“Because it’s embarrassing? Because you’re embarrassed?” said Nell.
My God, she would make a good cop, thought Cap. Or a journalist. Her questions just naturally sounded like someone who didn’t want to demean you or pressure you—she just wanted to know all the facts. You couldn’t teach a thing like that, he thought.
“Embarrassed, yes…and I couldn’t put Em in that position.”
“Dad, you covered for Em because he had little kids and a wife and a mother in a nursing home. You’d barely be asking for anything in return now.”
“He could lose his job.”
“So what?” said Nell.
“So what,” Cap repeated. “That’s a lot. That’s everything to most people.”
“You gave it up for him.”
Cap felt a stab of guilt. Nell didn’t have to say it; no one did, but still it was the theme that threaded through his family’s life, that after he took the fall for Em, his marriage splintered and finally crashed, and even though he and Jules paid for it, and kept paying, no one felt it worse than Nell. He coughed and said, “And so the endgame is that both me and Em are out of a job? What’s the positive spin on that?”
“You could help find the girls, Dad. Something you could do could help find them. The little one has asthma, for fuck’s sake!”
Now her voice was raised so Cap raised his.
“Watch your mouth!”
They stopped at a light. Nell looked out her window and breathed strongly through her nose. That was another thing she’d done since she was a little kid, only when she got angry. Jules and Cap used to call her Baby Bull.
“There’s another piece to this,” said Cap, calm again. “I don’t know who this woman is, the one from California. I read some articles about her, but she could have no idea what she’s doing. Then I’d be taking a huge risk for something that has no legs to begin with.”
“Don’t we explore all avenues?” said Nell.
Cap laughed.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Don’t we look at every angle, every branch of the tree?”
“Yeah, we do,” Cap conceded, feeling beaten down.
They pulled up in front of Carrie’s house. Nell reached in the backseat for her bags. She faced straight ahead, thinking.
“Look,” she finally said. “Remember when you quit your job and you explained it to me?”
Cap nodded. “Yeah.”
“You said every day we make a million little choices, and we should try to make the right ones as much as we can. And you said rarely in life do the big choices present themselves, so when they do, we have to take advantage of the opportunity. We have to do the right thing.”
Cap had no response to his daughter. He felt approximately six inches tall.
“Jesus, is there anything I say you don’t memorize?” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Nope,” she said cheerily.
She kissed him on the cheek and got out of the car.
“See you Wednesday,” she said.
“Yep, Wednesday.”
“I love you, Dad,” she said, leaning through the window.
“Love you too,” he said.
Then she was gone, up Carrie’s steps. Cap watched her go inside and then took out his phone. He looked through his deleted items for Alice Vega’s message. He sat in his car for a few long minutes.
—
Cap came back home. He parked in the driveway and rolled up the windows. It was still light outside, sun setting later and later these days, but it still felt like winter to him, especially in the evenings, the air cold and glassy with the sun sinking, everything in blues and grays. He saw the copy of Othello tucked behind the rear windshield and smiled.
As he walked up the path to his front door he didn’t exactly hear something but sensed it, a movement close by. If he were a rabbit, his ear would have twitched. He turned around quickly. Alice Vega was standing across the street. She waved to him and crossed.
He couldn’t help smiling and went toward her; they met in the middle of the street.
“Hey, hi, I just left you a message,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” she said. “I haven’t looked at my phone.”
Then he began to notice things. Strands of hair frayed and out of place. Accelerated breathing. Light sweat on her forehead. She’d been in a rush recently. Adrenaline.
“Everything okay?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, sounding so sure he felt stupid for asking. “Could you help me get something out of my car?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, but she’d already turned around and started walking away before he got the words out.
She walked fast, and Cap hurried to catch up. Something was off. Something was not fitting. He suddenly wished he had the Sig on him, which was not a wish he made often.
“Hey,” he said, and he placed his hand on her shoulder.
The muscle pulsed there, a braided rope under his fingers. She shook him off, and they both stopped and faced each other. Cap held his hands up.
“Sorry,” he said. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
This time she paused, appeared to think about it.
“I am. Could you come, please?”
She headed toward a generic beige sedan, and Cap thought how it wasn’t that cold out. Why should his eyes be blurring? Why did it look like Vega’s car was bouncing slightly up and down? But then he heard it, the squeak and scrape of the tires. The car was bouncing.
“What—” he said.
But Vega was already ahead of him, holding up her keys. Beep beep.
The lock clicked, and Cap caught up. She opened the trunk, and there was Brandon Haas, wrists and ankles tied with bungee cords, a collar of blue and bloody skin around his neck, urine stains on the crotch of his jeans, and a green apple wedged into his mouth. Frantic, angry raccoon eyes. He thrashed his body back and forth against the walls of the trunk and made long, muffled snorts. Cap lifted his hand to his mouth.
“This your skip?” said Vega.
“Yeah,” said Cap.
Cap reached down and pulled the apple out. Haas gasped and started screaming.
“You crazy fuckin’ bitch, I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna fuck you up so bad—”
Haas then realized Cap was there as well and screamed at him, “She burned my cock. My cock is burning!”
“Did you do that?” asked Cap.
“I did,” said Vega.
“I’m gonna sue the shit outta you, bitch. I’m gonna fuckin’ rip your face off and beat the shit outta you and get your ass thrown in jail—”
She took the apple back from Cap and shoved it back into Haas’s mouth.
“He’ll just keep going like that,” said Vega. “So how long do you need to take care of this? Couple of hours?”
Cap shrugged, a little stunned, said, “Probably.”
“Help me get him out,” she said.
Before Cap could agree, she threaded her arms underneath Haas’s armpits and started to lift him. Haas wriggled and flapped his elbows around. Cap grabbed his ankles. Haas tried to kick him.
“Hey,” said Vega to Haas, gripping his face in her hand like he was a dog she was trying to housebreak. “Stop it.”
Haas paused briefly and then kept trying to buck. His T-shirt hiked up, exposing his stomach, white and sagging.