There were streaks on her forehead and her neck, but her hair her red hair, the hair that had inspired her father to call her his chili pepper when she was only a baby - was now the color of a thicket's thorns, of a rosebush past recovery.
As she stuffed the ruined sweatshirt into the bottom of the trash
can, a mother came in with two little boys. Trixie held her breath, but the woman didn't look twice at her. Maybe it was really that easy. She walked out of the bathroom, past a new Santa who'd come on duty, toward the parking lot. She thought of the man who'd left his car in the woods: Maybe he had staged his own death. Maybe he'd done it for the sole purpose of starting over.
* * *
If a teenager wants to disappear, chances are he or she will succeed. It was why runaways were so difficult to track - until they were rounded up in a drug or prostitution ring. Most teens who vanished did so for independence, or to get away from abuse. Unlike an adult, however, who could be traced by a paper trail of ATM withdrawals
and rental car agreements and airline passenger lists, a kid was more likely to pay in cash, to hitch-hike, to go unnoticed by bystanders.
For the second time in an hour, Bartholemew pulled into the neighborhood where the Stones lived. Trixie Stone was officially registered now as a missing person, not a fugitive from justice. That couldn't happen, not even if all signs pointed to the fact that the reason she'd left was because she knew she was about to be charged with murder.
In the American legal system, you could not use a suspect's disappearance as probable cause. Later on, during a trial, a prosecutor might hold up Trixie's flight as proof of guilt, but there was never going to be a trial if Bartholemew couldn't convince a judge to swear out a warrant for Trixie Stone's arrestso that at the moment she
was located, she could be taken into custody.
The problem was, had Trixie not fled, he wouldn't be arresting her yet. Christ, just two days ago, Bartholemew had been convinced that Daniel Stone was the perp . . . until the physical evidence started to prove otherwise. Prove, though, was a dubious term. He had a boot print that matched Trixie's footwear - and that of thousands of other town residents. He had blood on the victim that belonged to a female, which ruled out only half the population. He had a hair the same general color as Trixie's - a hair with a root on it full of uncontaminated DNA, but no known sample of Trixie's to compare it to and no imminent means of getting one. Any defense attorney would be able to drive a Hummer through the holes in that investigation. Bartholemew needed to physically find Trixie Stone, so that he could specifically link her to Jason Underhill's murder.
The Tenth Circle
He knocked on the Stones' front door. Again, no one answered, but this time, when Bartholemew tried the knob, it was locked. He cupped his hands around the glass window and peered into the mudroom.
Daniel Stone's coat and boots were gone.
He walked halfway around the attached garage to a tiny window and peered inside. Laura Stone's Honda, which hadn't been here two hours ago, was parked in one bay. Daniel Stone's pickup was gone. Bartholemew smacked his hand against the exterior wall of the house and swore. He couldn't prove that Daniel and Laura Stone had gone off to find Trixie before the cops did, but he would have bet money on it. When your child is missing, you don't go grocery shopping. You sit tight and wait for the word that she's being brought safely home.
Bartholemew pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. After all, the Stones had a better chance of finding Trixie than he did. And it would be far easier for Bartholemew to track two adults than their fourteen-year-old daughter.
And in the meantime? Well, he could get a warrant to search the house, but it wouldn't do him any good. No lab worth its salt would accept a toothbrush from Trixie's bathroom as a viable known sample of DNA. What he needed was the girl herself and a lab-sanctioned sample of her blood.
Which, in that instant, Bartholemew realized he already had sitting in a sealed rape kit, evidence for a trial that wasn't going to happen.
* * *
In eighth grade, as part of health class, Trixie had had to take care of an egg. Each student was given one, with the understanding that it had to remain intact for a week, could not ever be left alone, and had to be “fed” every three hours. This was supposed to be some big contraceptive deterrent: a way for kids to realize how having a baby was way harder than it looked. Trixie took the assignment seriously. She named her egg Benedict and fashioned a little carrier for it that she wore around her
neck. She paid her English teacher fifty cents to babysit the egg
while she was in gym class; she took it to the movies with Zephyr. She held it in the palm of her hand during classes and got used to the feel of it, the shape, the weight.
Even now, she couldn't tell you how the egg had gotten that hairline fracture. Trixie first noticed it on the way to school one morning. Her father had shrugged off the F she received - he said it was a stupid assignment, that a kid was nothing like an egg. Yet Trixie had wondered if his benevolence had something to do with the fact that in real life, he would have failed too: how else to explain the difference between what he thought Trixie was up to and what she actually was doing?
Now, she inched up the wrist of her coat and looked at the loose net of scars. It was her hairline crack, she supposed, and it was only a matter of time before she completely went to pieces.
“Humpty freaking Dumpty,” she said out loud. A toddler bouncing on his mother's lap next to Trixie clapped his hands. “Dumpty!” he yelled. “Fall!” He lurched himself backward so fast that Trixie was sure that he'd smash his head on the floor of the
bus station.
His mother grabbed him before that happened. “Trevor. Cut it out, will you?” Then she turned to Trixie. “He's a big fan of the Egg Man.”
The woman was really just a girl. Maybe she was a few years older than Trixie, but not by much. She wore a ratty blue scarf wrapped around her neck and an army surplus coat. From the number of bags around them, it looked like they were making a permanent move - but then again, for all Trixie knew, this was how people with kids had to travel. “I don't get nursery rhymes,” the girl said. “I mean, why would all the king's horses and all the king's men try to put an egg back together anyway?”
“What's the egg doing on the wall in the first place?” Trixie said.
“Exactly. I think Mother Goose was on crack.” She smiled at Trixie. “Where are you headed?”
“Canada.”
“We're going to Boston.” She let the boy wriggle off her lap. Trixie wanted to ask the girl if the baby was hers. If she'd had him by accident. If, even after you make what everyone considers to be the biggest mistake of your life, you stop thinking it's a mistake and maybe see it as the best thing that ever could have happened.
“Ew, Trev, is that you?” The girl grabbed the baby around the waist and hauled him toward her face, rump first. She grimaced at the collection of duffels littering their feet. “Would you mind watching my stuff while I do a toxic waste removal?” As she stood up, she banged the diaper bag against her open backpack, spilling its contents all over the floor. “Oh, shit.. .”
“I'll get it,” Trixie said as the girl headed for the restroom with Trevor. She started jamming items back into the diaper bag: plastic keys that played a Disney song, an orange, a four-pack of crayons. A tampon with the wrapper half off, a hair scrunchie. Something that might, at one time, have been a cookie. A wallet. Trixie hesitated. She told herself she was only going to peek at the girl's name, because she didn't want to ask and run the risk of striking up a conversation.