“Nothing wrong with country-club housewives,” I said.
“Not until you drop them down into the middle of a couple of these shit situations. Then they break apart like china dolls. They love the kids, but they can’t take seeing them get hurt.”
I cleared my throat and sat up straighter in my chair. “Who’s going to want me around their kids after what happened?”
“People who don’t have a choice,” he said. “People who have lost their rights to lay claim to their children, people who may not have deserved that claim in the first place.” He stood up from his chair and walked around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, staring down at me the whole time. “Listen, Detective; that boy is gone, it was an accident, and nothing you can do or no prayer his momma and daddy can pray is going to bring him back. You can’t live for him and you can’t speak for him; but there are a lot of kids out there who need somebody to speak for them, and I think you’re just the man to do it.”
I said yes to Judge Shelburne mostly because it was the easiest thing to say at that time, and it took me a while to see myself as someone who could ever speak on a child’s behalf unless it was my own daughter’s. But I got used to it, and the years passed and it became easier and easier, seemed more and more natural. And then I was asked to speak for Easter and Ruby Quillby, two little girls, sisters, who didn’t have anybody else in this world to listen to them and give them a voice. And now they’d gone missing, and their voices were even harder to hear.
Helen Crawford, the woman who managed the home where the girls lived, had already called the police before getting ahold of me, and when I got there that morning I saw a young officer filling out paperwork in a patrol car in the driveway and a couple unmarkeds sitting half in the grass out at the curb. I parked behind Sandy’s old, beat-up Taurus, the same one we’d once shared back when we were partners.
He was coming up through the yard, carrying a cardboard evidence box with both hands, and when he saw me he raised it like he was bringing me a present and I’d gotten there too soon and ruined the surprise. At forty-three, he was three years younger than me and was just as tall and skinny as he’d ever been, and he wore the same kind of dark dress shirt and the same dark tie-loosened at the neck-he’d always worn. I climbed out of my car and watched him set the box inside his trunk and slam it shut. He turned around and stared for a second at the Safe-at-Home emblem on the breast pocket of my red golf shirt. “I hate to tell you this,” he finally said, “but if you’re here to install an alarm you’re too late for it to do any good.” He smiled and put his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t think I haven’t already tried.” I nodded toward Miss Crawford where she stood at the front door, staring out at the road like she wanted to ask one of us what happened next. “She said she didn’t want the kids feeling like prisoners.”
“It’s better than feeling kidnapped.”
“She also said there wasn’t enough money.”
“It’s state government,” he said. “There’s never enough money. You know that as well as anybody.” He sighed. “She told me they’re your kids.”
“They are,” I said. “Since May.”
“Well, come on, then.” He turned, and I followed him down through the yard around to the left side of the house. We’d been partners for a few years before I left the force. I’ve heard detectives say that having a partner is like having a second wife or a second husband, and I think I’d have to agree with that. Just like any other married couple, me and Sandy both got the same phone call in the middle of the night and met up at a place where something terrible might’ve just happened, bleary-eyed and frustrated, hoping that what we found wouldn’t be half as bad as the responding officer had made it sound. And, just like a real marriage, if a partnership goes to shit it can feel like a rocky divorce, and sometimes I saw myself as the spouse who’d been left behind, keeping tabs on the ex to see if he’d met anyone new and hoping there was a chance that it could all work out and everything would go back to how it used to be.
Sandy had moved up to detective faster than I had, and I knew he’d dreamed of being in the FBI or at least making the State Bureau. I figured he wouldn’t be a detective for too much longer.
We crossed the driveway of the one-story brick ranch and stopped and stared up at an open window covered in black fingerprint dust: Easter and Ruby’s bedroom. A plainclothes detective walked by inside. “All the doors were still locked this morning,” Sandy said. “And none of the kids have a key, so this is the only way they could’ve gotten out. We pulled some prints: most of them small, but some of them big enough to belong to an adult.”
“Easter wouldn’t have unlocked that window unless it was somebody she knew,” I said.
“Is that the oldest one?”
“Yep. She’s twelve.”
“They got any family around here?”
“Their mama died in May,” I said. “And their daddy gave them up years ago, but that don’t mean nothing.”
“Is he a good guy or a bad guy?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” I said. “He’s probably somewhere in between. Most of them are. He showed up at their school a week and a half ago, and he was over here on Saturday morning, trying to see them.”
“That’s what I heard,” Sandy said. I started to walk around to the front of the house. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Inside.”
“You can’t do that,” he said. “This is a crime scene.”
“But they’re my kids.”
“And you’ll see any reports you care to see as soon as we’re done writing them.”
I looked toward the front of the house, where I figured Miss Crawford was still standing right inside the door. “She’s inside there.”
“She’ll listen to me when I tell her not to touch anything; she’s too scared to touch anything anyway,” he said. “You don’t listen, and you ain’t scared of shit.”
I stared at him for a second, waiting for him to flinch, but he wouldn’t. I dug one of my cards out of my wallet and handed it to him. “Just fax over whatever you’ve got as soon as you can. Today.”
He took the card and looked at it. “You know that’s not the rules,” he said, smiling.
“When did you start following the rules?” I turned to walk back to the car, and Sandy followed me. I’d been right; Miss Crawford still stood by the front door. I could see the fear on her face. She looked up at me and tried to smile. I waved. “It’ll be okay, Miss Crawford. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
“It ain’t never happened to me,” she said.
“Well, I know, but it’s happened to other folks, and they…” My voice trailed off because I didn’t know what else to say. I pointed toward the patrol car in the driveway, where the officer was still filling out paperwork. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “You’re in good hands.”
“That went well,” Sandy said. He crossed his arms and leaned against the back of his car
“She looks pretty rattled.”
“She is. What about you?”
“I’ve been through worse than this,” I said. “And you know all about that.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not missing anything,” he said.
“Is it that bad?”
“Worse than you can imagine,” he said. “Unless, of course, you’ve seen a guy running around town with a sack full of money, about fourteen and a half million. If you have, I’m ready for his description.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an ink pen and clicked it open like he was ready to write something down.