Two Girls Down(22)

“So the older one sees someone, something, walks toward it. Younger one’s reluctant but goes with her,” said Cap.

“Maybe someone she knows,” said Vega.

“So that makes your job easy, right?” said Cap.

Vega didn’t turn to him, kept her eyes on the screen.

“Right.”

“Relatives, family friends, teachers, dental hygienist, pizza delivery guy,” he said. Then he pointed to the laptop. “How did you get this again?”

“I have a guy.”



“Same guy who found Haas?”

She nodded.

“That’s quite a guy. Hacker, right?”

She didn’t exactly smile, but the muscles in her face relaxed. Affection, Cap thought. Familiarity.

“We call him that, but he’d say he’s a contortionist.”

“A guy who can squeeze into small spaces,” said Cap.

“Yes.”

“So,” said Cap, “who do you like?”

“No one, until I get witness statements. You said you wanted to have a conversation.”

She held out her hand. Here is our conversation.

“You want to help me.”

It didn’t sound like a question, and it didn’t sound like she was attempting to brainwash him. It was softer; it was just the truth.

“How do you know that?” said Cap.

Vega sighed.

“Earlier when I left, you were sure you wanted nothing to do with this. Now something has changed. You thought about it, you had a revelation, a crisis of conscience. Maybe you thought about your daughter, or your ex-wife, or your mom. Maybe you talked to someone, and they changed your mind. Maybe you decided private practice isn’t what you want. I listened to your voice mail. There’s anticipation in it. Short breaths, your sentences end as questions; you sound hopeful.”

Cap tried to keep a game face. He did it pretty well, had a lot of practice. But Vega seemed to see and hear everything, every wrinkle in the skin and catch in the throat.

“You made your decision already,” she said. “Before I got here.”

Cap glanced at the ghostly video feed on the laptop screen, the parking lot entrance, where he could almost see the smoke trail of the Brandt girls. Sometimes these things looked like fairy tales at first. But they never were. As soon as you got closer you saw the damage, the disease, not what monsters and wolves could do, but what regular men could do to a kid. Once he saw the body of a malnourished five-year-old boy left to decompose in a junkie’s apartment. The ME who picked him up said he was as light as a doll.



“I did,” he said.

“And either you agree with Haas that I’m crazy, or you don’t, or maybe you do and you like it.”

“But you don’t care about that either, right? The why part,” said Cap.

“Right.”

Cap looked at the two open windows on the screen. Empty lot. The girls wandering out to the street like sleepwalkers. Dreaming.

—

Vega stayed in the car. They had driven together in Cap’s but agreed she would not get out. Instead she moved into the driver’s seat and watched from across the street. Cap stood in the lot where Vega had parked earlier. He leaned against a car and thumbed the screen on his phone. She watched a man come out of the building, down the steps, and around to the lot. He was overweight, pants a little too short.

He and Cap started with a handshake, then man-hugged, pat-pat-pat on the back. You haven’t seen him for a while, thought Vega. They chitchatted. Small talk, easy back and forth, how’s the wife, kids, house. Then it started to go on for too long. Four, five, six minutes. Come on, thought Vega. Too much time goes to this shit, she thought.

Should we play they could be…naked, raped, dying, dead? All of the above?

She sent a text to Cap and put her hands on the wheel. She watched him look at his phone.

—

STOP WASTING TIME. ASK HIM.

Cap paused.

“Y’okay?” said Em.

Cap smiled at him. Wiley Emerson. He was the same: always too loud and too fat, but earnest, honest, and surprisingly savvy when it came to police work. There had been a lot of talk when Cap left about how close they would stay, one very long night at Smith’s Road House when Em had hugged him and cried, snorted into Cap’s shirt and said, “Thank you, thank you.”

Cap peered across the street at Vega in his car. She pointed at him, pressed her fingertip against the window. Ask him, said the finger.



“Yeah,” Cap said at first. Then, “No, I need something, Em. I need a favor.”

“Anything, man,” said Em. He meant it.

“Nah, don’t say that yet,” said Cap. “I need the favor. The. Favor.”

“Oh,” said Em. Then as it sank in, again: “Oh.”

“I need the witness statements, Em. From the Brandt case.”

That took Em a second. Cap watched him deflate. Thanksgiving Day float style.

“What, what d’you mean?”

“I’m working the case. With someone the family hired.”

“The woman from California?” said Em.

“Yeah, that’s her. She went to see Junior. Obviously he doesn’t want her help.”