“That’s so weird,” Meredith said. Mr. Fulton was forever giving them hand sanitizer. That seemed to be his entire job, to stand in the main hall squirting out hand sanitizer to germy children. She didn’t know anything about him except that he was black, and someone, probably one of Lisa Bellow’s group, had started a rumor that he had spent twenty years in prison for murder. Of course this rumor made the rounds about every single black male who worked at the school, including the principal.
“How long would you say you were there, after the man left with Lisa, and before Mr. Fulton came in?” the tall Detective asked.
“I don’t know,” Meredith said. “I don’t even remember it. I don’t remember Mr. Fulton coming in.”
“She clearly didn’t remember Mr. Fulton coming in,” her mother said. “You just told her and she was obviously surprised.”
“Ma’am,” Detective Waller said.
Meredith looked at her mother. She’d seen the look on her face before. Years ago Evan had dubbed this look “the constipated rhino.” Oh, that had been hilarious. How many years had they laughed over this?
“Did he tell you to stay still for a certain amount of time?” Detective Waller asked. “Did he tell you not to get up?”
“No,” Meredith said. “Why?”
“Did he threaten you?” the tall detective asked.
She shook her head.
“The man had a gun,” her father said from the other side of the room. “I think that—”
“Of course,” Detective Waller said in her clipped way, though she didn’t stop looking at Meredith. “That in itself is a threat. It must have been very scary.”
It wasn’t until this moment that Meredith realized what this conversation was about, and why it was important how long she had lain on the floor, and why it mattered that she’d been so out of it or crazy or whatever it was that was making her not remember Mr. Fulton and not even remember the ambulance or getting to the hospital or any of it. Now she understood. If she had leaped up the moment the car pulled away, if she had called 911 right then from her cell phone, then the man with Lisa wouldn’t have had such a big head start. If she had even sat up and looked out the door she would have seen the car, would know at least its size and color, and maybe if she’d been on the ball, maybe even what kind of car it was and maybe even some numbers from its license plate.
And worse, just dawning on her now—how long had it taken before someone had realized that a kidnapping had even occurred? It would have just looked like a simple robbery; there was no trace of Lisa, just an unconscious sandwich farmer and one flipped-out teenager, no one to say Lisa had ever been there, no reason for anyone to suspect a third person had been involved. For all Mr. Fulton or the cops or anyone knew, there were only two victims, and they were both lying on the floor of the Deli Barn.
What time was it now? She could see light behind the curtains. How long had the sandwich farmer been unconscious? How many hours until, maybe in the middle of the night, being interviewed as she was now, had he said, “Then the girls laid on the floor” and Detective Waller jerked her head up and said, “Girls?” and then the pieces had started falling together—yes, in fact, a girl’s mother had called the switchboard in the evening, somebody Bellow, her daughter had never come home from school, she thought she was at a friend’s house, but now it was late, and . . .
So while she and the sandwich farmer slept, the man in the car was getting farther and farther away, and Lisa was getting farther and farther away, and no one knew the clock was ticking, no one knew to shake them awake in their hospital beds, wake them up for Christ sakes, there were three people in that store, three people, three victims, not two.
Why had she lain on the floor so long? What had she even been thinking about? Maybe the man had said something. Maybe he had said, “Lie there for an hour and don’t move. Lie there for an hour or I’ll come back and kill you. Lie there for an hour or I’ll kill her”—yes, maybe that was it. Maybe she’d forgotten that because she’d forgotten everything else. All she knew was what people told her about what happened, and there was no one here who could tell her this. Maybe she was just following instructions.
“The last thing I remember is them leaving,” she said. “I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up here.”
“Do you think he could have hit her?” her mother asked. “She might have been unconscious.”
“Doctor said no bodily trauma,” the tall detective said.
Meredith felt her mother take hold of her hand, not squeezing it, but wrapping her fingers carefully, like you’d hold something fragile that might be blown from your grasp.
“More likely you were in shock,” Detective Waller said. She smiled gently. She wasn’t unfriendly. She wasn’t accusing anyone of anything. She was just doing her job. “It’s understandable,” she said. “It happens. You did what you could.”
Which was nothing, Meredith thought. What I could do was exactly nothing.
“We have a good description and a clear time frame. We know you and Lisa went to the restaurant after school, and we know that Mr. Fulton arrived at the restaurant about three twenty-five. We just don’t know precisely when they left. But we’re working on it. We just wanted to talk with you as soon as we possibly could, so we have the best chance of finding Lisa.”
Meredith wanted to tell them that Lisa was safe, at least for the time being, that Lisa was in the man’s apartment, on the man’s couch, petting the man’s little white dog. But she knew how this would sound, and she wasn’t sure she believed it herself, though she knew the dog’s name, and she knew about the blender and the silver wastebasket with the foot pedal, and that had to mean something, didn’t it?
“One more thing,” Detective Waller said. “The man. Did he seem familiar to you? At all?”
“No,” Meredith said. “But his face was—”
“His voice sound at all familiar?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Why would he be familiar?” her mother asked.
“We’re just exploring all the possibilities,” Detective Waller said. “Meredith, do you think he could have been younger than you thought? Do you think he could have been a teenager?”
“I don’t think so,” Meredith said. “He didn’t really sound like a teenager.”
“And you don’t think you’d ever encountered him anywhere before?”
“No.”
“Do you think Lisa recognized him?”
“No,” Meredith said. “I mean, she didn’t act like she did.”
“How did she act?” Detective Waller asked.
“She already told you,” her mother said. “She—”
“She cried,” Meredith said. “And then she stopped. And then . . . then she left.”
“Do you think Lisa might have known him?” her mother asked Detective Waller.