Two Girls Down(49)

Cap leaned in for a closer look. The figure in the video stood up. Tall, thin, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled down over the top half of his face. Bottom half a mess of static fuzz. He walked out of the frame.

Vega pressed Pause.

“Could be Evan Marsh,” she said.

“Related to Nolan?” said Em.

Vega nodded. “His brother.”

“The guy working the register doesn’t remember him,” Em added. “We’re trying to lift prints.”

“You want to lift prints at a Kinko’s?” Cap said, incredulous. “You’re going to get sludge from those keyboards.”

“Not impossible,” said Vega.

Cap stared at her, at her hair swept back into a neat ponytail at the base, two or three wisps draped across her cheek, as if she’d planned it that way. It enraged Cap suddenly, her arbitrariness. Some things neat and some things messy. Maybe there was no method here. He suddenly felt duped.

Vega looked away from Cap and across to Em now, suddenly on the same side.

“Can we think about this critically for a second?” Cap said to both of them. “Where would Evan Marsh and Kylie Brandt meet? Where would they be in the same place at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” said Em, shrugging. “Maybe the supermarket.”

“That Giant’s clear across town. Jamie Brandt would shop at the Walmart in Black Creek.”



“We can figure it out later,” said Vega.

“No, let’s figure it out now,” said Cap. “I’m not chasing the invisible fucking man, here.”

“Maybe…” said Em. “Maybe that’s not the right question.”

Cap and Vega turned to him.

“Oh yeah?” said Cap, laughing a little bit. “All right, Stephen Hawking. You tell me. What’s the right question?”

Em scratched his chin and shifted his gaze to Vega. She raised her eyebrows. Go for it, kid. Knock yourself out. Em coughed, nervous.

“So maybe there’s a room,” he said. “Evan Marsh and Kylie Brandt are in it together. I can’t tell you where it is, and I can’t tell you how they got there.” He pointed to the laptop screen. “Kylie loves this movie, loves this movie star, and meets a guy who looks just like him. Right?”

Vega grabbed the line.

“She’s a flirt, romantic, a boundary tester,” she said. “She’s pissed at her mom, she’s pretending she’s a princess, she’s pretending she’s in a movie. Evan Marsh is nice to her. Maybe he flirts with her, makes her feel special. Maybe he’s teasing her. Maybe he’s stoned. He lights a cigarette and she sees a skull on his Zippo, just like the one the hero wears on a necklace in her favorite movie. She believes in signs, fate, love at first sight. All that shit a happy little girl believes in.

“Maybe he gets something from her—an email, a phone number, a way to communicate, tells her he’ll see her soon but doesn’t know where or when exactly. Then he trails her from home, picks up her and her sister from a mall when Mom’s shopping.”

“Why?” said Cap. “Is he a pedophile? Any history of that?”

“Not that we are aware of,” said Vega.

“So what would be the motive here? What would make a twenty-one-, twenty-two-year-old kid who’s not a pedophile kidnap two girls? Risk jail time. With a mother who’s dying.”

Cap had flashes of Maryann Marsh, her filmy eyes and drawn lips as she looked at the picture of her missing son.

“His mother,” said Vega.

“What’s the story with the mother?” said Em.

“She’s dying,” said Vega. “Evan told me his mother didn’t mind having cancer because it’s the last thing Nolan gave her. He was a smoker.”



“Oh, shit,” said Em, covering his mouth. “That is some rough shit.”

“Yes,” said Vega.

“I bet he was pissed the police didn’t do more,” Em suggested.

“How’d you know?” said Vega.

Em threw his hands up.

“Missing adult? Ralz probably just checked the box. File the report. Move on. We have some staffing issues,” Em explained. “In that we are understaffed.”

Cap asked, “How pissed?”

“Hard to say,” said Vega.

“Desperate?”

She nodded.

“Maybe.”

“His brother goes missing, Mom gets sick, kid’s life falls apart,” narrated Cap.

“He stops going to school, gets into some drugs,” added Vega.

Em picked up: “Somewhere, he meets Kylie Brandt.”

Cap continued, “And he has an idea. Take the girl—”

“Or girls,” said Vega. “Write an email to the police as ransom. Only instead of money, he wants them to find his brother.”

“Then he sends us the email,” said Cap, “because the police aren’t doing anything. Probably on a healthy dose of oxy to get rid of the anxiety.”

“But he’s not a criminal, right?” asked Em. “He’s just some druggie who made a shit-ton of bad decisions.”

Vega nodded at him. “I would think so.”