Vanishing Girls(65)

“Hate this f*cking place,” Hernandez says, when he catches me staring. I’m surprised to hear him say f*cking, and wonder if he did it to make me like him more. It works, a little. “It’s like living in a fishbowl. All right, then. What do you know about Madeline?”

In his absence, I’ve had time to think about what I want to say. I take a deep breath.

“I think . . . I think her older sister was working at a place called Beamer’s on the shore,” I say. “I think my sister worked there, too.”

Hernandez looks disappointed. “Beamer’s?” he says. “The bar off Route 101?” I nod. “They were waitressing there?”

“Not waitressing,” I say, remembering how the woman, Casey, had laughed when I told her I had no experience. If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, you’ll be fine. “Something else.”

“What?” He’s watching me intently now, like a cat about to pounce on a chew toy.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But—” I take a deep breath. “But it might have to do with those photographs. I don’t know.” I’m getting confused now, losing the thread. Somehow it comes down to Beamer’s and that red sofa. But there was no red sofa in Beamer’s, at least no red sofa that looked like the one in the photographs. “Madeline didn’t just disappear into thin air, did she? Maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. And now my sister . . . She’s gone, too. She left me a note—”

He straightens up, hyperalert. “What kind of note?”

I shake my head. “It was a kind of challenge. She wanted me to come find her.” Seeing his confusion, I add, “She’s like that. Dramatic. But why would she run away on her own birthday? Something bad happened to her. I can feel it.” My voice cracks and I take another long sip of water, swallowing back the spasm in my throat.

Hernandez turns businesslike. He grabs a notepad and a pen, which he uncaps with his teeth. “When was the last time you saw your sister?” he asks.

I debate whether to tell Hernandez that I saw Dara earlier in the evening, boarding a bus, but decide against it. He’ll no doubt tell me I’m being paranoid, that she’s probably out with friends, that I have to wait twenty-four hours before filing a report. Instead I say, “I don’t know. Yesterday morning?”

“Spell her name for me.”

“Dara. Dara Warren.”

His hand freezes, like it has temporarily hit an invisible glitch. But then he smoothly writes the remainder of her name. When he looks up again, I notice for the first time that his eyes are a dark, stormy gray. “You’re from . . . ?”

“Somerville,” I say, and he nods, as if he suspected it all along.

“Somerville,” he repeats. He makes a few more notes on his notepad, angling the paper so I can’t see what he’s writing. “That’s right. I remember. You were in a bad accident this spring, weren’t you?”

I take a deep breath. Why does everyone always mention the accident? It’s like it has become my single most important feature, a defining trait, like a lazy eye or a stutter. “Yeah,” I say. “With Dara.”

“Two of my men took the call. That was Route 101, too, wasn’t it? Down by Orphan’s Beach.” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. Instead he writes another few words and tears off the sheet of paper, folding it neatly. “Bad spot of road, especially in the rain.”

I tighten my hands on the armrests. “Shouldn’t you be looking for my sister?” I say, knowing I sound rude and not caring. Besides, even if I wanted to answer his questions, I couldn’t.

Luckily he lets it go. He places both fists on the desk to stand up, sliding his bulk away from the desk. “Give me a minute,” he says. “Wait here, all right? You want another water? A soda?”

I’m getting impatient. “I’m fine,” I say.

He gives me a pat on the shoulder as he moves past me to the door, as if we’re suddenly buddy-buddy. Or maybe he just feels bad for me. He disappears into the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Through the glass, I watch him intercept the same redheaded cop in the hall. Hernandez passes him the note, and the two of them exchange a few words too quiet for me to hear. Neither of them looks at me—I get the impression this is deliberate. After a minute, both of them move off down the hall out of sight.

It’s hot in the office. There’s a window AC spitting lukewarm air into the room, fluttering papers on Hernandez’s desk. With every passing minute, my impatience grows, that itchy, crawling sense that something is terribly wrong, that Dara’s in trouble, that we need to stop it. Still, Hernandez hasn’t come back. I stand up, shoving the chair back from the desk, too antsy to remain sitting.

Hernandez’s notepad—the one he scribbled on while I was speaking—is sitting out on his desk, the top sheet faintly imprinted with words from the pressure of his pen. Seized by the impulse to see what he wrote, I reach over and grab it, casting a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure that Hernandez isn’t coming.

Some of the writing is illegible. But very clearly I see the words: call parents and, beneath that, emergency.

Anger flares inside of me. He didn’t listen. He’s wasting time. My parents can’t do anything to help—they don’t know anything.