“But I do know her external circumstances.”
Jesse waited.
“She is not a discipline problem in the sense of an angry rebellious teenager that we all think of in this context…”
Lilly stopped suddenly and looked at Jesse again. Jesse waited.
“I don’t know if I should be talking to you like this.”
“It’s okay,” Jesse said. “I’m the police.”
“You are not even one of our police,” she said.
“True.”
“There’s something so quiet about you.”
Jesse nodded.
“And it’s charming in a way I don’t exactly understand,” Lilly said.
“Good,” Jesse said.
“That it’s charming, or that I don’t understand?”
“That I have your attention,” Jesse said.
They were silent.
“Yes, you do,” Lilly said finally.
Jesse smiled at her. She smiled back. Then she let her breath out audibly.
“Billie comes from a home,” she said, “that would be officially classified as ‘good.’ “
“By which we normally mean two parents and some money.”
Lilly nodded.
“Anything wrong with the parents?”
“Except that their daughter is a mess,” Lilly said. “I don’t know. I’ve never met them.”
“Any of her teachers know them?”
“They were invited to come in and discuss their daughter’s problems several times. But they never did.”
“Siblings?” Jesse said.
“Her older sister graduated this school with honors. There is, I believe, a younger girl as well.”
“In school here?”
“No. Still in middle school, I think.”
“So aside from a tendency toward frequent indiscriminate sex, what kind of mess is she?”
“She failed a number of courses, which is, as you may know, in today’s educational climate, not easy.”
“She dumb?”
“No. Extremely passive. Apathetic. She never speaks in class. Between classes she didn’t interact with other students.”
“Didn’t?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve been talking about her in the present tense until you said she didn’t interact. Why the tense change?”
“Hooker,” Lilly said.
“She interacted with Hooker?”
“Intensely,” Lilly said. “Have you met him?”
“No, one of the other cops talked to him on the phone.”
“He’s a lovely boy,” Lilly said.
“So how did the school hero end up with the town pump?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know,” Lilly said.
“Maybe it was influenced by the nymphomania.”
“There’s that cynical thing again,” Lilly said.
“You have any idea where Billie might be now?”
Lilly shook her head. They both stared out the window for a time at the ocean, always in motion, going nowhere.
“If she’s missing, wouldn’t her parents have reported her missing?”
“You’d think so,” Jesse said.
