“What’d Joe say?”
Shockey laughed softly. “You should’ve seen her face, but I could tell she couldn’t say no to that girl. Joe said she’d stay until the next court date. Now all I gotta do is get the department to pick up the hotel tab, and we’re all set, at least for ten days.”
The doors opened again. Joe and Amy came out. Amy was talking to her, excited about something, but he could tell Joe wasn’t listening. Her mind was three hundred miles away, in Echo Bay.
“Look, guys,” Joe said. “I have got to call Mike. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this. Amy, would you stay here with Detective Shockey for me? For five minutes?”
“Are you coming back?” Amy asked.
“Yes,” Joe said. “You’ll be fine with Detective Shockey. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Joe hurried off to find a pay phone. Amy pushed her hair from her eyes and wandered to the bench to sit down. There was a woman sitting farther down the hall, nursing a baby. The woman’s breast and the baby’s face were covered with a cloth diaper, but still Amy watched them, fascinated.
Shockey looked at his watch. “I gotta go. I have a meeting with my lieutenant at eleven. I have to bring him up to date on this stuff.”
Louis looked at Amy. “Go ahead. We’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Shockey went over to Amy and explained to her that he had to go, then gestured to Louis. She gave him a small nod and watched him until he disappeared out the glass doors. Then she glanced around, probably looking for Joe. When she didn’t see her, her eyes came to Louis.
He walked to her slowly. She watched him, but to his surprise, she didn’t look as if she was going to run. He sat down next to her and reached into his jacket pocket. Her eyes followed his every move, showing nothing but wariness until he withdrew the locket and held it out to her.
“I’d like to give you this,” he said.
Amy stared at it. “That belongs to her,” she said.
“No,” Louis said. “It’s for you.”
Amy picked it from his palm and opened it. “There’s nothing in it,” she said.
“You can put anything inside you want.”
Amy closed the locket and looked up. Her expression was no longer one of fear but of curiosity. She was staring at him so intensely that Louis had trouble sitting still.
Behind him, he heard the familiar
“Where’s Jake?” Joe asked.
“Went to report in.”
Joe’s eyes went from Louis to Amy. “You guys ready?” she asked.
Amy rose and walked to Joe. She wanted to take Joe’s hand, but Joe pulled gently away from her and started to the door. Louis rose to follow but stopped partway across the lobby, catching sight of an Ann Arbor uniform. Then he saw the face and the bald brown head of Sergeant Eric Channing.
Channing came forward. “You got a minute, Kincaid?” he asked.
Joe heard Channing’s voice, and she and Amy paused at the door and looked back. Louis waved them on.
“You guys go ahead,” he said. “I’ll catch up.”
Channing waited for them to leave. He drew a hand from his pocket and gestured to the bench. “Have a seat.”
“I’ll stand, thank you.”
“Sit down. Please.”
Louis dropped to the bench. Channing glanced to the doors, then down the hall, and finally took a place next to Louis. Louis braced himself, not wanting another confrontation. But if this was going to be another warning, Channing was approaching it far differently from the first time. His expression was not that of a combatant but of a man who needed something.
“I told you I’d be watching you, and I have,” Channing said.
“Look-”
“Be quiet,” Channing said. “Let me have my say here. That girl you were talking to just now, is she the one I’ve been hearing about around the station? The strange one you and Shockey found at that farmhouse?”
“Yeah.”
“Word is you’ve fought like hell to keep her out of the system and convinced your girlfriend to take care of her.”
“What’s that have to do with you?”
“Just answer the question,” Channing said. “That true?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I was standing over there, watching you a few minutes ago with her,” Channing said. “You surprise me, Kincaid. You handled that pretty good.”
“What do you want from me, Channing?”
“Five more minutes.”
Louis shook his head and leaned on his knees. There was a trio of lawyers coming toward them, and Channing waited until they had passed before he spoke.
“I have something to show you,” Channing said.
Channing reached into his back pocket and withdrew a worn brown wallet. He opened it and flipped through the plastic sleeves. When he found the photograph he wanted, he held the wallet open to Louis. Louis took it and looked down at the picture.
Her hair was a puff of cascading ringlets, light brown with streaks of gold, as if the sun had lightened them. Her small face was the color of caramels. Her lips were pink and full like Kyla’s. Her eyes were gray and somber — like his own.
“Her name is Lily,” Channing said. “She’s eight years old, and she’s yours.”
Louis stared at the picture, everything numb but the hard pounding of his heart.
“Kyla lied to you, but she was only trying to protect Lily,” Channing said. “Don’t hate her for that.”
Louis finally pulled his gaze up and looked at Channing. “What changed her mind?” he asked.
“Kyla didn’t change her mind,” Channing said. “If she had her way, you would’ve left here and never known. It was my decision to come here and tell you. When I leave, I’m going to go home and tell her what I’ve done.”
Louis looked back at the photograph. It was a long time before he was able to bring his gaze back up to Channing. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why would you jeopardize your marriage to tell me this?”
Channing let out a breath. “About a year ago, Lily started asking questions about her real father. Kyla and I gave her the standard stuff about how some parents aren’t grown up enough to be parents, and eventually, mostly because she could see how much it bothered her mother, she stopped asking.”
Louis was staring at the photograph again.
“But I know she hasn’t stopped wondering,” Channing said. “Kids who don’t know their fathers never stop wondering. And things like that leave a hole in a little girl’s heart. And I love Lily enough to admit it’s a hole I can’t fill.”
Channing rose and held out his hand for the wallet. Louis stood up and looked down again at the photograph of Lily, reluctant to let her go.
“Can I see her?” Louis asked.
“I figured you’d ask that,” Channing said. “I would’ve been real disappointed in you if you hadn’t.”
“But I don’t want to make a mess of it,” Louis said. “And I don’t want to make things harder on you and Kyla.”
“I appreciate that,” Channing said. “But I’ll handle Kyla. You just…”
