Girl in Snow(15)

Detective Williams is nearly as old as Russ’s father, who had served as a mentor to the detective back in the sixties. Ah, Fletcher, the detective is always reminiscing. Your pops really got me my start in law enforcement, you know that? He believed in me when no one else did.

You don’t want to be on patrol forever, right? Detective Williams often asks Russ. You want to move up eventually?

Russ cannot imagine being a detective. He likes the quiet of his patrol car, in the soft veil of a graveyard night. The slice of headlights on paved, sleepy streets. The whir of the heater and the vast blackness surrounding him, the only one awake, the only one alive.

Of course, Russ always says. Of course I want to move up eventually.

After Ivan’s interrogation, Russ watches his peers file out as Detective Williams places a hand on Russ’s shoulder. Leans his weathered face close. His breath like salami.

Pay close attention to this case, Detective Williams spits into Russ’s neck. You could learn a thing or two.

Truth is, Russ does not want anything but what he used to have, and he wouldn’t give up his patrol job for fear of losing even the smallest memory.



Ivan is gone before Lucinda’s family arrives. There isn’t enough room, and they cannot legally keep him—he has cooperated with patience. As Ivan leaves, he gives Russ a small salute. Russ cannot gauge its sincerity.

They interview Lucinda’s father first. Russ observes from the other side of the one-way mirror.

Joe Hayes sits across the conference table, facing Detective Williams and the lieutenant. His gray hair reflects the fluorescent light, thin and wan. He swipes a palm over his eyes like a rag—Mr. Hayes’s plaid button-down shirt already looks like a remnant of an earlier version of himself, a self before his daughter died. The shirt of a man who took pleasure in pouring coffee in a thermos before getting in his car to drive to work. He wears wire-rimmed glasses, which he takes off intermittently and folds in his hands, giving them something to do. Russ knows that tragedy is a thief. It will eat Mr. Hayes’s days, his months, his years alive.

Detective Williams asks, Is there anything you know that might help us with the investigation?

Lucinda’s father tells them about the boy last year—the boy in the yard. The boy they caught standing by their fence, the boy they told to leave and never come back. The boy they often felt, a presence lingering outside the house. But by the time the lights flicked on, the yard was empty, night after night.

Do you know this boy’s name? Detective Williams asks.

He was in Lucy’s class, the father tells them. Cameron Whitley. The other neighbors have seen him too, walking around late at night.

Even the sound of Cameron’s name brings Russ places he’d rather not go. The name said aloud: Whitley. A quicksand sort of sinking. Rapid and unsalvageable.



Lucinda’s mother twists a silver ring around her pointer finger, hands shaking so hard she can’t hold the paper cup of water they’ve placed in front of her. Her hair is the same shade of gold as both her daughters’.

Detective Williams asks, Is there anything you know that might help us with the investigation?

Some combination of shock and grief comes spewing out. An unintelligible moan, a short fit of hyperventilation. A social worker sits beside Lucinda’s mother, rubbing her back in methodical strokes.

Russ has never felt something so strong. Category eight. The other patrol cop backs away slowly, embarrassed to be spying on such a miserable spectacle. But Russ is not embarrassed. He is fascinated, hooked, and in some incomprehensible way, jealous. That grief—so pure.



And last, the little sister. While they interview Lex, her father slumps in the chair beside her, head bowed.

Lex wears a rainbow-striped wool hat with a pom-pom on the top. She keeps her ski gloves on, tenting the fabric away from each finger, pinky to thumb.

I love my sister, Lex says, eyes wide and wet. She does normal high-school things, I think. She spends a lot of time in her room and texting on her cell phone. I don’t have a cell phone yet, but I’ll get one when I turn fourteen, like Lucy—

Lex’s voice cracks, and her father stands up.

That’s enough.

Detective Williams thanks them and ushers them out, wringing his hands like they’ve gone numb in the cold.

We’ve got nothing, he mutters to Russ, absent.



Russ gets home late.

Ines is in the chair next to the fireplace, legs crossed beneath her. There is a switch next to the mantel that would ignite the gas flame, but in three married years neither Russ nor Ines has ever flipped it on.

Ines’s pale nails maneuver her knitting needles—they clack against one another, the only sound in the big house. A tangled braid hangs across her left breast. Usually when Russ comes home, Ines is at the computer in the corner of the living room, smiling to herself as she reads an e-mail from one of her sisters, laughing out loud as she types back in Spanish written with no accents on Russ’s English-language keyboard.

Russ and Ines live in a permanent bachelor pad. The living room is bleak, with outdated beige carpet, a couch, a chipped coffee table, and too much unfilled space. The furniture is from before they were married. The only thing Ines has put up for decoration hangs by the front door: a framed photo of family members standing in a garden, a tangle of happy arms. Out the window, the mountains are toy peaks—frosted white, minuscule.