I was waiting to talk to the Dennetts until I had some hard facts, but it doesn’t work out that way. I’m chomping down a greasy Italian beef sandwich at my desk when Eve Dennett comes into the station and asks the receptionist if she can speak to me. I’m still wiping the au jus from my face with a stack of napkins when she approaches my desk.
This is the first time she’s ever been down to the station, and boy does she look out of place here. Much different than the drunken losers we usually have walking around.
I smell her perfume before she ever arrives at my desk. She walks demurely as every sick bastard eyes her from across the room, jealous when her high heels come to a stop before me. Every cop knows I’m working the Dennett case and they have an ongoing bet as to if and when I screw the whole thing up. I even saw the sergeant putting money on it; he said he’d need the pot when he and I both found ourselves out of a job.
“Hello, Detective.”
“Mrs. Dennett.”
“I haven’t heard from you in a few days,” she says. “I was just wondering if there’s any...news.”
She carries an umbrella, which drips water on the linoleum floor. Her hair is matted down and windblown from the fury outside. It’s a horrible day, windy and cold. Not a day to be outside. “You could have called,” I say.
“I was out, running errands,” she says, but I know she’s lying. No one would be out today if they didn’t have to be. It’s just one of those days, a day to lie around in pajamas and watch TV.
I lead her to an interrogation room and ask her to have a seat. It’s a dingy room, poorly lit, with a big table in the middle and a couple of folding chairs. She lays the umbrella on the ground, but clutches her purse. I offer to take her coat; she says no thanks. It’s cold in here, one of those damp colds that chills you straight to the bone.
I sit down across from her and lay the Dennett file on the table. I see her eye the manila folder.
I look at her, at her delicate blue eyes. They’ve already begun to swell with tears. As the days pass by, all I can think is, what if I never find Mia? It’s apparent that Mrs. Dennett breaks a little more with each passing hour. Her eyes are heavy and bloated, as if she no longer sleeps. I can’t imagine what would become of her if Mia never came home. I think about Mrs. Dennett at all hours of the day and night; I imagine her lost and alone inside that mansion of a home, dreaming up all the horrific things that might have happened to her child. I feel this consummate need to protect her, to answer those burning questions that keep her awake at night: who and where and why?
“I was going to call you,” I say quietly. “I was just waiting for some good news.”
“Something has happened,” Mrs. Dennett says. It isn’t a question. It’s as if she knew all along that something had happened and that’s what brought her down to the station today. “Something bad.” She lays her purse on the table and digs inside for a tissue.
“There’s news. But that’s all right now. I haven’t quite figured out what it all means.” If Judge Dennett was here he would rip me a new one for not having all the answers. “We think we know who Mia was with before she disappeared,” I say. “Someone identified the photo that’s been on the news, and when we went to his apartment, we found some of Mia’s belongings—her purse and a coat.” I open the file and lay some photos across the table, ones taken of the apartment by the rookie who accompanied me the other day. Mrs. Dennett picks up the photo of the purse, one of those messenger-bag types that you sling across your body. The bag is laying on the floor, a pair of sunglasses and a green wallet falling out onto the parquet floor. Mrs. Dennett brings a tissue to her eyes.
“You recognize something?” I ask.
“I picked it out, that bag. I bought that for her. Who is he?” she asks, not pausing between thoughts. She glances at the other photos, one at a time, then sets them down in a row. She folds her hands on the table.
“Colin Thatcher,” I say. We ran the fingerprints we pulled from the apartment building in Uptown and came up with the man’s true identity, every other name in the apartment—on the mail, the cell phone, etc.—a pseudonym, a charade. We pulled mug shots from previous arrests and compared with the forensic sketch. Bingo.
I watch how Mrs. Dennett’s hands shake before me and how she tries, and fails, to control the trembling. It’s without thought that I feel my own hand reach out and find hers, ice-cold hands that melt in mine. I do it before she can hide them in her lap, hoping to disguise the terror she feels inside.
“There’s some footage from the security cameras. Colin and Mia entering the apartment, around eleven o’clock at night, then again later leaving the building.”
“I want to see it,” she says to my surprise. Her response is definite, not the kind of indecision I’m used to from her.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. The last thing Eve needs to see right now is the way Colin Thatcher hurled her daughter out of the building and the distress in the girl’s eyes.