“This a boy from school?”
Eureka blushed despite herself.
The bell attached to the door of the police station chimed. An older couple entered the lobby. They sat down in the seats Eureka and Cat had just been sitting in. The man wore gray slacks and a gray sweater; the woman wore a long gray slip dress with a heavy silver chain. They resembled each other, both slender and pale; they could have been siblings, possibly twins. They folded their hands on their laps in unison and looked straight ahead. Eureka got the sense they could hear her, which made her more self-conscious.
“We don’t know his last name.” Cat cozied closer to Bill, her bare arms splayed across the desk. “But he’s blond, kinda wavy.” She mimed Ander’s mop of hair with her hand. “Right, Reka?”
Bill said “kinda wavy” and wrote it down, which embarrassed Eureka further. She’d never been more conscious of wasting time.
“He drives an old white pickup truck,” Cat added.
Half the parish drove old white pickup trucks.
“Ford or Chevy?” Bill asked.
Eureka remembered the first thing Ander had ever said to her, which she’d relayed to Cat.
“It’s a Chevy,” Cat said. “And there’s one of those air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Silver. Right, Reka?”
Eureka glanced at the people waiting in the lobby. The black woman had her eyes closed, her swollen, sandaled feet up on the coffee table, a can of Fanta in her hand. The woman in gray glanced Eureka’s way. Her eyes were pale blue, the rare extreme eye color you could see from a distance. They reminded Eureka of Ander’s eyes.
“A white Chevy is a start.” Bill smiled fondly at Cat. “Any other details you can remember?”
“He’s a genius at skipping stones,” Cat said. “Maybe he lives down by the bayou, where he can practice all the time?”
Bill laughed under his breath. “I’m getting jealous of this guy. I kind of hope I never find him.”
That makes three of us, Eureka thought.
When Cat said “He has pale skin, blue eyes,” Eureka had had enough.
“We’re done,” she said to Cat. “Let’s go.”
Bill closed his notepad. “I doubt there’s enough information here for me to run a search. Next time you see this kid, give me a call. Take a picture of him on your phone, ask him for his last name.”
“Did we waste your time?” Cat folded down her lip in a mini pout.
“Never. I’m here to serve and protect,” Bill said, as if he’d just collared the entire Taliban.
“We’re going to get banana freezes.” Cat stood up, stretching so that her shirt drifted above her skirt, showing off a band of smooth dark skin. “Want to come?”
“Thanks, but I’m on duty. I’m on duty for a good while longer.” Bill smiled and Eureka took the hint that was meant for Cat.
They waved goodbye and headed for the door, for Eureka’s car, for home, where there waited something known as Rhoda. As they passed, the elderly couple rose from their seats. Eureka suppressed her instinct to jump backward. Relax. They were just moving toward Bill’s desk.
“Can I help you two?” Eureka heard Bill ask behind her. She stole one last glance at the couple, but saw only the gray backs of their heads.
Cat reached for Eureka’s arm. “Bill …,” she sang out wistfully as she pressed the metal bar on the front door.
The air was cold and smelled like a trash can fire. Eureka wished she were curled up in her bed with the door closed.
“Bill’s nice,” Cat said as they crossed the parking lot. “Isn’t he nice?”
Eureka unlocked Magda. “He’s nice.”
Nice enough to humor them—and why should he have taken them seriously? They shouldn’t have gone to the police. Ander wasn’t an open-and-shut stalking case. She didn’t know what he was.