Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  “Looked like it.”

  “This all happened today?”

  Cap nodded. Nell thought for a moment.

  “So why did Ralz punch you in the face?”

  “Getting to it.”

  Cap described the fight; Nell looked back and forth between him and Vega, dark eyebrows arched.

  “So you basically taunted him into attacking you?” she said to Vega.

  “Basically, yeah,” said Vega.

  “This is, like, a lot of drama, you guys.”

  “Serious drama,” said Cap.

  “So that kid they had in custody had nothing to do with it?” she said.

  Cap shook his head.

  “And you think Marsh was involved?”

  “Would be a heck of a coincidence if he wasn’t,” said Cap.

  “So what’s the link?”

  Cap leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms up, swallowed a yawn.

  “That’s why me and Vega are here, Bug.”

  “Can I see the paperwork?” she said, getting her determined look.

  “Finish your Civ and then I’ll show you what we have.”

  “Oh, fine,” she said, standing, sweeping up her plate and glass. She leaned against the sink. “I can’t believe you saw a dead person today.”

  “I know,” said Cap, quiet.

  “Let me know before you leave, okay?” said Nell. “Excuse me for eating and running, Alice.”

  Vega nodded and said, “Thank you for dinner. It’s really good.”

  “The next time you come, maybe my dad will make shrimp tacos. It’s his thing.”

  Vega looked at Cap.

  “It’s my thing,” he admitted.

  “I’m sure it is,” said Vega.

  Nell didn’t linger. She bounded up the stairs like a deer and shut the door of her room. Cap looked up, heard the floor creak, and traced her steps. Bed, earbuds in, over to the desk where she sat in her wheeled chair and rolled gently back and forth while she read.

  Cap and Vega were quiet, pushing food around on their plates. Cap sipped his beer and became instantly self-conscious that he was drinking it instead of club soda.

  “You tell her about your cases,” Vega finally said.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “She’s the reason, right, why you changed your mind about me? Working with me?”

  Cap smiled. “Yeah. Usually I don’t know what I think about something until I tell my daughter about it.”

  His phone buzzed on the table and he looked.

  A text from Nell: “She’s not a guy, Dad. Call her Alice.”

  “If I hadn’t met her, I might not believe that,” said Vega.

  Cap thought hard about the acronym for Mind Your Own Business, tried to type “MYOB.”

  “But if I had a kid like her, I’d probably do the same,” Vega continued.

  He hit Send, then realized he had hit the “V” instead of the “B,” and his phone had autocorrected to “Myocardial.”

  The text came back from Nell in a second: “Are you trying to say myob? Lol Dad.”

  “She’s a piece of work,” said Cap, placing the phone on the table. Then he chuckled, almost just to himself. “That’s something my father says. Let’s put it this way: I think she’s pretty extraordinary for a person, not even just for a kid. But as a parent you can’t go around saying stuff like that. I mean, you can, but you’d be one of those parents you meet at Back-to-School Night who can’t stop talking about how little Timmy doesn’t play any video games and just loves practicing the violin all the time.”

  Then Vega laughed. Actually laughed. Cap saw the teeth again and felt out of breath. He realized he had forgotten what it felt like to make a woman laugh. It was almost better than making them come. With Jules, even when their marriage was in the mud, he could still make her laugh unexpectedly, and boy would she punch the brakes as soon as she realized it. The look on her face could sear you like a steak—No way you are making me laugh, motherfucker.

  Stranger still, laughing made most women, including Jules, look younger, the spontaneity of it trimming the years off, letting you see the little girl on a merry-go-round, the sixth grader at the roller rink. But with Vega, she looked older in some appealing way, the skin around her eyes and lips falling into easy creases. It made Cap think, This is what she will look like at forty, fifty, sixty with spotty skin and filmy pupils, spine curved over like a fishing pole. But then you will make her laugh and all the light will pour right out of her just like it did that first time at your kitchen table.

  “You ever think about it?” he said, feeling like he could ask her anything just then.

  “What?”

  “Kids?”

  Out loud the word was toxic. Vega looked at her plate and didn’t respond right away.

  “I’m sorry,” said Cap. “Way too personal, right?”

  “No,” she said plainly. “Not too personal. Kids are…” She paused but only for a moment. “Not for me.”

  —

  Vega washed her hands in Cap’s bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought about death. Which was what she usually did when she looked in strange mirrors in strange bathrooms. It made her think of hospitals and morgues, how a body could look peaceful but only in the way a piece of luggage looked peaceful—it was simply an item that didn’t move.

  However, as Vega had seen with her mother’s body, the opposite could be true. A body could be animated in one last shock, neck twisted, limbs shriveled. Why did you have to look at her face? thought Vega now, in Cap’s bathroom. Why did you have to see the teeth comically large for her head like those vampire choppers you got from quarter machines?

  Is this you?

  —

  Cap loaded the dishwasher, cleaned out the soft spaghetti bits from the drain in the sink, opened another beer. He could still think clearly after three beers. Some nights he’d get to the end of the six-pack without thinking about it and wouldn’t feel any different, would still possess his powers of critical reasoning, was just able to sleep easier and more immediately. But he could still work. If the call came in with Charlie Bright’s address, he’d drink a pot of coffee with a lot of milk and sugar and be on the way.

  He squeezed the dishwashing goo into the dispenser, and the bottle made a retching sound. He glanced toward the hallway, the bathroom door, to see if Vega was emerging. He did not want her to think that he had made the retching sound, or worse, that the sound had been him passing gas.

  Not after he’d seen the picture of the palm tree in her backyard, after she’d allowed herself to be charmed by Nell and the three of them had sat around a table in a family-like formation. There was something, wasn’t there, some delicate strand between them, hovering like a jellyfish arm. Couldn’t there be more, when this was all over, when they found those girls, however they were going to find them? Couldn’t he take her to dinner and couldn’t she possibly have some wine and fix her focus on him, walk around the table and lean down to tell him something, press her face against his and breathe in his ear so he could smell the salt in her hair?

  His dick woke up a little, and he knocked his fist against his forehead and sat at the table.

  “Pull it together,” he said aloud. Let’s not have an erection like a twelve-year-old boy during his first slow dance.

  He opened the file on Ashley Cahill and his eyes fell on scattered words: blond, blue, 44 inches, 45 lbs., Holling Pool, mother bartender, father worked at a sporting goods store, missing, missing, missing.

  Then Vega came back. She nodded at him and sat back down at the table.

  “Everything’s clean,” she said.

  “Yeah…dishwasher,” he said. “You want anything else to drink?”

  She shook her head and opened the file on Sydney McKenna. Cap looked back down at the Cahill police report. No one saw anything. She’d been at the pool with a group of kids, and one of their moms said one minute she was playing Marco Polo with the rest of them, and the n
ext minute she wasn’t. Cap picked up the 5x8 matte school portrait. Nell didn’t have them done anymore, but Cap remembered them from grade school, her image in varying sizes—big, medium, a sheet of wallets. Rows and rows of Nells.

  The girl, Ashley, was cute in the way all six-year-olds were cute. Large eyes, unblemished skin. There was, in fact, nothing extraordinary about her. Except, Cap thought, to her parents.

  Vega closed the folder on Sydney McKenna and placed her hands on top of it. She looked intently at Cap, and he saw something strange about her eyes; they were clear and wet but not like she’d been crying. It was like she’d dunked only her face in a pool.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  She took a quick breath in and looked at the folder under her hands.

  “My mother died when I was twenty. She had lymphoma,” she said. They both waited. “Then my friend Perry, the guy who was kind of my mentor in fugitive recovery, a skip stabbed him in the kidney and he died walking out to his car. On the lawn.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Cap. He was unsure about a lot of things.

  She continued: “Then I started working freelance. I got lucky right away with Ethan Moreno.” She paused, then said, “The biggest mistake people make is that they think they’re special. They’re not.”

  She nodded, more to herself than to Cap, and seemed not to know what to do with her hands. She tapped her fingertips together like there were castanets on them. Cap didn’t like it, didn’t like her sad and somewhat confused. Could I hug her? he thought. Will she slam her forearm into my face if I hug her and kiss the crease between her eyebrows?

  He didn’t have a chance. She put her hands flat on the folder again and said, “Is there a gun shop open this late?”

  —

  Quiet again in Cap’s car. Vega felt strange, unused to a stomach full of food. Especially pasta, all that wheat swelling up like a pile of wet shoelaces. For a few years now Vega had a neutral attitude about eating, bordering on animosity, frustration at the braking of her body’s systems when she was hungry. Watching people eat in restaurants, she thought it seemed like such a waste—Do you think you have this kind of time? she wanted to say to them. Hours and hours sitting over bread and butter and Big Macs. Perry had Diet Cokes and grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon three times a day every day she knew him, so he wouldn’t spend any seconds considering the options. So Vega did that too—bananas, power bars, milk, juice. Some vitamins, some fat, some protein. Every day.

  “You’re gonna like this,” said Cap.

  He parked on a dark street, and they got out, walked to a two-floor brick house, picture window on the ground floor with a paper sign, a certificate—SMOKEY’S GUN SHOP. Below that, in big black letters: GLOCK.

  Then a woman came through a door to the right of the window with a ring of keys. She was round and short, with a boy’s haircut, the skin on her nose and cheeks red and speckled. When she saw Cap her face opened up, the keyhole mouth grew into a smile.

  “Mister Caplan, ain’t seen you much anymore,” she said.

  “Hey, Jean,” said Cap.

  They hugged. Vega stood back.

  “This is my colleague, Alice Vega. She’d like to look at some firearms. This is Jean Radnor. This is her shop.”

  “Hiya, Alice.”

  Vega shook hands with her, watched her unlock a series of locks on the glass door.

  “Come on in, then.”

  They followed her in as she flipped the light switches, fluorescents flickering on in succession. Handguns with orange tags in glass cases like jewelry. Shotguns and rifles on the wall racks.

  “What you been doing, Cap? How’s your daughter?” said Jean, pressing a code into an alarm box.

  “She’s well. Sixteen years old.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said Jean, genuine surprise in her voice, almost to the point of being offended. “That makes us what, a hundred goddamn years old or what.”

  “Something like that. How’re your sons?”

  They kept talking about kids and houses and births and deaths. Vega looked at the semiauto rifles on the wall, arranged by popularity as far as she could tell: Bushmasters, S&Ws, Sporticals, a Colt at the end of the row.

  “Jason and his wife had twins, I tell you that?” said Jean. “Sweet kids, but ugly. Don’t know how they got that way either. Jason and Melanie are attractive; it’s some kind of mystery.”

  “Could I see your Colt?” said Vega.

  Jean and Cap turned to her, both seeming surprised to hear her speak.

  “You got it, hon,” said Jean, going behind the counter. “You know I can’t sell it to you, right? Have to wait for regular store hours.”

  “That’s fine,” said Vega. “I just want to try it out.”

  Jean found a key on her ring and unlocked the case, lifted the rifle and handed it to Vega over the counter, continuing her conversation with Cap.

  “Names are Boyd and Blaine. I said, ‘Isn’t Blaine a girl’s name?’ Didn’t go over so well.”

  One hand on the grip and the other on the underside of the barrel, Vega held the rifle up, pressed her cheek against the stock. She could smell the alloy in the back of her throat, the tinny burn of it. The stock pushed against her shoulder; something wasn’t right. A Goldilocks feeling.

  “How long is it?” Vega said to Jean.

  Jean thought.

  “Thirty-two I think, with the stock retracted. Something wrong?”

  “Seems long to me.”

  Jean pulled out a lip balm stick and unscrewed the top, rubbed it across her lips, the color of rare meat.

  “Well, what’re you comparing it to, hon?”

  Vega glanced at Cap and could see him putting something together; she knew the look now, his eyes got a little dreamy, and his head bobbed slightly from side to side, like he was weighing two things. Like they were hanging on his ears.

  “An M4,” said Cap. Then he looked at Vega. “Right?”

  She relaxed the grip, held it to her side. Cap was grinning like he had won a poker hand.

  “Right,” she said.

  “Oh, you’re military?” said Jean. “My nephew’s in the marines.”

  “I only went through basic,” said Vega.

  At the mention of the word she felt the heat, dirt from the ground in her mouth, triceps and deltoids humming, mashed like lemon pulp. And the hunger that started in her bones instead of her stomach, for any kind of calories—meatloaf between bread dipped in whole milk to get it down quicker and as much coffee as she could swallow, throat already burned from breakfast.

  “Army,” said Cap, pointing at her.

  “Right.”

  He smiled, pleased with himself. Almost made Vega smile too.

  “Mind if I strip her?” said Vega.

  Jean shrugged one shoulder.

  “Help yourself. It’s brand-new, though; you’re not gonna find any deposits.”

  “Sure. I just want to field-strip it,” Vega said.

  Jean’s eyebrows arched up and she smiled peacefully, knowingly, reminding Vega of yoga teachers, the way at the end they would say, “The light in me bows to the light in you,” or some kind of bullshit.

  “It relaxes you, right? Me too,” Jean said. “I’ll get you an Allen wrench.”

  “That’s okay,” said Vega, pulling back the charging handle.

  She took one of the pins from her hair.

  “Ha!” shouted Jean. “She’s prepared. You got a good one here, Cap.”

  Vega slid the front pivot pin to the side. The snap of the receivers coming apart had a soporific effect on her; finally she could rest a second.

  —

  At the inn, Vega went through the motions of someone getting ready for bed: took a shower, brushed her teeth, rubbed some of the complimentary gardenia-smelling lotion into her hands and on her legs. She lay down on the bed, closed her eyes, and did not sleep, ping-ponging questions back and forth in her head. Soon i
t was five or six, blue light out the window as the sun rose somewhere close. Vega got off the bed and onto the floor on all fours. Then into down dog, where she didn’t linger, walking her feet up to her hands until they met. She held her breath, tensed her abs, and brought her legs up above, then stretched them out. Widened the fingers. Breathed.

  Then her mother in the hospital, the last time, Vega leaned down to kiss her forehead, and her mother grabbed her head suddenly and tried to pull her down, but she was not strong at that point. Vega was startled and a little terrified because she’d thought her mother was asleep. Her mother pushed her lips out like Vega was a drink she was trying to reach, and kissed the ridge between Vega’s nose and cheek. Then she went back to dying.

  Vega came down from the handstand and sat on the floor with her knees bent and her head between them. She had been at her father’s house when she heard the news. She’d always thought she would just know, that there was a cosmic alarm clock built in her chest linking her to her mother, but no. Her mother had died, and Vega had no idea.

  And the Brandt girls were not even blood. These things weren’t real, these connections between family members, husband to wife, parent to child. This psychic trash of people saying, “I knew when so-and-so died because I felt it in my soul or my heart or my pockets.” You didn’t, thought Vega, you had no idea. Those girls could have been in the ground two hours after they disappeared, and all of us have been running like hell in our mouse maze since then, tapping our bells and flags, desperate for pellets.

  11

  The next morning they arrived at Charlie Bright’s mother’s house early. A garbage truck rambled down the street. Cap pressed the doorbell, a grimy little button set in a rusty diamond.

  “Do you want to talk about goals?” he said.

  Vega’s right shoulder jerked, the suggestion of a shrug.

  “No change,” she said. “Right?”

  “You’re asking me?” said Cap.

  “Yes,” said Vega.

  Cap almost believed her.

  Then a dog started barking. Low bark, big dog, he thought. He could hear it sniffing at the door.

  He pulled the screen door open and knocked, and the dog continued to alternately bark and sniff. He turned back to Vega.