“Mama’s resting,” Annie Young said. “Can you come back tomorrow?”

“No,” Kat said. “It won’t take long.”

Annie Young scowled from behind the cracked door. Closed it. They heard footsteps receding. After a minute, she was back. The chain rattled and she opened the door and turned away. They followed her into the apartment, smelled a strong waft of air freshener. Marguerite Young was in her chair, crumpled-up tissues arranged on the upholstered arm. She was in her pink bathrobe, blue-veined feet in white terrycloth slippers. The TV was on, cowboys heading off a stampede. Lightning and thunder.

Mrs. Young glared.

“Isn’t there any crime going on in this godforsaken city?” she said.

“Yes, Mrs. Young,” Kat said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Suppose you caught the circus outside. I’m sick, too. No consideration, these people.”

“No,” Kat said. “But we want to talk to you about Fatima.”

“Who?”

“Fatima Otto. From upstairs.”

“Talk to Catholic Charities. They bring these foreigners here.”

“She’s missing,” Brandon said.

“The girl? Says who?”

“Her father.”

“Probably ran off with one of her brothers’ hoodlum friends,” Mrs. Young said. “Those two are headed for trouble, mark my words.”

“Maybe,” Kat said, “but we heard she may have been out in the driveway. Early this morning, around three.”

“So?”

“So we thought you may have been up, noticed her outside.”

“I’m sick. I’m not up at three in the morning, babysitting the neighborhood.”

“So you haven’t seen Fatima? You, Miss Young?”

The two heads shook in unison. Then Annie Young looked away and back. “I don’t want to start rumors,” she said.

“About what?” Brandon said.

“I have seen her. I mean, not today or yesterday, but lately. Down the street, with a boy.”

“Across State Street?” Brandon said.

“Yes. Around there, on that corner.”

She paused, added, “A white boy.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Mrs. Young said. “Somebody got to her. Matter of time.”

“We’ve talked to that young man. He says he hasn’t seen her in a couple of days.”

“Lucky if he sees her ever again,” the old woman said. “These people, one of their young women starts fooling around—doesn’t have to be a white boy. Could be someone from the wrong tribe or clan, or someone who didn’t pay enough goats.” She blew her nose. Folded the tissue and dabbed.

“It was on TV. One of these Moslem girls, she starts dating this boy. Not some hoodlum, either. Did something with computers.”

“Mama,” Annie Young said. “I don’t think the officers—”

“Pretty girl, too, what you could see of her.”

“Mama, they’re here about—”

“Well, her family, they got wind of it. But you see, they hadn’t approved of it or arranged the marriage, whatever it is they do.”

“Mama, I think that was in Pakistan,” Annie Young said.

“All the same, these places—hot and dusty. Can see why they want to get the hell out. But anyway, this girl’s male relatives, her uncles and brothers and her father, too, they locked her in a room and they beat the daylights out of her. Whips and tree branches and all sorts of things. Horrible. And the poor defenseless girl, she died.”

“So you think—” Kat said.

“And when they caught them? Didn’t even deny it. Said she disgraced her family and had to be punished.”

“I don’t think—” Brandon began.

“Only difference may be that this Mr. Otto, the father, he’s been here long enough to try to get away with it. Isn’t going to prison for twenty years.”

“Have you seen him punishing Fatima?” Kat said.

“They don’t do it in the middle of the street,” Mrs. Young said.

“Heard anything?” Brandon said.

“No, but they might’ve put a pillow over her face or something. They’re crafty, these people. Guess they have to be, to survive in that horrible desert. But they don’t belong here. It’s like putting a camel in the Maine woods. Nothing wrong with a camel—if you keep it where it belongs.”

“Mama, please,” Annie Young said, putting a hand on her mother’s shoulder.

“Women do all the work, too,” Mrs. Young said. “And they’re treated like second-class citizens.”

“Mama,” Annie Young said.

“Don’t shush me, dear,” Mrs. Young said, and then, to the cops, she said, “I’d go ask the Somalis, if I was you.”

“They’re Sudanese,” Brandon said.

“Same difference,” Mrs. Young said. “Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, you find out they have her locked up someplace, beating her with sticks.”

Kat and Brandon exchanged glances. Annie Young rubbed her mother’s shoulder. Mrs. Young blew her nose again, crumpled the tissue, and lined it up with the others on the arm of the chair, like cookies on a baking sheet.

“So, neither of you has seen Fatima in the last day or so?” Brandon said.

The heads shook, stopped.

Outside, Kat and Brandon gave the house a last look. Brandon was thinking of Tiffany’s notion that bad karma was working itself down from the top. Kat was picturing Fatima Otto getting a whipping for talking to an art student from down the block.

They got in the cruiser and Brandon backed out, headed up the block toward State Street.

“I know how she feels,” Kat said.

“Who?” Brandon said.

“Fatima. I mean, if she got in trouble at home for hanging out with Lil Messy there.”

“You hang out with art students?”

“No,” Kat said. “I hung out with a girl who was a very out lesbian.”

“Your family beat you with sticks?”

“Different culture,” Kat said, half smiling as she remembered. “We weren’t Amish, but my family had the shunning thing down pretty good.”

“Lay the guilt on you?”

“Disappointed them. Hurt them. Disgraced them. Humiliated them.”

“So they stopped talking to you?” Brandon said.

“More or less. Shut me right out.”

“For how long?”

“It’s been almost eleven years.”

“That’s shunning, all right,” Brandon said.

“I don’t see Otto hurting his daughter.”

“If she was having sex with a white American art student?”

“Well, maybe the art student part,” Kat said.

He looked at her.

“Just kidding. But I think he might send her away,” Kat said.

“But why would he report her missing, then?” Brandon said.

Kat thought for a second. “Maybe because the punishment got out of hand and she died?” she said.

They rode in silence, both contemplating that sad prospect. Brandon turned onto State Street and started up the hill. Coming down the sidewalk toward them were three women in head scarves, colorful long skirts. Not Fatima.

The cruiser passed them. They looked at the cops, then quickly looked away.

“No,” Kat said. “Mr. Otto wouldn’t want to get involved with us.”

“Then we’re left with the shabah,” Brandon said.

They cruised Parkside up to Longfellow Square. Students, a few homeless guys, blending in with their backpacks. A drunk with a coffee cup, panhandling. Out Congress toward Maine Med, three African guys walking, in no hurry. Brandon slowed, pulled over. He and Kat got out, walked back. The African guys put on their masks, no expressions, like tigers going still in the grass.

Brandon remembered Sergeant Perry’s instruction: Remember—where these people come from, men in uniforms rob and rape you.

“These are Somalis,” Kat said.

“Can’t hurt to ask,” Brandon said.

They stopped and gave their spiel. The three Somali guys shook their heads, a runaway Sudanese girl not their problem, white cops holding nothing but trouble.

Back in the cruiser, circling down the hill toward the Expo. Two guys on a stoop, both sex offenders. “Maybe somebody grabbed her off the street,” Brandon said.

“There’s one I haven’t seen yet,” Kat said, “somebody picking off Sudanese girls.”

Driving past the Oaks, the park quiet, a bald white guy sitting alone in a parked Jeep under the trees. “Always a first time,” Brandon said. He was writing the guy’s plate number down when his phone buzzed.

Mia.

“Hey,” Brandon said.

“Something’s going on.”

She was breathless, tense.

“What? Where are you?”

“Lily’s. She didn’t want to come back all alone.”

“Where’s Winston?”

“The restaurant.”

“So—”

“There were two guys. Sitting in a car out front, up a little.”

“Yeah.”

“I saw them. A white guy and a black guy...I don’t know. They just didn’t look like they belonged here. Looked, I don’t know. Big city. I said to Lily, ‘Probably it’s nothing but—’ ”