Two Girls Down(50)

“If he has the girls, all we have to do is pull a thread,” said Cap.

Vega’s phone buzzed. She looked.

“That your guy?” said Cap.

“I got a home address. You know Sisilia Street?”

“Yeah,” said Cap.

He studied Em across the table. He hadn’t aged much since that night the kid had died, since he had run to get Cap in the break room looking like a chunky pre-teen nerd who’d just got spooked from playing the Bloody Mary game in the mirror. No gray hair, no wrinkles, still with the sweat rings under the arms, but there was something different now. Cap couldn’t put his finger on it, but if he had to guess it might have been the maturity of experience, knowing what was instinct and what was optimism.



“I’ll go back to work,” Em offered. “Try to get the original report on Nolan Marsh, see if we have anything on Evan.”

“Good,” said Cap.

“Thanks, Emerson,” said Vega.

Em grinned and gave them two thumbs-up.





9

It was called Bethlehem Hill, this area, but it felt pretty flat to Vega. Cap told her this was the Bethlehem Coal Mine before it closed in the ’70s. When it was operational, the runoff would flow into the creek and powder the water black, and there you had it, Black Creek. Cap said some towns turned their old mines into museums, gave tours and sold chips of anthracite on key chains, but Beth Coal had been abandoned and trashed after an underground fire was set by an arsonist around 1980. The surrounding roads caved and looked like they’d been suctioned with a giant vacuum from below. Every once in a while there’d be an item on the ballot to clean it all up, but there was always somewhere else to put the money.

The streets within a couple miles’ radius consisted of mostly commercial properties, mini-malls and offices spread out about a hundred feet from one another. The building they were looking for was only two floors, a dusty block of brick sticking up like a rotten tooth.

Cap parked on the street. There was one other parked car, a beige compact under a carport behind the brick building. The sun was almost down.

“Apartment two,” said Vega, reading from her phone.

“Gotta be up there,” said Cap, pointing to the second floor.

Evan Marsh’s apartment was above an eye doctor’s office, a monument-style sign in front that read BETHLEHEM EYE ASSOCIATES, along with the logo of an eye, wide open with lashes. The office was closed.

Vega followed Cap to the stairs, metal and rattling under their feet. On the landing, Cap knocked hard on the door, and they waited. Vega put her ear to the door and heard nothing. She leaned over the railing to look through a small window and could see a part of a living room—a recliner and beanbag chair. She looked at Cap and shook her head.



She eyed the gold-finish doorknob and stretched the bottom of her shirt over the fingers on one hand. It was locked but cheap, clicking back and forth. Cap glared at her, vaguely disapproving.

“Okay, now, we can wait in my car,” he said.

“That’s got to be his car over there,” she said, reaching above each ear and pulling out two thick bobby pins.

“You’re probably right,” said Cap, peering over the railing. “And it’s beige.”

“We’re friends with the cops now, right?” she said.

She turned her head around to see his face—tired and put-upon. It made her imagine him waiting for her outside a dressing room. In another kind of life wherein she didn’t order her clothes online and would drag a man shopping. And in which Cap was the man. The whole fantasy was so weird it made her smile, and that made him smile, contagious like a yawn. The lines around his eyes softened up.

“Right,” he said.

She extended one of the pins, bent the other, and stuck them both in the lock. She felt around for the driver pins inside, turned the plug, and the door snapped open.

“We’re doing this now,” Cap said.

Vega went first into the living room, saw the recliner and the beanbag she’d seen from the window. Also a television, shaggy carpet, an outdated light fixture hanging from the ceiling on a garland chain. The space was not big, and there was a musty smell in the air—body odor, dust.

She sensed a familiar element shifting—something chemical, like a change in altitude. Early decay: she knew what it was even before she saw the body.

There was Evan Marsh, the boy from this morning, now smaller and whiter and lying on the ground faceup, legs buckled, with his forehead blown open. Vega stepped back without thinking about it, almost into Cap, but stopped right before she hit him. It was a few seconds before she spoke.



“I’ll check the other rooms,” she said.

“You want company?”

She shook her head and drew the Springfield, kept it pointed at the floor, stepped lightly toward a partly open door. It was a bedroom, sparsely decorated: a mattress without a box spring, an uneven set of gray blinds over the window. She pushed open the sliding door of the closet with her foot and there were three shirts on hangers.

She went into the bathroom, flipped the light switch with the nose of her gun. It was dim and dirty. There were two fat prescription bottles without labels on the sink. Frosted shower door slid open. The Zippo with the skull and an ashtray full of butts on the edge of the tub. Vega hovered over it, leaned down and picked up the lighter with two fingertips, careful not to touch the tile. She held it up for a second, then slid it into her back pocket.