Locust Lane(4)

Danielle had run out of questions.

“When did you last speak with your daughter?” Gates asked.

“Last night. Around seven.”

“Did she indicate there was anything wrong?” Procopio asked, his voice what she’d expected, practice fields and dive bars and roofing gigs.

“No,” Danielle answered. “Where is she now?”

“We’re looking after her.”

There was a knock on the door. Procopio answered it. His conversation with Slater didn’t last long. And then it was just the three of them again. Danielle remembered something.

“She called. I mean, a second time. Last night.”

“And when was that?”

“Just after midnight.”

“What did she say?”

“I missed it. I was asleep.”

“Did she leave a message?”

Danielle shook her head.

“I tried to call back this morning but…”

But she was dead.

“So what am I supposed to do now?”

“We’re going to need to ask you some questions,” Gates said.

“Can it be later? I’m not…”

She didn’t know what she wasn’t.

“It has to be now and let me tell you why. At this point in time we’re still trying to piece it all together. And every moment that passes makes that a little harder to do.”

“Can we not do it in here, at least?”

“Tell you what. Come down to the station with us. I think that would be best all around.”

“Is she there?”

“No, she’s being looked after by the Medical Examiner.”

“Can we go there first?”

“We can talk about all of that after we get to the station.”

In the showroom, whatever everyone was thinking vanished when they saw the look on Danielle’s face. Steve said something and then Britt said something but she couldn’t process their words.

Eden.

Their car was double-parked just outside the door. There was a Watertown cruiser as well. It took off after a nod from Gates. Danielle sat in the back. It wasn’t far to Emerson. Procopio drove. He used his lights and siren a few times to clear people out of the way. They didn’t speak, though Gates turned around every minute or so to check on her. Danielle was finding it hard to hold on to her thoughts. It felt like that moment right before you fell asleep, when your mind was pulling you into dreams. Things were still familiar but also completely different from your normal life. You could imagine Eden being just about any old thing. Under arrest. In the ER. In need of rescue from a fender bender or a disastrous one-night stand or angry people who’d been dumb enough to trust her. Laughing her head off over something nobody else even understood. But not dead. She was always alive when you thought about her. More alive than anybody. Fidgeting and talking and asking. Sipping your beer, taking food off your plate. Never quite getting it but plunging ahead anyway, as if the world was a big, rubberized playground where nothing truly bad could ever happen.

“You wouldn’t happen to know the password to her phone?”

“1526,” Danielle answered immediately.

Gates was surprised.

“It’s her birthday plus mine,” Danielle explained. “I bought it for her on the condition I knew the password.”

Gates sent a text and then the silence resumed. They arrived in Emerson. Big houses, big cars, quiet streets. As always, Danielle was struck by how safe it all looked.

“This must not happen here much,” she said. “People getting killed.”

“Things happen all over,” Gates said, a trace of weary wonder in her voice.

Emerson Police Headquarters looked more like some high-tech firm on Route 128 than a place where the grubby business of law enforcement took place. There was a van parked outside emblazoned with the name of a local news affiliate. A tiny bottle blonde in skyscraper heels spoke into a camera beside it.

“Terrific,” Procopio muttered.

They parked in a spot near the back entrance. Inside, there was an open-plan office that was both busy and hushed. People glanced at her as she passed, only to look quickly away. A uniformed man—tall, older, silver-haired—awaited them at the door of a glass-walled conference room. He introduced himself as the chief of police; she couldn’t catch his name through the oceanic buzz now filling her ears. When he shook her hand, he covered it like it was a waffle in an iron.

“I am so sorry about your child,” he said.

A strange choice of words given the fact her daughter was twenty, but unintentionally accurate. Eden was nothing if not a child. They entered the room. She was once again shown where she needed to sit. Gates and Procopio sat across from her; the chief remained standing. There was a manila envelope on the table. Gates produced a small tape recorder, pressed a button, then placed it on the table between them.

“I’m going to be recording our conversation. There’s also a camera.”

Danielle nodded. As if she had a say in any of this.

“Okay, what I’m going to do is show you two photographs. We’re going to need you to look at them and tell us if they’re your daughter. I have to warn you that this is not an easy thing. But it has to be done.”

“Yeah, I get it.”