She squinted past them through a bank of rain-splattered windows and for a second she thought it was daylight, until she realized that the lights were from the TV cameras. She was news and they all wanted a shot of her for the local morning shows. She was definitely going to have to do something different with her hair. Maybe dye it blue.
“Hey,” Susan said to her mother. “Can I bum a cigarette?”
Bliss’s brow furrowed. “You’ll get lung cancer,” she said.
Susan fixed her steely gaze on her mother. “Give me a cigarette, Bliss.”
Bliss dug a pack of menthols out of her enormous purse and held one out toward Susan. Then withdrew it when Susan reached for it. “Call me Mom,” she said.
“Give me a cigarette.” Susan paused and scrunched her face up with effort. “Mom.”
“Now try Mother dearest.”
“Give me the fucking cigarette.”
Bliss laughed and handed Susan the cigarette and then pressed a plastic lighter into her hands.
Parker stepped forward. “We need to talk,” he said to Susan. “And only partially because I want to scoop the assholes waiting outside.”
“I’ll give you the facts,” Susan said. “But I’m filing a harrowing personal account in the morning.”
There was Ian. He was wearing a Yankees sweatshirt and jeans, clearly pulled on after a middle-of-the-night phone call, and all she could think was, You went to sleep when you knew I was missing? You asshole.
But he looked at her like nothing had changed. Like she hadn’t changed. Well, she hadn’t changed. But she planned to. She put the cigarette in her mouth, lit it, and handed the lighter back to her mother. She only vaguely noticed that her hand was still trembling.
She took a drag off the cigarette, putting a lot of elbow in it, like she had seen in old French movies, and she appraised him—arrogant, condescending, professorial. And she saw in Ian every boss, every teacher she’d ever slept with. Yeah. It was probably time to consider therapy. She wondered idly if the paper’s health-insurance policy covered it. This probably wasn’t the time to ask. “Once this whole thing is done,” she said to Ian, “I want to work on the Molly Palmer story. Full-time.”
“It’s career suicide,” Ian protested. Then, in a final attempt at dissuasion, he added, “It’s tabloid journalism.”
“Hey,” Bliss said. “My daughter—”
“Mom,” Susan warned, and Bliss was silent. Susan was composed, indomitable. “Molly was a teenager, Ian. I want to find out what happened. I want to get her side of the story.”
Ian sighed and rocked back on his heels. He opened his mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it and threw his hands in the air. The smoke from Susan’s cigarette was getting in his eyes. She didn’t move it. “You won’t get her to talk,” he said. “She hasn’t talked to anyone. But if you want to try…” He let that trail off.
Bliss didn’t drive, and Susan’s car was back in the Pearl District. “I don’t suppose you have money for a cab?” Susan asked her mother.
Bliss frowned. “I don’t carry money,” she said.
“Your purse,” Parker said to Susan, extracting her small black purse from the pocket of his coat and handing it to her. “They found it in Reston’s car.”
“I’ll drive you both home when you’re ready.” It was Derek the Square. He hadn’t had time to blow-dry his hair, and it protruded straight out from his skull like grass.
“I’m going to need you to file the story, kid,” Parker said. “Get it up on-line before we get scooped. You go home early, don’t expect to see your byline.”
Derek shrugged, throwing a glance at Susan. “There’ll be other stories.”
“I need a new mentee,” Parker said to Ian. “This one isn’t working out.” But Susan could tell he didn’t mean it.
“What do you drive?” Susan asked Derek. “Let me guess. A Jetta? No. A Taurus?”
Derek dangled a ring of keys from his fingers. “An old Mercedes,” he said. “It runs on biodiesel.”
Susan tried to ignore the slow grin she could see spreading on Bliss’s face.
“First, I’ll need to go to my apartment for my laptop,” Susan told Derek as she took a drag off her cigarette. “Then I want to go home. To Bliss’s.” Derek’s eyebrows shot up. “My mom’s house,” Susan explained quickly, digging through her purse for her cell phone. “She lives in Southeast.” She looked at her phone screen. She had eighteen new messages.
“Bliss?” Derek said.
Bliss held out a hand. “How do you do,” she said.
Susan was going to say something clever, but she got distracted by her voice mail. The first message was from Molly Palmer.
Anne shrugged on her long leather coat. She wasn’t needed. But she always liked witnessing the wrap-up. It gave her a sense of closure. She dug for her car keys as she exited the patrol office. The damp Northwest weather had officially returned. Anne didn’t know how the natives stood it. It just made her feel like the entire world was rotting away around her.
“Good job today.” It was Archie, standing in the drizzle just outside the door.
Anne smiled. “You want a lift?” she asked. “I’m headed back to the Heathman. I can drop you.”