“You said fucked,” Mel pointed out.
“Yeah, but my wife didn’t hear it.”
“Okay, so they’ll find out about the DNA soon. What then?”
“The tech called me personally, but the file should hit the servers and be shunted off to them at any moment. Maybe it has already, but they can’t shoot the case back down to us. It would look bad to the sponsors. And there’s one more thing.”
“What?” Mel asked.
“Baby’s DNA. It might be a mistake.”
Glancing guiltily at the spilled contents of the evidence box on her floor, Mel kept her voice even and said, “Mistake, huh.”
“Yes indeedy. Big old mistake. Captain from Jersey called me on my personal line. Didn’t want any sponsors to hear what he said. Told me that they can’t find the evidence box. In confidence, he said it was entirely possible that the way the swabs were collected means the swab that showed up in that file could have been from any other file, including some missing persons file for a kid they don’t even know where to look for.”
The plastic bag with the belt peeked out from the overturned lid of the box, and Mel felt a surge of guilt run through her. She was a cop and she was an honest one. Every fiber of her being wanted to tell her boss the truth.
Her gaze landed on the printed sheet from the email Baby had sent her. It was short and to the point. She’d deleted the email after printing, as instructed in the message. On it were the instructions for a contact that would set her up with a secure drop box and an entirely secure phone. The only other thing in the email was an address.
The two words above that address were: Papa’s Webmaster.
“You still there, Mel?” Mann asked.
Mel spread her hand over the paper. “I’m here. Just give me a second. I’m thinking.”
He sounded uncertain, because this wasn’t a normal thing for her to do, but said, “Okay.”
In the harsh light of morning, the possibilities that had seemed so believable the day before were no longer so real or inviting. The pragmatic part of her was the larger part, and it was what let her live in the world. It made her good at her job and satisfied that she always did her best.
It was stupid to hang on to this information. All the talking and listening and meals had been to get Baby to give her something real that would lead to Papa and bring him to justice. And here was something, the very thing she wanted. It was right here under her hand and she was thinking of keeping it?
A memory came to her, one both hazy with age and sharp with affection. Her mother, bustling around the kitchen with one of the old style, chunky tablets propped up on the counter. The kitchen was a mess and her mother had a streak of white flour on her cheek. What she was making didn’t smell very good, yet Mel remembered her smile when she’d turned toward a much smaller version of Mel and said, “In for a penny, in for a pound!”
Pennies were long gone, but Mel understood. Like her mother and her endless bad recipes and worse cooking, Mel was already hip-deep in it. She should go for the full pound. If this was all a delusional fairy tale, then she’d take the address in and let the legal system do what it could.
“Captain, I can’t think of a thing I can do to help at this point. I’m sorry.”
With a sigh, he said, “I know and don’t worry about it. You’ve got a load of cases up to your eyeballs that got pushed back by this one. I’ll keep my ear to this and put up with whatever shit the feds want to shovel my way so I know what’s happening. I’m sorry, though. You were invested in this one. We all were.”
“Thank you, Captain. Now, about my sick days?”
He chuckled through the phone. “You haven’t had a day off in four weeks. I’m gonna get in trouble with the sponsors soon. Just call it a weekend and practice your fake coughing. That was fucking terrible. Truly shit.”
“Got it. Thank you. And also, watch your language.”
She could hear him laughing as he disconnected. Mel sighed and leaned back in the chair, which gave an alarming squeak. That’s what she got for buying a dinette set that she had to put together from a box.
Her phone lay there, along with the paper and the scattering of items that hadn’t followed the box to the floor. She hadn’t had the courage to open the music app yet. Baby’s warning about not listening to the song before she was ready had stirred up a little paranoia.
It was the same as going onto high places, like a balcony in a skyscraper. Every time she stepped onto one, she had the feeling that despite her best efforts and zero intention to do so, she would somehow step off into the void. It was perverse and illogical, but there all the same.
This felt like that. She had half-convinced herself that if she opened the app, she would accidentally set the song to playing, or maybe do it on purpose against her own intentions. She’d even avoided watching television the night before, including the news, because she was convinced some snippet of the song would come on. It was silly, she knew, but she didn’t even know what song it was, so how could she avoid it?
With a deep breath and a firm conviction that she would not accidentally press anything, she touched her phone and the screen lit up. She scrolled to the music app, then opened it. All her playlists were there. The one for working out, the one for long commutes, the angry ones, the
