Vega nodded.
“And you won’t necessarily throw boiling water on his crotch and stuff him in the trunk?”
“Sure,” said Vega.
The peephole darkened.
Then, “Yeah?”
“We’re looking for Alex Chaney,” said Vega to the peephole.
“Who’s looking?”
“Name’s Alice Vega and Max Caplan.”
“You cops?”
“No. Private investigators. This is about two missing girls. You’ve seen it on TV.”
There was a pause. Vega wiggled the fingers on one hand. Then there were locks being unlocked, and Cap got ready. It was a familiar feeling, watching a closed door, waiting to see what was on the other side, but it was rarely good, especially in the middle of the night in a shit part of town.
The door opened an inch; there was a stripe of a man, not big, a white face with black stubble and a bloodshot eye.
“Mr. Chaney?” said Vega.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at both of them up and down. “This about Jamie Brandt’s kids, I don’t know anything about it.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Look, we’re not police. We’re not here to interrogate you or search your property. We’ve been retained by Ms. Brandt’s family. We’re questioning everyone who knows Ms. Brandt and her daughters.”
Chaney looked up at the sky and hesitated.
“A little late,” he said.
“Honestly, Mr. Chaney, we don’t have a lot of time. Every hour that goes by these girls get farther away from us,” said Vega. “We only need about five minutes of your time.”
Another pause. Chaney scratched at his scalp like a cat with a rash. Cap could see Vega’s hand moving again, impatient.
“Yeah, okay,” Chaney said finally. “Long as it doesn’t take too long. I’m about to go to sleep.”
Cap doubted that very much but smiled like a gentleman and followed Chaney in when he opened the door wide.
The room was spare, a futon and a ratty tan couch, a cardboard box between them like a coffee table. There was a huge flat-screen television on a small stand against one wall, and the lockup show about America’s prisons on the screen.
Jamie was right about the homeless person thing. Chaney was like a stick figure in paper doll clothes, with long stringy hair to his shoulders. He picked up a lit cigarette from an ashtray on the cardboard box and brought it to his mouth, inhaled and made a face like it hurt his teeth.
“Do you wanna sit?” he said.
“We’re good,” said Vega. “When’s the last time you saw Jamie Brandt?”
“Month ago maybe, couple of months. Ran into her.”
“When’s the last time you saw her daughters?”
Chaney thought about it. He looked at the floor and blew smoke out in an O.
“Shit, I don’t know. A year ago? When me and Jamie broke up.”
Vega let a few seconds pass before she said anything else, and Cap remembered this feeling. Getting the distinct impression they were being lied to.
“When was that exactly?” Vega said.
“A year ago February. Around Valentine’s Day. Pretty rough.”
He looked imploringly at Vega as if she would understand, being a woman and all.
“And you saw the girls around that time.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone you remember, any friend or acquaintance of Jamie’s stand out to you as someone who had an interest in the girls?”
“No, I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.
“And when’s the last time you saw the girls?”
Chaney paused, then said, “Uh, year ago.”
Vega paused, and Cap turned to glare at her. Talk quickly right now, he thought. He’ll crack but you have to press. You can’t give him too much time to think. But she wasn’t talking. She just stared at Chaney like he was a Rorschach blot. Cap began to doubt—she was a brawler but maybe interrogation wasn’t her thing.
“So end of March, then?” said Cap.
Chaney and Vega looked at him. He avoided turning to see Vega’s face.
“No, Valentine’s Day, right?” said Chaney.
“You tell us. Did you see them the day you broke up with Ms. Brandt? Or before or after?”
“I don’t really remember when, you know, it was around then.”
“March,” said Cap.
“Yeah,” said Chaney, a light sheet of sweat forming on his forehead. Then he shut his eyes hard. “No, man, February.”
“You were close to them, the girls?”
“No, I mean, sure, they’re good kids, but I wasn’t like a dad to them.”
“Either one of them in particular, Kylie or Bailey?”
Chaney put his hand to his head like he had an ice headache. Okay, thought Cap. Brake.
“Which one were you closer to?”
“Kylie, I guess.”
“You used to bring her cannolis.”
“Yeah, Jamie tell you that?”
Cap nodded. “You had a friendship.”
“Yeah, I brought her stuff like that. She was a good kid. Real funny. One of those kids with a grown-up sense of humor.”
Cap believed him. They were all quiet. Chaney got nervous.
“I don’t know anything about them missing,” he said. He turned around and put out his cigarette in the ashtray. Stamp stamp stamp.
“No one said you did, Mr. Chaney,” said Cap.
“I think those people are degenerates, all right? The ones who mess around with kids. Fucking degenerate motherfuckers.”
He looked at Cap and Vega defiantly, waiting for them to challenge his position on child molesters.
“Can I use your restroom?” said Vega.
“Huh?” said Chaney.
“Restroom.”
“Yeah, down the hall, your right.”
Cap and Vega locked eyes for only a second. He could read nothing in her face, but was it because she was feeling nothing, or she wanted Chaney to see nothing, he could not say. Then she was gone.
“Was Kylie upset that you and Ms. Brandt broke up?” Cap asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Chaney said.
He had a wistful look. Now this is the truth, Cap thought.
“Yeah, she was sad about it,” he continued.
“What made you think that?” said Cap.
“You know, she was just sad about it. The way kids get sad about things.”
“So when exactly did you see her get sad about it? Was she there when Ms. Brandt broke it off with you?”
Chaney’s eyes shrank in his face.
“No, no,” he said, tripping over the words.
“Was it afterward then? Did you see her after?”
“Yeah, must have been.”
“So then it was less than a year ago when you saw her last. Was it eight months ago, six? Four?”
Chaney shook his head and scratched at his neck.
“No, I don’t know. I just know she was bummed out about me and Jamie.”
“How would you know that, Mr. Chaney, if you hadn’t seen her after you broke up with Ms. Brandt?”
Cap was calm. The situation didn’t need much effort. Press a pen slowly into a water balloon and wait for it to burst.
—
Vega quickly, quietly, opened Chaney’s medicine cabinet and examined the clusters of bottles on the shelves. NyQuil, Advil, Aleve. She took a ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of her jacket and used it to strip back the beige shower curtain. There was nothing in the bathtub except a brown ring and ashy spots on the floor.