Two Girls Down(8)

“That doesn’t sound like a mild-mannered guy seeking revenge,” he said.

“There’s Junior,” said Nell.

Now he felt obligated to watch. He stood in front of the TV and saw his old boss on the screen: “All we have to say right now is that these two girls are missing, and if you have any information, call us, email us. You can remain anonymous.”

“What happened?” said Cap.

“Two sisters from Black Creek were kidnapped,” said Nell. She stared at the screen and moved her eyes back and forth like she was reading text. Cap knew her mind was spinning with possibilities.

“Have we seen the parents yet?”

“They showed the mother.”

“Custody dispute. I’m sure daddy has them. That’s what most of these are, Bug. They’re not even putting out an AMBER Alert yet.”

He took the clicker from her and changed the channel. He didn’t want his former boss and co-workers and two kidnapped girls and their devastated mother in his quiet house. He wanted his daughter and his can of beer and a mild-mannered guy seeking revenge. Case closed.

—

In a room in a house in Central California, a girl stood on her hands. She was too old to be called a girl anymore, thirty-three, but she still felt like one. Not in the good way of having her whole life in front of her. In the bad way of being able to see only the edges of things, to peek around the corners when what you wanted was a city planner’s blueprints of the whole block seen from above.

Her old boss in fugitive recovery, Perry, used to call it Little Bad and Big Bad. Little Bad was the teenager on the front porch with a Phillips screwdriver tucked into his pants. Big Bad was his daddy waiting inside with a loaded .38 and a pissed-off pit bull. There was always a worse thing that you couldn’t see, and it was closer than you thought.

She breathed through her nose the way they taught her when she took three months of yoga. She’d quit because she couldn’t do what they asked. Focus on your breathing, they said, stare at a point on the wall, picture a string floating up from the top of your head and your chakras glowing blah blah blah. She got sick quickly of the instructor’s monologue, of the incense, of the women and their personalized mats. At the end when they all would lie on the floor in the corpse pose, she would look at the women around her, mouths open like fish, some actually sleeping with dumb smiles on their relaxed faces. Of the corpses she’d seen, none had looked so peaceful.



The dead were contorted like zombies; they had holes in their heads; they were kids with limp limbs.

So she quit, bought a book and learned on her own. Moved through the poses but didn’t do them all. Practiced the handstand until she could do it. First against the wall, then in the middle of the room. First for two minutes, then five, then ten. Now fifteen minutes in the middle of the room at four or five in the morning when she woke up. Her head was not exactly empty, but this was the time when she felt the most pleasant, the most like the way people on the street looked, she thought. People she saw in the grocery store or the gas station. Pushing babies in strollers or walking in a pair, or just alone hurrying to their cars, tapping away on their phones. Even if they weren’t smiling, even if they were yelling at their kids or worried about being late to work, she thought they had something on her, and she was never going to get it back.

She scissored her legs down and stood up straight. Rolled her head around. She checked the time on her phone. It was 4:28. The sky was navy blue outside. She could hear some birds.

She sat at her desk and opened her laptop, saw she had some new messages. Two junk, a message from her brother, and something she didn’t recognize.

From [email protected]. Subject: Missing Person Inquiry. The message read, “Hello Miss Vega, I read about you in regards to the Ethan Moreno case. I would like to speak to you about your services. My niece’s daughters have disappeared. Please find my contact information below and let me know when is a good time. Sincerely, Maggie Shambley.”



She looked at the street address and went online, typed “girls missing denville pa” and read three articles, saw half a dozen pictures of the missing girls, their mother, the parking lot where they were last seen.

She wrote: “Ms. Shambley, I am available now. Please call 916-567-1194. Best, Alice Vega.”

She left her laptop, took a shower, got dressed. She pulled a travel bag down from her closet and set it on the floor. She packed it with clothes and a small pouch with a toothbrush and floss. She opened the lockbox where she kept her Springfield and placed it in a foam-lined hard case along with two magazines of twenty rounds each.

Then she sat in the one chair at the kitchen table with her laptop and phone in front of her, her bag and the gun case at her feet. When Maggie Shambley asked how soon she could be there, she would say, “Tonight.”

She felt the muscles in her arms twitch from the handstand. The idea is you close your eyes and empty your head until you feel the life in everything, in the trees and the birds and the man you hate. Until you feel the peace. For Alice Vega there was never peace when she shut her eyes. There was always, always a fight.





2

She arrived at Jamie Brandt’s parents’ house around 9 p.m. local time. There were five news vans at the curb with their networks’ names and numbers splashed across the doors. Vega parked on the opposite side of the street along a copse of trees and saw a dark sedan down the block that looked like an unmarked police car, thought she could make out a figure inside it. She got out and crossed the street, watched as all five of the van doors slid open and people jumped out.