She snapped open her eyes and a glimmering crow caught her attention. Emilia pushed away the thoughts that had crept in and instead looked around at what she’d built over the past few weeks. She stared at each item, beautiful in its own way. And the wall that had taken up most of her time. She sat on the air mattress, taking it all in, over and over again. It was done. There was nothing more she could do.
She opened the window just enough for some wind to sway her paper birds. She lay down, watched them shiver and shimmer above her.
What more can I do? she thought. Because she didn’t feel like she was done. The room seemed complete and incomplete. There must be more she was supposed to do here. To feel complete. Normal. She wanted to feel complete and normal and whole.
Will I ever be?
The paper crows fluttered above her.
Detective Manzetti
Detective Manzetti looked at Emilia DeJesus, a small picture of her that he’d had in the back of his work desk drawer until recently. Now it lay on top of all the papers and reports on his desk. Her small brown face peeked out from behind her long dark hair, in front of the pink and blue beams they were using for backgrounds those days. He always thought she looked like she was hiding from the camera.
Do you have a picture where we can see her face more clearly? he’d asked Nina DeJesus back then.
She said something about this one being the most recent because she’d forgotten about picture day the year before, so this is the best one. She still looks just like a baby . . . , she’d said, before her knees buckled and she grabbed on to his arm. My god, my baby . . .
Detective Manzetti sat at his desk and rubbed his arm where Nina DeJesus’s fingers had dug into him eight years ago. He could almost still feel them.
Find her, she’d told him, gripping his arm harder. You have to find her!
We’re already looking, he said. It was five-thirty and they’d been looking for half an hour. Emilia was eight; police were sent immediately. Not like teenagers, who could be runaways, so they had to wait a full twenty-four hours before they started an official search.
When did you realize she was missing?
She’s a Girl Scout. The meeting today was canceled, but I didn’t know. I was at the bank. I saw one of the girls from her troop standing in front of me with her mother. It didn’t hit me at first . . . I remember looking at her and I said, “Missing Girl Scouts today?” and she looked up at me and said, “It was canceled.” Just like that.
What time was that?
A little after four. Dismissal is at two-fifty and the meeting starts at three. I pick her up at four-thirty, at the front of the school. I was just going to the bank first and then to the school from there.
Have you ever talked about what to do if you’re not home?
Nina shook her head. I’m always home after school . . . I only work mornings. I never . . . except . . . except today.
He saw the breath go out of her.
Anywhere you can think of where she might have gone after she found out the meeting was canceled?
Here. I thought she might be here. At the house. I was sure she must have walked home . . . Like I said, I was running errands. So I thought maybe I missed her. So I drove home.
Manzetti saw Nina going back in time, back to those moments. They all do it, when they’re telling a story. When they’re recounting the normal moments before the unimaginable.
It took so long to get home. I pulled into the driveway and ran inside, and I yelled her name. I ran upstairs, checked her room, ran through the whole house. Only Tomás, my son, was home—
Manzetti interrupted. How old is your son?
Nina gave the detective a look, anger and shame.
He’s eleven. We’ve just started letting him stay home alone, but only if I’m going someplace nearby, for a short period of time. I only had to go to the bank and the school . . .
Detective Manzetti didn’t react.
And your son, he said she didn’t come home. Is that correct?
The doors were locked. He said he didn’t hear the doorbell or anything. I scared him when I ran inside, yelling for Emilia. She shook her head. But I didn’t have time to explain. I . . . fell down the stairs.
Nina gestured to the bleeding shin Manzetti had already noticed.
I was rushing. When I didn’t find her here . . . I knew something had happened. Nina closed her eyes, leaning forward, holding her stomach. As soon as that little girl, Jasmine—from Emilia’s Brownie troop—said the meeting was canceled. I felt something, in my stomach, and . . . God, I just knew something was wrong.
Her voice was strained and she started crying.
Does Emilia have a key to the house?
Nina shook her head, swallowed new sobs that came up.
Tell me what you did next, Mrs. DeJesus.
I kept yelling her name, hoping she was somewhere in the house. I . . . I wanted her to be here. Then I ran to my neighbors’ house. I banged on their door asking if they’d seen her. Sometimes Mary bakes cookies and she lets Emilia help. But she wasn’t there. I told her husband I was going to the school. I told him to call the police.
Nina shook her head. That’s the part that always got parents. When the call to the police was made. Like ringing a bell that can’t be unrung. Suddenly it became real.
So you went to the school. Did you drive there?
Nina closed her eyes, nodded.
Then what?
Nina DeJesus took a deep breath. It was locked . . . Nobody was there. I banged on all the doors. I ran around banging on windows. Nobody was there. I . . . I didn’t know what to do. I ran to the bike rack, the playground. Nobody. Anywhere.
She was sobbing. I should’ve known the meeting was canceled. I should’ve . . .
Nina was starting the list of all the things she could have done differently. Manzetti had seen so many parents do this, too. He wanted to tell her there was nothing she could have done differently, but right now he needed to get the facts. Before she forgot them. This was no time to indulge in guilt.
So your neighbor who called the police, what is his name?
Nina told him and Manzetti made a note to make sure their stories matched.
The door opened and a man came in.
Sam! Nina yelled as he went over and hugged her. Oh god, Sam . . . Sam . . . Manzetti realized this must be the father.
He looked at the man, the struck look on his face. Shock, Manzetti thought. He’d had to drive up to a house with police cars in front, red and blue lights flashing; he’d had to explain to them to let him in, that he lived here; he’d had to walk up to this house, where the unimaginable was taking place.
Manzetti had seen spouses hold each other, yell at each other, blame each other, accuse each other, and then there were the ones who couldn’t quite take it all in at once, and sat there, lost in another world.
Like Mr. DeJesus was doing now as Mrs. DeJesus tried to explain between choked sobs.
Now came the harder questions, about close relatives, close family friends, if they thought Emilia would go home with anyone she knew, anyone she didn’t know.
Nina DeJesus answered them all, occasionally turning to her husband, who either nodded or shook his head or stuttered a few words.
And you, Mr. DeJesus? You were at work.
Yes.
And there are people there who can corroborate this?
Sam DeJesus nodded again. Eye contact, no anger. Probably not him, but check out his story, Manzetti thought.
Then Nina asked about the recent incidents with strangers, if they’d ever caught the person who flashed that little group of girls. She asked about a missing teen from last year who had received only a little publicity because it was first reported as a runaway.
Did they ever find that girl?
Manzetti paused
, then shook his head.
Could this be the same guy? Could she have been kidnapped . . . ?
This was how it happened, one descending layer upon another.
Oh god, no.
Oh god, missing.
Oh god, a search.
Please no, god, not kidnapped.
Please, please no, god, not a body recovery.
Detective Manzetti cleared his throat and told Nina DeJesus, Let’s take this one step at a time. We don’t know what has happened yet.
He knew Nina DeJesus would be the kind of parent who jumped in full speed ahead, doing anything and everything. She was the kind of parent who would still be searching years, decades later. Manzetti knew parents like that. But sometimes, often, they chased the wrong leads.
But you’re searching, right? There are officers out looking? I should—we should—be out there, Nina said. She moved closer to the edge of the couch, as if she would jump up at any moment.
Yes. We’re searching. We got all our guys on it. Please, just—it’ll be more helpful if you give me all the information I need.
She looked outside. It’s getting dark. He knew darkness killed parents. When darkness fell, there was another level of fear.
The same things that happened in the dark happened in the day, in plain sight. Manzetti knew this after so many years on the force. But parents didn’t. They had a false sense of security during the day and they looked into the fading light, the impending night just as small children did. With fear, scared of the impenetrable black, of the terrible unknown lurking there and what was happening to their child at that very moment.
The detective looked at how Nina swallowed gulps of air, the beginnings of an anxiety attack.
Then another officer informed Manzetti that some news stations had shown up while he was questioning Nina DeJesus. He had to get Emilia’s face out there. He looked at the picture. A gruesome image flashed into his mind. He didn’t want to think of her in a field, dead, a cord wrapped around her neck and flies buzzing around her naked body the way they’d found the fourteen-year-old girl from Hempstead whom Mrs. DeJesus had asked about moments ago. They’d reported her as a runaway, even though her mom, just like Mrs. DeJesus, knew something bad had happened to her.
Nobody listened to that mother. Nobody immediately searched for her daughter, Lucy Soto. The news didn’t keep showing her face like they do for other faces. Lighter faces.
Girls in her situation often run away, Detective Manzetti had said.
He’d actually uttered those words to her mother, when he found out she had an older boyfriend. When he found out her mother learned they were having sex. When she told him reluctantly, yes, they’d had a fight that day about it. When she closed her eyes and told him, I hit her.
He didn’t need more information after that, even though her mother kept trying.
The shame he’d learned to push away over the years came creeping back, along with the memory of how Lucy’s mother had winced at the word runaway, like he’d reached out and slapped her.
No, not Lucy, she wouldn’t run away, she told him.
And then weeks later, how she screamed.
No, no, not Lucy! Not Lucy!
He’d driven Mrs. Soto to the morgue to identify the body. And numb as she was when he drove her back home, her last words to him were, She would be alive if you’d believed me. If you’d bothered to do your job and look. But what do you care, what does anyone care, about girls like my Lucy?
He wouldn’t do that again, to another mother, to another girl.
We’ll find her, he told Mrs. DeJesus, following her gaze out the window. At the night flashing blue and red.
And then, he heard his radio. He’d turned it down just low enough to keep track of what was going on, but not loud enough for the DeJesuses to hear. And in buzzed the miracle nobody ever got.
Female matching subject found, ambulance en route.
He was sure he heard it correctly, but excused himself from the parents while he stepped into another room for more information.
Is she alive?
Critical.
Where?
St. Mary’s.
En route with mother and father.
They found her, he told Nina and Sam DeJesus. She’s on the way to the hospital. I’ll take you in my patrol car.
The cry that came out of Nina DeJesus still haunted him. It was so much like that of Ms. Soto. Primal. The way she fumbled getting up, like her legs didn’t work, as she grabbed on to him again, asking, Is she . . .
She’s alive—it’s what she meant to ask but couldn’t—and he quickly added, but hurt. It was all he said, all he really knew, as they hurried out of the house. But he wanted to prepare her. He felt her body go slack again.
* * *
*
What he remembered wanting to tell Nina when she cornered him in the hospital that night, when she told him to find the person who did this, was, Be glad she’s alive. So many aren’t. His mind flashed with the horrible image of Lucy Soto, with the horrible things done to her, to all the bodies he’d seen over the years, to the bodies of women and girls especially.
He couldn’t tell Mrs. DeJesus all the ways the odds were stacked against Emilia—a girl, a girl with a brown face, a girl with a name like DeJesus.
Do you know how lucky you are?
No. Of course, he couldn’t say that.
She would have spat in his face. Emilia? Lucky? With her black-and-blue body, her tongue she bit through, her cut face and missing teeth? With the uncertainty of whether there would be brain damage after her head was hit against the ground so hard, so many times? And with the certain emotional trauma she would endure the rest of her life? Lucky?
But she was.
All these years later, Manzetti understood more than ever how lucky Emilia was, how close she came to being another Lucy.
But the word went through Manzetti’s mind and made him sick. Was that all he thought? She was lucky? Is that why he did a sloppy job? Why he followed the only lead he had and was willing to lock up anybody who might fit the bill? To make it easier? For whom?
For you?
Yes. That’s how he’d managed.
But then Carl Smith called him.
* * *
*
Manzetti stared at the old file now marked REOPENED. Jeremy Lance stared back at him.
You prosecuted him. Another kid. Someone a traumatized eight-year-old identified. Someone you got to confess. Just because he displayed violent behavior at school. Just because you didn’t want to think about Lucy Soto. Because her face, her neck, that cord, was all you saw when you shut your eyes at night and you needed to close each case. Because you didn’t want anything else haunting you. Bad guy caught. The end. Another case solved. Move on to the next. And the next.
Good going, Manzetti. Fucking good going.
He put the picture of Emilia in the file, closed his desk drawer, and went home.
* * *
*
In the fridge sat two bottles of beer and leftover takeout. Manzetti grabbed a beer and closed the fridge. As he opened the bottle and took a long swallow, he stared at an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party last week that he hadn’t gone to. He crumpled it up and threw it out, then turned on the television.
The call he received from Carl Smith a few weeks ago was a punch in the gut. He couldn’t have imagined eight years ago having to make the call to Nina DeJesus about it.
Or did you know all along, he thought as he got in the shower. And just hoped it wouldn’t catch up to you?
Nina’s voice on the phone a few weeks ago echoed in his head.
But why? I don’t understand. How? Who? I don’t understand. I don’t understand.
That’s what Nina DeJesus kept saying when she was finally able to speak. After he brought the
past back through the phone.
Maybe I should’ve gone in person, Detective Manzetti thought. But he hadn’t wanted to scare Emilia. What if she was home and she saw him, remembered him from the hospital and the trial?
He’s dying, he’d told Nina over the phone. He wants to . . . He took a deep breath, had trouble uttering the next few words. He wants to relieve his conscience, Manzetti explained.
She’d hung up on him then.
He didn’t call back. He knew he’d have to eventually, but let her process this first, Manzetti, he’d told himself. Before you have to explain what a piece-of-shit scumbag this guy is.
Detective Manzetti looked at his bare feet as the shower water fell around him. Here, when he was alone and the emergencies of the day were over and there was so much quiet, things haunted him. Like Carl Smith’s voice when he called Detective Manzetti. He could still hear it. And his labored breathing. And the clicking sound of some kind of machine in the background.
I have to tell you something, Detective . . .
And so he began, the caller, telling Manzetti strange stories of his childhood that Manzetti listened to because he quickly realized the kind of person he was dealing with. Someone who reveled in the fear he instilled in others. Someone who, despite what Manzetti had told Mrs. DeJesus, didn’t have a conscience at all, but rather was proud of what he’d done and couldn’t stand going to his grave without boasting about it. Someone who identified himself as Carl Smith.
The Fall of Innocence Page 22