“The thing about this,” Willoughby said, “is that the person who took the girls doesn’t necessarily know about it and almost certainly doesn’t remember it. It wouldn’t have mattered to him. But a girl-a girl would remember it. You would, wouldn’t you? At that age?”
“Well, I was more of a tomboy, as you might guess, but yeah, I would remember.”
“So work your way to that. Get her good and drunk on her own words. That’s all you need to do. But you know that, right? You say you were in homicide, before your maternity leave.” He found himself blushing, as if it were impolite to remind this woman that she had bodily functions, that she had reproduced. “You know your way around an interrogation. In fact, I bet you’re darn good at it.”
It was her turn to drink cold tea, to stall a little. When he was younger, he might not have been drawn to her. In his twenties he had liked the women of his class, as his own snobbish mother might have said, the thin-to-the-point-of-brittle women, Katharine Hepburn types, with those pelvis-forward walks and hips that could cut you. Evelyn had been such a woman, elegant at every angle. But softness had its virtues, and this Nancy Porter had such a doll-like face, with those red cheeks and pale blue eyes. Peasant stock, his mother would have said, but his family tree could have used some sturdier genes.
“We thought-they thought-Sergeant Lenhardt, who supervises Infante, and the commissioner himself-we thought you should be present.”
“Watching, you mean?”
“Maybe even…talking.”
“Is that legal?”
“Sometimes retired police still work for the department. Sort of a noncommissioned, consultancy gig. We could make that happen.”
“Dear-”
“ Nancy .”
“I wasn’t being a sexist-I lost your name for a second and was trying to cover up. That’s how it works, don’t you see? I’m in my sixties. I forget things. I’m not as sharp as I was. I don’t remember every detail. Right now you know this case better than I do. I have nothing to contribute.”
“Just your presence might make her think twice about trying to fake us out. With Infante in Georgia and the mother due to arrive tonight-”
“Miriam is coming? You found Miriam?”
“In Mexico, just as you said. She kept a bank account in Texas, and we got the contact info from them. Lenhardt found her last night, but we never thought she’d get here so fast. He tried to talk her out of coming at all. She’ll have to travel all day, but once she’s here, I don’t see how we can keep her away. It wasn’t our idea to sit down today, but my boss says it may be an opportunity, after all.”
“You mean, if she’s a fake, she may fool Miriam and begin gleaning information from her, almost without her knowing.” He shook his head. “She won’t fool Miriam. No one could fool Miriam about anything.”
“We’re not too worried about that. If it comes to it, we’ll always have epithelial cells. But if we could eliminate her definitively, trip her up on the facts, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“Epi…?”
“DNA. I’m just being fancy using a scientific term, and not even accurately.”
“DNA. Of course. The policeman’s new best friend.” He took another sip of cold tea. So Miriam hadn’t told them, and they hadn’t asked. She assumed and they assumed, and why wouldn’t they? Things had gone unsaid, inferences had been made. His fault, he supposed, and he had considered undoing it so many times over the years. But he had owed Dave that much.
He pushed the papers away with enough force that some skidded off the slick surface of his mahogany coffee table. A table that, he noticed now, in the presence of this vibrant young woman, was dusty and overwaxed.
“You can’t imagine being through with something like this, can you? You think the juices can always be engaged. The old cliché is that warhorses react when they smell smoke. But does that mean the horse wants to go to war or that he wants to avoid it? I’ve always thought it might be the latter. I did some good work as a detective. When I retired, I made peace with the fact that this one case would remain open, that some things cannot be known. I even-don’t laugh-thought about supernatural explanations. Alien abductions. Why not?”
“But if there are answers to be had…”
“In my gut I feel that this is going to prove to be a hoax, an ugly waste of everyone’s time and energy. I grieve for Miriam, flying back here, being forced to contemplate the one thing she seldom allowed herself to believe. Dave was the one who clung to hope, and it killed him. It was Miriam who could accept reality, who found a way to survive and get on with her life, diminished as it was.”
“Your gut-that’s what we need. In the room with me, making eye contact with her. The commissioner says he’ll talk to you further about this, if it will make a difference.”
Willoughby walked to the window. It was overcast and cool, even by March’s temperamental standards. Still, he could play golf if he wanted to. Golf, the game one never perfects, the game that reminds you every time how human you are, how flawed. He had always said he would never play, never be drawn into the country-club life that was practically his birthright, but in the empty days of retirement he had fallen into it, and now he was stuck. He’d been forty-five when he retired. Who retires at forty-five?
A failure.
He hadn’t meant to be a career police. The plan, long ago, had been to go into police work for a mere five years or so, then switch to the state’s attorney’s office, run for attorney general as the candidate who knew the law at every level, maybe even take a run at governor one day. As a young man, fresh out of UVA law school, he had plotted his future with that kind of confidence-five-year plans, ten-year plans, twenty-year plans. Then he became a murder police at age thirty and decided to stay a little longer, maybe work a famous case or two to boost his profile. Within that first year, he caught the Bethany case. He stayed another five years, then another ten.
It wasn’t only because of the Bethany case, not exactly. But justice seemed less and less important to him. The courtroom wasn’t a place for answers. It was the world of epilogues, a stage setting where the players assembled the exact same facts, fitting them together-how had this young woman put it? Yes, like Legos. Here’s my version, here’s his version. Which appeals to you the most? Legos. There were an infinite number of ways to put them together. He thought of the downtown library at Christmastime, where the windows were filled with magnificent Lego constructions made by local architectural firms. He thought about how carelessly he had assumed he would walk his own children, then grandchildren, past those windows. But his wife couldn’t have children, as it turned out. “You can adopt,” Dave had told him, and Willoughby had said unthinkingly, “But you never know what you’re going to get.”
Dave, to his credit, had said only, “No one ever does, Chet.” The debt to Dave weighed on him still, and it was not paid, it would never be paid. His one effort to repay it had resulted in this debacle-Miriam on a plane, the detectives assuming that science was on their side, that when all else failed they would get a subpoena and prove she was a liar, via her blood or her teeth-or her mother’s DNA. Yes, it would be better for everyone if this woman’s story could be debunked before Miriam arrived tonight.
“I’ll accompany you,” he said at last. “I won’t go in, but I’ll watch and listen, and you can consult me as you need to. But I’ll need some lunch, and then you better get some caffeine into me. This is going to be a long afternoon, and I’m used to enjoying a nice postprandial nap.”