook of potential responses in his head: “You got that right, what a bunch of dicks,” or “Hey, they’re just trying to make a living like everyone else,” or “This could help us—the more attention, the better,” or “This could hurt us—the more distractions, the harder it will be to find Kylie.”
He said none of them, instead whispered, “Watch the language, okay?”
The Fed nodded, remembering.
Then they both glanced to the corner of the room where Bailey sat on a chair, drinking Pedialyte from a straw. She didn’t seem to hear them, staring at the ground, still in the dirty dress, legs kicking the air like a lazy swim stroke.
Vega sat straight up in bed, hips and torso shuddering with a single jolt. She looked around quickly for clues. Green plaid curtains, green plaid chair, television mounted to the wall. It could have passed for the world’s most uncomfortable motel room until she looked down at the stiff white sheets, flimsy gray blanket, adjustable side rails, remote with worn arrow buttons. Another goddamn hospital.
She saw the IV needle stuck in the top of her left hand. With her right she touched her chest, looked down the gown in the front. Bra and underwear still on. She pressed her lips against her teeth, then rubbed them together, realized she was taking too long to do these things and enjoying things too much—they must have given her painkillers. She touched her lips, smelled her fingers, saw the residue sprinkle on the tips and the imprint from the handle of the Springfield like little tire tracks on her palms.
Then she remembered Dena Macht on the ground, Bailey Brandt with her arms hooked around Caplan’s waist, the snapping of a wooden plank over McKie’s back, and then she lifted her hand and touched the bandage above her eye. The pain was dulled by the drugs but pulsed from the pressure, a drop rippling through a puddle.
Vega heard noise outside the window—voices, vehicles. The first thing she thought of was a stock car race, the time her mother took her and Tommy to see NASCAR racing at the Sonoma tracks, the swell and grind of the engines, the hiss and howl of the crowd. But this was not a sprint.
Vega pushed the twisted sheet off of her and swung her legs to the floor. Slowly she stood, one hand on the rail, the other on the IV stand. The bottoms of her feet felt spongy, the muscles in her legs weak, but she knew it was just the drugs; she hadn’t been in a coma, for Christ’s sake. She walked to the window, tugging the IV stand behind her, and pulled back the curtain.
She saw Jamie Brandt, Gail and Arlen White on either side of her, holding her arms, and Maggie behind them, in the middle of a herd of vans. A pack of newspeople waving mikes and cameras. Gail shoved one of their arms away as they ran toward the emergency room doors, leaving Maggie Shambley’s lawyer in her unwrinkled suit behind to talk to the press.
Vega went back to the bed to sit, pushing the IV stand in front of her. She examined the needle in her hand and thought. She’d seen enough nurses do this with her mother. Only one or two of them were good, the rest were always stabbing and re-stabbing her hands, muttering, “Small veins,” with disdain like it was her mother’s fault. But by the end she was so high most of the time it didn’t matter. She didn’t notice the blood drops on the mattress or the bruised skin below her knuckles.
Those were actually sweet memories for Vega, when her mother was stoned on morphine, because she seemed to enjoy things and she wasn’t debilitated by anxiety as she’d been before the cancer. Her mother had stopped driving a couple of years previously because she was afraid she’d crash, so she’d made Vega and Tommy and her second husband, TJ, drive her everywhere. Then she stopped riding in cars altogether because she said they felt too small.
But on the morphine, she laughed and swore, leaned back on the pillow and gazed at Vega as if she were a gently waving daffodil. Vega thought her mother looked pretty then, with her little scraps of hair and thinned eyebrows, clear white skin and deep-end eyes, like an old elf queen.
Vega stared at the bag and the slow drip of liquid into the tubing. She reached up and rolled her thumb on the little wheel to pinch off the tube inside, shutting down the flow. Then she looked around, grabbed a tissue from the tray table next to the bed and folded it into a tiny square. She unpeeled the tape from the needle, pressed the tissue square over the entry point into her skin, and pulled the needle out, slow and careful, then strapped the tape over the tissue.
I could have done that for her, she thought briefly, sadly. She slapped her palms against her thighs, rubbed them through the gown. For a moment she felt very old and very scared. Then she stood and walked on her rubbery legs to the door and pushed it closed. Her shirt and jacket hung on a hook on the back, pants folded neatly over a hanger, black boots against the wall. She gave them a tight little smile and pulled the gown off over her head.
Bailey didn’t seem to hear the noise coming from outside. She had finished the Pedialyte, and had asked for more, which Cap didn’t have access to in the administrator’s office, so he’d given her a small cup of water. He knew he couldn’t give her too much, that she was at least mildly dehydrated and would need more electrolytes, salt, and sugar. Cap squatted in front of her while the Fed looked at his phone.
“She’s here,” he said to Cap.
Cap smiled at Bailey, examined the slender curvature of her cheeks and chin. She really did look like the Shrinky Dinks version of Jamie, not just younger, but everything in miniature, down to the expressive almond eyes.
The child was calm and seemed to trust him. He didn’t flatter himself that he had a way with kids; he knew to her right now he was merely the agent of change, taking her from somewhere terrifying to another place, and considering the instability of Dena’s and McKie’s state of mind, another place was better no matter where it was. Because there were a ton of worse things you could do to an eight-year-old girl besides kill her.
But she had held on to him after Vega passed out, listened to him when he asked her to wait in the car while he went inside the house of the old man with the truck to use the phone, stood next to him and pressed her head into his side and under his arm when the sheriff and the ambulance showed up.
“Your mom’s here,” said Cap to her.
“Is she sick?” asked Bailey.
Cap breathed out an airy laugh and tried not to burst into tears like a maniac. Having had what would probably prove to be the singular most traumatic experience of her life, here was Bailey Brandt worried about her mother.
Before he could say yes, there was the ding of the elevator and then a rush of noise in the hallway, chatter and footsteps and Jamie Brandt’s burnt voice above them all, yelling, “Bailey!”
Bailey jumped in her chair and stood. She looked once more at Cap, and he smiled at her and nodded. She appeared unsure of everything, but not afraid. She peered toward the doorway.
Then Jamie was there, nearly hyperventilating, her jean jacket and purse falling off her, like she had climbed a rope ladder to get there. She was thin and pale and weak but still she ran and stumbled to Bailey, hitting the floor on all fours and crawling the last step to her. Bailey said, “Mama,” and slung her arms around Jamie’s neck, and Jamie grabbed her and moaned, her mouth open, cupping Bailey’s head and sweeping her hands over Bailey’s hair.
Then everyone was in the administrator’s small office: Traynor, Junior, Gail and Arlen, Maggie, two doctors and two nurses. Gail went to Jamie and Bailey and started hugging them too and thanking God, and Cap started to back out and make his way to the door.
Then Arlen was in front of him, pumping his hand, saying thank you and asking how can we thank you and remarking on what a blessed day this was. And Cap thought the day was blessed until it turned on you, and if they couldn’t find Kylie it would turn quick, sweet cream into bad milk.
A blessed day. Well, whatever you say.
Then a dark blot clouded the corner of his eye, and he turned and saw that it was Vega, standing against the wall at the end of the hallway. Dressed in her black uniform, the pants and sleeves coated with dust and dirt from the Macht cabin. Her face was scabbed and scraped on one side, a bandage over her eye where McKie had hit her with something hard and sharp.
Gail White called for her husband, her voice strongly reminiscent of a bow saw on plywood, and Arlen immediately stopped thanking Cap and God and hustled into the office.
Cap turned back to Vega and took some steps, and then she took some steps until they were close, and he could really see the scratches on her cheek like an animal skin pattern and the gloss of the bacitracin, the gray-blue bruise rising around the puncture wound, swelling her eyebrow.
“I didn’t think they’d let you out so soon,” said Cap. “They said you were dehydrated.”
“I’m okay,” she said, pressing her lips together. “They got me on some kinda painkiller.”
She squinted one eye at him and looked a little tipsy.
“You’re not supposed to be up, are you?” he said.
She shrugged, nodded to the office.
“They all in there?”
Cap nodded.
“Bailey tell you anything?” Vega said.
“Not really. We were holding questioning until Jamie could get here.”
“Where’s Dena?”
“In ICU. Which in this hospital is a room with a sign on the door that says ICU. She’s conscious but not at all lucid.”
“What about McKie?”
“He’s in a bed. Local sheriff’s watching him.”
“Awake though?”
“Yeah. Concussed,” Cap said, then smiled at her. “What’d you do to him anyway?”
“Hit him with a plank-a-wood,” she said, words running together. Then she pointed to the bandage. “Same one he got me with.”
Cap looked at the bandage, imagined a plank of wood hitting him in the forehead, a jagged edge or a nail punching a hole in his skull. He took in the parts of Vega’s face, including the puffy eyebrow and scrapes, and did not think he would look as good in such a situation. The kiss in the woods came back to him fast, his embarrassment and desire taking the form of a stomach cramp. He pulled at his belt.
“You okay?” Vega said. “What’s wrong with your pants?”
“Stomach thing,” he said.
She ignored him, because she was either high or disinterested, and he was grateful. Then he wondered if she remembered it at all, the kiss, if it had been wiped away by the trauma or if she’d slipped it into the inside pocket where she kept all things vulnerable and emotive.
Then a crowd came out of the office: Traynor and Junior and the Fed, the doctors and the nurse, the hospital administrator, and Maggie Shambley. The administrator shut the door.
“Family needs a few minutes,” said Traynor in Cap’s direction.
“Miss Vega,” said Maggie, rushing up, then to Cap, “Thank you both. I knew you could do it,” she said to Vega, taking one hand in both of hers. “I read about how you found that boy in Modesto, and I just knew it.”
She whispered the last few words, overcome. Vega gave a mandatory smile, and her eyes were lazy from the drugs, also sad because she was Vega—it was Friday and they were still one girl down.
After everyone had thanked everyone two or three times, and Traynor and the Fed had laid out the schedule, they’d all decided that it made sense to do the interviews right there in the hospital to (a) get the freshest statements; (b) play keep-away from the media; (c) get McKie and possibly Dena to talk before they figured out they wanted lawyers.
They were gathered in the hospital staff room, just marginally larger than the administrator’s office. The Brandt-White family lawyer was named Sam, tall and horsey with blond highlighted hair and a blouse with a silky ascot attached. Gail White had whispered to Vega in the hallway, “She’s from Philly,” to explain the sophistication, foreign and apparent. As Sam spoke she held out one hand and cut across it with the other, like she was chopping onions.
“Jamie’s ready, and Bailey’s ready,” she said. “You’ve got to wait for the social worker from CPS or you’re going to get heat from your DA.”
“We’re fine with that,” said Traynor. “We know most of them. Do we know if Dena Macht’s awake?”
“In and out,” said Cap, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. “McKie’s awake.”
“Anyone coming for either of them?” said Traynor.
“Hospital notified Dena’s parents,” said Junior. “They’re on their way. Still looking for next of kin for McKie.”
“I’ll take McKie,” said the Fed, fairly definitive. Then, “My supervisor’s meeting us in Denville.”
“I’d like someone in the room,” said Traynor. “Junior?”
Junior nodded. Cap cracked his neck to one side quickly, without sound. Vega recognized it as a signal that he was getting ready to be pissed off.
“Hey, we brought him in,” he said, looking at Vega. “We should be in there too. At least one of us.”
Traynor shrugged very gently and said to the Fed, “I have no problem with that.”
The Fed thought about it for a minute and then said, “I lead.”
“Of course,” said Cap.
And Junior will be there as window dressing, thought Vega.
“You can’t interview McKie right now,” said Sam the lawyer to Cap.
He shook his head, incredulous, preparing again to be pissed off.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because the Brandt-White family wants you to interview Bailey. With the social worker,” she said.
Cap was confused now. All the men were, actually, but Vega knew exactly what was coming. She’d seen it when she’d come down the stairs from the Macht cabin, the blurry vision of Bailey’s arms linked around Cap’s waist, the little girl’s face turned up to him, making a study of his chin.
“Jamie Brandt asked for me?” he said.
That made Sam the lawyer smile, tickled that he didn’t understand.
“Jamie agreed, but it was Bailey who asked for you,” she said.
They all took a second to absorb that. Vega watched as Cap’s brow softened.
“Fair enough,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Then Vega can be the third with McKie.”
Junior bristled and said, “Maybe not the best idea seeing she so recently beat the crap out of him?”
“I’ll stand somewhere where he can’t see me,” she offered.
The Fed perked up and pointed at her.
“You keep yourself controlled, ma’am. We can discuss ahead of time what you want covered, but you don’t make a sound, and you don’t make yourself known. Yes?”
He reminded Vega of someone, but it was surprisingly not the high school vice principal. There was nothing condescending about the tone, only firm and informative. Like a stern museum docent: Stand right behind this piece of tape, please. And do not touch a thing.
For the first time that day, Cap noticed there was a ripe smell coming off Bailey, like something fermenting, not entirely unpleasant. She had not been bathed and was in a frayed gown with sleeping tigers printed on it, sitting on her mother’s lap on the edge of a bed. Even though she was slight, she was still about fifty pounds and four feet tall, and Jamie struggled to hold her but showed no sign of letting go, one hand around Bailey’s thigh, pulling her legs into place, the other on Bailey’s head and hair. Bailey leaned her head on Jamie’s shoulder, the tips of her toes grazing the floor.
The CPS rep was young and named Krista. Cap remembered her a little from when he was a cop; there were only so many social workers in the county dispatched to do the uncompromising work of child abuse investigation. She blended in, though, with all the human services professionals he knew—mostly women, smart and overworked, usually with clothes that didn’t fit quite right, slacks and cardigans bought on sale.
The pediatrician, a stocky woman in jeans with a string of tiny hoop earrings on one earlobe, had just completed a basic head-to-toe exam on Bailey, confirmed the EMT’s diagnosis of mild dehydration, found no broken bones, but there were two small bruises and irritation around her right wrist where she’d possibly been tied up.
Cap watched as Krista tried to broach the topic of a rape kit, but since getting Bailey back Jamie had run the bases of Gratitude and Fragility and was now tagging Adamant and Pissy, or doing the best she could in her state.
“We’re at risk of losing any possible evidence of that type of activity,” Krista said, speaking as formally as she could, Cap sensed, so the adults would understand but the meaning might go over Bailey’s head.
“She don’t need it,” Jamie whispered, her voice thrashed from the tubes. “She told me they didn’t touch her like that.” She said gently into Bailey’s hair, “They touch you like that?”
Bailey shook her head sleepily.
“She may not remember for some time everything exactly as it happened,” Krista said, more quietly. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”
That caught a thread for Jamie. She considered it. Then she turned to Cap, her eyes heavy.
“What do you think?” she whispered, pointing at him with her chin.
Krista and the pediatrician looked at him, and he thought he could see a glint of Bailey’s visible eye peeking out from Jamie’s neck too.
“Well,” he said, “how recent does the activity have to have been in order to show up in the kit?”
Krista shrugged, said, “Depends. Certain physical elements degrade obviously. But bruising…scratches.”
“I looked at her,” said Jamie, more helpful now. “When she used the bathroom, she looked fine. Everything looked normal.”
“Sure,” he said. “I think what Krista’s saying is there are some things we can’t see, right?”
Krista nodded.
“But,” Cap said with a small cough. “I think the odds are that there has not been this type of activity, committed by these particular suspects.”
Krista opened her mouth to speak, and Cap held his hands up in humility and kept talking.
“I’m not saying it’s not possible. Just saying from our investigation, me and my partner’s, these suspects—”
He paused, stopped himself from saying “didn’t want her for that” because it sounded crude in his head.
“Had other goals,” he finally said.
Krista almost spoke again, then closed her mouth and gave a tight little smile.
“But if we’re ready for some questions,” Cap said, looking to Jamie, “we can, I hope, get some more information. Right?”
Jamie pressed her nose against Bailey’s head.
“Mr. Caplan’s gonna ask you questions now, okay?”
Bailey brought her face out of Jamie’s neck and leaned back on her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay with it.”
Then she smiled at him.
Cap smiled too. The more he looked at her, the more he thought she was a gorgeous kid, the more he wanted to do things that would make her happy.
“Okay,” said Cap, tapping the Record button on the DVR. “So can you tell me what happened last Saturday morning at Ridgewood? After your mom went to Kmart?”
“Like, right after?” she said.
“Yeah, right after,” said Cap. “Your mom gets out of the car. What do you and Kylie do?”
He watched Jamie’s eyelids twitch and nearly shut, like hairs were being removed from her head one by one.
Bailey, however, had the advantage of youth and did not yet view her ordeal as a tragic story. For her it was merely one thing after another, which, if her recollection of events didn’t fuse together, would be very helpful for Cap.
She told him everything, and her voice was high and thin, no real dip or modulation through the story of their leaving the mall and getting into the car, stopping for Blizzards at Dairy Queen on the way to the Macht cabin, even when she admitted to getting scared and missing Jamie, even when McKie pushed her into the kitchenette roughly because she was in his way. It was only when she got to the part detailing the realization that her sister was leaving with Evan Marsh, how she had grabbed and scratched his hand and wrist trying to hold on to him to make them stay; it was just when she was left with Dena and McKie, when she realized it was getting dark outside, that she started to cry in front of Cap just like she had in front of the strangers who had kidnapped her.
Vega swayed forward and back on her feet like rocking chair legs, the painkillers still suppressing whatever receptors they were meant to suppress in her central nervous system. She could sense the medication ebbing, though, as she pricked her cuticles with her thumbnails and felt startled when the spike of skin separated. She stood on one side of a grimy curtain between a vacant bed and an old heart rate monitor, the Fed and Junior on the other side of the curtain with McKie, who was cuffed to the bedrail and not in the greatest mood. Vega swore she could smell him too, the same scent that hung in the cabin—something gamey and just beginning the process of decay.
They had started nicely enough, the Fed lobbing plain questions, McKie saying yes and no like a good dog, but then it turned quickly into McKie playing pin the tail on the bad guy, who was Evan Marsh of course, McKie and Dena having been victims of unfortunate circumstances.
“So how exactly did Mr. Marsh talk you into kidnapping an eight-year-old girl?” said the Fed, all clean lawyerly manners. “I’m curious to know how he phrased it so you could think you weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“All he said was he needed me to hold on to a kid for a couple of days. We were never gonna keep her,” McKie said.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better, sir?” said the Fed. “Kidnapping a child for a week is as bad as a month is as bad as a year.”
McKie’s breathing accelerated, turned into a wheeze.
“Look, if you find Marsh, he’ll tell you everything—he took the older one.”
“Mr. Marsh is dead, Mr. McKie,” said the Fed. “We think someone shot him.”
“Fuckin’ Marsh,” McKie muttered. “Dumb motherfuckin’ Marsh.”
“Yeah,” said the Fed, quiet, calm. “Where would someone like Marsh get fifty thousand dollars, Mr. McKie?”
McKie didn’t respond right away. Vega heard nails on skin, scratching an itch. She wondered what kind of medication they had him on, how long it would take him to go into withdrawal.
“A guy,” he said. “I don’t know who. Some guy paid him to take the girls.”
“Then why would he give one of them to you?”
Vega knocked her head lightly against the wall behind her. She pictured Kylie’s face in the video at the ice cream store, the smile. The girl’s a natural-born flirt. She knew what McKie was about to say.
“Because the guy wanted the older girl. Just the older girl. I guess ten-year-olds gave him a stiff but not eight-year-olds, the fuck do I know,” McKie said.
Then he laughed a little at his joke.
“I’m glad you find the potential rape and murder of Kylie Brandt funny, Mr. McKie,” said the Fed. “I’m sure Captain Hollows here will remember that when he speaks with his district attorney.”
“Hey—” started McKie.
“Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, please. You’re a moron, and it grates on me,” said the Fed, getting angrier. “What do you know about the man who paid Mr. Marsh to bring him Kylie Brandt?”
“Nothing,” said McKie, drawing the word out. “Nada.”
His tone was careless, and it made Vega want to pop his front teeth out with a flat-head screwdriver. But if he were lying he would be more committed, somber even. He was not smart enough to lie casually.
“Captain Hollows,” announced the Fed, “if you have any questions, I encourage you to ask them. Mr. McKie’s made me so tired with his cerebral impairment that I can’t trust myself not to slap his mouth if I continue to conduct the interview.”
Vega extended her neck like a weed trying to reach the light, listening.
“Yes, I have some questions,” said Hollows. “Where did you say you met Evan Marsh for the first time?”
Vega heard the creak of the mattress as McKie moved around.
“Stag’s Bar on Seventh.”
“When was that?”
“I don’t know. Year ago.”
“And how did you get to know each other?”
“What do you mean?” said McKie, confused.
“In my experience,” said Hollows, “drug addicts get to know each other because they buy drugs together, sell them together, do them together. It’s like a burrow of rats sharing the same pile of garbage. And Denville’s not a big place. So did you and Evan Marsh share that type of relationship?”
Vega smiled. Hollows could sound sanctimonious and bitchy reading a grocery list, and she recognized that it probably made him good at his job.
“Yeah, sure, we bought from the same guys,” said McKie.
“You traveled in the same circles?” said Hollows.
“Yeah,” said McKie, sounding exhausted from the repetition. “Yes.”
“So how exactly would Evan Marsh meet Kylie Brandt, if these were the types of people he was associating with?”
McKie was quiet.
“I’ll rephrase that,” said Hollows, ever more condescending. “Where would a little girl meet two dumb junkies like you and Evan Marsh?”
“I don’t know, man,” said McKie, angry and annoyed. “At a party or some shit. I wasn’t there.”
Vega pictured a room. Beige walls and beige floors. No furniture, no windows. There was Kylie in her party dress on one side; there was Evan Marsh in jeans and a T-shirt on the other. No one else.
“Come on, John,” said Hollows. “Where would that party be? You think Marsh went to her middle school dance?”
Vega filled in the room. Flat-screen TV. Cardboard box for a coffee table. One black cat with white paws. She touched the bandage above her eye, and the ache rushed across her brow.
“One of Marsh’s hookups,” said McKie. “He was buying, and she was there.”
In her head a blue needle moved across the spiking red sound waves on an audio memo, a scratchy voice saying, “I had clients here. People get freaked out they see a kid.”
“That’s what he told you?” Hollows said, skeptical.
“Yeah, that’s what he told me, the fuck I know!” McKie shouted, banging his fist into the bottom of his food tray.
Back in Vega’s room: Evan Marsh, Charlie Bright, guys who looked like one or either of them—doubled and tripled, smoking weed, drinking beer, counting money.
And then Evan and Kylie in the corner of the room, talking, getting to know each other in the few minutes it took for Evan Marsh to get hold of a bad idea, and for Alex Chaney to get his keys so he could drive Kylie back home.
They were in Traynor’s SUV, Junior driving with Traynor sitting shotgun, twisting his body so he could talk to the passengers in the backseat: Cap and the Fed, with Vega between them like the little sister on a road trip. Vega’s thigh was lined up against Cap’s, the warmth blocked by the fabric of their pants, but it crossed his mind his palm could likely span the width of her leg, that she was actually far more delicate than either of them wanted to think. She reminded him of birds he would see hanging on the feeder Nell had strung in the backyard a few winters back, puffing out feathers to protect brittle bodies.
On the way out of the hospital, the administrator and a gray-faced doctor stopped them and made Vega sign a form, saying they weren’t responsible for the consequences of her removing her own IV and releasing herself. The doctor gave her a Band-Aid for the spot on her hand where the IV needle had been, and told her there might be irritation where they’d administered the tetanus booster in her arm. He told her to keep the wound on her forehead clean and change the dressing once a day. Vega seemed bored by the instructions, took the pen impatiently from the administrator and scrawled “AV” on the black line. To Cap, she looked smaller, her head bowed, taking careful tightrope steps to the car.
Cap realized it was his turn to talk, after the Fed had debriefed them on the interview with McKie, and Junior had instructed Ralz to bring in Alex Chaney for questioning. He tapped his fingertip on the Fast-Forward button on the recorder and gave them the highlights.
“After Kylie leaves with Marsh, McKie and Dena give Bailey some food and water and tell her she’s going home soon, so she does what they tell her for two days; she notices they nod off on the couch around the same time every night. I’m guessing that’s when they shot up or took their Vikes or whatever. So on the third night she waits until they’re asleep and then tries getting out the back door. McKie comes to and catches her, ties her by the wrist to the bed with an extension cord.
“She said he and Dena started fighting, fed her less, kept her tied up and made her pee in a cup. That was the last two days. Then we showed up.”
“Did she hear Marsh say anything about the man with the money?” said Traynor.
Cap held his fingertip to the Fast-Forward button.
“Just one thing,” he said.
He let go, clicked up the sound.
“I know this is hard,” said Cap on the recorder. “Was Kylie upset to leave you…when she and Evan left?”
“Yeah,” said Bailey, sounding even younger and squeakier than eight years old. “We were, like, hugging and crying.” Bailey’s voice shook and rattled. “Evan said it would be okay; he’d bring Kylie back soon and we could see our mom soon….”
“What did Kylie say?”
“She told him she didn’t want to leave me there, in the cabin, with John and Dena. And he was like, we’ll be right back after we visit your friend.”
Cap tapped the Stop button.
Traynor looked at the Fed, then Vega, then Cap. He shrugged and shook his head at the same time.
“Your friend,” said Vega.
“Yes,” Cap said. “Bailey, quoting Marsh, who says your friend to Kylie.”
“I heard that,” said Traynor. “You’re thinking that means Kylie knows the moneyman?”
“Maybe,” said Cap.
Traynor turned to the Fed and nodded.
“Easily a slip of the tongue or memory,” said the Fed. “It’s a stretch.”
“Sure,” said Cap. “Stack it up is all I’m saying.”
Traynor waved his hand in the air directly above his head. Reminded Cap of the white-wigged politicians in British Parliament he’d seen on TV.
“So noted,” said Traynor, a red light flashing over his face. “Captain,” he said to Junior, aggravated, “pull over and let all this pass.”
Junior pulled over, and they all watched the caravan: the Whites’ car containing Jamie and her parents and aunt and Bailey, the lawyer’s car close behind, two state police, three local, and then the news vans—ten that had become twenty while the authorities had been conducting the interviews in the hospital.
A helicopter cut the air above them, hanging low like a mosquito. Cap lowered his window, leaned his head out and peered up, shutting one eye to the rough wind from the rotors. The sound amplified and became less choppy, turned into a booming rumble. There was something strangely peaceful about it; Cap had the feeling that if he closed his eyes and opened his arms the gust might lift him up, he might rise and float—until a voice or a car horn shocked him awake, brought him back down fast.