“Such as?”
“The boyfriend. It’s really irksome-” Oh lord, what a stupid word. She wished she could take it back, but she couldn’t. “It’s troubling that not a single security camera in the mall yielded even a frame that shows the girl was there. We’re also doing checks on the custodian who claims to have found the clothes.”
“You know how many kids get kidnapped-kidnapped in Baltimore in a year? I mean, stranger abductions, with ransom notes and everything? One or two, maybe. Most missing children are runaways.”
“This child is three years old, judge.”
He scowled. “I know that. But why aren’t you going after the boyfriend’s blood?”
“He provided a sample, and it didn’t match,” Infante said. “We’re continuing to talk to him and the mother, looking for anyplace their stories fall down. I gotta say, though, they’re pretty consistent. And city Social Services doesn’t have anything on ’em, not even a neglect call.”
“You say their stories are consistent. But are they too consistent? Consistency is often the hallmark of something that’s been rehearsed. The hobgoblin of little minds, as Emerson would have it.”
Nancy, having already risked offending the judge, restrained herself from rolling her eyes. People who quoted other people were show-offs, plain and simple. “The mother seems genuinely grief-stricken. The boyfriend is sorry that his girlfriend is upset, if you get the distinction.”
“He’s not so unhappy to see the little girl gone?”
Nancy hesitated. The judge, for all his bluster and bullying, had managed to identify the one thing that disturbed her about the boyfriend. He seemed surprised by the profundity of his girlfriend’s grief, almost sullen about it. On Saturday, when Nancy and Infante had visited the couple and continued to question them, albeit in the guise of offering them sympathy and support, the boyfriend had held his weeping girlfriend and said: “You still got me, babe. You still got me.” But that could be because he had, in his heart of hearts, wished the child away and was horrified to realize the consequences of seeing his wish come true.
“He’s not the child’s father,” Nancy said at last. “And given the way things are, I don’t think he was planning on being her stepfather. He was living with a woman, the woman happened to have a child. Was the girl a nuisance at times? I’m sure she was. Was she enough of a nuisance that he wanted to get rid of her, or would hurt her in a fit of anger? We can’t say. It wouldn’t be the first time, though.”
Infante leaned in. “The missing girl and the Barnes child really do look alike, judge. It’s uncanny. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but it’s a hard one to ignore.”
Harder to ignore, Nancy thought, that neither Ronnie nor Alice seemed to know about the Barnes child. But maybe that was what they were trying to conceal.
“Especially with Cynthia Barnes and her father breathing down your necks,” Judge Prosser replied, putting his glasses back on, which pulled his left eye back to center. “Very well. I’ll sign this. Although I’ll be surprised if they can even find the records. There are days when the juvenile system can’t find the kids in its custody, much less their paperwork. And they may have already forwarded the medical files to the girls’ private physicians.”
“The girls just left state custody in the past eight weeks. We’re counting on the state not being that efficient.”
“In my experience, it’s only efficient when you don’t want it to be,” the judge said, chuckling at his own wisdom. He added, almost as an afterthought, “I hope you find the little girl and that she hasn’t suffered. Just don’t be taken in by the Royal Family.”
“The Royal Family?”
“Isaac Poole and his daughter. They think everything is about them. And what’s not specifically about them, to their way of thinking, is about their race. You should hear him bitch and moan about his career when he’s lucky to have gotten as far as he did. Very paranoid, these people.”
Nancy took the signed subpoena and left. But she wanted to ask the judge if the Barnes family had always been this way. It seemed to her that a woman whose child was kidnapped and murdered had come by her paranoia pretty honestly.
Ronnie had shown up for work at the Bagel Barn that morning, trying to act as if nothing had happened. “I clocked you out,” Clarice said, and Ronnie nodded her thanks. After that, there was no mention of Saturday’s events until the late morning lull.
“So you in trouble?” Clarice asked, her voice casual, as if the answer didn’t matter.
“Maybe,” Ronnie said. Then: “Yeah, I guess I am. But I didn’t do anything. Honest.”
Clarice shook her head. She was a black woman living in Baltimore. She knew a lot of people who were in trouble and hadn’t done anything. She also knew people who were in trouble and had done something, but maybe not the something for which they were in trouble. And she knew people who were in trouble and had done the very thing of which they were accused, but still had good reason to lie about it. They said confession was good for the soul, and perhaps it was. But it was hell on the body. She had boys in her family, nephews and cousins, who had come out of lockup with lumps and bruises, still halfheartedly denying the charges hanging on them.
Ronnie-well, Ronnie didn’t have a mark on her, unless you counted her eyes. Dark, dark blue, they reminded Clarice of pansies, but not the fresh ones you saw in window boxes, holding their heads up to the sun. Ronnie’s eyes looked like flowers after a heavy rain, their little faces pounded flat into the earth.
29.
Cynthia Barnes was no longer interested in food, but she insisted on preparing elaborate dinners for Warren even in the heat of summer. Tonight, it was grilled tuna with a mango-papaya relish and cold tomato-corn soup, served with jalapeño corn muffins. The muffins had been baked in an old pan of her mother’s so they came out looking like miniature ears of corn. It was all delicious, all perfect, but the only part of the meal that interested Cynthia was the pinot noir that Warren selected to accompany it.
“This is wonderful,” he said, brave and polite. Warren had never outgrown his plebeian palate. He would eat sausage and ham and meatloaf every night, if he could. He would also weigh three hundred pounds and have hypertension and diabetes. But as Cynthia had told him when Rosalind was born, “I’m not planning on raising this child alone. You can choose your vice, but you get only one-workaholism, gluttony, drink. For I am definitely not raising a child alone.”
He had not said then what he never said. And perhaps he never thought it, either, but Cynthia did. If she were Warren, she would think it every day. If only you had raised our first baby instead of leaving the job to some dumb girl.