The women drifted back inside to fix lunch; some of them reappeared. More cops arrived and milled around on the grass, murmuring. Pete approached a couple of them, asked if they had any comment to make; they all said the same thing: there was no news and the search for the Malone kids was ongoing.
Pete looked around for Anders, but his car was gone. He took a few more shots, tried to capture the sense of waiting. The low voices, the tense stances, the drawn faces.
The small dark woman brought out sandwiches, blushed when Pete thanked her, introduced herself as Carla Bonelli. She stood with him while he ate, chattered about Mr. Bonelli’s job, brought him a glass of milk.
Pete asked if she had any photos of the kids who were missing and she went inside, reappeared with an album neatly covered in leftover floral wallpaper. She leafed through pages of round-faced Italians at weddings and parties—and then she stopped, lifted the cellophane, and took out two photographs.
One was of a group of children playing in the street—this street? There wasn’t enough detail to tell—a fire hydrant open, the silver spray of the water filling the background. Pete noticed the patterns of light first; the arc of rainbow drops as a little girl spun around and her wet hair spread behind her. He noticed the detail of her frilled bathing suit against her plump arms and legs, and next to her, the skinny frame of a boy in shorts. He was maybe a year or two older than her, but a head and a half taller, all long brown limbs and white teeth.
The other photo showed the same two children on a sofa with a woman between them. Her arm was around the girl and the little boy leaned into her. All three were laughing into the camera. They had the same wide mouths, the same high foreheads, but where the kids were all innocence and open grins, the woman’s glossy smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Mrs. Bonelli touched the photo gently. “That’s them. Frankie and Cindy. And their mom. That’s Ruth.”
Then she said, “I saw her, you know. This morning. I can’t believe it was just this morning.”
“You saw Mrs. Malone? Where?”
“She was over there”—she pointed toward the corner of the street. “She was looking for the children. She told me they were missing.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know if what she was saying was real. God forgive me, I thought”—tears came into her eyes—“I thought she might be drunk.”
She sniffed. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
Pete tried to think of something to say. Could only come up with, “Mrs. Bonelli, I’m sure . . . well, let’s just wait for some news.”
She nodded. Wiped her eyes on her apron. Took the plate and glass and went back inside.
Pete glanced around and slid the photos into his notebook, quickly closed the album, and left it on the stoop. He got back in the car. There wasn’t much else he could do here: he had the names, the background details. From what he had seen and overheard, the cops seemed to know as little as he did.
He turned the engine over and decided to find a phone to call the office, head back, and type up his notes.
Then the door to the apartment building opened and a murmur passed through the small crowd like a breeze in a cornfield.
A cop in uniform emerged from the doorway. Blushing at the eyes on him, he hurried to a police car parked at the end of the path, got into the driver’s seat.
A second guy appeared in the doorway, squinting against the afternoon sun. He was big, broad-shouldered, with slicked-back hair and a square sallow face.
Although he wore a suit, he was a cop too. He walked like a cop, and the uniforms stood to attention as he came out.
Pete raised his camera and clicked the shutter.
Click.
He held the door, and a woman appeared behind him.
She wasn’t what he’d expected. And as soon as he became aware of that, he asked himself what he had expected; what the women had led him to expect. Someone wild, he thought. Tangled hair, disordered clothes. Hysterics.
Instead, she was easily recognizable as the glossy woman in the photograph. Her outline was as neat as a doll’s. She was slim, wearing pale pants that came halfway down her calves, a tight shirt. And she was tiny, or seemed so, dwarfed as she was by the men around her: the cop ahead of her, a guy behind her holding a cigarette. Her hair was short, dark in the doorway, bursting into a red-gold flame as she came into the sunlight.
Click.