She looked so earnest Cap almost believed maybe this had been the real Vega all along and the whole tough girl thing was the act. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Why would I have them?” he said, annoyed.
“Press,” said Lindsay, pulling gently at his arm.
Linsom kept his eyes on Cap and Vega and let his wife tug him away for just a second. She spoke quietly and rapidly, and Cap could only imagine how many times she’d had to do this before—talk her husband off the angry bridge. Linsom spread his feet apart, seemed to relax a bit. There you go, Tiger, thought Cap.
“So if I let you walk out of here, and I call the police captain in a couple of hours, he’ll know exactly who you two are and he’ll have that notebook as evidence?” said Linsom.
He sounded like a high school principal, and Cap could tell he enjoyed it; the smirk had reappeared.
“Absolutely,” Vega gasped. “You have my word.”
Linsom thought about it for another full minute, making the fake Vega squirm.
“Get out of here before I change my mind,” he said.
“Thank you, thank you so much. I’m so sorry, we’re so sorry to have bothered you.”
She pumped his hand and rushed out.
“Mrs. Linsom, I’m so sorry,” she said.
Cap followed her. He smiled sheepishly at Linsom, and said, “Yeah…sorry.”
Out they went, through the front door. Cap ran to catch up with her as she crossed the street.
“Give me your phone and yell at me in a second,” she said, eyes straight ahead.
Cap handed over his phone. Vega bounced it on her fingertips like a volleyball and dropped it to the pavement.
“Goddammit, Alice!” Cap shouted.
Vega bent down to grab it, and they got to the car without looking behind them, but Cap didn’t have to. He knew the Linsoms were still at the door, watching. He and Vega got into the car, and Cap bit the insides of his lips to stop himself from bursting into laughter from relief and awe that Linsom was just another safe that Vega had cracked.
“Park when we get out of here, yeah?” said Vega, looking down.
“Yeah,” said Cap, tucking the notebook between his seat and the cup holder.
He pulled out and down the block, glanced in the rearview and watched the Linsoms and their absurdly spotless house get smaller and smaller. He drove out of the Sprawl and parked next to a brown field, which he felt certain was soon to be Extended Sprawl.
He and Vega sat in silence for a moment. Then she placed a small black hook on the dashboard. It made a little clink.
“Where’d you get that?” said Cap.
“From the grill on the patio. It’s a magnet. I think you hang tongs on it.”
“So that was plan B, huh?” said Cap. “To hook him like a bass?”
“Something like that.”
Cap thought about it, rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t have minded, tell you the truth. He was a special guy.”
Vega reached her hand out the window and adjusted the side mirror.
“I had a feeling we could get out of there clean so I went with it.”
Cap nodded and picked up the notebook.
“Let’s do this now?” he said.
“Yeah, hold on,” said Vega.
She pulled out her phone and scooted toward Cap.
“Lean over,” she said to him.
He leaned into her, and she held the phone and aimed the camera. He pressed his shoulder into hers gently and could smell her hair and skin. Something herbal but not flowery—sharp and aromatic. He tried to ignore it the best he could, the desire to just turn and take a deep breath through his nose. He opened the notebook to the first page.
“Good?” he said.
Vega looked at the frame on her phone.
“Yeah,” she said, tapping the screen. Snap.
Then they huddled together and peered down at the first page, a list of boys’ names. “5A” was at the top of the page and the middle of the way down, “5B.” Next to each name were letters, a code: FH, BF, FF, G. Thankfully Kylie had added a key: FH: Future Husband; BF: Boyfriend; FF: Friend Friend; G: Gross.
Cap smiled at the honesty of it. At least you knew where you stood.
“Boys in her class,” he said.
“I have the class list—we can match the names, make sure there’re no discrepancies,” said Vega.
They flipped through the next few pages, more lists of boys’ names, more codes, some scratched out and changed from FF to BF and back. Ballpoint garlands of flowers and vines around the borders.
They came to a page with “MY MOM IS A BITCH” written at the top, angry black spirals beneath it, covering up a sentence or two.
“She felt bad about whatever she wrote,” said Vega, running her finger over the scribbles. “Crossed it out.”
There were only about ten pages in all with writing; the rest was blank. The last page was covered with wobbly edged hearts, the initials “KB + WT” inside every one.
“Who’s WT?” said Cap.
“Go back to the lists,” said Vega.
“Wesley. We can get his last name. And he’s a FF, so it’s probably not him.”
“Wait,” said Vega.
She ran her thumb through the rest of the pages like a flip book and stopped on one with a crease at the corner. She opened it. Tiny letters at the bottom: “See you soon he said!”
They both stared at the words.
“So what do we do in two hours when Linsom calls this in?”
“How about we beat him to it?”
“You want to call it in?” said Cap.
“We could use it. Trade it for whatever they have that we need.”
“You want to go back to Junior,” said Cap, staring straight ahead. The prospect made his teeth hurt.
“You want me to call, I’ll call,” said Vega.
“No, I’ll call. I’ll call,” he said again, talking himself into it.
Vega’s phone buzzed, and she scanned the screen and said, “My guy got the location of the email source—it’s a Kinko’s on North Haven Street. He’s working on security footage.”
“At least he’s close, but it’s a public device,” said Cap. Then he thought about it. “Shit, was it too much to ask for it to be a single-occupant residence?”
Vega didn’t answer him. She gazed out the window.
“Why don’t you bring that to Hollows too?”
“What—the Kinko’s?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t want our help,” she said. “Doesn’t mean he can’t help us.”
“Let them do the legwork there, talk to the staff,” Cap said.
“Why not. Keep everyone busy, going in the same direction. Here,” she said, handing him his phone.
Cap rubbed the top where it was nicked from the fall.
“Why’d you have to drop my phone and not yours?” he said.
Vega turned to face him and said, “I like my phone, Caplan.”
7
Evan Marsh moved like he had a pain in his shoulders or his neck. Vega stood just outside the loading dock of a supermarket called Giant, light rain landing in her hair, the temperature dropping. Marsh met her eyes and sped up, jumped off the dock and around the fork of a manual pallet jack with boxes stacked on top.
“Hey, Alice?” he said.
“Vega, yeah. Evan Marsh?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Do you have a minute to speak?”
They shook hands, and Marsh said, “Yeah, my shift hasn’t started yet. So you talked to my mom?”
“Yes, earlier today.”