Maggie
It was a long walk from Eighteenth and Chestnut to the precinct, but the weather was cool, and the trees to the north, lining the parkway, were starting to turn colors, and Maggie decided she needed the air. She would cut over to Broad Street eventually, when the neighborhood turned more transitional, but for now, she just looked at the stores, the window boxes outside the restaurants, the trees dotting the sidewalk in heavy planters. There were other people walking in a city, always, moving through their lives like nothing was the matter. Frank used to take long walks, trying to puzzle out his cases, walking through their suburban neighborhood, the only person without a dog or a stroller or a cigarette. Everyone walks now, for their health, but for many years in Ardmore, no one did unless they had a reason. And Frank’s reasons were all internal and more numerous than Maggie had bargained for. Did he call Salt during those walks or just think of her? Maggie had suspected a girlfriend existed before she knew; Frank had started going to the gym, had bought new underwear. Weren’t those the classic signs? Once she’d caught him using her eye cream, dotting it on the creases that appeared at the corners of his eyes, and she’d laughed at him, told him that he should have started twenty years ago, wearing sunscreen. That nothing could help him now, it was too late. She felt sick, thinking of those words. How right she’d been.
But now, angry as she was, she missed her husband deeply. Not because he knew better what to do—she’d learned plenty over the years after all—but because he’d go off the playbook. A mother going crazy with grief is a harridan, easy to dismiss. But a father? A cop? He was a vigilante, not to be crossed. Frank would know the exact moment to take that editor kid and twist a rep tie around his neck until he gave up his so-called sources. Frank would handcuff those roommates in a squad car for jaywalking and refuse to allow them a phone call until they confessed. Frank would make it happen. Only a slightly dirty cop, an old-school cop, could make it happen. Not Kaplan. Going by the book took time. And who had time?
Maggie cut over to Broad Street, passing a church, a school. The bell in the tower chimed as she walked by, and she wondered if Emma had thought to go to church for solace, for moral protection, for guidance. It was hard to imagine her doing so. That was what Maggie and her sister had often done as young girls, turned to quiet prayer, to reflection to guide them. Now, girls did yoga and used meditation apps. They paid money to go somewhere and float in water or nap on clean sheets. And why? When the filtered light from stained glass was there for free on nearly every corner?
Above Broad Street, Maggie passed the downsized offices of the Inquirer, an upscale barbecue place across from an old-school diner, a mix of new and old in this area of the city. She smiled, thinking of Frank’s hatred of craft beer and artisanal burgers, his Philly accent tripping over the word artisanal.
By the time she reached the front door of the precinct, she was almost calm. Her blood pressure, which had seemed to do nothing but rise since she’d gotten that first visit at the salon, had settled down a bit. Walking had calmed her, just like Frank. So she should have been ready for whatever Kaplan had to say, but the look on his face as he came up to greet her was grim.
“There have been a few developments,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said, her hand going up to her chest. Had her long walk been the last moment of peace she would ever find? She knew “development” could be a euphemism. Was it code for “finding a body”?
“It’s okay. It’s nothing definitive. But let’s go to the video room.”
“Video,” she said dumbly.
“Are you okay? Do you need water?” He said it clinically, like a nurse, but she tried not to hold that against him.
Behind him, Salt came up and took her arm. “It’s okay. Take a deep breath.”
“Did you find—”
“No, no, no. We got the security camera footage back, among other things. It’s going to help. We’re getting closer.”
“It doesn’t show—”
“No.”
Kaplan shot Salt a look Maggie didn’t understand. Was she contradicting him? Was she just saying whatever needed to be said to calm her down and keep her from fainting?
Salt guided her to a room, set her down in a chair, then sat down next to her.
“You’re wondering if there’s violence or worried that there’s blood or something you can’t handle seeing,” she said calmly, and Maggie swallowed hard and gave a small nod. “And there isn’t. It’s helpful, though, so let’s go through it together and talk about it, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She drank the water they gave her.
“Unless you don’t want to look? We can just describe it, but we thought you’d—”
“Yes, yes, I want to see it.”
A technician came in, sat at the computer. A box of tissues nestled next to him, and that scared her, too. It all scared her. She knew some crimes were solved solely on the basis of security footage. People forgot the cameras were there. People thought they were in disguise. People were stupid, and cameras were smart.
Maggie thought of her mother, telling her and her sister to be strong at her grandmother’s funeral. She always said the best way to stop crying was to pretend you were drinking something through a straw and holding it in. It had worked, but it also meant she and her sister had walked around the funeral home with pursed lips all day. It was one thing for a girl to cry over a death and another for a mother to cry over evidence. She didn’t want to be that woman, but she was that woman. She was that girl, and now she was that woman, scared and sad with a reservoir full of unshed tears.
They said the first view they had was outside Lenape Library. There was footage that was clearly Emma, arriving late morning, leaving before dinner, almost every day. The times were slightly different, but nothing else. She looked pretty, clean, neatly dressed. Completely normal except she wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look unhappy exactly, but the word businesslike occurred to Maggie. That, and though she passed lots of clusters of kids, she was always alone, with her backpack. The inside camera showed she walked past the tables of study groups and went to the computer area.
“We have this same basic footage for almost two weeks. It coincides with the date of her second meeting with the editor and ends the day before she is reported missing. So we’re confident that Sarah Franco got the timeline right. And while it’s reassuring to see her looking perfectly fine, it was initially worrisome, because she has a clear routine and schedule. If anyone wanted to follow her, it was easy to know where she would be.”
“Do you see any evidence of anyone following her?”
“No,” Kaplan said with a sigh. “We’ve been through it thoroughly and don’t see anyone behaving suspiciously. And no one who repeats any of the days.”
“Which is good,” Salt added.
“It could be interpreted that way,” Kaplan said. “Bad for the investigation maybe, but good for her welfare.”
Maggie thought perhaps that was all she could ask for. Not that she could know or that they could all figure it out. It didn’t have to make sense. As long as Emma was alive, it could make no sense. She’d have to remember that, to fight the urge to put the pieces together. The pieces didn’t matter. Only her daughter did.
“We wonder if she’s not working on her own laptop because she’s doing something private, for the story she is researching. It seems a little cautious, but that’s what people who are hiding something do.”
Maggie nodded. That made sense to her. And the fact that that’s what criminals also did to cover their tracks wasn’t lost on her either. She knew Kaplan had to be thinking that, too. She also knew journalists sometimes broke laws to pursue stories, but they weren’t usually freshmen in college.
“There is also no log-in under her name, but there is under Sarah Franco’s. Do you think the two friends might have had a beef?”
“No, no—”
“Okay, maybe they were working together?”
“No, that’s probably just being secretive again. She needed to log in with someone else’s info.”
“Okay, one more thing. This also might be because her laptop was stolen or damaged.”
“No,” Maggie said. “If she needed it repaired or replaced, she would have called me. We have AppleCare.”
Salt and Kaplan exchanged another look, and Salt began to speak. Maggie saw what was happening now, a version of good cop/bad cop. Boy cop/girl cop. Salt stepped in whenever there was something difficult to explain or deliver. Like she was interpreting. Like she was giving Maggie the mom version. But what did she know, this woman without children? It was both helpful and irritating at the same time.
“Well, we ask because there’s another video we’re concerned about. We thought you might have some insight into it.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
“It’s outside the trash bins in your daughter’s dorm.”
“Oh God,” Maggie said.
Salt patted her arm. “You can do this,” she said. “It’s okay, I promise.”
The tech pressed more buttons, then sat back. Three girls taking the trash out. Fiona, Taylor, Morgan.
“Those appear to be your daughter’s roommates.”
“Yes,” she said. “Everyone but Annie.”
Fiona carried a large black garbage bag, the others, smaller shopping bags.
The girls were laughing, lighthearted. Not the grim faces of someone who had committed a crime. Not the nervous glances of someone afraid to be caught.
“The bag looks light,” Maggie said with relief. Not a body. Not parts of a body. Even these girls weren’t stupid enough to dispose of a person in their dorm hallway and laugh while they were doing it. They were idiots; they weren’t killers.
“Yes,” Kaplan replied. “We think it’s your daughter’s clothes.”
“Why?”
“Go in on that tote bag,” he said to the tech.
The picture sprang to life, detailed. She could see the fibers, if not the correct colors, of the plaid sleeve.
“Same pattern she was wearing at the library,” he said.
“Is it?”
“We think so. Go back.”
The technician went back to the Tuesday footage from the library. Plaid shirt. Brown and green. Tucked in the front, loose in the back. The tails lifted in the breeze.
“She loved that shirt,” Maggie said simply. “Loves,” she corrected. “Loves.”
She remembered Emma buying it, bringing it home. It was soft, rayon, purchased on sale at American Eagle, and Maggie had worried that it had to be dry-cleaned. She worried Emma would take it to college, shrink it in an old-fashioned laundromat on high heat. That she’d forget, be in a hurry, not take care of it. That someone would steal it and throw it away because she loved it? Yes, it was safe to say that had never occurred to her.
“Of course, it might be a coincidence,” Kaplan said.
“No, I don’t think so.” Maggie said. For once, she and Kaplan agreed. “We found her room empty.”
“Yes. And her roommates said they had no idea why.”
She turned to Kaplan. “How stupid are they? Do they not see the cameras? How did girls this dumb get accepted at college?”
Kaplan smiled. A rare sight. “If there’s one thing you learn quick, being a cop, it’s that people are never as smart as they think they are. Never. Especially kids.”
“So what is this? Is this theft? Is it tampering with evidence?”
“It’s taking out the trash,” Kaplan replied. “At least that’s what they’re going to say.”
“So, the bigger issue,” Salt said haltingly, “is if they’d throw away her favorite shirt as a prank and take her phone, which was in Fiona’s drawer, what’s to keep them from taking her computer?”
“Especially,” Kaplan added, “if it was important to her. If she was, in fact, working on a story that mattered to her, and they knew that.”
“Wait, did you say ‘prank’?”
They were silent. It had been a bad choice of words.
“Is that really what you think this is? Stealing her stuff and throwing it away?”
“It doesn’t matter yet what we think,” Kaplan said. “It matters what we can prove and identify.”
“Have you checked the other garbage bins? In the other dorms? Or the dumpsters?”
“We’re doing that,” he replied.
“I think,” Maggie said, “not that it really matters, that in that library footage, her laptop is in her backpack. And some of that is time-stamped after this, right?”
They went back to the other footage. Maggie pointed to the backpack, how the edges sank down, heavier.
“That could be a book,” Kaplan said.
“A book as big as a laptop? No, Maggie’s right,” Salt said.
He sighed deeply, as if he didn’t like being told by two different women someone else was right. Maggie was used to that from Frank; that rankled a cop more than anything, finding out they were wrong. It was what bothered the force the most about cold cases, new DNA techniques. That someone would sweep in later and tell them they were wrong. Because being right was what a cop was all about.
“We also retrieved some deleted images from her phone,” Kaplan said.
Maggie didn’t think it was possible for the blood in her veins to actually go cold, but she swore she felt it turn. Didn’t Kaplan realize that his measured tones and vague sentences were more ominous than being enthusiastic and direct? She wouldn’t be nearly as frightened if he would just be himself. And then, a more chilling thought—maybe he was. Maybe this measured man was all there was to him. Maybe he wasn’t covering anything, wasn’t holding anything back. He was what he appeared to be.
“What type of images?”
She was prepared for his answer, or so she thought. She had never caught Emma or her friends doing anything sexual or aggressive with a camera, but you can’t parent a girl, go all the way through high school with her or, God forbid, middle school without hearing the stories. Of videos passed around boy to boy. Of girls playing strip poker over Skype to a whole team of football players. You didn’t have to go to the same parties or even be in the same room to have something terrible happen to a girl. And it all began on the phone.
“Well,” Salt said, taking in a deep breath. “It seems one of her roommates stole more than Emma’s clothes.”
“Just tell me,” Maggie said firmly. “Did she hurt her?”
“Only her pride,” Salt said. “Remember the partial handprint above the bed?”
“Yes.”
“Fiona had a visitor, filmed it, and shared a screen grab of that video with Emma.”
She pulled a photo out of a file. It was taken from a height, above the bed on the right side of the room. A naked boy, on top of Fiona, his hands against the wall for leverage. A boy with one finger bandaged.
“Jason,” Kaplan said.
“Future Husband,” Salt said.
“Oh my God,” Maggie said.
“We’re bringing her in for questioning,” Salt said.
“No,” Maggie said.
“No?”
“You need to talk to him,” she said.