“It’s late, Tom . . .”
“Do you remember what it was like when Caitlin was little?” I asked. “Just the three of us in the house together. Watching TV or playing games. Hell, it didn’t matter what we were doing.”
“It was good, Tom,” she said. “Back then, it was good.”
“Back then,” I said, repeating her words, letting them hang in the air between us. “I tried to get Frosty back today. I went to the shelter and asked about him, but he was already gone.”
Abby raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh,” she said. “It happened that fast.”
I shook my head. “Not that. Somebody adopted him. Some family, I guess. They wouldn’t give me the name, even though I said I wanted to get him back.”
“He’s probably okay then. Somebody wanted him.”
“He and I could have lived here together. He was good company.”
“It’s going to take me a little while to get all my stuff out. There isn’t much room over there at the church. It’s like a dorm, I guess.”
“Hell, maybe I’ll just go get another dog.”
Abby made a noise deep in her throat. No one else would have recognized it, but I knew. She started to cry. Her tears always began that way, and then she quickly began taking deep, sobbing breaths, so it sounded like she couldn’t get enough air. Then I started crying, too, the tears stinging my cheeks and falling into my lap. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, first one side, then the other. “One dog’s pretty much the same as any other, right?”
Chapter Ten
Ryan showed up with a sketch the following week. Abby was slowly moving her things out of the house, one box at a time, so there was some disarray, which caused Ryan to raise an eyebrow. But he stepped around the mess without saying anything or making a comment. It was one of the few times he didn’t wear a tie. He wore the collar of his white shirt open, revealing a strip of T-shirt and some straggly black chest hairs.
“You’ve got it?” I asked before he took a seat.
He nodded and lowered his body into the big chair in our living room.
I couldn’t bring myself to sit. While Ryan sat calmly, patiently, almost Buddha-like in the chair, I paced back and forth among the boxes. It had taken him three days just to arrange a meeting with Tracy. First her phone was disconnected; then someone at her apartment told Ryan she was out of town. I called Liann and asked her—told her—she needed to find this girl and apply some pressure.
“We need her,” I’d said.
And that only earned me an extended lecture from Liann, one in which she explained to me how delicate it was to deal with women like Tracy, women who were living victimized lives. I wanted to be sympathetic, I did. But I wanted the goddamned sketch more. I didn’t have anything else to think about. Finally, Liann met Tracy at the Fantasy Club and brought her to the police station.
And so Ryan sat in front of me, holding the Rosetta stone.
“Can I see it?Please?”
“Abby isn’t home,” he said, more of a statement than a question.
“She’s . . .” I pointed at the boxes. “This has been . . .”
He nodded. He’d probably seen it a million times.
“Do you want me to call her?” I asked. “Get her over here? I really don’t want to wait. I want to see the sketch.”
“Tom, let’s talk first.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t need another lecture.”
“I don’t lecture you.”
“Liann set me straight about this. Now you.”
Ryan raised a finger. “Liann doesn’t work for the police. She doesn’t speak for me. I appreciate what she did, getting this girl to meet with the artist, but she doesn’t speak for me. If I have something to say, it comes from me.”
Finally, I sat, hoping to speed things along.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
He cleared his throat. “I was there the whole time she worked with the sketch artist, and then I spoke with the artist after she left. She gave the same story and approximate description she gave to me at the strip club, and apparently the same one she gave to you.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
Ryan’s facial features grew pinched.
“It’s not good?” I asked.
“I believe she saw the man she says she saw. Her description of him is quite detailed. It led to a very good sketch, as far as those things go. In fact, it’s very possible she knows this man. Well.”
“Did you ask her about this? Did you ask his name?”
Ryan gave me a supercilious look, the kind I use on my students. It said, Do you think I don’t know how to do my job?
“Okay, so you asked her, and she stuck to the original story. But I get the feeling you’re hinting at something larger.”