She wandered aimlessly down the driveway. There was no evidence of the accident in the street. She slid back to her knees and stared vacantly ahead. She was so distracted, and the streetlight was so dim, that she barely saw the tiny thing nestled on the opposite curb. It was almost invisible, like a piece of junk that had fallen from a garbage can and been left there. She almost missed it, but something about it caught her eye and held it. Through her tears, a puzzled expression crept onto her face. Then the puzzlement turned to horror.
She knew what it was. But it couldn't be.
With a burst of strength, Emily pushed herself to her feet. She crossed the rest of the street hesitantly, not wanting to look into the gutter, but she couldn't tear her eyes away. Finally, she stood over it and shook her head, still not believing. Even when she bent down, picked the dirty thing off the street, and held it loosely in her hands, she wanted to be wrong.
Then her hand curled around it into a fist.
The grief subsided and became rage. She had never felt such basic hatred filling her soul. It wasn't just Snowball. It was years of cruelty coming to roost in a single crystallized moment. Emily trembled, almost washed away by the flood of anger inside her. Her jaw clenched. Her lips tightened into a thin line.
She screamed, dragging the name out into a wail. "Rachel!"
Emily sprinted back across the street, up the driveway, and into the house, slamming the door behind her with such ferocity that the whole frame of the house shook. She didn't care if the neighbors could hear. She kept bellowing her daughter's name. "Rachel!"
With deadly intent, she stormed into the kitchen, where Rachel was still calmly flipping pages in the Victoria's Secret catalog. The girl looked up, utterly unfazed by Emily's screams. She didn't say anything. She just waited.
"You did this!" Emily shouted in an agonized voice. "You did this!"
Emily stuck out her hand and uncurled her fingers, in which lay the grimy blue chew-toy that Snowball happily fetched on command. "He didn't get loose," Emily hissed. "You let him out in front. And then you tossed the toy for him when the car was coming. You killed him!"
"That's ridiculous," Rachel said.
"Don't give me that innocent shit," Emily exploded. "You killed him! You heartless fucking little bitch, you killed my dog!"
The years of restraint gave way. Emily bent down and yanked Rachel bodily out of the kitchen chair. She swung her arm back and slapped the girl fiercely across the face. "You killed him!" she screamed again, and then hit Rachel again, harder. "How could you do this to me?"
She hit her again.
And again. And again.
Rachel's cheek was beet red and streaked with the imprint of Emily's fingers. Blood trickled from her lip. She didn't fight back. She stood there, her eyes cold and calm, not flinching as each blow pounded her face. She absorbed the punishment until Emily finally ran out of fury. Emily staggered backward, staring at her daughter, then turned away and buried her face in her hands. The room was suddenly quiet again.
Emily nursed one hand in the other. She felt Rachel's eyes boring into her back. Then, without another word, her daughter stalked out of the kitchen. She heard Rachel climb the stairs, then heard the clanging of pipes as she ran water in the bathroom.
It was the one thing Emily had sworn to herself she would never do, no matter how bad things got between them.
And she had done it.
"Mrs. Stoner?" Bird Finch repeated. "Is there anything you'd like to tell Rachel right now?"
Emily stared hollowly into the camera. Tears filled her eyes and burst onto her cheeks. To everyone watching on television, it was the pain of a mother faced with the ultimate agony-the loss of a child. They didn't need to know the truth.
"I guess I'd tell her I'm sorry," Emily said.
9
Stride sat alone in his basement cubicle at city hall on Friday night. The chrome desk lamp cast a small circle of light over the files he was trying to read. He had returned to his office in order to catch up on paperwork and review reports on the other crimes that had occurred in the weeks since Rachel disappeared. Most were straightforward domestic disputes, auto thefts, retail break-ins-the kind of investigations he could delegate to the seven sergeants he supervised. But the sheer volume was catching up with him. He couldn't see the pockmarked wood of his desk underneath the files and papers.
The downstairs headquarters of the Detective Bureau was quiet. His team had gone home. Stride liked it here at night, when the silence was complete and the phone didn't ring. He only had to worry about the buzzing of his pager, like a mosquito biting him to alert him to bad things happening in the city. He didn't spend much time in his office during the day. The bureau was small, and he had to share the weight of serious investigations himself. That was fine. He liked being in the field, doing the real work. He squeezed in the administrative half of his job at odd hours when he wouldn't be interrupted.
The city didn't pay for plush quarters anyway. The foam tiles over his head were water-stained from the many times that pipes had leaked and dripped down onto his desk. The industrial gray carpet carried a faint aroma of mildew. His cubicle was large enough to squeeze in a visitor's chair, which was the only real difference between a lieutenant's office and a sergeant's office. Stride didn't bother personalizing his space with posters and family photos the way most of his team did. He had only one old picture of Cindy tacked to the cork bulletin board, and even that photo was half covered by the latest advisories from Homeland Security. It was a messy, cold place, and he was happy to escape from it whenever he could.
He heard the ding of the elevator a few feet away. That rarely happened at night. It meant someone from above, in the real city offices, was coming downstairs. He waited for the doors to open and recognized K-2's dwarflike silhouette.
"Evening, Jon," Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick said in a reedy voice.
K-2 used an open-toed walk and strolled through the open door of Stride's cubicle. He looked down, frowning, at the pile of papers in the empty chair. Stride apologized and moved the stack to the floor so the chief could sit down.
"So you think she's dead?" Kinnick asked, cutting straight to the point.
"That's the way it looks," Stride said. There was no point in sugarcoating what both men knew. "Nine out of ten don't come back alive at this point."
Kinnick yanked on the knot of his tie. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, which was baggy on his tiny frame, and looked as if he were just coming from a city council meeting. "Shit. The mayor's not happy about this, you know. We're getting queries from the national press. Dateline. They want to know if this is a serial killer story, something they can run with."
"There's no evidence of that."
"Well, since when did evidence mean a damn thing to these people?" Kinnick warbled. He dug a finger in one of his ears. They flapped from the side of his small head like cabbage leaves.
Stride smiled. He was remembering the leprechaun parody of K-2 that Maggie did at a bureau party the previous St. Patrick's Day.
"This funny to you?" Kinnick asked.
"No, sir. Sorry. You don't have to tell me about the media. Bird's all over me."
Kinnick snorted. He was gruff with his lieutenants and an easy mark for jokes, but Stride liked him. K-2 was an administrative cop, not a field detective, but he defended his department fiercely with city officials, and he made a point of meeting with every interest group in the city, from kindergarten classes to the Rotary, to talk up the police force. He was loyal to his team, and that went a long way with Stride.
"You realize we don't have a lot of time here?" Kinnick asked. He kicked his black wingtip in the direction of Stride's overflowing desk. "You're doing way too much work on this yourself already."