Julia feels heat rise in her cheeks.
“You should’ve told us.”
“What background checks?” says Julia, heart thumping.
“It serves no purpose to pretend. We’re not here to judge,” says Christine, kindly.
Julia lowers herself onto the bed. “It’s not an easy thing to talk about.”
“I can’t imagine that it would be.”
“Toni was always into everything, even as a kid. After the early life we had, it wasn’t exactly a surprise she turned to drugs.”
“Heroin?”
Julia nods. “And the rest. Three years ago she stayed with me and Leo. Got clean. She doesn’t use anymore.” Julia looks at them. “I know what you’re thinking, but Toni wouldn’t get caught up in drug trafficking.”
“Addiction can make a person do unthinkable things,” says Christine.
“I told you already, Toni was clean.”
“We don’t know that.”
“So that’s it?” says Julia, throwing up her hands. “You’re going to stop looking now that you think Toni is just some junkie?”
“No one is saying that,” says Christine. “It gives us other lines of inquiries to explore, that’s all.”
Julia feels her eyes water but manages to hold it back. “Don’t give up on her. Toni’s a good person. She needs us to keep looking.”
Detective Muhtar bends down, picks up Julia’s shoes, and holds them out for her.
“And we will,” he says.
*
Leo’s in slightly worse shape than Julia. A heavy-duty plaster and gauze are stuck to his forehead. There’s also a nasty black bruise on his left cheek that must hurt like hell. Julia waits for him to get dressed, turning to look out the window of his hospital room as he disrobes.
“What a night,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.”
“They know about Toni.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Leo slips on his shoes. “It was bound to come out in the end.”
“They’ll stop looking now.”
“They won’t. They have a duty to locate her. We’ll keep on at them, ramp up the pressure. Go to the media if we have to.”
He joins her at the window, taps the bandage on his head, checks the pads of his fingers for blood.
“I could use a hot shower,” he says. “Let’s go back to the hotel, get a change of clothes, grab something to eat, and regroup.”
Julia doesn’t move.
“Julia?”
She wipes a tear from her eye.
“Hey,” Leo places a hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. We’ll find her.”
“I turned my back on her, Leo, when she came to me for help. You were the one who convinced me she could do it. And she did. Toni got clean. You were right.”
“It was a team effort.”
Julia stiffens and pulls away, remembering that wasn’t the end of the story.
“We should go,” she says.
Then her cell phone begins to ring.
23
They head out, turning left through the wrought iron gates of Gulhane Park and up the winding pathway that dissects the park in two. It’s a lovely space, shrouded by towering cypress trees and the pale stone walls of the Topaki Palace, the former residence of the Ottoman sultans, now a museum. Given it’s mid-morning, the park is busy with locals strolling along the winding pathways. Older thick-waisted women with colorful headscarves tied under their chins talk loudly together as they walk, while here and there, gray-haired men sit on wooden benches dotted around the park, twirling worry beads and contemplating the pleasant morning in silence.
“Any sign of her?” says Leo, looking around.
“She said to meet her by the statue of Ataturk.”
They keep going, past a fountain and a lone gardener turning over soil in a flowerbed, and locate the bronze statue of Turkey’s former president. Sally is there, dressed in the same plaid shirt and army fatigue cargo pants as the day before.
“Not here,” she says, pushing herself off the squat cinderblock wall.
Leo and Julia follow her out the park gates, up the main street, and into a bustling teahouse. The place is crammed floor to ceiling with enormous glass jars filled with all sorts of exotic spices, most of which Julia would have trouble naming, apart from one jar near the counter that contains the distinctive flame-colored threads of saffron.
Sally nods at a table near the back corner. “Take a seat over there. I’ll order us coffee.”
They do as she says and it’s not long before Sally returns carrying a kebab rolled up in a paper napkin.
“Coffee will be here in a bit,” she says, sitting down. She holds out the pita. “Want some?”
Leo and Julia both shake their heads.
“Suit yourselves,” Sally says, chomping into the doughy pita. She looks at Leo. “What happened to your head?”
He reaches up to touch the plaster. “We were caught up in the protests.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” says Sally, chewing. “The police around here aren’t exactly shy about testing out their machinery on the general population.”
The coffee arrives. Leo takes a mouthful and gasps. “God, I think my heart’s about to explode.”
Sally grins, lobbing the last of the kebab into her mouth. “They say that once you have Turkish coffee, you’ll never go back.”
“You said you have some information?” says Julia.
Sally nods, using a paper napkin to wipe the yogurt dripping down her arm. “I do.” She pauses, looking from Julia to Leo and back again. “Don’t trust Yasmin.”
Julia’s surprised. “What’s Yasmin got to do with this?”
“There’s something off with her. We really had to push her into reporting Toni missing. She kept delaying, saying we’ll give it another day, until finally I put my foot down and told her to make the bloody call. Embassy first, you second.”
“Why was Yasmin
