Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  Vega’s eyes opened with a jolt, and she brought her legs down. She sat on the floor and raised her head too quickly, felt the heat leave her head and rush to her chest. After a few seconds she stood and went to her laptop, flipped it open and clicked her email. There was a new message, a Gmail address she didn’t recognize. No subject. It was a single line:

  FIND NOLAN MARSH AND YOU WILL FIND THE BRANDT SISTERS

  6

  Cap was shocked out of sleep by the sound of Bosch next door yelling, then his own doorbell. He jumped up from the couch, still in his clothes, disoriented, his head running through the slideshow of the night before. He smelled the coffee brewing from the programmed machine in the kitchen, glanced at the blue numbers on the cable box (7:01 a.m.) as he hustled to the door, didn’t look through the glass panel before opening it. And there was Vega, looking exactly the same as she had hours earlier, except her hair was wet from the shower.

  Bosch stood on the edge of his driveway and was waving his arms like he was trying to flag down a tow truck. He wore a bathrobe over his clothes.

  “Cap, Cap, I tried-a teller she can’t park there,” he said.

  Then Cap saw. Vega had parked in Bosch’s spot in front of the lawn where he liked to walk his dog and his mother’s cat.

  “I’m not blocking the driveway,” Vega said, quiet, not defensive. She searched Cap’s eyes for an explanation.

  “Cece won’t do business on a car, she don’t like the wheels,” Bosch shouted.

  Cap smiled apologetically.

  “We don’t park there,” he said. “You can park behind my car.”

  Vega turned and stared for a moment at Bosch, who continued to talk.

  “Cece gets upset, then Monty gets upset, then they don’t eat, Cap…” he said.

  She walked down Cap’s front steps and headed toward her car.

  “…then Ma don’t eat…”

  For a moment Cap’s head flooded with concern while he watched them, Vega approaching Bosch slowly as he chattered. Then she unlocked her car with the beep from her keys and got inside, started the engine, and pulled into Cap’s driveway.

  “…she’s gotter iron supplement, she can’t take it with any dairy else it don’t work,” Bosch was saying, though he was beginning to slow down.

  Vega got out of the car and nodded to Bosch.

  “Thank you, thank you, ma’am,” he said.

  “Welcome,” said Vega.

  “Thank you, thank you,” said Bosch again. “Cap, is Nell home there? Gotta book for her. She might like it.”

  “Wednesday. Best to Iris,” called Cap, as he held the door open for Vega.

  She passed underneath his arm, barely producing a draft. If he’d had his eyes closed he might not know she was there.

  Cap let the door close and followed Vega in. Only now did he feel tired, the exhaustion of the night before pressing on him.

  “Is Jamie awake?”

  “I don’t think so. You want coffee?”

  “No thanks,” said Vega. “I got this email a couple of hours ago.”

  She handed him her phone. Cap peered at the screen.

  “Who’s Nolan Marsh?”

  “Twenty-five-year-old white male, disappeared three years ago. Took a walk after dinner from the home he shared with his mother and never came back. Listed as a ‘vulnerable adult.’ ”

  Cap leaned on the back of the couch and rubbed his eyes.

  “Mentally challenged or ill,” said Cap.

  “Yes. Detective Ralz is listed as the police contact.”

  Cap thought.

  “What’s the connection to the Brandt girls?”

  “Nothing obvious. I have Marsh’s mother’s home address and a landline,” said Vega, examining her phone.

  “Your guy get that?”

  “He did.”

  “We should call her.”

  “Yes, we should. Let’s talk to her first,” said Vega, nodding toward Cap’s office.

  “Yeah,” said Cap. “Wait. Let me get coffee.”

  He went to the kitchen and pulled out two mugs, filled them.

  “You sure you don’t want?” he said, tipping one toward Vega.

  She shook her head, impatient.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He ran his hands through his hair in a weak effort to appear more presentable, and went to his office door, Vega right behind him. He opened the door to his office slowly. The room was dark and stuffy, the blinds still drawn. He heard Jamie Brandt snoring softly as they got closer to the loveseat. She was curled up like a prawn, her face pressed against the back cushions, mouth open.

  Cap walked around and sat on the table. He looked up at Vega. Who’s going to do this?

  No one had to. Jamie convulsed awake, blinking at Cap and Vega hard and fast, struggling to see them.

  “What is it? Where are they?” she said, hoarse, her hand on her forehead.

  “It’s okay, Jamie,” said Cap. “You’re in my house. Max Caplan,” he said, tapping his chest.

  “Yeah,” she said, sitting up, breathing. “Yeah, right. I remember. What time is it?”

  “A little after seven.”

  “I have to go,” she said, alarm setting in.

  “We have to ask you a couple more questions,” said Vega.

  “I don’t have time,” she said, reaching for her purse. “I have to go.”

  “We have information. We have to ask you some questions,” said Vega, firmer.

  “What do you mean? What information?”

  “Here,” said Cap, handing her the coffee.

  She sat back and took a small sip.

  “Do you know someone named Nolan Marsh?” Vega asked.

  Jamie thought about it for a second and shook her head.

  “No, doesn’t ring anything.”

  Vega and Cap looked at each other. Then Vega handed her the phone.

  “I got this email this morning.”

  Jamie looked at the screen. Cap watched her eyes go wide.

  “What is this? Who is this from?”

  “We’re trying to find out,” said Vega. “Nolan Marsh is a missing adult, disappeared three years ago.”

  “Does he have them? Do you think he has the girls?” Jamie said to Vega.

  “We don’t know if there’s a connection, but we’re going to speak to his mother soon and ask her about it.”

  “It’s very possibly a false lead, Jamie. The police told you about these?” said Cap.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sickos who just want attention, stuff like that.”

  “Exactly. On the surface this doesn’t sound too promising, but we’ll still check it out. We just wanted to ask you first.”

  “Okay.”

  She took an aggressive sip of her coffee, set the mug on the table with a clink.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That it for now?”

  “Something else,” said Vega. “Does Kylie have a girlfriend with a boy’s name? I have her class list, but it doesn’t show gender.”

  “Yeah, it’s Cole. Cole Linsom. Parents are a couple of snobs, but Cole’s a sweet thing. Real polite. The police already talked to her though. All of Kylie’s friends.”

  “Linsom,” said Vega, writing it down on a small chit. “We need to speak with her.”

  “Why? You think she knows something?” said Jamie, fresh paranoia in her voice.

  Before Vega could say a word, Cap said, “We’re not sure, but we need to clarify a couple of things, make sure Kylie didn’t mention anything to her about someone she was going to meet at the mall.”

  “Okay, yeah,” said Jamie. “I can…uh, call her mom. She sent me an email, I think. Said if there’s anything she can do.”

  “That would be great,” said Cap. “Should we take you back to your folks’ place?”

  “Yeah. Could I use your bathroom first?”

  “Out the door on your right.”

  Jamie picked up her purse and left, closing the office door beh
ind her.

  “Why didn’t you let me tell her about Chaney?” said Vega, writing another note.

  “We tell her about Chaney, she gets upset about Chaney. She calls him, shows up at his house—Why didn’t you tell me you saw Kylie? and so on. Then we have her off the rails, which we don’t need, right? We need her focused.”

  Vega looked at him and didn’t speak for a moment. Cap felt slightly disarmed.

  “I tell my clients everything,” she said. “No one can help us more than the client.”

  “And usually I would agree with you. But you have to go case by case.”

  “I told her last night we’d tell her everything we knew. Now I’m lying.”

  “You never lie, Ms. Vega?” Cap said, mostly out of curiosity.

  “Not to clients.”

  The toilet flushed; there wasn’t much time. Cap leaned in.

  “This is your investigation so you run it however you want. But my opinion: we hold back on Chaney now, tell her later when we need to. Now we drop her off at home, let her get her day in order,” he said quietly. “We don’t need to push her further down, right? The more time that passes, she’s going to get there on her own.”

  Vega’s face didn’t move, her eyes still on him. Jamie came back in, on the phone.

  “I’m coming. They’re driving me….Jesus, Mom, I’m coming, shut up, okay?” She hung up and put her phone in her purse, then looked up at them. She was awake now, scared and sick all over again. “Can we go?”

  Cap glanced at Vega and tried to read her, but she was a stone.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding up at Cap as if they’d already discussed it: “Your car, right?”

  “Right.”

  Cap took another quick sip of coffee and grabbed the jacket off the back of his desk chair. Brand-new day, and here we go.

  —

  Every fucking one looked the same, thought Vega, as Cap parked on a wet dirt road. All the houses here looked like they’d suffered a few winters without maintenance; they all had water stains on the siding near the ground, the gutters on the roofs over the garages twisted dripping glum puddles into the driveways. The homes varied by style, either row house or ranch style or A-frame, but they were all old, all depressing in their disrepair. Her house in the Sacramento Valley was nothing special, two small bedrooms and a narrow kitchen, arched doorways and bright blue tiles in the bathroom. Spanish eclectic, the realtor had called it. It didn’t evoke any emotion in her in particular; she didn’t miss it when she was gone, had no feelings either way about sleeping in her own bed or taking a bath in her tub the way other people seemed to, but this place, Denville, made her miss the heat in the air when she left the screens open on the windows in her kitchen, and the squat peeling palm tree in the backyard.

  She watched Cap pocket his keys, listened to him ask her something and thought, Except his place. Something about it she liked; something made her want to sit in his living room in the summertime and feel a warm breeze blow through.

  “So? What do you think?” Cap said again, squinting through the windshield at the house.

  “About what?” said Vega.

  Cap glanced sideways at her, a smile creeping onto his mouth. He knew she hadn’t been listening and was amused.

  “We go straight to Cole Linsom’s house after. Unless we get a break.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you talk first,” said Cap.

  They got out of the car and walked the short distance up the road. The house had a little land around it, overgrown grass and shrubs and a few trees framing the property. It was raining lightly, speckling the grass, tapping the roof of the porch as Vega and Cap stepped up. Cap knocked on the wooden pane of the screen door; it rattled under his fist.

  They waited a couple of minutes, and then a woman opened the door behind the screen. She was thin, with curly red hair and no eyebrows. She also had a plastic tube running across her face with a prong in each nostril, the tube running to a nylon bag she wore on her shoulder, and which contained, Vega suspected, a portable canister of oxygen. Vega felt just for a moment like she’d been punched in the nose, all the bones in her face radiating heat. And it came to her: cannula. That’s what the tube was called, a nasal cannula. Just one word in the lexicon of the sick and dying, one stone in an endless riverbed.

  “Hello, Ms. Marsh?” said Vega. “I’m Alice Vega; this is Max Caplan—we spoke on the phone?”

  Maryann Marsh opened the screen and smiled, a weak, crooked line.

  “Hello, come in,” she said.

  She seemed to struggle with holding both doors open until Cap stepped in and pushed them to the wall. Vega followed him inside, wiped her shoes on the gray mat by the door like he did.

  The house was dark inside and smelled old, like water had been spilled on the carpet a long time ago. There were tables and sideboards against every wall with no space in between, and on top of them, knickknacks and pictures and ashtrays with hardly a spot of bare surface showing.

  Maryann walked slowly ahead of them and sat on a pink brocade couch, the upholstery faded and shredded in spots on the arms. Cats, thought Vega. But she saw none.

  Maryann touched the cannula, pressed the prongs up her nose with two swollen fingertips.

  “Sorry to keep you out there,” she said. “Don’t move too fast.”

  Vega nodded.

  “Ma’am, I received this email this morning.”

  Vega unfolded the sheet of paper and handed it to Maryann. She squinted at it and looked disappointed.

  “Who sent this?” she said to them.

  “We don’t know. The email address is just a Gmail; we’re trying to trace the actual machine it was written from. Do you have any idea why someone would link your son’s disappearance to the Brandt girls?”

  Maryann paused to consider, then shook her head. The red hair, which was now very clearly a wig, moved stiffly on her shoulders.

  “He’s been gone three years November. Other than the fact that there’s all three of them missing now, I’m not sure….” She took a deep breath through her nose then and coughed.

  Vega felt everything that was bothering her just then—the toe she had stubbed that morning, a cut below her knee from a razor two days before, most of all the smell of the house, some kind of lotion and mold, like a cellar stuffed with old clothes. It seemed to be getting worse.

  “Could you tell us what happened to your son, to Nolan?” said Vega.

  Maryann nodded.

  “Yeah, I can,” she said, resigned to the task. “He was what you call a disorganized schizophrenic, which is just like what it sounds like. Everything about him was disorganized, his head and the way he talked, and his emotions. I first knew something was wrong when we were at my mom’s funeral when Nolan was, oh gosh, about twenty-one, and he was laughing during the service. But I could tell he didn’t think he was doing nothing wrong—he just didn’t know how to be. Before that, he was a normal boy. Played all kinds of sports, had a couple nice girlfriends. Here,” she said, waving her hand toward a small white table. “Get those pictures, will you, hon?”

  Vega stood and went to the table, saw two pictures in dusty frames and brought them over.

  “That one, that’s him in his soccer gear,” Maryann said, pointing to Vega’s left hand.

  Cap and Vega looked. A boy, big and brawny, with red cheeks, on one knee in a soccer uniform. He had the look, Vega thought, the one reserved for teenaged boys, the one that says there’s nothing but girls and beer and sports in the world and I am goddamn okay with that.

  “Looks like a forward,” said Cap.

  “You got it,” said Maryann, proud. “Went to State that year. Lost in the end but made all the papers.”

  “When was this taken?” Vega said, nodding at the other photo.

  It was the same boy but obviously transformed, wearing a white shirt buttoned up to his chin and his hair combed neatly. He smiled but was shy about it.

  “Then that’s him right
before he disappeared. He was in the community college when he was diagnosed, and then he just lived with me and my youngest. Their dad’s way far out of the picture.”

  She paused to take a breath through the tubes in her nose and pressed them again to her nostrils, as if to get every last bit.

  “That must have been challenging,” said Vega.

  Maryann laughed. “You know, you’d think so, right? But by the time he left, we were doing okay, the three of us. Nolan knew he had to take his meds, and he smoked a pack and a half of Camels every day, but it was no bother. He always smoked them on the porch or in his room.”

  “There’s something I have to ask you,” Vega said, leaning forward in her chair. “Did Nolan ever show any interest in underage children?”

  Maryann breathed strongly through her nose, coughed and laughed. “No, my dear, he did not.”

  “And he never had any violent tendencies? I hear that can happen with schizophrenics.”

  Now Maryann seemed to try to steady herself, placed one hand on the arm of the couch. Vega could see the white in the knuckles. Maryann held up one finger.

  “One time he pushed me. Once. When we were still trying out different meds, before we got him on the Zyprexa. But he was like a starving dog that ain’t been fed yet. Just wild and sick.”

  “And that was it,” said Vega.

  “That was it.”

  “What happened when he disappeared?” said Vega.

  Maryann shut her eyes.

  Please do not cry, thought Vega.

  “He and I got in some silly argument over emptying the dishwasher—he was usually really good about chores—and I told him I was too tired. And then I told him, ‘Nolan, I’m going to bed early and tomorrow morning that dishwasher better be empty.’ I was working a fifty-hour week back then, before I got sick. And I woke up next morning, and he was gone. All his clothes still in his closet. No note. Just took his wallet and his cigarettes.”

  She looked at Cap and Vega then, and wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with her clubby fingers.

  Cap leaned forward and handed her a square brown napkin from his pocket. She nodded and took it, wiped her eyes.

  “Youse have kids?” she said.