Wasn’t it news enough that these two girls had returned to their neighborhood without the community being alerted? If they had been adult sex offenders, they might have fallen under one of those whatchamacallit laws, the one named for yet another little girl victim. But because they were juveniles, they had been granted the right to move anonymously through the world. Was that right? Was that fair? Mira had convinced herself it wasn’t.
The phone rang and she grabbed it without thinking, forgetting she was in someone else’s office. It didn’t occur to her that there could be any other phone call in the world just now except the one for which she waited.
“This is Detective Porter. You paged me and used the emergency code?” Cynthia had told Mira that adding 911 to the phone number written next to the detective’s name would get her an automatic response.
“Yes, I’m Mira Jenkins of the Beacon-Light and I need to speak to you about the Brittany Little disappearance.”
“No comment.”
“Wait-” Her voice shrilled, and she struggled to get it under control. “I have information about the case, which I have confirmed from independent sources. I plan to publish this information with or without your cooperation. I’m just giving you the opportunity to correct or contradict my information.”
“No comment.” She was more tentative this time, less prompt. And she was still on the line.
“I’m going to write that you’ve interviewed Alice Manning and Veronica Fuller in this matter. Will I be incorrect if I say that?”
“No…no comment.”
“If you don’t tell me I’m wrong, I’m going with it. I also know the missing child bears a marked resemblance to Olivia Barnes’s sister. I’ve seen the photos, so I don’t need you to confirm that. But do you think that’s why the girls took her? Are they trying to get back at the family? Why are they so obsessed with hurting the Barneses?”
“No comment.”
“Do you think it’s racial? It’s my understanding that the first murder followed a racial outburst by one of the girls.”
“You can’t print this. You must not print any of this.”
“Why, is it wrong?”
“It could be harmful to our investigation.”
“But will I be wrong if I publish it?”
“I’m not playing this game.”
“I’m going to let five seconds of silence elapse. If you don’t say anything, I have to assume it’s right.”
“But-”
“So I’m wrong?”
“No comment.”
“If I’m wrong, you better say straight out I’m wrong.”
“You should call our press office. We don’t talk directly to reporters.”
“I’m not going to quote you. I’m just going to say, ‘Police sources confirmed.’ ”
“I didn’t confirm anything and I’m not your source.” The detective sounded almost hysterical.
“Didn’t you? Look, you have my number if you want to call me back. Meanwhile, I need to talk to my editors about what we’re going to print tomorrow.”
Mira hung up the phone and let out a little yelp of triumph, wishing she had a colleague to high-five. Then she composed herself before leaving the advertising director’s office.
“What were you doing in there?” the cop reporter asked.
“Talking to a doctor about why my hands are so cold all time. He’s going to do some tests.”
32.
“Fuck,” Nancy said after hanging up the pay phone in a back corridor at Value City. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary and fuck me.”
“What’s up?” Infante asked, coming out of the bathroom. He had a copy of the Pennysaver under his arm, a fact Nancy would have found hilarious in normal circumstances.
“A reporter is chasing the story.”
“Well, sure. They been chasing it.”
“Only she knows. She knows about the girls, has their names. She says I confirmed it by not contradicting it. But I didn’t, did I? You heard my end? Did I say anything?
“I didn’t hear anything, Nancy. I was in the can.”
“Damn it.” It was going to happen again. She was going to be in the paper, and other police would think it was because she was showboating, still desperate for attention. No one would believe she had changed, and she would have to live with it this time. She had run out of room, she had no place else to go, except over the state line to Pennsylvania.
“It might not be so bad,” Infante said, which convinced Nancy it was very bad indeed.
She leaned her forehead against the edge of the fake wood partition for the pay phone. They were in a dingy corridor on the top floor of Value City. Nancy remembered when a bakery used to occupy this space, back when Value City was Hutzler’s, the city’s grandest department store. Her mother had come here to buy Nancy’s first communion dress and then, to reward her for not fidgeting, had brought her to the bakery to pick out any treat she wanted. Nancy had chosen a strawberry cupcake, its pink frosting chunky with pieces of berry. Probably made from jam, she realized now. But at eleven she had believed it was the real thing.
“Let’s go do what we came here to do,” she said. “I’ll worry about this later.”
They made a circuit of the store, studying the placement of the cameras. The numbers matched-there were seven cameras in all, and the mall had sent them seven tapes. They left the store, entering a glassed-in corridor of smaller shops. Nancy stopped, did a double take.
“What?” Infante asked as she crouched down.
“Here,” she said. Three little bolts, almost impossible to see in the dirty gray carpet, but Nancy’s eyes had found them. They looked lost, meaningless, unconnected to this sunny, dusty column of light-until their eyes traveled up the wall, about eight feet. And then it was almost too easy to connect the bolts to the not quite spackled-over holes in the wall.
Infante stood on tiptoe and pressed a finger against the white swirl of Spackle. There was a small freckle of white when he took his finger away.
“Fucking Lenhardt,” Infante said. “He’s scary sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Nancy agreed. “This is a case about what’s not there. But how could he know that the camera was removed?”