When I stepped inside the Ridgedale Police Station, the floor was sloped and creaky, the carpet worn. The air had a decidedly musty but not unclean tinge. I would have thought I’d stepped inside the Ridgedale Historical Society were it not for the portraits of uniformed officers on the wall. Seated behind a small polished wood desk was a woman with spiky gray hair, a forearm full of gold bangles, and a beaming smile.
“Can I help you?” she asked brightly, her bracelets jangling as she straightened the wooden nameplate on the counter in front of her: Yvette Scarpetta, Civilian Police Dispatcher.
“I have an appointment with the chief of police?” My voice rose at the end as if it were a question. Dammit. Enough with the nerves. “My name is Molly Sanderson. I’m a reporter with the Ridgedale Reader.”
Better. Not perfect, but I could live with it. I’d have to.
“Have a seat.” Yvette pointed to a row of antique-looking wooden chairs along the wall, then picked up the phone. “I’ll let Steve know you’re here.”
Question #5: Do you have enough resources to handle the scope of this investigation? Or will you have to rely on neighboring jurisdictions? That question was Erik’s, and it was a good one. Most of his questions never would have occurred to me, and I was grateful to have them.
“Steve’s right through that door straight to the back,” Yvette said after a brief phone exchange. “You can head on through.”
When I knocked on Steve’s office door, he was standing, talking on the phone. I hesitated, but he waved me in, pointing to the chairs in front of his desk. He was older than I’d realized out at the creek. At least early forties, with a face that looked like he’d been standing out in the elements most of that time.
Steve nodded again after I sat, and his blue eyes locked briefly on mine before he turned to face the windows. Outside was a full view of the green, the gray sky breaking blue. With his back to me, Steve tucked his one free hand under his other arm, which made his strong shoulders look even broader.
That guy could kick my ass, I imagined Justin saying of Steve. He liked to freely admit this whenever we were in the company of much larger men, which was fairly often. Naturally, the admission had always served to make Justin seem utterly invincible.
It was cold in Steve’s office, and I slipped my hands into the pockets of my coat as I waited. I felt the little slip of paper then. One of Justin’s notes. I knew without even having to look. He’d started leaving them for me again in the past few weeks. It had been something he’d done all the time when we started dating, back when I was finishing up law school and he was in the middle of his Ph.D. Quotes from poems, usually about love, tucked romantically somewhere for me to stumble upon. If I hadn’t already been in love with Justin when he started giving them to me, they would have surely done the trick.
I couldn’t remember exactly when he had stopped, but it had been gradual and natural, relegated—like so much spontaneous sex—to birthdays and anniversaries and then not at all. Now that Justin had started up again with the notes, finding them gave me a little thrill, as if I were cheating on my damaged self with the new, steadily improving me. And the notes felt like Justin’s way of welcoming me home. I smiled, rolling the scrap of paper between my fingers in my pocket.
“Yes, well, unfortunately, that’s it for the moment,” Steve said into the phone. “I’ll call you back if there’s anything new. Yep.” Silence. “Yes, sir.”
Steve exhaled loudly as he hung up, then rubbed an exasperated hand over his face as he sat down. I wanted to ask who it had been on the phone, the mayor, the governor? But asking a question like that—one I’d never get the answer to—would only undermine my credibility.
“Thanks so much for taking the time to meet with me,” I said as if the interview weren’t a little bit of extortion.
“If anyone should have the story first, it’s our local paper,” Steve said. “I know I can trust the Reader to present what’s happened in a fair and reasonable manner.”
A throwaway comment, calculated to make me feel obligated not to disappoint him. An agenda. Erik was right. Steve was smoother and more practiced than I’d anticipated, but then Ridgedale was hardly a one-horse town.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, holding Steve’s stare. “So the body is a baby?”
“Yes, a female infant,” Steve said with clipped efficiency.
“How old was she?”
“Medical examiner will need to confirm her age,” he said, then seemed to realize he would have to give me something in return for my silence. “I would estimate newborn.”
“Do you have any idea who she is?”
“Not at the moment,” he said. “We’re pursuing all leads. But if anyone has any information about the identity of the baby or the baby’s parents, I’d ask that they contact the Ridgedale Police Department. I’ll get you a number to include.”
“Was the baby stillborn?”
I’d been preparing over the past hour for that particular question. For saying that one word out loud. Stillborn. I’d been afraid I wouldn’t get it out. After my petite pregnant-herself doctor had held my hand and told me that my baby’s heart was no longer beating, I’d convinced myself that all I had to do was never say that word, and I could alter the history that had already been written.
“That’s the obvious question,” he said. “And the honest answer is we don’t know yet. Given the condition of the body, an official determination on cause of death isn’t going to be easy.”
“What was the condition of the body?”
“You saw for yourself where she was found. And with the weather we’ve been having? Freezing, then warm. Something like four inches of rain in two days, and that’s just this week. I’ll leave it to you to imagine what that might do to complicate things.”
“How long was she out there?”
There was a knock at the door, and a slight red-haired officer with a face full of freckles leaned in.