Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(10)

“And that’s why you joined Crimes Against Children?” I said.

“That’s why I built Crimes Against Children,” he said. “It’s my baby. I created it. Took me fifteen years, but I did it. CAC exists because I looked at my wife in that doughnut shop and I knew, right then and beyond any doubt, that no one can survive the loss of a child. No one. Not you, not me, not even a loser like Helene McCready.”

“Helene’s a loser?” Angie said.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Know why she went to her friend Dottie’s instead of vice versa?”

We shook our heads.

“The picture tube was going on her TV. The color went in and out, and Helene didn’t like that. So she left her kid behind and went next door.”

“For TV.”

He nodded. “For TV.”

“Wow,” Angie said.

He looked at us steadily for a full minute, then hitched his pants and said, “Two of my best guys, Poole and Broussard, will contact you. They’ll be your liaisons. If you can help, I’m not going to stand in your way.” He rubbed his face with his hands again, shook his head. “Shit, I’m tired.”

“When’s the last time you slept?” Angie said.

“Beyond a catnap?” He chuckled softly. “Few days at least.”

“You must have someone who relieves you,” Angie said.

“Don’t want relief,” he said. “I want this child. And I want her in one piece. And I want her yesterday.”





3





Helene McCready was watching herself on TV when we entered Lionel’s house with Lionel and Beatrice.

The on-screen Helene wore a light blue dress and matching jacket with the bulb of a white rose pinned to the lapel. Her hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her face carried just a hint of excessive makeup, hastily applied around the eyes perhaps.

The real Helene McCready wore a pink T-shirt with the words BORN TO SHOP on the front and a pair of white sweatpants that had been shorn just above the knees. Her hair, tied in a loose ponytail, looked like it had been through so many dye jobs it had forgotten its original color and was stuck somewhere between platinum and greasy wheat.

Another woman sat on the couch beside the real Helene McCready, about the same age but thicker and paler, dimples of cellulite pocking the white flesh under her upper arms as she raised a cigarette to her lips and leaned forward to concentrate on the TV.

“Look, Dottie, look,” Helene said. “There’s Gregor and Head Sparks.”

“Oh, yeah!” Dottie pointed at the screen as two men walked behind the reporter interviewing Helene. The men waved at the camera.

“Look at ’em waving.” Helene smiled. “The punks.”

“Smart-asses,” Dottie said.

Helene raised a can of Miller to her lips with the same hand that held her cigarette, and the long ash curled down toward her chin as she drank.

“Helene,” Lionel said.

“One sec, one sec.” Helene waved her beer can at him, her eyes fixed on the screen. “This is the best part.”

Beatrice caught our eyes and rolled her own.

On TV, the reporter asked Helene who she thought could be responsible for the abduction of her child.

“How do you answer a question like that?” the TV Helene said. “I mean, like, who would take my little girl? What’s the point? She never did nothing to nobody. She was just a little girl with a beautiful smile. That’s what she did all the time, she smiled.”

“She did have a beautiful smile,” Dottie said.

“Does,” Beatrice said.

The women on the couch seemed not to have heard her.

“Oh, it was,” Helene said. “It was perfect. Just perfect. Break your heart.” Helene’s voice cracked, and she put down her beer long enough to grab a Kleenex from a box on the coffee table.

Dottie patted her knee and clucked. “There, there,” Dottie said. “There, there.”

“Helene,” Lionel said.

TV coverage of Helene had given way to footage of O.J. playing golf somewhere in Florida.

“I still can’t believe he got away with it,” Helene said.

Dottie turned to her. “I know,” she said, as if she’d been unburdened of a great secret.

“If he wasn’t black,” Helene said, “he’d be in jail now.”

“If he wasn’t black,” Dottie said, “he’d have gotten the chair.”

“If he wasn’t black,” Angie said, “you two wouldn’t care.”

They turned their heads and looked back at us. They seemed mildly surprised by the four people standing behind them, as if we’d suddenly appeared there like Magi.

“What?” Dottie said, her brown eyes darting across our chests.

“Helene,” Lionel said.

Helene looked up into his face, her mascara smudged under puffy eyes. “Yeah?”

“This is Patrick and Angie, the two detectives we talked about.”

Helene gave us a limp wave with her sodden Kleenex. “Hi-ya.”

“Hi,” Angie said.

“Hi-ya,” I said.

“I ’member you,” Dottie said to Angie. “You ’member me?”