Two Girls Down(29)

Chaney put his hand to his head like he had an ice headache. Okay, thought Cap. Brake.



“Which one were you closer to?”

“Kylie, I guess.”

“You used to bring her cannolis.”

“Yeah, Jamie tell you that?”

Cap nodded. “You had a friendship.”

“Yeah, I brought her stuff like that. She was a good kid. Real funny. One of those kids with a grown-up sense of humor.”

Cap believed him. They were all quiet. Chaney got nervous.

“I don’t know anything about them missing,” he said. He turned around and put out his cigarette in the ashtray. Stamp stamp stamp.

“No one said you did, Mr. Chaney,” said Cap.

“I think those people are degenerates, all right? The ones who mess around with kids. Fucking degenerate motherfuckers.”

He looked at Cap and Vega defiantly, waiting for them to challenge his position on child molesters.

“Can I use your restroom?” said Vega.

“Huh?” said Chaney.

“Restroom.”

“Yeah, down the hall, your right.”

Cap and Vega locked eyes for only a second. He could read nothing in her face, but was it because she was feeling nothing, or she wanted Chaney to see nothing, he could not say. Then she was gone.

“Was Kylie upset that you and Ms. Brandt broke up?” Cap asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Chaney said.

He had a wistful look. Now this is the truth, Cap thought.

“Yeah, she was sad about it,” he continued.

“What made you think that?” said Cap.

“You know, she was just sad about it. The way kids get sad about things.”

“So when exactly did you see her get sad about it? Was she there when Ms. Brandt broke it off with you?”

Chaney’s eyes shrank in his face.

“No, no,” he said, tripping over the words.

“Was it afterward then? Did you see her after?”

“Yeah, must have been.”

“So then it was less than a year ago when you saw her last. Was it eight months ago, six? Four?”



Chaney shook his head and scratched at his neck.

“No, I don’t know. I just know she was bummed out about me and Jamie.”

“How would you know that, Mr. Chaney, if you hadn’t seen her after you broke up with Ms. Brandt?”

Cap was calm. The situation didn’t need much effort. Press a pen slowly into a water balloon and wait for it to burst.

—

Vega quickly, quietly, opened Chaney’s medicine cabinet and examined the clusters of bottles on the shelves. NyQuil, Advil, Aleve. She took a ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of her jacket and used it to strip back the beige shower curtain. There was nothing in the bathtub except a brown ring and ashy spots on the floor.

She opened the door to the bathroom slowly and stepped into the hallway, heard Chaney chattering and Caplan’s low tones.

Down the hall was a door with a light on inside. Vega squinted her eyes, saw shadows moving around in the crack under the door. Something was in the room. Here comes Little Bad, said Perry in her head. Vega slid her boots off and walked in her socks on the carpet down the hall. She pulled the doorknob toward her and tried to turn it. Locked. Vega leaned her head back and heard Chaney and Caplan still, Chaney’s voice starting to rise.

She took from her wallet a Costco rewards card that never had belonged to her but that was long and flexible, with beveled laminated edges, and slid it directly in between the wall and the door, right above the doorknob.

She left it there, padded back to the bathroom, flushed the toilet and turned the water on in the sink. Then quickly back to the door with the light and the shadows, held the card tightly between her fingertips, wedged it next to the lock and jimmied it.

The door popped opened, and a black cat with white toes jumped off a table and ran out, sliding against Vega’s shins on the way. Vega was about to lean down and grab the thing by the back of the neck but then she saw what was on the table in the room and thought, Let the girl run.

—



Cap saw the cat first. It lingered in the doorway for a moment and then curled around the frame into the room.

Chaney was saying: “I don’t have a fucking BlackBerry, okay? I don’t keep track of shit—”

Then he saw the cat and stared at it, froze and pointed to the hallway.

Cap held his hands out, didn’t know what the big deal was with the cat except that it managed to look fed in a druggie’s house.

“Where—” Chaney started to say.

Then Vega came in, taking big strides, and threw something at Chaney’s head. It hit him and bounced to the floor, sounding like a maraca. Cap finally got a good look at it—a sizable prescription pill bottle.

“What the fuck?!” Chaney said, crouching in shock.

Cap looked at Vega expectantly but said nothing. Vega picked the bottle up and showed it to Cap, then shoved it in Chaney’s face and pulled him down to the futon by the shoulder.

“He’s not just a junkie,” she said. “He’s a dealer. He’s got a room back there with six boxes of pills.”

“That’s trespassing!” said Chaney to Cap.

“You let us in, Mr. Chaney,” said Cap.