“I’m sorry, you think we might be able to finish this tomorrow?” said Toby, so excruciatingly polite it made Cap a little angry. Why aren’t they indignant, vengeful, filled with rage?
“It’s getting late,” he said, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
She blinked in gentle surprise.
“Yes, of course,” said Cap. “I apologize for the delay here. Captain Hollows and I just wanted to cover one more base with you and then that’s it—we really can’t stress enough how helpful you’ve been.”
They smiled. Toby remained standing behind his wife.
“Captain Hollows,” Cap said, nodding to him.
“You know, I have to tell you, I’ve been over the file—your file—a few times,” Junior said to them, “and I just didn’t recognize you folks.”
His regional accent seemed to get thicker as he spoke, and Cap thought he better watch it and not get too hometown PA. People can sense when they’re being patronized.
“You both look like a million bucks, honestly,” said Junior.
Toby smiled and fiddled with his glasses. Erica looked down, not exactly smiling but like she was thinking about it.
“Why…” Junior began, then stopped.
He waited until they both looked at him, second-guessing themselves—had he already asked the question and we didn’t hear it? Asshole had a good strategy, thought Cap.
Then he finished his question: “…do you look so good?”
The McKennas’ smiles dissipated. They glanced at each other, then at Cap and Junior.
“Pardon?” said Toby, still no trace of impatience.
“You folks have been through arguably the worst thing two people can go through only two years ago, and you look like you just stepped out of an L.L. Bean catalogue.”
Junior paused.
“And you didn’t used to look like that. I’ve seen the photos in your file.”
Erica wiggled her nose like the witch from the old TV show. But this wasn’t a spell; it was a precursor to crying. She touched the corner of one eye with the pad of her manicured ring finger. And that’s what put the anger, or at least irritation, in Toby McKenna—his wife upset. He stared at them with his brow lowered, his teeth in an underbite.
“The police have a problem with people improving themselves?” he said.
“No, Mr. McKenna,” said Cap. “We just want to know where you got the money for all of it. Cosmetic enhancements and a fleet of luxury sedans.”
Cap knew it could play either way—either they break and there are more tears and jumbled confessions, or they’re angry, really genuinely angry, and Toby would take off his glasses and blazer and show Cap and Junior what he learned in Ultimate Fitness class.
“It’s not anybody’s business,” said Toby. “How we make money.”
“That would be true with the average couple,” said Junior. “But you two aren’t average, because of what happened to your daughter.”
“So together these two un-average things have become a set,” Cap picked up. “As things that are possibly connected.”
Toby rubbed his chin, then his cheek, wiping off a smudge he couldn’t quite locate.
“I don’t know what you think is the truth,” he said. “But you’re wrong.”
“Then why don’t you tell us the truth,” said Cap softly, trying not to sound too desperate. “Please.”
Toby shook his head then, but it seemed to be in response to something he was telling himself.
He opened his mouth to speak but Erica cut him off.
“They are connected,” she said, as if they were all so dense and she felt sorry for them. “Just not the way you think.”
—
Vega pulled off for gas at a rest stop. After she filled the tank she parked in the lot and read the latest emails from the Bastard, along with a pdf of Colin Cahill’s bank statements from the past two years. The Bastard had circled a number—$150,000 deposited almost two years to the day since Ashley disappeared.
Vega opened a chat with the Bastard.
“Can you track the accounts that wired the money to Cahill and the McKennas?” she wrote.
He wrote back: “They’re both burner accounts. Like a burner cell. Use them once then toss.”
“So no names,” Vega typed back.
“No. Offshore through Panama. Not unusual. I can get into the bank for current accounts, but not for ones that don’t exist anymore.”
“No way to tell if both accounts belong to same user?” wrote Vega.
“Not really. Can keep looking.”
“Give it thirty more minutes, then drop it.”
She signed off, closed her laptop and slid it to the passenger seat, where it flipped Stacy’s shoebox to the floor. The top was off, pictures and papers fanned out on the black liner mat. Vega sighed and started the car. Just drive, she thought. Pick them up when you get to Denville. She squinted at them, could barely make out the images of little girls twirling pirouettes. She had the uncanny feeling she could not leave them there.
What do you believe now? she scolded herself. That Ashley Cahill’s soul is in those pictures and you’re disrespecting it by leaving images of her on the floor of a rental car?
She didn’t quite say yes, but the answer wasn’t no either.
She leaned down sideways, could feel all the muscles in her left hip stretch as she scooped up the box and pictures, grabbed the last one left on the floor, the edge under her fingernails, and glanced at it before dropping it in the box. Ashley at the barre, two other girls behind her, holding it with their left hands, right arms extended, their faces serious and shiny, reflecting the light.
They were in the right side of the frame. In the left, slightly backgrounded, was an upright piano, and the piano player in a three-quarter profile. A fair-haired woman with a strong jawline, delicate long fingers over the keys, concentrating on the sheet music, as if the girls weren’t even there.
Vega brought the picture closer to her eyes. It was printed on paper, a thick stock but matte and a little pixelated. Maybe if she had the file on her laptop or her phone she’d be able to see it more clearly, to make out every high-resolution detail of the piano player’s face, but she didn’t need to. Because she knew who it was, even with the dulled color of whatever secondhand laser printer had produced it; she knew exactly who it was.
—
Cap felt his phone buzz, over and over on his hip in his pants pocket. He reached for the power button and pushed it with his thumb. His teeth chattered from the sugar, the sweat a cold glaze on his forehead. He didn’t feel nervous. But Erica McKenna was about to tell them something, and his body was preparing for it, like pulling the rip cord on a toy race car.
“This is the truth,” Erica said.
She removed her glasses and set them in her lap, tapped the bridge of her nose.
“That year, the year after Sydney—”