Two Girls Down(25)

Schultz’s Bar was in Black Creek. The neighborhood was full of apartment complexes and single-level homes built in the ’60s, brown and yellow exteriors with shag carpet and faux wrought-iron arches inside. When Cap and Jules had been shopping around for houses back in the beginning, they’d looked at one or two there, and driving away Jules had said, “If I have to live in a house like that, I will hang myself.” Cap had said, “I will buy the rope.” Then of course they’d laughed with the relief of their agreement on the subject. Ha. Suicide.

Cap had been to Schultz’s once or twice. It looked like a hundred other bars, a black box from the outside with a single rectangular window, like an aquarium, but instead of fish there was a Yuengling sign. He and Vega parked on the street and went inside.

There were a few people scattered around, a group of men hooked around the corner of the bar, a couple making out at a table next to the bathroom, two women at the jukebox. And there was Jamie Brandt, Cap recognized her from TV, sitting at the far end of the bar with her head down. He and Vega made their way to her. Vega stopped when she was about a foot away, as if Jamie were a dog on the street.



“Jamie?” Vega said. She was quiet about it.

Jamie turned her head, languid, her lids heavy with exhaustion or drunkenness, or both.

“You,” said Jamie, pointing at Vega.

“Alice Vega,” said Vega.

“Right. Vega. Who’s he?”

“Max Caplan,” said Cap, friendly. He looked at Jamie’s hands on the bar, lying there like leaves of a dead plant, and did not extend his.

Jamie licked her lips and said, “How’d you know I was here?”

“Your aunt said you might be.”

Jamie laughed through her nose.

“What else she say?”

“Just that you went somewhere to be alone,” said Vega.

Jamie paused to take a sip of what looked like a very light beer on ice from a mug.

“We have some more questions,” said Vega.

“I’m sorta off the clock here,” said Jamie. “I did three interviews today, and I talked to someone at CNN. Then I tried to find some pictures of the girls wearing different kinds of clothes other than dresses. The lawyer told us that they might be walking around in other kinds of clothes. So I been looking at pictures of them all day. Then we been hanging up flyers. So I come here to get drunk for two goddamn hours and then I’m going to go home and sleep for four more and then do it over again. Maggie’s got an email into the Today show. She knows someone who knows someone.”

“We need to make a list of people,” said Vega.

“Cops made a list.”

“We’re going to make a better one. But we need you to come with us now so we can sit down somewhere and talk.”

There was something a little hypnotic in Vega’s voice, thought Cap, the evenness. Lost on Jamie Brandt, however.



“I need an hour. I need twenty minutes,” said Jamie, grabbing at her mug.

She missed it, ran her fingers into the handle instead of latching on to it, and it spilled sideways toward Cap. Ice cubes slid down the bar and dropped into Jamie’s lap, then hit the floor with little wooden taps.

“Shit,” said Jamie.

The air around them seemed to freeze. Cap looked around, saw the bartender, not a small guy, coming toward them.

“Hey, Jamie, you okay over here?” he said, staring at Cap.

“I fuckin’ spilled,” she said, patting her lap with a wadded cocktail napkin.

The bartender wiped the bar with a rag and pushed a stack of napkins to Jamie. Then he folded his arms, which made them appear bigger. He had “Maya” and “Tori” tattooed on his knuckles.

“Maybe you two ought to take a walk around the block,” he said to Cap and Vega.

“Jamie,” said Vega, ignoring the bartender. “Come with us now, please.”

“Hey,” said the bartender. He nodded to Cap. “You wanna tell your girlfriend to chill the fuck out?”

Vega jerked her head in the bartender’s direction.

“Or?” she said.

“You want me to come over there?” he said, leaning across the bar.

Vega’s eyes went glassy like she’d just tasted something delicious.

“Wish you would,” she said.

Cap inserted himself between Vega and the bar, touched Jamie’s shoulder.

“Jamie,” he said. “We don’t have twenty minutes. We don’t have one minute. Kylie knew who took her.”

Cap watched as this information snaked its way into Jamie’s brain. Her face contorted; her thin plucked eyebrows turned into little Spanish tildes.

“Cops didn’t say that.”

“They might not even know it yet. They’re under a shitstorm of information, and they might not even have seen the footage we’ve seen yet.”

“There’s something else,” said Vega.

Now they all turned to Vega: Jamie, Cap, Knuckles.



“They aren’t telling you anything, right? They say it’s part of an ongoing investigation?”

Jamie nodded.

“That’s standard,” said Vega. “But we’re not cops. We’ll tell you everything we know.”