Every Secret Thing

by Laura Lippman

  “What does this have to do with the child who’s missing now?” The very suggestion of racism put Mira off. She didn’t deny its existence in the world, but talking about it every day was like discussing anything else you couldn’t control—the weather, time, death, taxes. People needed to move on.

  “They sent those white girls away seven years ago. Now they’re home and another baby’s gone. And I can guarantee you, the police are looking at those girls, trying to find out if they had anything to do with it. You call the police. You ask them if they’re talking to those girls and they’ll have to say yes if they’re not lying to you. You tell people that another child is going to die because they wouldn’t do it right the last time.”

  “What—”

  The line was dead.

  Mira stared at the phone for a good long time.

  “Hey, Bolt,” she called to the night editor, who probably wouldn’t look up if his first name were uttered. “You notice the number on that call you forwarded?”

  “Didn’t know the number, didn’t know the voice,” he said promptly. “We got a new weirdo joining the ranks?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, whoever it was asked for you by name. You got a friend out there?”

  No, but she had a ’trib line on the story, she remembered, and had tried to make a few follow-up phone calls this evening.

  She closed her AOL e-mail account, on which she had been sending witty, vicious letters to various college friends, and called up the paper’s in-house library. She specified a date range, giving herself a three-year period—people were imperfect when it came to time—and dropped in the terms Olivia and missing. Too many files came back, including several reviews of Twelfth Night. She looked at the notes she had doodled as the woman spoke. She tried Olivia and Poole.

  Seventeen matches in all, and not one more recent than the summer of the crime, seven years earlier. Mira read with careful, absorbed attention, breaking away only to watch the evening newscasts. All four programs carried stories about the missing girl, but not one mentioned the old case or suggested a connection. There seemed to be no developments at all.

  When the end of Mira’s shift arrived, the night editor had to remind her three times that she was free to go. She printed out the library stories she had been reading and tucked them away in a manila folder, taking them home.

  21.

  Nancy had been experimenting with several postures and stances in interrogations, not to mention various intonations and degrees of eye contact. Lately she had tried standing, her back against the door, her arms folded across her chest. She thought this pose projected the air of a stern teacher or parent. “That’s the problem,” Lenhardt had told her. “You do look like a teacher, and these aren’t the kind of people who have fond memories of school. If these guys had listened to their teachers, they might have turned out a little differently.”

  He was right. The men—and so far Nancy had interviewed mostly young men, with an occasional mom and girlfriend thrown into the mix—were sullen or resentful, seldom cooperative. But Nancy couldn’t intimidate the way Infante did, especially toward the end of the day, when his five o’clock shadow gave him that blue-black werewolf look. Nor did she have Lenhardt’s air of mournful disappointment, which was surprisingly effective with a certain kind of mutt. Plus, if she stood, it gave her a height advantage.

  One thing she was sure of: She wasn’t going to go all girly. A cop couldn’t flirt confessions out of people, and she would look weak if she tried.

  None of these concerns, however, applied to Alice Manning, who had arrived here with the nervous shake of someone who actually respected authority. Nancy took a seat across from her in the interview room, hands folded on the table in front of her. Alice unconsciously mirrored her, the way a chimpanzee in a zoo imitated onlookers. Only she looked like someone waiting for a meal at a city mission. Nancy glanced at the girl’s pale forearms, searching for fresh nicks or cuts, but saw nothing. The rest of her was too covered up to scout.

  “I want to help. I really, really want to help,” Alice kept repeating.

  “Well, the way you can help is by telling us what you know.”

  “I’m not sure I know anything.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Because my mom said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Do you know why we came to your house looking for you? Do you know why we think you may have information to share with us?”

  “Because of my…past.”

  The choice of word sounded like something Alice had been taught to say. Nancy could imagine Helen Manning schooling her daughter in just this fashion, giving her this grand yet inadequate word, as if Alice were a young Bette Davis, back in her glory days, when her big wounded eyes always seemed to hold some secret.

  “Sort of.” It was important not to lead the girl, not to give her too much information. “A little girl disappeared Friday night. We’re looking at a lot of leads.”

  “I’m a lead?” Alice tested the word, at once attracted and repelled.

  “Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  “Is lead another word for suspect?”

  Nancy couldn’t swear to it, but she thought she caught a wisp of something sly in Alice’s face just then, a hard light in those wide blue eyes. Again, very Bette Davis. Like the song, the stupid song that had been on the radio when Nancy was in middle school. She’ll tease you, the song had promised. It was the only line Nancy could remember. She will something and something and tease you.

  “Sometimes leads are suspects. And sometimes they’re just leads. Right now, you’re just a lead.”

  Would Alice think to ask for a lawyer? It was funny how much and how little neophytes knew about the criminal process. Repeat offenders, of course, had the drill down cold. But first-timers didn’t think they could ask for a lawyer until they had been charged and read their Miranda rights. They didn’t realize they could just get up and walk out, say, “I’m not talking to you until you’re ready to charge me.” Or that they could lawyer up anytime.

  Then again, Alice wasn’t a first-timer. And she had been cagey at eleven, Nancy recalled, almost preternaturally consistent, according to the detectives who caught the case. They had taken the baby because they thought she wasn’t safe. They were scared to return her after her parents made such a big deal of her disappearance. And then the baby got sick. But Alice didn’t know why Ronnie killed her. She wasn’t even there at the time.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” Nancy began, her voice as bland as possible, “where you were Friday afternoon and evening.”

  “I was walking.”

  “Walking?”

  “I’ve been walking a lot. It’s a good way to lose weight.”

  Nancy willed herself not to let her eyes drift down to the indistinct bulk beneath Alice’s bright pink T-shirt. The girl had to weigh almost two hundred pounds. God help her if she had weighed more when she came home.

  “Walking? For how long?”

  “Well, I don’t walk every minute I’m out.” Alice must have seen where the question was going. “I walk for a while, then take a break inside someplace air-conditioned, someplace they’ll let you sit or browse.”

  “Like a fast-food restaurant.”

  “Yeah, although there you have to buy something. At least a drink. Which is a waste of money, they put so much ice in.”

  “Or a mall?” Keeping it generic was deliberate. No need to mention Westview yet.

  “Sure.”

  “So where did you walk on Friday, where did you stop?”

  “I started out Route 40 and I filled out an application at an Arby’s—I’m looking for a job. I don’t want to work in fast food, but my mom says I can’t afford to be picky.”

  “It’s not so bad. I did it for a little while.”

  “Yeah?” She seemed genuinely interested.

  “I was a counter girl at Long John Silver’s the summer I was sixteen, until I got a
waitressing job at a Chili’s. I was saving up for a car.”

  Why had she told the girl this stray bit of personal information? It was one thing Nancy never did. But there was something about Alice that made Nancy want to curry favor—something closed off, an unspoken accusation in her face, like a stoic child who had taken an unearned punishment without flinching or complaining.

  “I like Chili’s,” Alice offered, “but my mom doesn’t. Were you popular?”

  “At the restaurant?”

  “In high school.”

  “I don’t know. I never thought about it.” She was glad Lenhardt wasn’t watching this. It was bad enough that Infante was tracking the conversation through the one-way glass. She was losing control, letting Alice direct the flow of conversation. Maybe it would loosen the girl up, lead to something she could use.

  “So you must have been. Only a popular person wouldn’t think about it.”

  “It was just high school.”

  “I didn’t get to go to high school. Not a real one. Although I got my diploma at Middlebrook.”

  Suddenly Nancy knew what Alice wanted from her: pity. The girl actually expected sympathy, for missing high school and all the other normal rituals of adolescence.

  “Well, Olivia Barnes didn’t get to go to high school either.”

  Alice, chastised, bent her head so Nancy could not see her eyes when she whispered: “I know.”

  “There’s another little girl missing, Alice.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw it on the news. My mom told me.”

  “Which is it? You saw it on the news or your mom told you?”

  “My mom told me and then I saw it on the news for myself, this morning.”

  “She disappeared from Westview Mall. Is that one of the places you go, when you’re walking? It’s on Route 40.”

  Her head was still down, her voice faint. “Yes.”

  “Do you know anything? Anything at all about this missing little girl?”

  “I know,” Alice said, “something I’m not supposed to know. But I know it because, because…I broke a rule.”

  “A rule?”

  “Well, more like an admonition.” Alice raised her head, as if surprised she knew this word and could use it.

  “An admonition?”

  “I think that’s right. I mean, it’s not a law, or a rule, it’s just something I was told I shouldn’t do. My mom and my lawyer, they said there were certain things I shouldn’t do. And I sorta did them.”

  “What did you do, Alice?”

  “I didn’t walk by the Barnes house,” she said. Interesting. Asked what she had done, the girl began by citing what she had not done. If she hadn’t walked by the Barnes house, would she even know there was a new little Barnes?

  “There’s no reason for you to. Is there?”

  “It’s in my neighborhood and it’s a pretty street. I used to walk up and down it all the time. But I don’t go there now.”

  “Have you seen the Barnes family at all?”

  “No.”

  Her denial felt like the most honest thing she had said so far. Which meant that she would have no reason to grab a girl who looked like Rosalind Barnes. Nancy allowed herself a moment of despair. What if this were all a coincidence? What if Cynthia Barnes’s paranoia had set them off in the wrong direction? She tried to reassure herself that she and Infante had kept all their options open. A young detective from Family Crimes was trying to stay on top of the Social Services end of it, checking out the family more thoroughly. And this, sadly enough, was the only lead Nancy and Infante had developed in twenty-four hours. If Nancy hadn’t been interviewing Alice, she’d just be taking phone calls from helpful, helpless cranks, interviewing dimwitted mall employees, watching security tapes that showed nothing.

  “So that’s what you didn’t do. What did you do? What”—she chose, quite deliberately, to echo Alice’s word back to her—“admonition did you ignore?”

  She whispered: “I saw Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie Fuller?”

  Alice nodded, her face stricken, as if she had confessed to something horrible.

  “You saw Ronnie…” She left a space for Alice to finish the thought, but the girl didn’t jump in. “You saw Ronnie do what?”

  Alice looked deflated, as if she had expected a more horrified reaction. “I just…saw her. I walked over to where she works and I watched her. She didn’t see me. But I’m not supposed to see her. Sharon said.”

  Sharon who? Nancy let it pass. “So you saw her. When was this?”

  A flash of impatience: “Yesterday. That’s what we’re talking about, right? Yesterday.”

  “You were at the Bagel Barn yesterday?”

  “I didn’t go in. I didn’t even get close. I just sat on the curb for a while. I could see Ronnie, but she didn’t see me.”

  Alice seemed to have no sense of what she was doing. Yes, she was placing Ronnie at Westview Mall, a few hours before Brittany Little disappeared. But she was placing herself there, too.

  “Did you see her do anything…unusual?”

  “No. But I saw Ronnie. I thought you’d want to know she worked there. Did you?”

  “Actually,” Nancy said, “we did.”

  “Oh.” Alice looked confused. “I thought that’s why you came to see me. Because you knew I had seen Ronnie. I thought that’s why I was in trouble. I couldn’t imagine what else I might have done.”

  “You can’t?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Alice—did you go into the mall yesterday?”

  “No. I left because I didn’t want Ronnie to see me.”

  “Why did you want to see Ronnie?”

  “I didn’t want to see her. I just did.”

  “By accident?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sort of.’ It was an accident, or it wasn’t.”

  “I knew from my mom that Ronnie had a job at the bagel place. But I didn’t know her hours, or what days she worked. So it’s not like I could have planned it.”

  “But you went there hoping you might see her?”

  Her eyes slid away from Nancy’s. “Yes,” she said in a voice so soft that Nancy needed Alice’s nodding head to confirm what she thought she had heard.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” And then, almost to herself, as if castigating herself. “I thought you didn’t know about the bagel shop, that I could help you. I want to help. I’m trying to help.”

  “You can help us,” Nancy said, “by telling the truth.”

  Fierce, automatic: “I always tell the truth.”

  “Then tell me this. Do you know anything about Brittany Little, the girl who disappeared? Anything at all, Alice?”

  “I don’t know Brittany Little. I mean, except from the news. I saw her picture on the news.”

  “Can I ask you something, Alice?”

  Alice gave her an odd look, as if it were late in the game for Nancy to be seeking permission to ask questions. Still, she nodded.

  “I mean, it’s only because it might give me—give us—an insight. When you took Olivia Barnes, what were you thinking?”

  The wounded blue eyes cut right through her, saw the deception in Nancy’s question. “How would that give you an insight? I mean, unless Ronnie or I did what happened. And I didn’t.”

  “Still—” Nancy had to know. Even if it proved to have nothing to do with the matter at hand, she had to have the answer to the question that had haunted her for so many years. “What were you thinking?”

  “We thought she had been abandoned. We thought we could take care of her until her parents came back.”

  “And why did you kill her?”

  “I didn’t,” Alice said with a weariness at once disappointed and resigned. “Ronnie did. I wasn’t even there when it happened.”

  “I know that’s what you said back then. But you can tell the truth now.
It’s over. There’s no risk now in telling me what happened.”

  “I am telling the truth. I always told the truth. It’s not my fault that no one believed me. Ronnie’s a bad girl. You can’t know what she’ll do. It’s almost like there’s another girl who lives inside Ronnie and comes out sometimes. That’s why people want to believe Ronnie when she says she didn’t do things, because she doesn’t remember doing them, so she seems really honest. But she’s bad, really bad.”

  “Are you saying she has, like, another personality?”

  “Sort of?” Alice’s voice was tentative. “I saw this show once, and there was a girl like that. Only with Ronnie, it’s not so…obvious, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her voice doesn’t change, and she doesn’t tell you to call her by a different name. But it’s like there’s good Ronnie and bad Ronnie, and bad Ronnie will do anything, and then good Ronnie can’t believe she did it, so she’s believable when she says she doesn’t remember. I don’t know why she killed Olivia. If I had been there, maybe I could have stopped her. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t even there.”

  Alice’s voice rose, petulant after all these years. Yes, she took the baby, yes, she knew where the baby was, yes, she participated in the conspiracy that kept the baby hidden for four days. But she hadn’t killed her, and she still didn’t understand why the punishments meted out refused to recognize her lesser guilt.

  Nancy wasn’t sure she did, either. Her odd connection to the Barnes case had not granted her special privileges, despite what everyone believed, but over the years she had indulged her curiosity about the aftermath. Alice had always been adamant about not being with Ronnie when Olivia was killed, and even had a partial alibi—she was home with her mother, reading, if you could call that an alibi. Whose mother wouldn’t back up that story, under the circumstances? But the alibi was meaningless because heat and other factors had made it difficult to pinpoint the time of death with any accuracy. The medical examiner had provided a twelve-hour window, adding, as only an M.E. could add: “At least nothing chewed on her after she died.” That was an M.E.’s idea of a benediction, not getting chewed postmortem.

  “Alice—” There was so much Nancy wanted to ask her, but the sad fact was, it had little to do with Brittany Little and everything to do with Olivia Barnes. Nancy was face-to-face with a girl who had changed her life as surely as anyone. Except, perhaps, Ronnie Fuller. If it were not for the two of them, Nancy wouldn’t even be here, in the county. If it weren’t for Nancy’s freak moment of glory in the Olivia Barnes case, there would have been less to live up to and, consequently, less to live down. She would probably still be in the city, a detective in CID, maybe even a sergeant. She would be who she was supposed to be when she grew up, a third-generation police officer in the Baltimore PD. “County police,” her uncle Stan had asked when she decided to come out here. “Do they even have crime in the county?”