Hide (Detective D.D. Warren, #2)(12)

"My family fled for the first time when I was seven years old," I told the two detectives, and then with gathering speed ran through my story. The parade of moves, the endless procession of fake identities. My mother's death. Then my father's. I kept the details sketchy.

Detective Dodge took a few notes. DD. Warren mostly watched me.

I exhausted the story more quickly than I'd expected. No grand finale. Just The End. My throat felt parched now. I wished I'd had that glass of water after all. I lapsed awkwardly into silence, keenly aware that both detectives were still studying me.

"What year did you leave?" Detective Dodge, pencil posed.

"October, '82."

"And how long did you stay in Florida?"

I did my best to run through the list again. Cities, dates, aliases. Time had dulled the specifics more than I'd realized. What month had we moved to St. Louis? Was I ten or eleven when we hit Phoenix? And the names… In Kansas City, had we been Jones, Jenkins, Johnson? Something like that.

I started sounding less and less certain and more and more defensive, and they hadn't even gotten to the hard questions yet.

"Why?" Detective Warren asked bluntly when I had wrapped up the geography lesson. She spread out her hands. "It's an interesting story except you never said why your family was running."

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"My father never gave me the details. He considered it his job to worry, my job to be a child."

She arched a brow. I couldn't blame her. By the time I was sixteen, I'd become skeptical of that platitude myself.

"Birth certificate?" she asked crisply

"For my real name? I don't have one."

"Driver's license, Social Security card? Your parents' wedding license? A family photo? You must have something."

"No."

"No?"

[page]"Original documentation can be found and used against you." I sounded like a parrot. I suppose for most of my life I had been one.

Sergeant Warren leaned forward. This close I could see the shadows under her eyes, the fine lines and pale cheeks of someone who was operating on little sleep and even less patience. "Why the hell did you come here, Annabelle? You've told us nothing, you've given us nothing. Are you looking to get on the news? Is that what this is about? You're going to claim the identity of some poor dead girl in order to snag your fifteen minutes of fame?"

"It's not like that—"

"Bullshit."

"I told you already, I had only minutes to pack and I didn't think to grab my scrapbook."

"How convenient."

"Hey!" My own temper was starting to rise. "You want some evidence? Go get it. You're the goddamn police after all. My father worked at MIT. Russell Walt Granger. Look it up, they'll have a record. My family lived on 282 Oak Street in Arlington. Look it up, there'll be a record. For that matter, dig in your own damn case files. My whole family disappeared in the middle of the night. I'm pretty f*cking sure you got a record."

"If you know that much," she replied evenly, "why haven't you followed up?"

"Because I can't ask any questions," I exploded. "I don't know who I'm afraid of!"

I pushed back from the table abruptly, disgusted by my own outburst. Sergeant Warren straightened more slowly She and the other detective exchanged another glance, probably just to piss me off.

Warren got up. Left the room. I stared at the far wall resolutely, not wanting to give Detective Dodge the satisfaction of breaking the silence first.

"Water?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Must've been hard to lose both of your parents like that," he murmured.

"Oh, shut up. Good cop, bad cop. You think I haven't seen the movies?"

We sat in silence until the door opened again. Warren returned holding a large paper sack.

She'd put on a pair of latex gloves. Now she set the bag down, unrolled the top, and pulled an object from its depths. It wasn't big. A delicate silver chain bearing a small oval locket. Child-size.

She held it out on her gloved palm. Showed me the front, engraved with a filigree of swirls. Then she opened it, revealing two hollow ovals inside. Finally, she flipped it over. A single name was engraved on the back: Annabelle M. Granger.

"What can you tell me about this locket?"

I stared at the locket for a long while. I felt as if I were sifting through a deep fog, searching carefully in the mist of my mind.

"It was a gift," I murmured at last. I unconsciously fingered my throat, as if feeling the locket still hanging there, silver oval cool against my skin. "He told me I couldn't keep it."

"Who told you?"

"My father. He was angry." I blinked, trying to recall more. "I don't… I don't know why he was so mad. I'm not sure I knew. I liked the locket. I remember thinking it was very pretty But when my father saw it, he made me take it off. Told me I had to throw it away."

"Did you?"

Slowly, I shook my head. I looked up at them, and suddenly, I was afraid. "I went outside to the garbage," I whispered. "But I couldn't bring myself to throw it in the trash. It was so pretty… I thought maybe if I just waited, he'd get over it. Let me wear it again. My best friend came out to see what I was doing."