by Louisa Luna
Vega bent down to grab it, and they got to the car without looking behind them, but Cap didn’t have to. He knew the Linsoms were still at the door, watching. He and Vega got into the car, and Cap bit the insides of his lips to stop himself from bursting into laughter from relief and awe that Linsom was just another safe that Vega had cracked.
“Park when we get out of here, yeah?” said Vega, looking down.
“Yeah,” said Cap, tucking the notebook between his seat and the cup holder.
He pulled out and down the block, glanced in the rearview and watched the Linsoms and their absurdly spotless house get smaller and smaller. He drove out of the Sprawl and parked next to a brown field, which he felt certain was soon to be Extended Sprawl.
He and Vega sat in silence for a moment. Then she placed a small black hook on the dashboard. It made a little clink.
“Where’d you get that?” said Cap.
“From the grill on the patio. It’s a magnet. I think you hang tongs on it.”
“So that was plan B, huh?” said Cap. “To hook him like a bass?”
“Something like that.”
Cap thought about it, rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t have minded, tell you the truth. He was a special guy.”
Vega reached her hand out the window and adjusted the side mirror.
“I had a feeling we could get out of there clean so I went with it.”
Cap nodded and picked up the notebook.
“Let’s do this now?” he said.
“Yeah, hold on,” said Vega.
She pulled out her phone and scooted toward Cap.
“Lean over,” she said to him.
He leaned into her, and she held the phone and aimed the camera. He pressed his shoulder into hers gently and could smell her hair and skin. Something herbal but not flowery—sharp and aromatic. He tried to ignore it the best he could, the desire to just turn and take a deep breath through his nose. He opened the notebook to the first page.
“Good?” he said.
Vega looked at the frame on her phone.
“Yeah,” she said, tapping the screen. Snap.
Then they huddled together and peered down at the first page, a list of boys’ names. “5A” was at the top of the page and the middle of the way down, “5B.” Next to each name were letters, a code: FH, BF, FF, G. Thankfully Kylie had added a key: FH: Future Husband; BF: Boyfriend; FF: Friend Friend; G: Gross.
Cap smiled at the honesty of it. At least you knew where you stood.
“Boys in her class,” he said.
“I have the class list—we can match the names, make sure there’re no discrepancies,” said Vega.
They flipped through the next few pages, more lists of boys’ names, more codes, some scratched out and changed from FF to BF and back. Ballpoint garlands of flowers and vines around the borders.
They came to a page with “MY MOM IS A BITCH” written at the top, angry black spirals beneath it, covering up a sentence or two.
“She felt bad about whatever she wrote,” said Vega, running her finger over the scribbles. “Crossed it out.”
There were only about ten pages in all with writing; the rest was blank. The last page was covered with wobbly edged hearts, the initials “KB + WT” inside every one.
“Who’s WT?” said Cap.
“Go back to the lists,” said Vega.
“Wesley. We can get his last name. And he’s a FF, so it’s probably not him.”
“Wait,” said Vega.
She ran her thumb through the rest of the pages like a flip book and stopped on one with a crease at the corner. She opened it. Tiny letters at the bottom: “See you soon he said!”
They both stared at the words.
“So what do we do in two hours when Linsom calls this in?”
“How about we beat him to it?”
“You want to call it in?” said Cap.
“We could use it. Trade it for whatever they have that we need.”
“You want to go back to Junior,” said Cap, staring straight ahead. The prospect made his teeth hurt.
“You want me to call, I’ll call,” said Vega.
“No, I’ll call. I’ll call,” he said again, talking himself into it.
Vega’s phone buzzed, and she scanned the screen and said, “My guy got the location of the email source—it’s a Kinko’s on North Haven Street. He’s working on security footage.”
“At least he’s close, but it’s a public device,” said Cap. Then he thought about it. “Shit, was it too much to ask for it to be a single-occupant residence?”
Vega didn’t answer him. She gazed out the window.
“Why don’t you bring that to Hollows too?”
“What—the Kinko’s?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t want our help,” she said. “Doesn’t mean he can’t help us.”
“Let them do the legwork there, talk to the staff,” Cap said.
“Why not. Keep everyone busy, going in the same direction. Here,” she said, handing him his phone.
Cap rubbed the top where it was nicked from the fall.
“Why’d you have to drop my phone and not yours?” he said.
Vega turned to face him and said, “I like my phone, Caplan.”
7
Evan Marsh moved like he had a pain in his shoulders or his neck. Vega stood just outside the loading dock of a supermarket called Giant, light rain landing in her hair, the temperature dropping. Marsh met her eyes and sped up, jumped off the dock and around the fork of a manual pallet jack with boxes stacked on top.
“Hey, Alice?” he said.
“Vega, yeah. Evan Marsh?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Do you have a minute to speak?”
They shook hands, and Marsh said, “Yeah, my shift hasn’t started yet. So you talked to my mom?”
“Yes, earlier today.”
“You have any idea who sent that email?” he said.
Vega watched his eyes. Big and brown, she couldn’t even separate the pupil in the low light. His hair was brown too, his skin smooth. Unlike his brother, who looked to be too big for his body in the pictures, Evan Marsh was in his midtwenties but looked about seventeen, young and lean like a greyhound.
“Not yet,” said Vega. “Do you?”
He laughed through his nose. “No. Nobody’s talked about my brother for three years except me and my mom. The police got the same message?”
“We think so.”
“And they didn’t do anything about it,” he said. “Not a surprise.”
Vega saw the tension in his lips, pushing his chin forward in frustration. She knew if there was something he wasn’t telling her, she could find it out, just by passing the tip of the blade over the wound that was already wide open.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I been in some small towns with some goddamn incompetent police departments, but this one is up there. They couldn’t find their assholes with a mirror and flashlight.”
Marsh smiled with half his mouth and nodded to the parking lot.
“You wanna walk?”
“Sure.”
As they walked out, Marsh took out a cigarette and lit it with a Zippo, silver with a cast metal skull on the face. He offered the pack to Vega, and she took one, let him light it for her.
“I don’t smoke around my mom,” he said. “Only started when Nolan disappeared.”
“I’m sure it was a stressful time,” said Vega.
“You do this for a living, right? Find people who are missing?”
Vega nodded.
“So you’ve seen all of this before—parents who can’t find their kids?”
“I’ve seen it. Every one’s different though.”
Marsh brushed the rain off his hair.
“What do you think the email means?” said Vega.
“I don’t have any idea. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“You’re right about that. But let’s say you had to guess. Let’s say your brother an
d the Brandt girls are connected in some way. What way do you think that might be?”
Marsh frowned, shrugged.
“I don’t know. I was kinda hoping you would. You’re the professional, right?”
“Yeah. But you’d be surprised how much you might already know, just instinctually. I mean, you can’t be any more off base than the cops, right?”
Marsh smiled again.
“So you just want my gut?”
“Yeah. Your gut.”
“Maybe the same guy who took those girls took my brother, and someone, like a third party, knows about it and sent the email,” Marsh said, looking down, almost embarrassed.
“Hey, it’s possible,” said Vega, encouraging him. “So are they all in the same place—Nolan and the Brandt girls?”
“No, no way,” said Marsh. He stopped walking. “My brother’s dead. I know that. My mother knows that.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, shook his head and shut his eyes hard for a second. “She tell you that she’s sick?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“She seem upset about it to you?”
Vega watched him. Finger flicking the cigarette at his side.
“Actually no, she didn’t.”
“You think some people are just at peace with a death sentence, right?”
Vega thought about the cannula again, the way it scraped the insides of the nostrils.
“I don’t know.”
Marsh shook his head more slowly for dramatic effect, like that would make Vega listen closely.
“She doesn’t like the pain,” he said. “She’s got a lot of aches, says her bones hurt, hurts to cough and breathe. Her mind’s pretty sharp though, but she forgets to take the pills that will shrink the cancer cells. Get it?”
Vega got it but wanted him to explain it to her. She shrugged dumbly.
“She doesn’t mind the cancer because it’s the last thing he gave her.”
Vega was glad it was raining, and that it was cold, that the water was getting into her socks and wetting the back of her neck and starting to chill her skin. Then it was easier to play the trick on herself. She’d started it a long time ago, on a humid day in South Carolina doing side lunges, the nail on her pinkie toe peeling off. Count the grass blades, smell the cigar smoke. This is not your body, she thought. This is not your pain. When a two-hundred-pound beast of a Mexican with a tattoo on his bald head that read BEBE AMO MAMA threw her across a table in a bar she thought it as she hit the floor: Focus on the sticky-sweet smell of tequila on the boards against your cheek. This is not your body. You don’t feel a thing. Right before she reached for the Springfield.
And she did it again, right now, looking into Evan Marsh’s angry young face, feeling cool drops slide into her bra, let herself shudder. Marsh’s hair was dark and soft, glued to his forehead in wet curls. His eyes were big and round and liquid. This is not you.
“I’m sorry,” said Vega.
“I know,” he said. “So what do you think, Alice? It’s Alice, right?”
His eyes went over her, down to the waist and back up to the face.
“Right.”
“What do you think, you know, in-stinct-ually?”
He drew the word out and managed to make it sound inappropriate.
Some part of Vega wondered what he was getting at. Are we flirting now? she thought. Well, okay, then, Evan Marsh, I will be whoever you goddamn well want me to be.
“I think it’s probably random, someone with an odd sense of humor. That doesn’t mean I won’t look into it.”
“I appreciate it. You know, for my mom.”
He wiped the water off his face and his hand lingered there, over his cheek. Vega looked at his hand and saw a series of fresh scratches, vertical on his forearm. He dropped his hand to his side, and she grabbed him by the wrist. He didn’t pull it back. His skin was warm.
“You have a cat?” she said, turning his hand up, showing him the scratches.
“Roommate’s got two,” he said.
He let his knuckles rest on her wrist, held her eyes. She let go and smiled, tried to picture herself younger and lighter.
“How are you not freezing out here?” she said.
He looked back over his shoulder at the loading dock.
“Hard labor, Alice,” he said. “It’s a bitch.”
“I thought you said your shift hadn’t started yet.”
Evan flinched only a little bit, smiled and started backing up, toward the loading dock. He held his arms out and called, “Guess I’m just warm-blooded.”
—
Cap leaned against his car and watched two kids, a boy and girl, probably four years old or so, turn dizzy spirals on a small steel merry-go-round. One of their mothers sat on a bench texting on her phone and smoking. She seemed young, and it momentarily concerned Cap, made him think, Why aren’t her eyes on the kids?
A blue midsize sedan pulled up across the street, and Junior Hollows stepped out, nodded to Cap and jogged over.
“Twice in twenty-four hours,” he said. “That’s twice as many times as I’ve seen you in the past three years.”
Cap shrugged.
“Unusual twenty-four hours.”
“What’s this about, Cap? You want to explain to me what you have to do with my case?”
“I’m working it.”
“You’re working it? From your rec room?” Junior said, amused.
“Alice Vega hired me. I’m working with her.”
Junior’s smile dissipated, and for a rare moment Cap could see the age lines around his mouth, ironed creases in a napkin.
“You really think that’s a good idea?” said Junior.
“Yeah, I do. The more hands the better.”
Junior laughed and shook his head, weary.
“Would you ever say that as a cop? Would you ever have wanted PIs up in your shit? Come on, Cap.”
“If they could help my investigation, yes, yeah I would.”
“And how can you and Alice Vega help me exactly?”
“I have Kylie Brandt’s diary.”
Junior’s eyes got a little bigger; then he tried to look cool about it.
“Kylie Brandt didn’t have a diary.”
“Says who.”
“Her mother.”
“In what universe are you operating where girls don’t keep secrets from their mothers?”
“We’ve been through Jamie Brandt’s apartment,” said Junior. “It’s the size of a shoebox. We didn’t find a diary.”
“Kylie didn’t keep it at the apartment. It was at a friend’s house.”
“The friend gave it to you?”
“Yes.”
Junior shrugged with cynicism.
“What makes you think the friend didn’t make it up, for the attention?”
“Jamie Brandt’s ex-boyfriend says Kylie told him about it. That’s how we found it.”
Cap watched Junior process it.
“You have it here,” Junior said, nodding to Cap’s car.
“Yeah. Also you got an email recently about Nolan Marsh?”
Junior shook his head no, a reflex.
“I know,” said Cap, fatigued by the exchange. “You don’t know what I’m talking about. Okay. Let’s say the DPD received an email about a guy named Nolan Marsh. Alice Vega got the same email.”
Junior stopped shaking his head, just listened.
“She had it traced to the Kinko’s on North Haven. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but maybe you want to send someone over there.”
They both stood there; Cap let his eyes drift to the kids on the merry-go-round, the boy dragging his foot along the ground, slowing it down.
“All right, Cap,” said Junior. “What do you want for all this? For the diary.”
“Just the open exchange of information. You don’t want to work with us, fine. But at least we can all have the same facts. Like witness statements, for example.”
“I have to check with Traynor,” said J
unior. Then came a big sigh. “You know he likes it clean.”
Cap nodded. He knew Junior wasn’t necessarily lying. The chief of police liked detail and transparency. He kept a twenty-year medallion from Alcoholics Anonymous in a frame next to the picture of his kids. The files in his file cabinet were alphabetized and color-coded, the Post-its stacked in towers from large to small on his desk. Cap knew for a fact there was a canister of Lysol wipes in his bottom right drawer. The only thing worse than telling Nell and Jules about his resignation was facing Chief Traynor, who was under the impression it really had been Cap who had let the junkie kid die.
“Caplan, I didn’t think you had these kinds of fuckups in your blood,” he’d said.
It hurt Cap like a sunburn.
Light rain had started to fall. Junior wiped drops from the hair that hung over his forehead.
“Fine,” said Cap.
He went into his car and grabbed the book from the seat, shielded it under his jacket from the rain. Junior eyed it and his lips twitched, like he was hungry and just a little too far from the dessert cart. Cap enjoyed the moment of cruelty, let his hand linger on the book before handing it over. Junior slid it under his coat.
“Thanks,” he said, blinking from the rain. He ran his hand over his face and shook it out. “I’m glad you called. It was the right thing.”
Cap stared at Junior, thought maybe it was not at all the right thing.
Then they heard screaming. It was the little boy from inside the playground. He’d fallen off the merry-go-round and hit the rubber playground mat headfirst.
“Goddammit,” Cap said.
He ran into the playground as the mother got up from the bench and went to the boy, not in a rush.
“Hey!” he shouted to the mother. He could feel his ears getting hot.
She turned to Cap as she leaned over the boy and helped him stand up. Cap put her age at twenty-one or twenty-two; she had the face of a girl.
“Listen, ma’am, there are three entrances to this playground. One of them leads to a street where people frequently run the stop sign, and either of these kids could have run out there at any time. And I’ve been standing here a full fifteen minutes, a strange man just watching your children play, and you haven’t looked up from Candy Crush. Just watch the goddamn kids. That is your only priority.”
Cap’s hands started to shake so he stuffed them into his pants pockets.
