“Jamie?” Vega said. She was quiet about it.
Jamie turned her head, languid, her lids heavy with exhaustion or drunkenness, or both.
“You,” said Jamie, pointing at Vega.
“Alice Vega,” said Vega.
“Right. Vega. Who’s he?”
“Max Caplan,” said Cap, friendly. He looked at Jamie’s hands on the bar, lying there like leaves of a dead plant, and did not extend his.
Jamie licked her lips and said, “How’d you know I was here?”
“Your aunt said you might be.”
Jamie laughed through her nose.
“What else she say?”
“Just that you went somewhere to be alone,” said Vega.
Jamie paused to take a sip of what looked like a very light beer on ice from a mug.
“We have some more questions,” said Vega.
“I’m sorta off the clock here,” said Jamie. “I did three interviews today, and I talked to someone at CNN. Then I tried to find some pictures of the girls wearing different kinds of clothes other than dresses. The lawyer told us that they might be walking around in other kinds of clothes. So I been looking at pictures of them all day. Then we been hanging up flyers. So I come here to get drunk for two goddamn hours and then I’m going to go home and sleep for four more and then do it over again. Maggie’s got an email into the Today show. She knows someone who knows someone.”
“We need to make a list of people,” said Vega.
“Cops made a list.”
“We’re going to make a better one. But we need you to come with us now so we can sit down somewhere and talk.”
There was something a little hypnotic in Vega’s voice, thought Cap, the evenness. Lost on Jamie Brandt, however.
“I need an hour. I need twenty minutes,” said Jamie, grabbing at her mug.
She missed it, ran her fingers into the handle instead of latching on to it, and it spilled sideways toward Cap. Ice cubes slid down the bar and dropped into Jamie’s lap, then hit the floor with little wooden taps.
“Shit,” said Jamie.
The air around them seemed to freeze. Cap looked around, saw the bartender, not a small guy, coming toward them.
“Hey, Jamie, you okay over here?” he said, staring at Cap.
“I fuckin’ spilled,” she said, patting her lap with a wadded cocktail napkin.
The bartender wiped the bar with a rag and pushed a stack of napkins to Jamie. Then he folded his arms, which made them appear bigger. He had “Maya” and “Tori” tattooed on his knuckles.
“Maybe you two ought to take a walk around the block,” he said to Cap and Vega.
“Jamie,” said Vega, ignoring the bartender. “Come with us now, please.”
“Hey,” said the bartender. He nodded to Cap. “You wanna tell your girlfriend to chill the fuck out?”
Vega jerked her head in the bartender’s direction.
“Or?” she said.
“You want me to come over there?” he said, leaning across the bar.
Vega’s eyes went glassy like she’d just tasted something delicious.
“Wish you would,” she said.
Cap inserted himself between Vega and the bar, touched Jamie’s shoulder.
“Jamie,” he said. “We don’t have twenty minutes. We don’t have one minute. Kylie knew who took her.”
Cap watched as this information snaked its way into Jamie’s brain. Her face contorted; her thin plucked eyebrows turned into little Spanish tildes.
“Cops didn’t say that.”
“They might not even know it yet. They’re under a shitstorm of information, and they might not even have seen the footage we’ve seen yet.”
“There’s something else,” said Vega.
Now they all turned to Vega: Jamie, Cap, Knuckles.
“They aren’t telling you anything, right? They say it’s part of an ongoing investigation?”
Jamie nodded.
“That’s standard,” said Vega. “But we’re not cops. We’ll tell you everything we know.”
That seemed to wake her up. She looked from Vega to Cap, who nodded.
Cap said, “Kylie smiled at whoever took her. We need to make a new list.”
—
Back in Cap’s office, Jamie stared at the screen and covered her mouth with both her hands and made squeaking sounds into the hollow space. Vega closed her laptop. She and Cap looked at each other.
Jamie fumbled with her purse, a bright blue hobo bag with palm trees printed on it. She pulled out a pharmacy bottle of pills, flattened her palm against the lid, and tried to twist it. Her hands were shaking and the bottle fell into her lap.
“Here,” said Cap, holding his hand out.
Jamie gave him the bottle. Cap unscrewed the top, glanced at the label: alprazolam. Generic Xanax. Jamie shook two into her hand and brought them to her mouth, chewed them up like SweeTarts. Cap looked at the symbol of a little martini glass with a line through it on the label, thought better of mentioning it.
Jamie still held a hand over her mouth, just grazing her lips.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” she whispered.
Vega leaned over to her.
“Does anyone come to mind, someone she’d smile like that for?”
“No,” said Jamie. “I mean, yeah, but she knows them for sure, that’s all. That’s what I’m thinking about.”
“Most kids know their abductors,” said Cap.
“Yeah, but how many make them smile?” said Jamie.
“She wouldn’t know her father well enough that she would have that kind of reaction,” said Vega, pulling her laptop onto her lap.
“Shit no,” said Jamie. “They only seen a couple of pictures, and they’re from a long time ago.”
“So who’s the first person, the very first, who you think of.”
Jamie thought for a moment, rubbed the temples on her head roughly.
“My folks. That’s stupid, huh.”
“It’s not,” said Cap. “We want to rule people out, right? I was a cop for a long time, and that’s how you do this. You just keep ruling people out until you get some good suspects. So put Jamie’s parents on the list,” he said to Vega.
Vega nodded at him, but he noticed there was some theatrics in it, exaggeration, so Jamie could see it. Her eyes were steady on him too. It was a familiar click; it was one partner to another.
“Okay, who’s the next?”
Jamie shook out her shoulders like she had a chill.
“I don’t know, my aunt?”
“Right,” said Vega, typing.
Jamie went on, naming family members, a great-uncle, first and second cousins, a third cousin in the army who sent the girls emails from Afghanistan. All people Kylie might smile at. Then they were done with family.
Then her boyfriend, Darrell.
“What’s he do for a living?” said Cap.
“He works at the Bagel Pub, over in Cherry Point.”
“Would Kylie smile at him?” said Vega.
“Sure, I guess. I mean, they like him well enough.”
“What about teachers?”
Mrs. Phillips for Kylie, Miss Ferno for Bailey. They had PE teachers too, but Jamie couldn’t remember the names.
“What about, like, extracurricular types of things?” said Vega.
Bailey’s soccer coach was a guy named Arnab, an Indian or something, Jamie told them. He seemed nice enough. Kylie’s ballet teacher was Miss Savannah. Jamie thought she might be a lesbian.
“Are any of these folks angry at you for any reason? Do any of them hold a grudge that you know about?” said Cap.