He hesitated, then shook his head. He chased the thought away or held it back.
“I have some other concerns.” He reached into his interior jacket pocket and fumbled around. I thought he was going to bring out the sketch at last, but instead he pulled out a small pocket notebook, the kind he wrote in whenever he was conducting business. He reached into another pocket and brought out a pair of half-moon reading glasses and worked them into place on the tip of his nose. He leaned back in his chair and studied the notebook. “This woman, Tracy Fairlawn, has been arrested twice for drug possession, once for prostitution, and has also been investigated by the child welfare department. These things call into question, to some extent, the reliability of whatever she says.”
“No, it doesn’t. You said you believed her story—”
Ryan raised a finger of caution. “I said I believe she knows this man.”
“But you can’t throw her story out because of these arrests. That’s—”
“Criminalization of the victim,” he said. “I know. Liann’s taught you well.” He flipped the notebook shut and put it away. He took off the glasses. “I detected something both times I spoke to Miss Fairlawn about this man. There was something underneath her words, an anger or sense of grievance lurking there, something I couldn’t quite place my finger on, but it gives me reason to stop for a moment. Tom, I want to give you the choice about something. We can go ahead and distribute this sketch, or we can hold off a few days until we know more about where this information is coming from.”
“Let me just look at the thing.”
“I think if we run with it, we risk getting a lot of information that won’t be helpful because we don’t know if we’re starting from a good place or not. We risk shooting our last good bullet here—”
“Can I see it?” I asked. “Will you just hand it over so I can see it? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want to see it.”
Reluctantly, he started digging into his jacket pocket. He brought out a white piece of paper, folded like a letter. He shifted his bulk, leaning forward, and the paper hovered in the air between us.
But I didn’t make a quick grab for it. My hand moved slowly, as though weights were tied to it, and the farther I extended the more I felt it shake. Ryan didn’t seem to notice. He held the paper in the air until I took it.
As I unfolded it, Ryan spoke. “Take a long look. See if it jars your memory. Coworkers, service people. The guy who cuts the grass or cleans the floors at work.”
I unfolded the paper and took it in. It was a simple drawing, black on white. I saw the wide, fat nose Tracy had described. It filled the middle of the page and made the man depicted look brutish, almost simian. His brows were thick and dark, and the eyes beneath them looked small and narrow, as though the artist had depicted the man in midsquint. I scanned the other features quickly—the hard set of the jaw, the thin lips—and absorbed a sense of menace from the simple drawing.
“I don’t think I know him,” I said.
“I would like Abby to take a look at it,” Ryan said.
I continued to stare at the drawing and tried to retrofit that face to all the images of the kidnapper that continually ran through my head. A car pulling up at the park, or a man talking to Caitlin, making a grab for her arm.
The man in the strip club, in the little booth with my daughter.
“Do you think it’s him?” I asked.
“Like I was saying before . . . Tom?” He wanted me to lower the sketch, so I did. Slowly. “We need to think carefully about what we do next,” he said. “It’s been a long time since Caitlin disappeared. The public has a short attention span. Over time, people understandably forget. They move on to other things, other news stories. Their memories get muddy.”
I held up the paper. “I want to run it. I don’t want to wait. I’ve been waiting four years, and this is the best lead we have. Run it.”
Ryan rubbed his hand over his cheek as though he were tired.
“It’s my choice ultimately,” he said. “If I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the case to run it, I won’t.”
“How could this not be in the best interests of the case?” I asked.
“It is, of course,” he said. “What I said the other night is true—this is the best lead we’ve had in four years. But I’m thinking of you and Abby as well as the case.”
“What about us?” I asked.
“How well do you know your daughter, Tom?”
And there it was, just as Liann had predicted. Just as I’d suspected all along. Ryan believed his own counternarrative of Caitlin’s disappearance, and he intended to share it.
“I guess it’s hard for me to answer that since I haven’t seen her in four years.”
“Before that. Before she disappeared.”
“I knew her very well then.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. We were happy.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. He glanced around the room at the boxes. “Were you?”