Two Girls Down(11)
Jamie stamped the cigarette into an ashtray on the coffee table. She touched her lips.
“I wanted people, all their little friends and their parents, to know I’m their mother, me.”
She pointed to herself and started tapping her foot, moving her whole leg like she was pressing the pedal on an old sewing machine.
—
Vega left with Maggie Shambley close to eleven. The temperature had dropped. Vega felt cold wet air on her neck and ears.
“You have to forgive my sister,” said Maggie. “All of them. I know they don’t show it right now, but they’re all very glad you’re here.”
“Sure,” said Vega.
“That’s me,” said Maggie, pointing to a Lexus across the street. Then, “Oh, here.”
She handed Vega a business card that read “The Old American Inn” in curly script.
“A friend of mine runs it. She and I have an arrangement. It’s the best bed-and-breakfast in the area. I brokered the deal for the place myself.”
Vega took the card and stared at it.
“I’ll really be fine in a hotel. Like a Best Western or something.”
“Oh no,” said Maggie. “This place is so much better.”
“I don’t really eat breakfast,” said Vega.
Now Maggie smiled like a grandmother and said, “Breakfast is entirely optional. It’s cleaner and quieter than any motel, you’ll see. And there are bedbugs in all those motel chains. Have you heard about that?”
She pulled her keys out of her purse, nodded to the house, and said, “What do you think?”
“Hard to say right now. I have to do some research.”
“Will you be talking to the police?” said Maggie.
“Yes, tomorrow. I’ll need to speak with Jamie afterward.”
“I’m sure she’ll be more amenable,” said Maggie.
Vega was not at all sure of this.
“I will speak with you soon, Miss Vega. Thank you for coming.”
They shook hands again, and Maggie got into her car and drove off. Vega looked down the road at the unmarked car. She wasn’t sure but thought she could see the shadow of a man at the wheel. The man didn’t move and didn’t seem bothered by her seeing him. Vega stood up straight and stared at him for another minute. She wasn’t bothered either.
—
Later, in her room at the inn, Vega emptied her head in an email to the Bastard.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: Alice Vega
RE: Info
I’m near Phila working a case. Could you look up the following for me:
? Whereabouts of Kevin Michael Brandt, dob: 12/19/81, ss: 199-75-8225. Start with PA, NY, OH, WV, MD, DE, then expand to all US. Any other relevant information.
? Ridgewood Mall on Sterling Road E—can you get me security camera feed from around the Kmart from last Sat until 1pm? Also all parking lot exits/entrances.
? Hess Gas on Township Hwy 148—security camera feed from last Sat morning.
? Staff and faculty at Starfield Middle School and Denville East Elementary—look for anything that stands out.
Asap.
She looked up the police blotter from the past two months on the Denville Daily Tribune website—domestic violence, shoplifting, and minor drug busts, all for oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet, heroin. And more oxy and more heroin. She went back a year or two, looking for times when the Denville Police Department had made the news. In 2013, budget cuts required reduction of the department by five officers. In 2014, a scandal—a former high school football star overdosed on oxy in the holding cell where he was awaiting processing.
Vega scanned the photos; she paused on the detective who had resigned to avoid further attention from the Schuylkill County district attorney. The photo was from a better day, the detective smiling and standing with another man, shutting one eye into the sun, both of them holding thin silver fish on lines. She felt like she recognized him, his smile and curly brown hair, but maybe he had one of those faces.
She checked the time in the corner of her screen: 2:42 a.m. She was not the least bit tired.
—
Downtown Denville was made up entirely of shabby storefronts on narrow streets and neighborhoods with weighty American names from a more industrious time, evoking coal mines and lumberyards: Bullrush, Rockland, Black Creek.
Vega didn’t see one black or Hispanic or Asian person. Everyone was white, and smoked cigarettes and drove cars with dents. At an intersection there was a man in a hospital gown and flip-flops, hitchhiking. His face was unshaven, gaunt, calm. Vega drove closely past him but did not stop.
The police department was an unadorned three-story beige building on a corner. Vega parked her rental on the street and saw three or four news vans in the parking lot; she recognized Channel 12 from the night before at Gail and Arlen White’s house.
Inside, the station smelled like every other one she’d ever been in, half government facility and half men’s locker room: astringent, with the smell of old shoes and sweat.
The lobby was full of people, sitting in the folding chairs against the walls, standing, talking to each other or on phones. Behind the reception counter were two women, one fat, one thin. The fat one wore a cop’s uniform and was explaining a form on a clipboard to a man who kept saying, “Do I need a lawyer? Should I call a lawyer?” The thin one was not a cop, wore wide-rimmed glasses and an oversized sweater.