She thought of when her mother used to take her and Tommy to the Russian River, and they’d wade into the water, walking on a million pebbles and then smooth, round rocks that seemed made to fit the arches of her feet. The water was cold, but she’d get used to it quickly, her body heat sinking to match it.
But then the riverbed would drop off, and the plunge wouldn’t startle Vega as much as the temperature of the water, which would turn to freezing cold, the real cold, enveloping her, and she’d realize, this is what the river actually is—it is this cold, the kind that makes you blue.
That’s what she felt in the air now, and that’s the problem with this whole coast, she thought. They tell you it’s spring, they say out like a lamb, but it’s still winter underneath, barbs of ice packed deep in the dirt and gusts of Arctic air turning whipped cream wheels in the sky.
The light went green, and Vega followed the GPS to Stag’s Bar, a redbrick building on a small street with houses on either side. There were two small windows and a Coca-Cola light-box sign above the door, an American flag dancing around in the wind.
Inside, the counter was U-shaped and white and looked cheap and beat-up under the fluorescents in the corkboard ceiling. There were three customers, two young guys together on one side talking to the bartender, one old man on the other. The bartender had illegible script tattooed up and down both forearms and drowsy eyes. He was not particularly tall or husky.
They all gawked at her when she came in, none of them the least bit shy, the old man sipping his beer and staring at her face like he was watching a football game. The bartender walked away from the two young men, and they immediately erupted in laughter. The bartender glanced back at them and laughed too, in on the joke. He came toward Vega, smirking.
“What can I get you?” he said, shuffling his skater sneakers on the checkerboard floor.
“You Bruce Pastor?” said Vega.
He nodded up once. It was the who-wants-to-know nod.
“I’m Alice Vega,” she said. “I left three messages on your phone.”
Pastor snapped his head to the side.
“Battery’s dead,” he said, both hands on the bar. “Who are you again?”
“My name’s Vega. I find missing persons. I’d like to ask you some questions about Evan Marsh, about a time you and he bought drugs from Alex Chaney a month ago.”
She could see Pastor hedging in the dimly lit hallways of his head. She could almost hear the idiot chorus: lie to her.
“I don’t know either of those guys,” he said. “So I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not a cop,” she said. “I don’t care if you buy drugs or use drugs or if you’re on drugs right now. I need to know if you remember seeing a little girl at Alex Chaney’s house the last time you were there with Evan Marsh.”
Pastor was quiet; he was looking everywhere but at her eyes.
Vega leaned over the bar.
“The little girl was Kylie Brandt,” she said, close enough to his face to smell cinnamon gum. “We found her sister this morning, but Kylie’s still missing. I need to know what she and Evan Marsh talked about at Alex Chaney’s house a month ago.”
The two guys in the back chattered away. Pastor looked over his shoulder at them, then turned back to Vega, pursing his lips, gathering spit to speak.
“If you’re not buying a drink, you’re gonna have to leave.”
Vega sighed. She could tell he felt kind of bad about it but not bad enough to talk. He started to walk away, and Vega grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “Please just tell me if you remember.”
He yanked his arm away and shrugged, and even that was lazy, his bony shoulders barely making the arch.
“Sorry, girl. Wasn’t me.”
Now he no longer felt bad about anything. Now he was just a kid who wanted to cover his ass, like a million kids before him wanting to cover their asses. He walked away from her, and she watched him go with his skinny-boy slouch. He went back to talking with his friends, and they sputtered and laughed some more.
Vega honestly couldn’t determine if she was more angry or tired. Her face was tingling, but she was fairly sure it was the injuries and not roofless rage. She stared at her hands, palms and tops, the dirt and blood packed under the nails, and thought of the day she had had. Then she saw the three boys at the end of the bar and tried to think of the day they had had—probably woke up at noon and smoked weed and played Grand Theft Auto and jerked off.
She looked at the old man on the other side of the bar, sipping his beer, and felt like him, or felt like she imagined he was feeling—creaky and sore.
Then she thought of Caplan and his daughter. For some reason she imagined him helping Nell with homework at the kitchen table. Vega actually doubted that Nell needed much help with anything, but still she pictured Cap standing over her while she worked on math or chemistry, something with definitely right and wrong answers, nothing wishy-washy. She thought of Nell getting it, drawing a neat box around a string of numbers and letters. Cap would say, “You see, Bug [that’s what he called her, wasn’t it?], you don’t even need me.” And Nell would smile and say something smart. Maybe they would high-five. They would both be proud.
Maybe Cap and Nell had not done that today, but whatever it was, no matter the detail, Cap and Nell were unequivocal in the decency of their lives; it ran through them like thread and colored everything they did. And these guys, well, how was she to know, really; maybe they helped an old lady with her grocery bags and had run a tutoring session for at-risk kids today before they came here to get hammered at five p.m., but likely not. Vega stared at them, put a box around the answer.
She moved slowly at first toward them, her right hand running along the bar, when she came to the taps—Yuengling, Yuengling Light, Bud, Bud Light. She made a fist and hit one after another, and down came the tired streams, one by one onto the rubber mat on the floor. It was only during a pause in their conversation that Pastor noticed the sound.
“What the fuck, girl—” he said, managing to sound offended and hostile at the same time, and then he started to run.
Vega picked up a highball glass in each hand and lobbed one at him. He caught it like she knew he would, so she fired the other one at his head. It hit him, and he screamed, probably more from the shock of it than the pain, though he went down anyway.
The other two were coming at her fast, one taller than the other, both scrawny, and Vega thought she could fight one but not two, especially if they did that thing that boys were so fond of, where one held your arms back and the other took shots.
And then there was the interest of time. So she pulled the Springfield from her holster and waved it at them casually.
“Go away,” she said.
They both stopped where they stood. The tall one’s jaw fell open like a puppet without a hand, but the short one was galvanized, high off the possibility of violence.
“I’m-a call the cops on you and your busted-ass face, bitch!” he said.