—
Vega washed her hands in Cap’s bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought about death. Which was what she usually did when she looked in strange mirrors in strange bathrooms. It made her think of hospitals and morgues, how a body could look peaceful but only in the way a piece of luggage looked peaceful—it was simply an item that didn’t move.
However, as Vega had seen with her mother’s body, the opposite could be true. A body could be animated in one last shock, neck twisted, limbs shriveled. Why did you have to look at her face? thought Vega now, in Cap’s bathroom. Why did you have to see the teeth comically large for her head like those vampire choppers you got from quarter machines?
Is this you?
—
Cap loaded the dishwasher, cleaned out the soft spaghetti bits from the drain in the sink, opened another beer. He could still think clearly after three beers. Some nights he’d get to the end of the six-pack without thinking about it and wouldn’t feel any different, would still possess his powers of critical reasoning, was just able to sleep easier and more immediately. But he could still work. If the call came in with Charlie Bright’s address, he’d drink a pot of coffee with a lot of milk and sugar and be on the way.
He squeezed the dishwashing goo into the dispenser, and the bottle made a retching sound. He glanced toward the hallway, the bathroom door, to see if Vega was emerging. He did not want her to think that he had made the retching sound, or worse, that the sound had been him passing gas.
Not after he’d seen the picture of the palm tree in her backyard, after she’d allowed herself to be charmed by Nell and the three of them had sat around a table in a family-like formation. There was something, wasn’t there, some delicate strand between them, hovering like a jellyfish arm. Couldn’t there be more, when this was all over, when they found those girls, however they were going to find them? Couldn’t he take her to dinner and couldn’t she possibly have some wine and fix her focus on him, walk around the table and lean down to tell him something, press her face against his and breathe in his ear so he could smell the salt in her hair?
His dick woke up a little, and he knocked his fist against his forehead and sat at the table.
“Pull it together,” he said aloud. Let’s not have an erection like a twelve-year-old boy during his first slow dance.
He opened the file on Ashley Cahill and his eyes fell on scattered words: blond, blue, 44 inches, 45 lbs., Holling Pool, mother bartender, father worked at a sporting goods store, missing, missing, missing.
Then Vega came back. She nodded at him and sat back down at the table.
“Everything’s clean,” she said.
“Yeah…dishwasher,” he said. “You want anything else to drink?”
She shook her head and opened the file on Sydney McKenna. Cap looked back down at the Cahill police report. No one saw anything. She’d been at the pool with a group of kids, and one of their moms said one minute she was playing Marco Polo with the rest of them, and the next minute she wasn’t. Cap picked up the 5x8 matte school portrait. Nell didn’t have them done anymore, but Cap remembered them from grade school, her image in varying sizes—big, medium, a sheet of wallets. Rows and rows of Nells.
The girl, Ashley, was cute in the way all six-year-olds were cute. Large eyes, unblemished skin. There was, in fact, nothing extraordinary about her. Except, Cap thought, to her parents.
Vega closed the folder on Sydney McKenna and placed her hands on top of it. She looked intently at Cap, and he saw something strange about her eyes; they were clear and wet but not like she’d been crying. It was like she’d dunked only her face in a pool.
“I have to tell you something,” she said.
“Okay.”
She took a quick breath in and looked at the folder under her hands.
“My mother died when I was twenty. She had lymphoma,” she said. They both waited. “Then my friend Perry, the guy who was kind of my mentor in fugitive recovery, a skip stabbed him in the kidney and he died walking out to his car. On the lawn.”
“I’m sorry,” said Cap. He was unsure about a lot of things.
She continued: “Then I started working freelance. I got lucky right away with Ethan Moreno.” She paused, then said, “The biggest mistake people make is that they think they’re special. They’re not.”
She nodded, more to herself than to Cap, and seemed not to know what to do with her hands. She tapped her fingertips together like there were castanets on them. Cap didn’t like it, didn’t like her sad and somewhat confused. Could I hug her? he thought. Will she slam her forearm into my face if I hug her and kiss the crease between her eyebrows?
He didn’t have a chance. She put her hands flat on the folder again and said, “Is there a gun shop open this late?”
—
Quiet again in Cap’s car. Vega felt strange, unused to a stomach full of food. Especially pasta, all that wheat swelling up like a pile of wet shoelaces. For a few years now Vega had a neutral attitude about eating, bordering on animosity, frustration at the braking of her body’s systems when she was hungry. Watching people eat in restaurants, she thought it seemed like such a waste—Do you think you have this kind of time? she wanted to say to them. Hours and hours sitting over bread and butter and Big Macs. Perry had Diet Cokes and grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon three times a day every day she knew him, so he wouldn’t spend any seconds considering the options. So Vega did that too—bananas, power bars, milk, juice. Some vitamins, some fat, some protein. Every day.
“You’re gonna like this,” said Cap.
He parked on a dark street, and they got out, walked to a two-floor brick house, picture window on the ground floor with a paper sign, a certificate—SMOKEY’S GUN SHOP. Below that, in big black letters: GLOCK.
Then a woman came through a door to the right of the window with a ring of keys. She was round and short, with a boy’s haircut, the skin on her nose and cheeks red and speckled. When she saw Cap her face opened up, the keyhole mouth grew into a smile.
“Mister Caplan, ain’t seen you much anymore,” she said.
“Hey, Jean,” said Cap.
They hugged. Vega stood back.
“This is my colleague, Alice Vega. She’d like to look at some firearms. This is Jean Radnor. This is her shop.”
“Hiya, Alice.”
Vega shook hands with her, watched her unlock a series of locks on the glass door.
“Come on in, then.”
They followed her in as she flipped the light switches, fluorescents flickering on in succession. Handguns with orange tags in glass cases like jewelry. Shotguns and rifles on the wall racks.
“What you been doing, Cap? How’s your daughter?” said Jean, pressing a code into an alarm box.
“She’s well. Sixteen years old.”