“I was walking.”
“Good.”
“But it’s only three miles, from Westview to our house,” Alice said. “Anyone can walk three miles in an hour.”
“Yes, but, you couldn’t…it wouldn’t…as far as the police are concerned…”
Alice stopped and stared directly into Sharon’s eyes for the first time. “You’re saying it matters where I was, and whether I was in a car or on foot, because the police think I did this.”
“Not exactly. You’re a suspect. You shouldn’t be, but you are.”
“Do you want to be my lawyer because you think I’m guilty, or because you think I’m innocent?”
“I want to protect you, to make sure that no one hurts you. Again.” Sharon stopped and braced herself against a huge old tree, its craggy bark striped like a tire’s tread. She shifted her weight from one foot to another, digging her fingers into the straps to loosen them. The sandals had left deep red marks on her ankles.
“You were supposed to take care of me last time.”
“We did our best. We really did, Alice.”
“Oh.” Alice pretended to think about this. “So that was your best.”
Letting those words go was like the first bite of something hot and delicious, a liquid warmth that started in her chest and spread into her neck and face. It reminded Alice of the fireworks she had seen Saturday night, as she and Helen drove to the police station-long bright strands of color bursting from a center and then streaming through the sky.
But the feeling disappeared almost as quickly as the Roman candles had.
“Alice-we’ve been over this before.”
“No. Actually, we’ve never gone over it. Why did I have to go away for what Ronnie did?”
“Well, for one thing, they found your toy, the jack-in-the-box-”
“Put there by Ronnie after she stole it from me.”
“And it was hard to be definite about when the baby died. The time frame.”
“Ronnie killed her while I wasn’t there. Do you think I would have let Ronnie kill the baby in front of me? Do you think I could have stood there while she did what she did?”
“But you were with Ronnie when she took the baby. And you didn’t tell anyone where she was, even while there…even when there…”
“Just say it,” Alice said. “She was alive and I could have saved her. But I couldn’t see that. All I could see was that whatever happened, we were going to be in trouble. Trouble for taking her, for making people worry. We were in so much trouble. I tried to think of a way to help people find her. I tried to get Ronnie to take the baby home. But she wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t let me. She just wanted to stay there, pretending it was hers. And then, all of a sudden, she wanted the baby to be dead.”
“I know,” Sharon said, nodding. “I know.”
“Now they think I took this girl and maybe hurt her. Why do the police think I could do that?”
“Because cops can only understand the present by way of the past. It’s like the story, you know, about the boy who goes to market for his mother.”
“What story? I don’t know that story.” But suddenly she did. She remembered being nine, in the community room at the Catonsville library for an afternoon program that Helen had deemed worthy. “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt / His name is my name too / Whenever we go out / The people always shout / There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt / la la la la la la la.” They had told that story, too, the one about the boy who never got it right, but it was the song that Alice remembered, the joy of shouting the chorus until she was hoarse.
“He ties a string around a pork chop and drags it behind him, only to have the dogs eat it. His mother says, ‘No, you should have put it under your hat.’ So he goes to buy butter and puts it under his hat and it melts. And she says-actually, I don’t know what she says next. But the point is he keeps applying yesterday’s solution to today’s problem.”
“So I’m yesterday’s solution.”
“In a sense.”
“Which means I was also yesterday’s problem.”
Sharon shifted her weight back and forth. Alice remembered how her feet felt in the early days of walking, how they burned and ached. Now they were so tough that she could probably go five miles barefoot without feeling it.
“I never thought of you as a problem,” Sharon said.
“What about the things that happened to me while I was away? What about the things that were done to me?”
To her horror, Sharon began to cry, a response that Alice didn’t crave, and couldn’t even use. Whenever a grown-up began to cry, Alice knew she had lost.
“I tried, Alice. I really tried. I did my best and I’m sorry about how things turned out. But no one knew-no one could have known or predicted-I’m so sorry, Alice. All I can do is try to get it right this time. That’s all anyone can do.”
“You’re right,” Alice said. “You are absolutely right. All anyone can do is try.”
She started walking, indifferent to whether Sharon could keep up. She trained her eyes on the sidewalk, measuring her stride so her foot landed safely in the middle of each square. Not because she worried about stepping on a crack, much less breaking her mother’s back, but because the solid, almost jumping movement reminded her of hopscotch. She had been good at hopscotch, playing kicksies in the Baltimore style, using an old rubber heel as her token. Helen would go to shoe repair shops and bat her eyes at the old Italian men who worked there, just to make sure that Alice had an authentic Black Cat Paw heel to fling into the numbered spaces.
Tuesday, July 7
31.
“This is how it works in Baltimore,” Lenhardt said, perching on the corner of Nancy’s desk. “Or how it doesn’t work. The bureaucracy that wants to help you can’t. The bureaucracy that could help you won’t.”
“Problem with the medical records?” Nancy guessed.
Lenhardt nodded. “Middlebrook, where Alice was held, is finally under renovation, and the nonactive files have been put away in some storehouse for the time being. They’re going to try and find them, but I got the feeling they honestly don’t know where they are. Shechter, a psychiatric unit at one of the privately run juvenile facilities, is stonewalling us, says they sent the files to a state agency upon Ronnie Fuller’s release. But they’re not sure if it was Juvenile Services or Health and Mental Hygiene.”
“Seems like a lot of work,” Infante said, “for information that may not even help us.”
“Well, there’s blood, and you can’t ignore that,” Lenhardt said. “Blood is good. But I’ve been thinking: This is a case about what’s not there, too. And what’s the primary thing that’s not there?”
He looked at his two detectives expectantly and Nancy couldn’t help wanting to get the answer first. She studied her sergeant’s face for a clue, a tell, and saw his eyes slide to the right, toward the stack of videotapes on Infante’s desk. These were tapes from the store’s security cameras and the mall security cameras at the various exits. They had watched them several times and caught a glimpse of Maveen Little and her boyfriend, seemingly looking for the girl. But-
“Brittany Little,” Nancy said. “Brittany Little is missing. Not a single security camera caught her. Which is possible, but not plausible.”
“If a stranger took a kid, he’d have to snatch her fast”-Lenhardt hugged a phone book to his chest to demonstrate-“and even then, she’d probably yell. It’s more likely he enticed her out with something.”
“We talked to the shift supervisor for mall security,” Infante said, “and the security guard from Value City. An off-duty city cop, pretty sharp. He pointed out that if the cameras caught everything, there wouldn’t be a shoplifter walking free today.”