‘‘Not make the news—
Stevie stood from the couch and paced the room. ‘‘That’s dangerously close to entrapment.’’
Melissa reminded, ‘‘Who was it that said: ‘Real news is never found, it’s uncovered’?’’
‘‘Don’t take what I say out of context.’’
‘‘Three women died in that container. The others were stripped naked, de-loused, shaved head to toe and will be on a plane back to China in less than a week. If I approach Klein and she offers to sell me a driver’s license, then we’ve got her by the thumbs. She’s ours.
She either leads us up the next rung of the ladder or—’’
‘‘We extort her?’’
‘‘We pressure her.’’
‘‘What’s gotten into you?’’ Stevie asked.
‘‘You hired me to get a story.’’
‘‘I hired you to pursue a lead. There’s a big difference.’’
‘‘Not to me.’’
‘‘Since when?’’
‘‘Look at me. Look at my face. If not for you and your father, that could have been me in that container. Those women are my age and younger! Are you going to walk away from them because we have to work a little harder to get the story?’’
‘‘You see?’’ Stevie said. ‘‘You see what happens with you?’’
‘‘Me? What if it’s a strong enough story to run nationally?’’ She raised her voice. ‘‘We may have different reasons, but we both want this story.’’
‘‘Don’t confuse the issue.’’
‘‘The issue is three dead women and more coming in behind them every week. The issue is the deplorable conditions that allowed those women to die.’’ Melissa added, ‘‘The police are investigating those deaths as homicides.
‘‘It’s our problem too if we handle it wrong, Little Sister. These people—’’
‘‘See? What people? Who? That’s exactly my point!’’
‘‘Let’s exercise a little patience, shall we? You’ve been on this a day and a half. Keep up the surveillance. If you want a partner, I’ll—’’
‘‘No! This is our story, yours and mine. No one else!’’
‘‘And I’m in charge,’’ Stevie asserted. ‘‘Keep an eye on her. One day is nothing.’’
‘‘Try telling that to the women trapped in those containers.’’
‘‘Patience.’’
‘‘Yeah, sure,’’ Melissa snorted.
‘‘I’ll work on getting the digital camera. That’ll help, right?’’
Melissa beamed. ‘‘Then you
‘‘Of course I want it, Little Sister. I brought it to you, remember? But we talk it out, work it out together. We’ve got to set aside our personal agendas. I want this as much—’’
‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ Melissa said interrupting. ‘‘You don’t always have to mother me, you know?’’
‘‘Old habits die hard.’’
‘‘Get me that camera.’’
‘‘Work with me,’’ Stevie said. ‘‘A team,’’ she suggested.
‘‘A team,’’ Melissa echoed.
Through one day and into the next, Melissa Chow sat impatiently in her brown van, following and videotaping Gwen Klein’s movements, from home to the grocery, and for the second time in three days, to a car wash.
Mid-morning, Melissa received a phone call from Stevie.
Stevie informed her, ‘‘A friend who works with a credit rating service says that there are no loans, no liens on the Dodge 4X4 registered to Joe Klein.’’
‘‘Where’s that camera you promised?’’
‘‘Are you listening?’’
‘‘They own it free and clear?’’ Melissa asked, her eyes on Klein’s taillights as the van sat parked in the automatic car wash.
Stevie said sarcastically, ‘‘That’s just a little unusual for a couple with a reported combined income of sixty- seven thousand a year.’’
‘‘A little unusual?’’ Melissa exploded. ‘‘That’s damn near impossible. That’s a thirty-thousand-dollar truck.’’
‘‘There’s more. The Kleins’ credit cards, which for seven years had maintained balances in the mid–four thousands, were all paid off over the last eighteen months.’’
‘‘So, if nothing else shapes up we threaten to turn the Kleins over to the IRS.’’
‘‘There you go again,’’ Stevie said.
‘‘Just trying to think ahead.’’
‘‘Don’t. Stay where we are.’’
‘‘You’re not the one chasing the All-American mom from the grocery store to the—’’
When Melissa failed to complete her thought, Stevie checked that they still had a connection.
‘‘I’m here,’’ Melissa acknowledged. ‘‘Okay, so I missed the obvious.’’
‘‘Little Sister?’’
‘‘You know those trick posters that are all color and pattern, and you stare at them long enough and suddenly this three-D image appears?’’
‘‘You missed what?’’ Stevie asked.
‘‘She washed her car two days ago. I mean, what was I thinking? I sat right in this same spot! Talk about lame!’’
‘‘You missed what?’’ Stevie repeated.
‘‘She’s rolling. I gotta go,’’ Melissa said. The phone went dead.
CHAPTER 6
oldt sat on the back porch on a warm Friday night, the kids in bed, waiting for Liz, the slide projector at the ready, aimed at the only smooth white surface available, a door that had once led into what was now the kitchen pantry. Painted shut. Lately, he had felt pretty much the same way as that door: closed off, stuck.
He might have set up the projector in the living room; there was a wall there, pretty much of it white if the framed watercolors were removed, but the noise of the carousel’s clicking was certain to wake Sarah, who was as light a sleeper as her father, and if she awakened it might be an hour or two before she could be coaxed toward slumber again. So the carousel sat out there on a wicker table, the yellow Kodak box alongside. Boldt blinked in an attempt to decipher the firefly mystery: He couldn’t figure out whether he was actually seeing fireflies or if those spots of white light before his eyes were simply another sign of his total exhaustion.
‘‘I think we have fireflies,’’ he told Liz when she finally joined him.
‘‘We’ll need to cover Miles before we go to sleep. Remind me, would you?’’
The wicker creaked as she sat into it. Boldt wanted her twenty pounds heavier. He wanted that wicker chair to cry when she took to it, not simply moan.
‘‘I didn’t think we had fireflies. Six years in this house, I can’t remember ever seeing a firefly.’’
