Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  “Hospital notified Dena’s parents,” said Junior. “They’re on their way. Still looking for next of kin for McKie.”

  “I’ll take McKie,” said the Fed, fairly definitive. Then, “My supervisor’s meeting us in Denville.”

  “I’d like someone in the room,” said Traynor. “Junior?”

  Junior nodded. Cap cracked his neck to one side quickly, without sound. Vega recognized it as a signal that he was getting ready to be pissed off.

  “Hey, we brought him in,” he said, looking at Vega. “We should be in there too. At least one of us.”

  Traynor shrugged very gently and said to the Fed, “I have no problem with that.”

  The Fed thought about it for a minute and then said, “I lead.”

  “Of course,” said Cap.

  And Junior will be there as window dressing, thought Vega.

  “You can’t interview McKie right now,” said Sam the lawyer to Cap.

  He shook his head, incredulous, preparing again to be pissed off.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because the Brandt-White family wants you to interview Bailey. With the social worker,” she said.

  Cap was confused now. All the men were, actually, but Vega knew exactly what was coming. She’d seen it when she’d come down the stairs from the Macht cabin, the blurry vision of Bailey’s arms linked around Cap’s waist, the little girl’s face turned up to him, making a study of his chin.

  “Jamie Brandt asked for me?” he said.

  That made Sam the lawyer smile, tickled that he didn’t understand.

  “Jamie agreed, but it was Bailey who asked for you,” she said.

  They all took a second to absorb that. Vega watched as Cap’s brow softened.

  “Fair enough,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Then Vega can be the third with McKie.”

  Junior bristled and said, “Maybe not the best idea seeing she so recently beat the crap out of him?”

  “I’ll stand somewhere where he can’t see me,” she offered.

  The Fed perked up and pointed at her.

  “You keep yourself controlled, ma’am. We can discuss ahead of time what you want covered, but you don’t make a sound, and you don’t make yourself known. Yes?”

  He reminded Vega of someone, but it was surprisingly not the high school vice principal. There was nothing condescending about the tone, only firm and informative. Like a stern museum docent: Stand right behind this piece of tape, please. And do not touch a thing.

  —

  For the first time that day, Cap noticed there was a ripe smell coming off Bailey, like something fermenting, not entirely unpleasant. She had not been bathed and was in a frayed gown with sleeping tigers printed on it, sitting on her mother’s lap on the edge of a bed. Even though she was slight, she was still about fifty pounds and four feet tall, and Jamie struggled to hold her but showed no sign of letting go, one hand around Bailey’s thigh, pulling her legs into place, the other on Bailey’s head and hair. Bailey leaned her head on Jamie’s shoulder, the tips of her toes grazing the floor.

  The CPS rep was young and named Krista. Cap remembered her a little from when he was a cop; there were only so many social workers in the county dispatched to do the uncompromising work of child abuse investigation. She blended in, though, with all the human services professionals he knew—mostly women, smart and overworked, usually with clothes that didn’t fit quite right, slacks and cardigans bought on sale.

  The pediatrician, a stocky woman in jeans with a string of tiny hoop earrings on one earlobe, had just completed a basic head-to-toe exam on Bailey, confirmed the EMT’s diagnosis of mild dehydration, found no broken bones, but there were two small bruises and irritation around her right wrist where she’d possibly been tied up.

  Cap watched as Krista tried to broach the topic of a rape kit, but since getting Bailey back Jamie had run the bases of Gratitude and Fragility and was now tagging Adamant and Pissy, or doing the best she could in her state.

  “We’re at risk of losing any possible evidence of that type of activity,” Krista said, speaking as formally as she could, Cap sensed, so the adults would understand but the meaning might go over Bailey’s head.

  “She don’t need it,” Jamie whispered, her voice thrashed from the tubes. “She told me they didn’t touch her like that.” She said gently into Bailey’s hair, “They touch you like that?”

  Bailey shook her head sleepily.

  “She may not remember for some time everything exactly as it happened,” Krista said, more quietly. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  That caught a thread for Jamie. She considered it. Then she turned to Cap, her eyes heavy.

  “What do you think?” she whispered, pointing at him with her chin.

  Krista and the pediatrician looked at him, and he thought he could see a glint of Bailey’s visible eye peeking out from Jamie’s neck too.

  “Well,” he said, “how recent does the activity have to have been in order to show up in the kit?”

  Krista shrugged, said, “Depends. Certain physical elements degrade obviously. But bruising…scratches.”

  “I looked at her,” said Jamie, more helpful now. “When she used the bathroom, she looked fine. Everything looked normal.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I think what Krista’s saying is there are some things we can’t see, right?”

  Krista nodded.

  “But,” Cap said with a small cough. “I think the odds are that there has not been this type of activity, committed by these particular suspects.”

  Krista opened her mouth to speak, and Cap held his hands up in humility and kept talking.

  “I’m not saying it’s not possible. Just saying from our investigation, me and my partner’s, these suspects—”

  He paused, stopped himself from saying “didn’t want her for that” because it sounded crude in his head.

  “Had other goals,” he finally said.

  Krista almost spoke again, then closed her mouth and gave a tight little smile.

  “But if we’re ready for some questions,” Cap said, looking to Jamie, “we can, I hope, get some more information. Right?”

  Jamie pressed her nose against Bailey’s head.

  “Mr. Caplan’s gonna ask you questions now, okay?”

  Bailey brought her face out of Jamie’s neck and leaned back on her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay with it.”

  Then she smiled at him.

  Cap smiled too. The more he looked at her, the more he thought she was a gorgeous kid, the more he wanted to do things that would make her happy.

  “Okay,” said Cap, tapping the Record button on the DVR. “So can you tell me what happened last Saturday morning at Ridgewood? After your mom went to Kmart?”

  “Like, right after?” she said.

  “Yeah, right after,” said Cap. “Your mom gets out of the car. What do you and Kylie do?”

  He watched Jamie’s eyelids twitch and nearly shut, like hairs were being removed from her head one by one.

  Bailey, however, had the advantage of youth and did not yet view her ordeal as a tragic story. For her it was merely one thing after another, which, if her recollection of events didn’t fuse together, would be very helpful for Cap.

  She told him everything, and her voice was high and thin, no real dip or modulation through the story of their leaving the mall and getting into the car, stopping for Blizzards at Dairy Queen on the way to the Macht cabin, even when she admitted to getting scared and missing Jamie, even when McKie pushed her into the kitchenette roughly because she was in his way. It was only when she got to the part detailing the realization that her sister was leaving with Evan Marsh, how she had grabbed and scratched his hand and wrist trying to hold on to him to make them stay; it was just when she was left with Dena and McKie, when she realized it was getting dark outside, that she started to cry in front of Cap just like she had in front of the strangers who had kidnapped her.

  — />
  Vega swayed forward and back on her feet like rocking chair legs, the painkillers still suppressing whatever receptors they were meant to suppress in her central nervous system. She could sense the medication ebbing, though, as she pricked her cuticles with her thumbnails and felt startled when the spike of skin separated. She stood on one side of a grimy curtain between a vacant bed and an old heart rate monitor, the Fed and Junior on the other side of the curtain with McKie, who was cuffed to the bedrail and not in the greatest mood. Vega swore she could smell him too, the same scent that hung in the cabin—something gamey and just beginning the process of decay.

  They had started nicely enough, the Fed lobbing plain questions, McKie saying yes and no like a good dog, but then it turned quickly into McKie playing pin the tail on the bad guy, who was Evan Marsh of course, McKie and Dena having been victims of unfortunate circumstances.

  “So how exactly did Mr. Marsh talk you into kidnapping an eight-year-old girl?” said the Fed, all clean lawyerly manners. “I’m curious to know how he phrased it so you could think you weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “All he said was he needed me to hold on to a kid for a couple of days. We were never gonna keep her,” McKie said.

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better, sir?” said the Fed. “Kidnapping a child for a week is as bad as a month is as bad as a year.”

  McKie’s breathing accelerated, turned into a wheeze.

  “Look, if you find Marsh, he’ll tell you everything—he took the older one.”

  “Mr. Marsh is dead, Mr. McKie,” said the Fed. “We think someone shot him.”

  “Fuckin’ Marsh,” McKie muttered. “Dumb motherfuckin’ Marsh.”

  “Yeah,” said the Fed, quiet, calm. “Where would someone like Marsh get fifty thousand dollars, Mr. McKie?”

  McKie didn’t respond right away. Vega heard nails on skin, scratching an itch. She wondered what kind of medication they had him on, how long it would take him to go into withdrawal.

  “A guy,” he said. “I don’t know who. Some guy paid him to take the girls.”

  “Then why would he give one of them to you?”

  Vega knocked her head lightly against the wall behind her. She pictured Kylie’s face in the video at the ice cream store, the smile. The girl’s a natural-born flirt. She knew what McKie was about to say.

  “Because the guy wanted the older girl. Just the older girl. I guess ten-year-olds gave him a stiff but not eight-year-olds, the fuck do I know,” McKie said.

  Then he laughed a little at his joke.

  “I’m glad you find the potential rape and murder of Kylie Brandt funny, Mr. McKie,” said the Fed. “I’m sure Captain Hollows here will remember that when he speaks with his district attorney.”

  “Hey—” started McKie.

  “Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, please. You’re a moron, and it grates on me,” said the Fed, getting angrier. “What do you know about the man who paid Mr. Marsh to bring him Kylie Brandt?”

  “Nothing,” said McKie, drawing the word out. “Nada.”

  His tone was careless, and it made Vega want to pop his front teeth out with a flat-head screwdriver. But if he were lying he would be more committed, somber even. He was not smart enough to lie casually.

  “Captain Hollows,” announced the Fed, “if you have any questions, I encourage you to ask them. Mr. McKie’s made me so tired with his cerebral impairment that I can’t trust myself not to slap his mouth if I continue to conduct the interview.”

  Vega extended her neck like a weed trying to reach the light, listening.

  “Yes, I have some questions,” said Hollows. “Where did you say you met Evan Marsh for the first time?”

  Vega heard the creak of the mattress as McKie moved around.

  “Stag’s Bar on Seventh.”

  “When was that?”

  “I don’t know. Year ago.”

  “And how did you get to know each other?”

  “What do you mean?” said McKie, confused.

  “In my experience,” said Hollows, “drug addicts get to know each other because they buy drugs together, sell them together, do them together. It’s like a burrow of rats sharing the same pile of garbage. And Denville’s not a big place. So did you and Evan Marsh share that type of relationship?”

  Vega smiled. Hollows could sound sanctimonious and bitchy reading a grocery list, and she recognized that it probably made him good at his job.

  “Yeah, sure, we bought from the same guys,” said McKie.

  “You traveled in the same circles?” said Hollows.

  “Yeah,” said McKie, sounding exhausted from the repetition. “Yes.”

  “So how exactly would Evan Marsh meet Kylie Brandt, if these were the types of people he was associating with?”

  McKie was quiet.

  “I’ll rephrase that,” said Hollows, ever more condescending. “Where would a little girl meet two dumb junkies like you and Evan Marsh?”

  “I don’t know, man,” said McKie, angry and annoyed. “At a party or some shit. I wasn’t there.”

  Vega pictured a room. Beige walls and beige floors. No furniture, no windows. There was Kylie in her party dress on one side; there was Evan Marsh in jeans and a T-shirt on the other. No one else.

  “Come on, John,” said Hollows. “Where would that party be? You think Marsh went to her middle school dance?”

  Vega filled in the room. Flat-screen TV. Cardboard box for a coffee table. One black cat with white paws. She touched the bandage above her eye, and the ache rushed across her brow.

  “One of Marsh’s hookups,” said McKie. “He was buying, and she was there.”

  In her head a blue needle moved across the spiking red sound waves on an audio memo, a scratchy voice saying, “I had clients here. People get freaked out they see a kid.”

  “That’s what he told you?” Hollows said, skeptical.

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me, the fuck I know!” McKie shouted, banging his fist into the bottom of his food tray.

  Back in Vega’s room: Evan Marsh, Charlie Bright, guys who looked like one or either of them—doubled and tripled, smoking weed, drinking beer, counting money.

  And then Evan and Kylie in the corner of the room, talking, getting to know each other in the few minutes it took for Evan Marsh to get hold of a bad idea, and for Alex Chaney to get his keys so he could drive Kylie back home.

  —

  They were in Traynor’s SUV, Junior driving with Traynor sitting shotgun, twisting his body so he could talk to the passengers in the backseat: Cap and the Fed, with Vega between them like the little sister on a road trip. Vega’s thigh was lined up against Cap’s, the warmth blocked by the fabric of their pants, but it crossed his mind his palm could likely span the width of her leg, that she was actually far more delicate than either of them wanted to think. She reminded him of birds he would see hanging on the feeder Nell had strung in the backyard a few winters back, puffing out feathers to protect brittle bodies.

  On the way out of the hospital, the administrator and a gray-faced doctor stopped them and made Vega sign a form, saying they weren’t responsible for the consequences of her removing her own IV and releasing herself. The doctor gave her a Band-Aid for the spot on her hand where the IV needle had been, and told her there might be irritation where they’d administered the tetanus booster in her arm. He told her to keep the wound on her forehead clean and change the dressing once a day. Vega seemed bored by the instructions, took the pen impatiently from the administrator and scrawled “AV” on the black line. To Cap, she looked smaller, her head bowed, taking careful tightrope steps to the car.

  Cap realized it was his turn to talk, after the Fed had debriefed them on the interview with McKie, and Junior had instructed Ralz to bring in Alex Chaney for questioning. He tapped his fingertip on the Fast-Forward button on the recorder and gave them the highlights.

  “After Kylie leaves with Marsh, McKie and Dena give Bailey some food and wat
er and tell her she’s going home soon, so she does what they tell her for two days; she notices they nod off on the couch around the same time every night. I’m guessing that’s when they shot up or took their Vikes or whatever. So on the third night she waits until they’re asleep and then tries getting out the back door. McKie comes to and catches her, ties her by the wrist to the bed with an extension cord.

  “She said he and Dena started fighting, fed her less, kept her tied up and made her pee in a cup. That was the last two days. Then we showed up.”

  “Did she hear Marsh say anything about the man with the money?” said Traynor.

  Cap held his fingertip to the Fast-Forward button.

  “Just one thing,” he said.

  He let go, clicked up the sound.

  “I know this is hard,” said Cap on the recorder. “Was Kylie upset to leave you…when she and Evan left?”

  “Yeah,” said Bailey, sounding even younger and squeakier than eight years old. “We were, like, hugging and crying.” Bailey’s voice shook and rattled. “Evan said it would be okay; he’d bring Kylie back soon and we could see our mom soon….”

  “What did Kylie say?”

  “She told him she didn’t want to leave me there, in the cabin, with John and Dena. And he was like, we’ll be right back after we visit your friend.”

  Cap tapped the Stop button.

  Traynor looked at the Fed, then Vega, then Cap. He shrugged and shook his head at the same time.

  “Your friend,” said Vega.

  “Yes,” Cap said. “Bailey, quoting Marsh, who says your friend to Kylie.”

  “I heard that,” said Traynor. “You’re thinking that means Kylie knows the moneyman?”

  “Maybe,” said Cap.

  Traynor turned to the Fed and nodded.

  “Easily a slip of the tongue or memory,” said the Fed. “It’s a stretch.”

  “Sure,” said Cap. “Stack it up is all I’m saying.”

  Traynor waved his hand in the air directly above his head. Reminded Cap of the white-wigged politicians in British Parliament he’d seen on TV.

  “So noted,” said Traynor, a red light flashing over his face. “Captain,” he said to Junior, aggravated, “pull over and let all this pass.”