Lost Girls

''Well, with Ashley, it really was the truth. The very spitting image. Would you like to see for yourself?''

''Why not?''

With this Flynn lunges out of his chair, leaves the room for a moment, and returns with a white binder with Your Wedding scripted in flaky gold on the cover.

''I stuck all the wedding photos in the closet and put pictures of Ashley in instead,'' he explains, giving me a look that suggests certain things are too messy and happened too long ago to be worth going into the details. Then he opens the album up near the middle and shows me a picture of his daughter wearing a pink tutu, dark hair tied in a single braid, arms held up in a circle around her head. It was taken in this room, in the place where Flynn now sits, the only difference being that behind the girl stands a stubby artificial Christmas tree sparsely entangled in tinsel.

''That's Ashley,'' he says, pushing the picture closer so that I have to stick my cigarette between my lips and move to the other end of the couch to take half the album on my knee.

''She's eleven there. Always wanted to be a ballet dancer. Never knew where she got the idea, but from as soon as she could talk that's all she wanted. Well, what could I do? There was no classes for that sort of thing up here, and even if there was I couldn't have afforded--well, there weren't any ballet classes. But I got her that tutu there anyway, secondhand. And my God, didn't she wear that thing every minute she could! Come home from school and on it went. And on she'd go, spinning and kicking around the place till dinner and then up round and round again till bed. Had to move all the furniture over against the walls to give her room! I thought my neck was going to snap off from the angle I had to watch the TV at. Not that I minded. No. Of course I didn't mind at all.''

He turns now to the album's back page and puts his finger on the face of a woman in her early twenties with small but clever eyes and a slightly fierce smile broadening her mouth.

''That's her mom,'' he says.

''I see what you mean. Very similar indeed. But I must say, there's definitely some of your genes in Ashley as well, Mr. Flynn.''

''Really?'' He pulls the album back to his own knee and takes a close look. ''Which part?''

''The eyes,'' I half lie, for though both the girl's and her father's eyes were blue, hers were liquid circles and his twinkly slits. ''I believe she had your eyes.''

''You think?'' He sits back, pleased. ''Maybe she did, y'know? Maybe she did take something from the old man.''

For a time neither of us speak, just smoke, and after I stub my cigarette out on the pope's forehead Flynn sticks the pack out at me and again I pull one out. It occurs to me that perhaps I should take the lead here, direct him to some area of inquiry that may be of use. But the truth is I've forgotten what these areas are.

''The police came to talk to me soon after the girls disappeared,'' Flynn starts again, ''and at first I thought they were just being supportive or something, giving me plenty of 'We're very sorry' and 'We're just coming by to get the details straight here, Brian.' Then I realized they thought I might have been the one. That they were coming around so much and asking questions because they wanted to see if I'd slip up. And why not? Strange guy, unemployed, lives alone, nobody seems to know him. Isn't that the sort of person who does these kinds of things?''

He takes an aggressive pull from his cigarette and looks up at me.

''Isn't that why you're here?'' he exhales. ''To see if you can pin it on me so you can save your guy?''

''I would if I could. But the police had nothing on you, and so far neither do I.''

''And you're just here to see if you could dig something up. Well, I guess that's what you're paid for, right? I guess Tripp deserves his rights and all that. And you're the man who's been given the job, so it's no fault of yours. Let me tell you something.''

In one fluid movement he scrunches his current butt out and lights another, sticks his free hand into the wiry scrub of his beard.

''I used to work in a mine outside of town until management figured we'd dug too deep, it was too expensive to go deeper when you could just dig another hole someplace else, so they closed us down. Was out of work nearly two years. And then the men at another mine up the road a couple hours went on strike--saying it wasn't safe and they were trying to get the owner to do something before somebody got killed. But when a bunch of their management guys came to town advertising for temporary workers, I went. And I knew what it meant. I was a strike-breaker, a scab, whatever. All those men on the picket line had their own kids and bank loans and the rest. They needed to work. And me and the others that went up there, we just walked through their pickets to do their work for them, and nobody laughing but the owner.''

He runs his tongue over lips so dry they've lost their color, pulls on his nose between forefinger and thumb.

''But you know what the bugger of it all is, Mr. Crane? I'd do it again. Because I had my own little girl, my own bills to pay. I had my family to take care of, y'see? And while I knew that what I was doing was taking money from those men and bringing that mine closer to shutting down once and for all--while I knew all that, none of it meant a thing. Because it was a job, and I had to take it. Just like you. You've got your job, and nobody's going to like you for doing it--I don't like you for doing it--but you've got to. Besides, there's nothing you or the judge or McConnell or Tripp can do about it. Or me. Nobody can bring her back.''

Flynn sits back in his chair now and looks about him as though there were others in the room who until now he'd been ignoring. Finding it's still only the two of us, he rests his eyes on his mud-caked shoes and moves them back and forth, confirming that the feet within belong to him.

''I'm sorry, I've been going on so much I haven't let you ask a single thing,'' he says after a time.

''Not to worry.'' Take another puff. ''Well, let's see. I guess I'm mostly wondering about alternative explanations.''

''Oh, yeah?''

''For example, do you think it's at all possible that Ashley ran away from home? Took off someplace with Krystal and the two of them just haven't called home yet?''

Flynn's shoulders fall away from his neck. ''You mean, do I think she's alive?''

''Someplace else.''

''No, sir, I don't.''

''You sound fairly certain.''

''That's because I am.''

''You mean, you don't believe Ashley to be the type to run away from home? As far as you're aware, she was happy?''

''I'm not saying she was happy. I'm not saying she wasn't. I'm telling you, I know she's dead.''

''Mr. Flynn--may I call you Brian? I'm not trying to tell you about your own life, but it couldn't have been easy bringing a teenaged girl up all on your own. Maybe there was boy trouble. Maybe she went off to have a little adventure and got carried away. Nobody could blame you for that. I'm just asking if you would admit that it's possible.''

He twists what's left of his cigarette into the ashtray and sits forward.

''I'm going to tell you something now that you can take as fact. With me and Ashley, all we had is each other. That's it. If she were alive today, I'd know about it by now. She wouldn't leave me here alone unless it wasn't her choice.''

With this Flynn jerks back and circles his hands over his hips, feeling the pockets for the lighter. Eyes returned to his shoes.

''I'm sorry, Mr. Flynn. But would you mind if I used your bathroom?''

''Left at the end of the hall,'' he says without looking up.

I move around him past a narrow kitchenette to a hallway of four open doors: linen closet, bathroom, Flynn's shadowed bedroom, and, directly across from it, a tidy off-white square containing a single bed. Ashley's room. I step inside and the first thing I notice is the smell, somehow entirely distinct from the rest of the house despite the open door. Fabric softener, one of those sporty, unisex colognes, and somewhere beneath them the faint traces of gym sock. But nothing out of place now, the navy-striped comforter smoothed carefully over the bed. I glance across the hall into Flynn's room--peaked ranges of laundry, an unglued Pamela Anderson poster folding over itself