When he got out of prison in 1994, he’d picked up a Waffen SS tattoo at the base of his neck, courtesy of his new best buddies in the Aryan Brotherhood. He’d also picked up a dedicated criminal trade-all his arrests for the next several years were for suspicion of identity theft. The more sophisticated personal computers grew, the more sophisticated Kenny grew with them. Couldn’t quite tame the old ways, though, and in ’99 he was picked up for rape and battery of a minor in Peabody, Massachusetts. She was seventeen or sixteen, depending on which time of night the rape actually occurred. Kenny’s lawyer fought hard on the issue. The DA realized that if he put the victim on the stand, what was left of her would just get chewed to the marrow. Kenny ended up pleading to the reduced charge of sexual battery on an adult. Because the state took rape so seriously, he was given two years, less time than he’d done in ’91 for snorting a couple of lines of Sacramento blow and chugging a six of Bud. Final arrest was in 2007. He was caught receiving fifty grand worth of TVs he’d purchased with a stolen identity. The plan had been to sell them out the back door for five hundred dollars less than he’d paid using the corporate credit card of one Oliver Orin, owner of the Ollie O’s chain of sports bars, several of which had just finished structural renovations. I had to hand it to him-if anyone could order fifty K worth of plasma TVs without raising an eyebrow it would be a guy like Oliver Orin. Because of his priors, Kenny was convicted and sentenced to five years. He served just short of three. Since then, no convictions.
“But a nice man, all the same,” Angie said.
“A charmer, no doubt.”
“Just needs snuggle-time, a good hug.”
“And free weights.”
“Well, of course,” Angie said. “We’re not barbarians.”
We were in the spare bedroom/closet where we keep the home office desk. It was a little past nine and Gabby had dropped off around eight. Since then, we’d been digging deeper into Kenny Hendricks’s history.
“So this is Helene’s boyfriend.”
“ ’Tis.”
“Oh, well, it’s all fine, then.”
She sat back and blew air up at her eyebrows, a sure sign she was about to pop.
“God knows I never expected Helene to be a good parent,” she said, “but I didn’t expect even that crack whore to be this retarded with her child.”
“There, there,” I said, “she strikes me more as a tweeker than a crackhead. Technically that would make her a meth whore.”
Angie shot me the darkest look she’d shot me in months. Playtime was over. The elephant in the middle of our relationship that neither of us talked about was the actions we’d taken back when Amanda McCready disappeared the first time. When Angie was faced with choosing between the law and a four-year-old’s well-being, her reaction at the time could be summed up thusly: Fuck the law.
I, on the other hand, had taken the high road and helped the state return a neglected child to her neglectful parent. We broke up over it. Went nearly a year without speaking. Some years are longer than others; that year was about a decade and a half. Since we’d reconciled, we hadn’t said the names Amanda or Helene McCready in our home until three days ago. In those three days, every time one of us mentioned one of those names, it felt like someone had pulled the pin from a grenade.
Twelve years ago, I’d been wrong. Every day that had passed since, roughly 4,400 of them, I was sure of that.
But twelve years ago, I’d been right. Leaving Amanda with kidnappers, no matter how vested they were in her welfare, was leaving her with kidnappers. In the 4,400 days since I’d taken her back, I was sure this was true. So where did that leave me?
With a wife who was still certain I’d fucked up.
“This Kenny,” she said, tapping my laptop, “do we know where he lives?”
“We know his last known address.”
She ran her hands through her long, dark hair. “I’m going to step out on the porch.”
“Sure.”
We put our coats on. Out on our back porch, we carefully closed the door and Angie opened the top of the barbecue grill where she kept a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She swore she only smoked a couple a day, but there were days I’d noticed the pack was a lot lighter than it should have been. So far she’d kept evidence of the vice from Gabby, but the clock was ticking and we both knew it. Yet as much as I’d love my wife to be vice-free, I normally can’t stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus, they suck the life right out of a party. Angie knows I’d love it if she didn’t smoke, and Angie would love it if she didn’t smoke. But, for now, she smokes. I, for my part, deal with it and stay off her ass.
“If Beatrice isn’t crazy,” she said, “and Amanda really is missing again, we’ve got a second chance.”
“No,” I said, “we do not.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yes, I do. You were going to suggest that if we somehow manage to locate Amanda McCready, then this time we can make up for the sins of the past.”
She gave me a rueful smile as she blew smoke out over the railing. “So you did know what I was going to say.”
I took a vicarious whiff of secondhand smoke and planted a kiss on my wife’s collarbone. “I don’t believe in redemption.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in closure.”
“That either.”
“So what do you believe in again?”
“You. Her. This.”
“Babe, you’ve got to find more balance.”
“What’re you, my sensei?”
“Hai.” She gave me a small bow. “I’m serious. You can either sit around the house brooding on what happened to Peri Pyper and how you helped a classic d-bag like Brandon Trescott avoid any responsibility for his actions, or you can do some good.”
“And this is good, uh?”
“You’re damn right it is. Do you believe a guy like Kenny Hendricks should be around Amanda McCready?”
“No, but that’s not enough to go mucking around in people’s lives.”
“What is?”
I chuckled.
She didn’t. “She’s missing.”
“You want me to go after Kenny and Helene.”
She shook her head. “I want us to go after Kenny and Helene. And I want us to find Amanda again. I might not have much free time.”
“You don’t have any.”
“Okay, any,” she admitted, “but I still have mad computer skills, m’ man.”
“Did you say mad computer skills?”
“I’m reliving the early aughts.”
“I remember the early aughts-we made money then.”
“And we were prettier and your hair was a lot thicker.” She put both palms on my chest and stood on tiptoe to kiss me. “No offense, babe, but what else are you doing these days?”
“You’re a cold bitch. I love you. But you’re a cold bitch.”
She gave me that throaty laugh of hers, the one that slides through my blood.
“You love it.”
Half an hour later Beatrice McCready sat at our dining-room table. She drank a cup of coffee. She didn’t look quite as broken as she had the other day, quite as lost, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t.