Two Girls Down

by Louisa Luna

  So she made him wait for a few fat seconds before she said yes.

  —

  An hour later there were six cops on the scene, two paramedics and the ME, a guy named Baker who had been smoking for forty years and looked like it, his skin a mess of pale folds. Baker and the cops seemed glad to see Cap, their faces expectant, surprised. They looked at Vega like she was a spiky tropical fruit, some exotic unknown thing. They had started to comb the room, splitting it into a grid of squares, Baker kneeling over the body making a disappointed hound dog face.

  Cap and Vega waited on the landing outside, watched as the cops dusted and bagged. One of them, Torres, a young guy in a wrinkled uniform, took pictures with a digital camera.

  “Any idea why they’re not questioning us?” said Vega, leaning against the railing.

  Cap’s gaze went to the road, to a tan sedan pulling in next to the ambulance and the cruisers. Cap nodded to it.

  “I have an idea.”

  The car door opened. It was Ralz.

  “Hey, Ralz,” said Cap. “We going for a ride?”

  —

  Then they were in the goddamn cruiser. In the backseat behind the filmy polycarbonate partition like a couple of drug dealers.

  Ralz drove them and didn’t speak, kept glancing at Vega in the rearview.

  “Junior does this. This is his thing,” Cap said to her.

  “Wasting time during an investigation?”

  “He gets angry, asserts himself, calms down. Happens very quickly.”

  Cap looked out the side window into traffic. He patted his knee with his hand; Vega watched the fingers curl. She glared at Ralz’s face through the partition. Maybe 180 pounds but mostly muscle. Dead-eyed and stoic, which seemed to be his signature look. He would win in a fight between the two of them with his eyes closed, one hand tied behind his back, without breaking a sweat, and all the rest. Unless she had one or two seconds on him.

  Perry would have said that if someone crosses you on the wrong day, you grab the nearest pint glass and shove it in their teeth. Don’t stew in your juices, don’t let anything sink in. Don’t wait, don’t bide your time, don’t save your breath, don’t sleep on it. You don’t have the weight, kid, but you got the fire, so burn the motherfuckers to the bone.

  —

  The wind had picked up, blowing leaves and trash in spirals in the street outside of the station. As they pulled up, Cap saw Junior standing on the front steps like an angry dad. Hands on his hips and everything. Em and some other cops filtered out behind him.

  Ralz opened the doors for Vega, then Cap.

  “What the fuck!” Junior yelled to him.

  “Hey, Junior,” said Cap, checking the impulse to grin.

  He came down the stairs and stood in front of Cap and Vega, pink in the face and sweating through the blond fuzz on his upper lip. He pointed a thin finger at Cap’s chest.

  “You got some bad fucking luck, Cap, you know that?”

  “I’m pretty keenly aware of it, yes.”

  “This is cute, asshole?” said Junior, hushed. “You think turning up at a murder scene with your girlfriend after I told her to stay out of my town is funny?”

  Cap felt a prickly numbness on the back of his head, something sour in his throat. His mild amusement at Junior’s pissy little face started to shift.

  “You want to give us shit or you want our statements?” said Cap, dry mouthed.

  “Wow, Cap, how about both?” said Junior, snotty. “The two of you can sit in the box until you scrape some lawyer off the bottom of your shoe, and then I’ll have you arrested for obstruction anyway. Then you can add gross misdemeanor to your list of fuckups….”

  He kept talking. Cap watched a drop of foam form in the corner of Junior’s mouth, and couldn’t hear him anymore. Cap looked down at his hands, front and back. Shaking.

  He remembered times like this before. A lot when he was younger, so skinny and scared he couldn’t do anything about it, in high school in Sheepshead Bay when those goddamn gangster Russian kids jumped him and beat him with an umbrella. Then later, when he was a cop, when he wasn’t skinny or scared anymore, some punk they had in for armed robbery kept calling him a Jesus killer and talked about how Hitler was A-OK in his book. And then he saw the picture of Jules on Cap’s desk and said, “Your wife looks like she likes gettin’ raped.” Cap had to go in the bathroom so he wouldn’t slam the kid’s face into the desk edge. Then fights with Jules, the time she said so incredibly fucking coldly, “The worst part about you, Max, is that you don’t even know why you’re angry at me anymore—you’re just too lazy to figure it out.” So he threw the beer bottle at the door and it cracked into a few unsatisfying pieces and dented the old damp wood.

  Stop, Junior, please stop.

  Cap made himself step back.

  “What’s the problem, Cap?” said Junior, a smirk spilling across his face. “You think you might hit me?”

  Then came Vega. Before Cap could answer or think or move, she put herself between him and Junior, chin angled up. Junior almost looked charmed.

  “You got a thing to say, sweetie?”

  Cap could sense her body filling up with some kind of current, the warmth from her back on his chest. For a second he thought he could feel her heart beat.

  “I know guys like you,” she said with an air of discovery. “You’re the kind of guy has to beg girls to let you screw them.”

  Junior coughed out a laugh now.

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “You missed your calling, California. Should have been a shrink.”

  “You beg your wife to marry you too?”

  Junior talked over her, said, “That’s enough, now.”

  Vega did not think that was enough; she kept talking fast and low in his face.

  “She’s so active, Hollows,” said Vega. “So much time at the gym.”

  Junior was caught off guard and speechless for a second, and Cap saw just the smallest hint of painful recognition in his eyes.

  “Miss Vega, every word you say digs you a deeper hole. It’s a little pathetic,” said Junior, still calm.

  “I saw her Facebook page—not the one with your kids and your dog and all that shit. I’m talking about the good one, GymBabe80?”

  “Watch your mouth,” Junior snapped.

  Cap realized, finally, where she was going. Ralz pawed at the ground a little next to Cap, and the air in their little circle turned to glass that was about to break.

  “She really likes spin class, right? A lot of nice pictures of her, but not one of you or the family. That’s a little funny, huh?” said Vega, whispering now. Then she grew thoughtful and almost humble: “Now, I don’t know a lot about social media. What does it mean when you have a ton of ‘likes’ from guys?”

  “Watch your fucking mouth, I said,” said Junior, pointing a finger in her face.

  Vega leaned into the finger and said, “They seem to know her really well.”

  Cap kept his eyes on Ralz, who looked unsure as to how to proceed. He could almost see the hamster wheel in Ralz’s brain rattling around as he ran through the options.

  “Detective Ralz, please place Miss Vega under arrest right now,” said Junior, his voice a little hoarse.

  “What for?” Cap said. “Talking trash about your wife? You’d have to arrest half of Denville.”

  Cap was just gambling now; he’d never heard anything about Junior’s wife, but saw that Junior was sure as shit uncomfortable talking about her, and that made Cap very happy. Junior glared at him.

  Vega shrugged, her shoulders rising and dropping casually.

  “You’re right, doesn’t matter,” she said to Junior, cheery and conciliatory. “Probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Junior’s shoulders came down a fraction of an inch at the prospect of her backing off. He even looked like he might turn around and go back to being his regular shithead self.

  But then Vega snapped in a loud, clear voice, “My guess is they clicked ‘like’ bec
ause there’s no ‘I fucked her’ button.”

  And that was it. Junior lunged, grabbing for the collar of Vega’s jacket, and suddenly Cap felt all his limbs loosen and an old blind confidence fill him up, and he stretched his arm out to bat Junior away, but couldn’t get there before Ralz landed a punch on his jaw, smashing Cap’s lower lip between his teeth.

  He hadn’t been hit in a few years and was unprepared for it, lost his balance and stumbled sideways onto the ground.

  Cap sat up, saw Em standing with Ralz in a headlock, Ralz’s face red, both of them tumbling backward with the momentum, and Cap was so dazed he started laughing. When he stopped there was a buzzing in his ear, like a bug was deep in there. He shut his eyes and heard his name over and over through the static. Caplan, Caplan, Caplan.

  He opened his eyes. The noise cleared. Traynor, the chief of police, stood above him.

  “Caplan, you need a medic?”

  Cap shook his head, tasted the blood on his tongue, and stood up carefully. All at once he felt the various points of pain on his body—shoulders, coccyx, jaw. He pressed his palm against his chin, trying to adjust it. He knew in an hour it would swell, in four it would bruise.

  Then he looked around. They were all staring at him, frozen. The chief, right in front of him, fit and attentive. Here were Ralz and Em behind him, both sweaty and no longer attached to each other. Here was a slightly hefty guy in a blue suit and a burgundy tie, alert, clear eyes—must be the Fed. Here was Junior, panting and dazed. Here were a few cops, some in shirtsleeves and some in uniform, some Cap knew, a couple young ones he didn’t, on the steps and on the ground.

  And there was Vega, standing next to the chief, loose strands of hair waving like spiderweb filaments, her fair skin punctuated by red blots on her cheeks and forehead, chest rising and falling in measured surges.

  They were all watching Cap. Cap looked back at Traynor.

  “What’s going on here, Caplan?” he said.

  Cap knew there was rage in there, contained and primed. Cap thought that back when Traynor was a drinker he must have been a bastard; he’d heard stories about him showing up for work with black eyes and bloody knuckles, blowing .12 on the Breathalyzer at eight in the morning before coffee. But now he was wide-awake, chewing the end of his mustache, waiting for an answer.

  Cap didn’t plan, just started talking.

  “I’m working for the Brandt family, Chief, with Alice Vega, over there. We think there’s a connection between the kidnapping and the dead kid we just found, and we’d like to tell you about it.”

  Traynor glanced at Vega, then back to Cap.

  “Get inside.”

  “He can’t enter the premises,” said Junior, pointing at Cap. “It’s in the terms of his agreement.”

  “What terms?” said Traynor.

  “My resignation,” said Cap.

  Traynor thought about it for only a second.

  “Was the condition negotiated on behalf of the family or the department?”

  “Department,” said Cap.

  “Good,” said Traynor. “Consider the condition suspended for the length of this investigation.”

  “Chief, legally speaking it might not—” Junior began.

  “You get yourself a JD, Hollows, in your spare fucking time?”

  Junior stepped back and appeared to shrink in volume.

  “Then we worry about it later. Let’s go,” the chief said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  He turned and headed toward the steps, striding, and everyone else was quick to follow, jumping to attention like they were already late. Vega held her hand down to Cap. He took it, feeling her soft cold skin, and she pulled him up. She let go, said nothing, straightened her jacket out and clapped her hands together once softly like they were chalkboard erasers she’d just finished cleaning.

  10

  She sat at a long oval table in a dim blue room with a bunch of cops.

  Cap was next to her, and the chief of police and the FBI agent were at the front of the room, projecting images from a laptop onto a ratty screen. Cap and Vega were near the head of the table. The presentation was for them.

  There was a school photo of a girl on the screen, round faced, with straight blond hair to her chin. She smiled out at the camera, but it was one of those trained-kid smiles. Smile, smile, smile, Vega could hear the photographers in her head. Always laid it on thick for the girls—Come on, princess, you’re gonna be Miss America, smile for me. All the boys got was a Hey buddy, say cheese.

  “This is Sydney McKenna,” said the chief. “Disappeared on her way home from school two years ago near Harrisburg. She was eight years old at the time. You remember?” he said to Cap.

  Cap nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

  “Splashed around the news for a couple of months. Never found her.”

  Traynor nodded at the kid with the mouse, who clicked.

  Another photo, another little girl, wearing a sailor top and a navy bow in her hair. She was younger than the last, her hair a darker blond, but still there was a resemblance.

  “Ashley Cahill, age six, was seen getting into a car in the parking lot of a public swimming pool in Lebanon four years ago,” said Traynor.

  He let it all sit for a moment.

  “Gone. Never seen again. Either of them. We think,” he said, nodding to the Fed, “what we have is an MO, which is not much, but it’s similar, and there’s a physical resemblance between all the girls. That and they all took ballet classes. These two and Kylie Brandt.”

  Traynor nodded at a cop by the door, who flipped on the lights. The photo of Ashley Cahill stayed on the wall behind him, overexposed, the top half of her face whited out.

  “We’ve talked to every registered sex offender who fits the profile between here, Harrisburg, and Reading. Everyone ruled out aside from five we can’t locate. Agent Cartwright has people working on that.

  “As you know, we have three witnesses of varying reliability, two of whom have a similar description of the suspect, which matches the image of the sender of the email we got from Kinko’s. You say you have something similar?”

  Vega nodded.

  “We’ll want to have a look at that afterward to line it up. You tell us—Caplan, Miss Vega—what brought you to Evan Marsh?”

  Caplan looked at her and held his hand out, opening a door.

  “After we received the email about Nolan Marsh we talked to his mother,” said Vega. “She didn’t have anything new as far as we could tell. I talked to Evan Marsh just to cover the base. He seemed under the influence of something—your team will find the pills in his bathroom. And your ME should look at his right wrist—I saw scratch marks there.

  “We, Caplan and I, we think Evan Marsh had some opportunity to meet Kylie, even though we’re not sure where.” She paused. “We think he was the kidnapper, initially at least. His plan was to take the girls and use them to get his brother’s case revisited. Then, we think, he would’ve returned them. He wasn’t a pedophile, didn’t want to raise them as his own, just wanted his brother’s body so his mother could put on a funeral. But he obviously didn’t do this alone, and whoever helped him or worked for him got angry.

  “But now, this guy, Marsh’s killer, has the girls and an unknown motive. Maybe he’s one of your five.”

  The Fed, Cartwright, leaned forward.

  “You talk to Marsh’s acquaintances? Co-workers? Girlfriend?” he said, no blame in his voice, just a slight southern accent.

  “We didn’t get that far,” said Cap. “This is our theory as of”—he looked at his watch—“two and a half hours ago. And we’ve been tied up.”

  “What about your team?” said Cartwright to Traynor. “They get anything from Marsh before he was killed?”

  “Hollows?” said Traynor.

  Junior sat at the opposite end of the table. He looked at something on the palm of his hand.

  “Lieutenant Ralz spoke with the mother. She indicated she had no involvement.”
r />   “Which is probably the case,” said Traynor. “What did Evan Marsh say to you?”

  Hollows paused and glanced at Ralz.

  “We didn’t speak with him.”

  Traynor combed his mustache with his bottom lip. He turned his head halfway, in Cartwright’s direction.

  “Let’s get two people to the mother’s house now to break the news and get the information while it’s fresh.” He turned back to the group at the table. “We’ll keep the team we have now at Marsh’s apartment and have them look for anything, specifically financial records and statements, get his phone and computer so we can get the tech in here. Miss Vega, Cap, you two,” he said, pointing to Junior and Ralz. “Stay two seconds with me, please. Everyone else, let’s move.”

  The rest of the cops scattered and filed out the door. Vega watched Traynor and the Fed. Traynor gripped the edge of a chair and leaned down slightly. Nervous energy, she thought, but holding it together. The Fed’s face was round and red. He tapped a pen on his knee and watched the cops leave, moved his jaw like he was cleaning something out of a molar with his tongue.

  The door closed, and Junior held his hands up, indignant.

  “This is what we’re going on now?” he said. “This is the working lead?”

  Cap laughed lightly. He’s used to it, Vega thought, this little fucker’s attitude and sycophantic bullshit that passes for work. Doesn’t make a move unless it makes things easier for him, less paper on the desk. Or, worse, he just can’t have anyone else be right first. Even cleaning five bloody, shit-stained toilets with her own T-shirt in Basic was better than working in a goddamn office with goddamn office people trying to climb a ladder, crushing knuckles along the way. Vega squeezed her hand open and shut around her pen.

  Traynor shoved the chair into the table.

  “Yes, Captain, it is one very viable lead seeing we’ve had an abduction and a homicide within four days’ time that appear to be related. Just so you can get a nice sleep tonight, we’ll still chase the five SOs and the father. That okay with you?”

  Junior shifted in his seat.

  “Yeah, Chief.”

  “You sure? You sound a little depressed about it.”