Girl in Snow(13)

When I get home, the house is quiet. 10:19 p.m.

Usually after babysitting I’d go to see Howie—the homeless guy who lives behind the library. But tonight, I’m too curious. I change into a pair of men’s boxer shorts and a clean Crucibles T-shirt. Roll my plastic desk chair to the window. I turn off the lights and use my pink lighter to ignite the chamomile candle on the nightstand. Ma says it’s a fire hazard because my room is so cluttered. I’m not allowed to light candles until I get rid of all the useless junk, but I’m terrible at knowing what’s irrelevant.

I pull a CD from the middle of my stack, which wavers at the foot of my bed. They’re homemade mixes, burned to fit different moods—this one is titled Night Walks, which is scrawled messily across its matte-finish face. The track list: Misfits, Green Day, Bad Religion, the Crucibles, and Blink-182. “Letters to God” by Box Car Racer comes on, and when the nasally singer starts to whine, I allow myself just a twinge of satisfaction.

I sit at my window like always, but I know Cameron won’t come tonight. The hood of his sweat shirt always gives him away, distinguishing him from the shadows—the white drawstring across his chest is illuminated in the moonlight. Lucinda’s back lawn slopes upward from where her house sits at the bottom of the small suburban hill; from where Cameron stands by the fence we can both see into her bedroom.

It’s been almost twenty-four hours since Lucinda Hayes disappeared and tonight, the grass is still. A police car idles with its lights off, whirring sneakily by the side of the house. The Hayeses are in their living room, but from my desk chair, looking down across the short alley of grass between our houses, their faces are visible only in passing. They have relatives visiting already—grandparents, aunts, uncles—who shuffle in and out of the kitchen with steaming cups of tea and food that no one touches. A steady rotation. Lex sits on the floor with her back against the legs of the couch; she looks like her younger self, like Amy’s twin princess-sister in their game of pretend. Except now, she is wearing a pair of rhinestone-spattered jeans and crying quietly as their grandmother braids her hair.

I search for the white of Cameron’s sneakers and instead I find the roots of the bushes that line the back fence, ropes uncoiling across a midnight lawn. For an ignorant moment, I’m afraid I’ll get sucked into that endless dusk.

Lucinda is gone. Cameron will have no one to watch. No one to make his hands shake. No one to think about before he falls asleep, as he watches the cracks in the ceiling or counts Orion’s elbows.



How Zap used to look at me:

With eyes open wide, like someone surprised by a camera. Often quickly. In passing. In longer moments, which stretched beyond their appropriate span. What? one of us would say. What do you mean, ‘what’?

Nothing.

You’re looking at me funny.

I’m not.

What are you thinking?

Did you know Mars takes six hundred eighty-six days to orbit the sun?

That’s not really what you’re thinking.

Prove it.

Shut up.





Russ





Russ and two other officers are told to knock on every door on the block. They start with the houses lining the playground, the houses with fences that overlook the carousel.

Did you hear anything last night?

They speak to Greg and Rhonda Hansen, the older couple doing calisthenics together in the living room. They speak to Lucinda’s ballet instructor, who insists on serving tepid tea. They speak to Chris Thornton, who struggles to keep a squirming toddler on his hip. They speak to Kelly Dixon-Burns, who wears a silk bathrobe and looks Russ too long in the eye as she takes a hefty pull of her cigarette, and to Sherry DeCasio, who sobs the moment they say Lucinda’s name. In this case—as with the Weinberg family, the Sanchez family, and anyone else who has children at Jefferson High—Russ asks: Can we come back after school? We’d love to have a word with your child. Most nod solemnly.



When Russ gets back to the police department it is late afternoon, and he does not expect to see the boy.

Cameron’s middle-school yearbook photo hangs on a bulletin board where they’ve already tacked up the faces of early suspects. He looks strikingly like his father. No one comments on this. No one mentions Lee at all.

But those hazel eyes: a snake writhes in Russ’s gut. Nostalgia, a dagger.

The entire Broomsville Police Department has been summoned to the main conference room to be briefed on the case. If anyone remembers that Russ is related to the janitor, Ivan—another suspect pinned to the bulletin board—they don’t say anything. Maybe they’ve forgotten about Russ’s brother-in-law. More likely, they don’t care.

The case is already making national news, the chief tells the room of officers and sergeants and receptionists. You are not to make any comments to the media.

A short list of suspect individuals:

Ivan Santos, the janitor who found the body.

Edouard Arnaud, the victim’s ex-boyfriend.

The parents—Joe and Missy Hayes.

Howard Morrie, the homeless guy squatting in the park behind the library.

Cameron Whitley, the stalker boy from down the street.



Russ went to visit Ivan in prison—only once. No warning. Ivan, six foot two, was gargantuan on the other side of the metal table in the visitor’s room. Russell, Ivan had greeted him, with a firm handshake, sliding comfortably into his chair. My brother.