Two Girls Down(46)

He put his hands on his hips and cleared his throat, as if he were preparing to identify someone in a lineup at that moment. He rocked back and forth on his feet.

“Possibly,” Cap answered him, over Vega’s head. “They have all your contact information, correct?”

“Yes, sir,” said Carl, as if his contact information were a great source of pride.

“I’m sure they’ll be in touch,” said Cap.

Vega said nothing, stood between them like a dumb little ghost.

—

As soon as they got in the car, Cap started the engine and said, “Look, some guys around here only want to talk to other guys about anything substantive. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is.”

“Sure,” said Vega. “You do a decent impression of one of those guys.”



Now she had offended him. He took his hands off the wheel and turned to her.

“No, hey, give me a small break, Vega. I was trying to get information and move to the next thing.”

“Then let’s move to the next thing. My lead.”

“All yours.”

“You don’t have to be so fucking supportive,” said Vega. “You can just let me work.”

Cap shrugged. “Fine.”

They didn’t speak until they got to the last witness on the list. A woman named Alyssa Moser let them in but was anxious about it. She wore a chunky wool sweater with a large spiral pattern on it. Her face was covered with freckles like a girl, though Cap put her age at about fifty.

“I keep going back in time in my head, wishing I’d turned around and seen something that could help you,” she said. “You have to understand, my uncle isn’t well. We told the police. I don’t know what you could get by interviewing him again.”

“He seemed to remember a few things when he gave his statement,” said Vega, not combatively.

“Good days, bad days,” she said, looking sad. “He used to be so funny is all,” she added, as if to explain her sadness.

“He said the suspect looked like Harry?” said Vega.

Alyssa gave them a wounded smile.

“Harry was my cousin. Uncle Roy’s son. He died in Vietnam in 1970.”

“I’m sorry,” Cap and Vega said at the same time.

“He gets confused. He keeps thinking he sees people who’ve died—his parents, my aunt who passed four years ago,” said Alyssa.

“What about Harry?” said Vega. “Does he think he sees Harry?”

“Sure, sometimes.”

“Do you have any pictures of him?” asked Vega.

“Who?” said Alyssa, confused.

“Your cousin, Harry.”

“Yes, sure, just one moment.”

She left the room, and Cap looked to Vega. His look said, So what’s the point of this now?

Alyssa Moser came back with a photo in a chipped gold frame.



“This is him and me,” she said, smiling. “He was five years older than me, and I just loved him to pieces.”

Cap and Vega came to her side and examined the picture.

It had that muted color of photos from the ’60s, like the film was developed in murky water. There was a little girl, twelve or thirteen, wearing a headband and a denim dress, smiling with a mouthful of braces at the camera. She leaned against a boy who looked like a man, tall and burly with a healthy head of hair and a respectable mustache.

“This is Harry?” said Vega.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Alyssa said. “?’Course when he went to Vietnam they cut his hair and everything.”

“He was a big guy?” said Cap.

“Oh, yeah. Over six foot.”

She paused, eyes dulled in thought.

“He was six-two when he shipped out, and he was six-three when they shipped him back,” she said. “Weird to think he grew an inch over there.”

“He looks husky too,” said Cap.

“Made it to State for wrestling. All he would eat was bananas and peanut butter so he could bulk up.”

They looked back down at the picture, at Harry Eldridge’s honest smile.

—

“Roy Eldridge is the definition of an unreliable witness,” said Cap in the car, determined to shred the morning’s work to dust.

“I understand, but stack it up. Two witnesses claim Kylie hugged a skinny teenage boy, slight in build.”

“The current suspect fits that profile,” said Cap, sounding bored.

“Sure. But one witness describes a totally different body type.”

“The witness has dementia.”

“Stack it up. Let’s just not forget it; that’s all I’m saying,” said Vega.

Cap looked at her sideways. She could see the doubt in his face.

“What do you want to do?” she said, tapping her hands on the dash, conciliatory.

“We should’ve talked to the kid first. He should’ve been on the fucking list,” said Cap through his teeth.



“He wasn’t on the fucking list. Get over it. What do you want to do?”

Cap rolled his head to the right. Vega heard a snap.

“I don’t think Jamie’s good for us right now,” he said. “Her kids have been gone for eighty hours. She’s cracking. She’s going to rip apart the first person who takes her off the leash.”