“Whatever,” two of them said.
On the front steps, I exchanged business cards with Principal Nghiem and shook her small, smooth hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been a huge help.”
“I hope so. Good luck.”
I started down the stairs.
“Mr. Kenzie.”
I looked back up at her. The sun had popped out, hard and strong. It turned last night’s snow into a brook that gurgled as it rushed along the gutters toward the sewer grate.
Mai shaded her eyes. “Those exams she missed? Those overdue papers? If you get her back here soon, we’ll find a way to make up all that work. Without damage to her academic file. She’ll get that scholarship to a great school, I promise.”
“I just have to find her soon.”
She nodded.
“So,” I said, “I’ll find her soon.”
“I know you will.”
We acknowledged the gravity of the situation with the briefest of nods, and I felt something else in the exchange, too, something a little warm and a little wistful and better left unacknowledged and unexamined.
She turned back and entered the school, and the heavy green door closed behind her. I walked up the street to my Jeep. As I clicked the remote to unlock the door, a girl came out from behind it.
She was one of the seven I’d just interviewed. She had dark eyes pooled in shadow and lank dark hair and skin as white as Styrofoam. Of the seven girls in the room, she was the only one who’d said nothing.
“What’re you going to do if you find her?”
“Bring her home.”
“What home?”
“She can’t stay out there by herself.”
“Maybe she’s not by herself. Maybe ‘out there’ ain’t so bad.”
“It’s pretty bad sometimes.”
“Have you seen where she lives?” She lit a cigarette.
I shook my head.
“Well, break in sometime, m’ man. Check out the microwave for starters.”
“The microwave.”
She repeated it as she blew a series of smoke O’s out of her mouth. “The mi-cro-wave. Yes.”
I looked in her dark eyes, which were fringed by even darker eye shadow. “Amanda doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl who takes friends by her house.”
“I never said it was Amanda who brought me into her house.”
It took me a few seconds. “You went there with Sophie?”
The girl said nothing, just chewed the left corner of her upper lip.
“Okay. So is Sophie still there?”
“Might be,” the girl said.
“And Amanda-where’s she?”
“I honestly don’t know. Swear.”
“Why are you talking to me if you don’t want me to find her?”
She crossed her arms so that her right elbow was cupped in her left palm as she took another drag. A smattering of pink scars rose up her inner arms like railroad ties. “I heard a story going around about Amanda and Sophie. I heard five people went into a room over Thanksgiving. You with me so far?”
“Yeah, I think I can follow.”
“Two people in that room died. But four people walked back out.”
I chuckled. “What are you smoking besides that cigarette?”
“Just remember what I said.”
“Could you
She shrugged and bit a nail. “Gotta go.”
As she walked past me, I said, “Why talk to me?”
“Because Zippo was a friend of mine. Last year? He was more than a friend. First more-than-a-friend I ever had.”
“Who’s Zippo?”
Her facade of apathetic cool collapsed and she looked about nine years old. Nine years old and abandoned by her parents at the mall. “You’re serious?”
“I am.”
“Christ,” she said, and her voice cracked. “You don’t know anything.”
“Who’s Zippo?” I said again.
“Buzzer’s buzzed, man.” She flicked her cigarette to the street. “Gots to get my education on. You drive safe.”
She walked up the street as the melted snow continued to rush along the gutters and the sky turned to slate. As she vanished through the same door Principal Nghiem had gone through, I realized I’d never gotten her name. The door closed, and I climbed in my Jeep and drove back across the river.
Chapter Eleven
While I’d spent the morning interviewing annoying prep-school girls, Angie’s friend, PR, had agreed to watch Gabby for a few afternoons. So it was that my wife joined me on casework for the first time in almost five years, and we drove north of the city to meet Sophie Corliss’s father.
Brian Corliss lived in Reading on a maple-lined street with wide white sidewalks and lawns that looked like they shaved twice a day. It was a solidly middle-class section of town, leaning toward upper maybe, but not to an elitist degree. The garages were two-car, not four, and the cars were Audis and 4Runner Limiteds, not Lexuses and BMW 740s. All the houses looked well cared for, and all were adorned with Christmas lights and decorations. None more so than the Corliss house, a white Colonial with black shutters and window trim, a black front door. White icicle lights dripped from the gutters, porch posts, and railings. A wreath as big as the sun hung above the garage door. In front of the bushes on the front lawn stood a manger replica and figures of the three kings, Mary, Joseph, and a menagerie of animals arrayed around an empty cradle. To their right stood a somewhat incongruous menagerie of snowmen, elves, reindeer, Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a leering Grinch. On the roof, a sled sat by the chimney and more lights spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS. The mailbox post was a candy cane.
When we pulled up the driveway, Brian was in his garage, unloading groceries from the back of an Infiniti SUV. He greeted us with a wave and a smile as open as a heartland prairie. He was a trim man who wore a denim Oxford unbuttoned over a white T tucked into a pair of sharply pressed khakis. His canvas safari jacket was maroon with a black leather collar. He was in his mid-forties and looked to be in exceptional shape. This made sense, because he’d made his living the last ten years first as a fitness trainer and then as a fitness guru. He traveled New England speaking to small companies about how they could raise their productivity by getting their employees into better shape. He’d even written a book,
“It’s just the city traffic, you know? After two, forget about it. But I mentioned it to Donna and she said, ‘But
