Two Girls Down(19)

“Hey, Dad,” she said, stretching across to kiss him on the cheek.

Cap could feel sweat underneath her lip and heat coming off her forehead. He had an urge to take a deep breath. It reminded him of when she was little and would come out of the tub smelling like a wet cat.

“Good practice?” he said, pulling out of the lot.

She shrugged.

“Okay. Just drills and, like, one or two new plays, but we need more if we’re up against Valley.”

“You say Steves knows what he’s doing.”

“I think so. He doesn’t want anyone’s opinion though, you know. And he’s only, like, five years older than us.”

“Boys in their twenties like to think they’re grown-ups,” said Cap.

Nell said, “Huh,” then began to text.

“So, they still haven’t found those girls,” he said, tentative, watching her from the side.

She stopped texting.

“I know, it’s awful. They can’t find the dad either; he ran out on them when they were babies. So my question is, why would he want them now?”

She was engaged, gesturing as she spoke, holding her hands out to an invisible crowd. Cap felt guilty; the kid didn’t think he wanted to talk about it so she hadn’t said anything since he had turned off the TV on Saturday. But she’d been doing the due diligence in her head; it was like when Cap was working a case he couldn’t shake off the brain. You find yourself awake at three a.m.—was it because you had to pee or because your subconscious was giving you clues?

“And why would he take them from a Kmart parking lot? How would he know they were going to be there? Was he tailing them?”



“These are all valid questions,” said Cap.

“I don’t like the dad for this,” she said definitively. “Doesn’t add up.”

“Who do you like then?”

“I don’t know,” she said, exasperated. “I don’t have any real details, just the news and you know how they mess it all up.”

Cap nodded. They were quiet.

“I watched an interview with the mom,” he said.

“Was it the one where she said the younger one needs her asthma medication? Wasn’t that awful,” said Nell. Then, quietly, she repeated, “Awful.”

He watched her as she picked at the skin around a fingernail.

“So,” said Cap, trying to sound casual, “I met with this woman today; she’s working on the case.”

“What do you mean?” said Nell in her interrogation voice.

Cap coughed into his fist.

“A woman came to see me who’s working the case. She’s been hired by family—”

“The private investigator from California?” said Nell.

“Yeah, how’d you know that?”

“It was on TV, Dad. What did she say? Why’d she want to meet with you?”

“She asked for my help. She wants me to call in a favor.”

“What—” Nell started but Cap cut her off.

“She wants me to call in a favor with Em.”

“How does she know Em?”

“She doesn’t know Em. She figured that I had a favor coming to me, and she wants me to call it in so I can get the witness statements.”

“Why doesn’t she get them from the department?”

“You think Junior would give an inch here?”

He stopped at a red light, feeling an old wave of frustration and gripping the wheel.

“Asshole,” said Nell, stewing. “Did you call Em?”

“No,” said Cap. “No, I didn’t call Em. I’m not calling Em. I’m not getting involved in this. And watch your language please.”

“What?” said Nell, turning in her seat to face him. “Why not?”

“It’s a police investigation. And I have my own cases to work.”

As he said it, he heard the words differently. It was always like this with Nell: he’d already justified a thing in his head, but when he said it aloud, it got stripped down. There was the paltry sheath of it removed; all that was left was the truth.



“Because it’s embarrassing? Because you’re embarrassed?” said Nell.

My God, she would make a good cop, thought Cap. Or a journalist. Her questions just naturally sounded like someone who didn’t want to demean you or pressure you—she just wanted to know all the facts. You couldn’t teach a thing like that, he thought.

“Embarrassed, yes…and I couldn’t put Em in that position.”

“Dad, you covered for Em because he had little kids and a wife and a mother in a nursing home. You’d barely be asking for anything in return now.”

“He could lose his job.”

“So what?” said Nell.

“So what,” Cap repeated. “That’s a lot. That’s everything to most people.”

“You gave it up for him.”

Cap felt a stab of guilt. Nell didn’t have to say it; no one did, but still it was the theme that threaded through his family’s life, that after he took the fall for Em, his marriage splintered and finally crashed, and even though he and Jules paid for it, and kept paying, no one felt it worse than Nell. He coughed and said, “And so the endgame is that both me and Em are out of a job? What’s the positive spin on that?”