The cold kept her mind focused, alert. She was going to do it. She knew as she sat there she wasn’t going to resist today. She was going to call.
She’d put it off all day, talking to Henry and seeing Roberto and doing everything she always tried not to do, except for the real thing, the thing she stopped herself from doing every hour of every day, checking the day off on the calendar if she’d successfully resisted, months and years of black Xs until her weekly sessions with Dr. Ferguson were a thing of the past and she’d almost forgotten what it was she was marking. But now none of that mattered, it was the thing that needed to be done, so she picked up the phone and called that number which was carved jaggedly into her heart.
“Lieutenant Ludden speaking.” He had picked up the phone in the middle of telling someone something, some story; his voice was light, joshing. She could hear voices in the background—brusque, workaday. She could almost smell the burned police station coffee.
“A lieutenant, now.”
He knew her voice, of course, even though a few years had passed. You don’t call someone at 11:00 PM and then again at 8:00 AM and then again at noon every day for years and not burn your voice into their consciousness. That had been the point. “Yeah.” She felt the exhaustion bleeding into his voice at the sound of hers.
“So, when did that happen?”
“I was promoted last year.”
“It’s Denise Crawford.”
“I know. Hello, Mrs. Crawford. How are you?”
“You know how I am.” This was her true self, her true voice, hoarse and unwavering. Maybe that’s why it had been so hard to stop herself from calling him.
“And what can I do for you this evening?”
“You know what you can do.”
He exhaled.
“If there was news I’d call you, you know that, Mrs. Crawford.”
“Well, I wanted to check in. On the investigation. On how it’s going.”
“How the investigation is going.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause. “You know it’s been seven years.” His voice thin, almost pleading. She’d worn the man out. She considered this a kind of victory.
“Six years, ten months, eleven days, to be exact. Are you telling me you’ve closed the investigation? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“As far as I am concerned, Mrs. Crawford, this case will never be closed until—until we find your boy. But you must—you’ve got to realize that we have new cases every day. People keep on dying in Greene County, Mrs. Crawford, and they have mothers, too, and those mothers, they call me, too, and I have to account for them.”
“Tommy’s not dead.” The words were flat, automatic.
“I didn’t say he was.” His voice was heavy, despairing; this was how they talked to each other, the only true relationship she had in the world.
She looked out the window. All she could see was her own reflection, those eyes that were her real eyes all right, not fierce like the voice but tired, tired. Her mouth was full of that taste that had been in her mouth all day, the taste of something burned.
“I still keep my eyes peeled, though. I don’t forget. All right? I don’t forget any of ’em, but especially Tommy. All right?”
“Maybe you could search the files again. Maybe there’s something you missed there that you’d only realize now, after all this time has passed. Or maybe something small has come up somewhere else that might have some bearing—”
There was a pause.
“There is something.”
She felt her pulse quickening. Oh, she knew him. She could feel it in his silence. “What is it?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
“There’s something.”
“No.”
“I know you found something. I can hear it in your voice. Tell me what it is.”
“A boy disappeared a few months back in Florida. Maybe you heard about it?”
“I don’t read the papers anymore. And they found him? They found the boy?” Her voice quivering with excitement while her guts twisted with envy. That word echoing in her ears: found, found.
“They found the body.”
And then she was wrenched, again, with dismay. For herself, for the boy’s parents, for all the parents in the world.
“You didn’t hear about this?”
“How did the boy die?”
“He was murdered.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Detective. You know I can take it. You know that. Now you tell me. How. That. Boy. Was. Killed.” She could barely keep her voice level.
“No, it’s—it’s part of the investigation. I don’t know myself. It’s not my case, they’re keeping us apprised in case—there are any similarities.”
“There are similarities?”
He sighed. “The boy was nine. African American. There was a bike found.”
“A bike? But—but—but there was a bike. We found Tommy’s bike—by the road.”
“I’m aware of the details of the case, Mrs. Crawford.”
“And the man that did that—who murdered this Florida boy—”