Midnight Baby

CHAPTER 21

The telephone rang in the middle of night. We both bolted upright, the reflex reactions of a cop on call and a mother. Mike picked up the receiver.

“Flint,” he said in a clear voice, rubbing sleep-filled eyes with his fist. When I was sure the call had nothing to do with Casey, I fell back onto the pillows, still sizzling with adrenaline rush. I eavesdropped on a lot of uh huhs and Jesus Christs before Mike hung up.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Bad stuff. George Metrano was booked on a single charge of murder and processed into the city jail at eight.” He reached through the dark for my hand. “An hour ago in his cell he made a noose out of his denims and hanged himself.”

“Jesus,” I moaned. I curled myself around Mike and held on. “He’s dead?”

“Yes, dammit.”

“Does Leslie know?”

“Yes. They’re bringing her in. Throw on some clothes. We should hurry. Leslie won’t feel much like waiting around for us.

“Back up,” I said. “I must have missed something. Why would Leslie wait around for us? What does it have to do with us?”

“George left two letters on his bunk. One for Leslie. And one for you.”

“For me?” I sat up again and snapped on the bedside light. “Why would he leave a letter for me?”

“Guess we’ll find that out.”

We drove through dark space, a hot jet of light moving too fast to connect with the night world outside. Transients from the daytime galaxy.

At the Long Beach police station, we were taken into a small interrogation room furnished with a table and a few odd chairs. There Leslie sat alone with her head resting on folded arms. The fluorescent lights overhead washed her face a pale milky gray, made her smeared lipstick too vivid in contrast. Her eyes seemed unfocused when she watched me walk in and pull out the chair beside her. She muttered something I could not decipher.

I touched her coat sleeve and repeated the same impotent words I had used at her house the night before. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” She brought up her chin and rested it on her hands, staring at the wall in front of her. “Doctor gave me something so I wouldn’t go off and do something wild. Wish I had said no to it. My mind is so full of mush I can’t feel anything. You ever have that happen to you, you can’t feel anything?”

Sergeant Mahakian came in then with a pair of men in suits, detectives, no doubt. Six people made tight quarters out of the small room.

Mahakian carried two folders.

“I know this is unpleasant,” he said. “But I don’t know a better way to do it. The letters Mr. Metrano left are evidence, so we can’t release them to you. I need you both to read their contents carefully to help us verify that they were in fact written by George Metrano and do reflect his state of mind. Now, in light of the circumstances, Mrs. Metrano, you might want some privacy. If that is your wish, you just tell me so and the others will clear out.”

Leslie pulled herself upright. “Did you all read my letter already?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then I guess there isn’t much left that’s private about it, is there?”

“No, ma’am.” He smiled gently. He opened one of the folders, took out a single sheet of paper encased in a plastic sleeve, and placed it on the table in front of Leslie. She moved it so that I could see it.

Yellow lined paper that had been folded into quarters, with a single sentence scrawled in blue ink: “Forgive me.”

Leslie read it, turned the sheet over, read her name printed there like an address on an envelope.

“That’s all?” she said, looking at both sides again. “That’s all he had to say to me?”

“We didn’t find anything else with your name on it. The second letter is addressed to Miss MacGowen. I would like her to read it over first before she passes it on to you, Mrs. Metrano. If she thinks its contents are too hurtful, we may hold off showing you until we can get in a family member or a counselor.”

Leslie gave me a glance that told me she was beginning to feel again. She was furious.

Mahakian handed me two sheets, both encased in plastic sleeves. Both were covered with close, precise printing done with a cheap, leaky ballpoint pen. I slumped back in the straight-back chair and, with Mike looking on over my shoulder, I read:

Maggie MacGowen,

I don’t have anyone else to turn to. My wife trusts you so I am asking you to please help her understand. Tell her not to hate me.

Tell her I never meant to hurt anyone. Maybe what I did was wrong, but I was only trying to do what I thought was best for us.

I confess before God that I caused the death of Randall Ramsdale. He would not help me with a loan. We had a fight about it that got out of hand. I feel he must take some of the blame for what happened to him. If he had not been so stubborn the result would have been different.

I hope that when my wife understands why I had to give our little girl to Mr. Ramsdale she will forgive me. Amy had a good life with him and we had a good life because of the financial help he gave us. I found her a good home.

After Mr. Ramsdale was dead I tried to get Amy back for my wife. I took to showing myself to Amy. I wanted her to get used to seeing me and feel comfortable when the time came. But I guess it scared her to see me because she in a way recognized me from a long time ago. Mrs. Ramsdale had her own reasons for keeping Amy and she told Amy I was trying to kidnap her and hurt her.

You will have to ask Mrs. Ramsdale what all she did, but I know she had that child scared to death of me. I believe that was why Amy ran away, because she believed I was going to hurt her. There was a private investigator came around asking questions. I thought he would help Amy understand I was her real and true father and she could come to me on her own. But it did not work out that way. When she came to me herself, she only got more scared when she recognized me as the man she thought would hurt her.

The saddest day of my life was the day I learned from Mrs. Ramsdale that Amy was dead. You have got to make my wife believe that I had no part in the killing of that little girl. Alive or dead we would still get Amy’s inheritance, so why would I harm her?

I know I did some hurtful things to you and you probably hate me for that. I do not believe I would have harmed you. I had to make you understand that I was serious, just like I had to make Mr. Ramsdale understand that I was serious and needed some assistance from him. I guess that what I want to say most is that I am sorry that all this got started. I am taking the only action I know of that will put an end to it all with some honor.

Tell my wife that I have paid my insurance premiums and she will be okay.

Sincerely,

George Metrano

I read it through a second time, vaguely disappointed. At one point in this affair, I had nearly ascribed some noble, altruistic motives to George – poor man, big family, desperate solution. The letter showed no hint of nobility. Inelegant prose, an ugly story, tawdry rationalization. Nowhere did I see the word “love.” Nowhere did I get the idea he felt truly repentant, nor had he accepted full blame for anything he had done. The only remorse I saw was that nothing had worked out the way he wanted it to. Like a Vegas craps shoot.

The man had been dead less than two hours. He had addressed his last formal thoughts to me. I should have felt something more – at the very least some sense of tragedy. But I did not. To be sure, I was aggrieved for his wife, who sat next to me, waiting her turn to see the letter. In a way, I guess that what I felt most was relief.

For years, George had dumped one heavy burden after another on Leslie. Among other things, he had stolen her peace of mind – no small crime. In the end, even in writing, he hadn’t had the guts to confess his transgressions directly to her. He had been as amoral as a newborn child. And in his way, nearly as dependent. I didn’t know yet whether Leslie had figured out that she was going to be a whole lot better off without old George, but I did my part – I passed her the letter.

Mahakian started to reach out for the pages before Leslie took them, but he pulled his hand back. Along with Mike and me and the two men in suits, he watched Leslie read.

Tears ran down her face, and her jaw was set in angry knots. Good grief therapy, that letter, I thought. When she was finished, she pushed her chair back and slowly rose to her feet.

Leslie addressed Mahakian. “When a man dies in prison, how is he buried?”

“Well.” Mahakian looked around for support. “The body is usually turned over to the family.”

“Yes. But if he has no family to claim it, what happens?”

“I’m not real sure. Now and then cadavers are turned over to medical schools. Most of the time the county buries them in potter’s field in a sort of mass grave with other indigents. Why? Your husband said there was insurance money.”

“My husband?” Leslie handed Mahakian the letter, holding him in an eerily level gaze. “The man who wrote this shit is a complete stranger to me.”

With back straight and head held high, she strode from the room.

“Should I go after her?” Mahakian asked, befuddled.

“Definitely,” Mike said. “She’s bombed on dope. I don’t think she should drive herself.”

Mahakian passed his files to one of the suits and dashed out. He was a nice man. Good-looking, about Leslie’s age. A long heart-to-heart with him could be good grief therapy for her of another sort. I wondered whether he was married.

Leslie had said she couldn’t feel anything because of the sedative. Her reactions were flat. I planned to call her when the sedative had had time to wear off, to hear what she really thought. I knew it would be a big-time flame-out.

We stepped into the hall just as the elevator doors closed behind Leslie and Mahakian.

Mike said to me, “Quite a letter.”

“Quite,” I said. “George wasn’t about to take the fall alone, was he? Not even posthumously. I feel so awful for Leslie.”

“She’ll be okay.” Mike pushed the elevator call button.

“Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” I was saying as the doors slid open for us.

“What is?”

“George and Randy. To be sure, a deadlier combination than Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but as alike in their way.”

“You mean stubborn?” Mike pushed the lobby button and we started down. “Isn’t that what George kept saying about Randy, that he was stubborn?”

“I mean that if either of them wanted something, he thought any means to attain it was legit, even baby-selling and murder. What a couple of puds. My God, Attila the Hun had a finer moral code than those two.”

“Well sure, but old Attila was a big old bleeding-heart liberal leftist.”

I laughed. “What makes you think so?”

“He had to be as far left as you can go,” Mike said, leading me out through the deserted lobby. “Have you ever heard anyone described as being to the left of Attila? Never. It’s always ‘He’s further to the right than Attila the Hun.’ Therefore, if everyone is to his right…”

“Take me home,” I said.

Mike and I were both feeling the loss of two nights’ sleep. Ever macho, Mike said he was fine to drive, but I had to keep him talking all the way up the freeway. He gave up the effort just about the time the first orange glow of dawn lit the sky over the San Gabriels. He pulled off the freeway in downtown L.A., weaving like a drunk up Figueroa, and parked in the lot across from the Original Pantry. The Pantry never closes – it can’t, even in a riot, because there’s no lock on the door.

Mugs of coffee helped a little. Looking without interest at a plate covered with eggs, bacon, hash browns, I suggested we get a room at the Hilton and crash for a while where the telephones couldn’t reach us. Elizabeth was due to be brought in sometime during the midmorning, and there wasn’t time to go home, sleep, and come back.

Instead, we went to Parker Center, where there are a few cots stashed around so that morning-watch troops – the patrol shift on duty from midnight to eight – can get a little sleep when they have court scheduled during the day.

Mike found me a cot in a sort of closet behind the third-floor offices. The bed was narrow and hard, and had a tiny hard pillow, like the headrest in a coffin. My sleep was as close to death as I think I’ve ever gotten. At least it felt that way. I wasn’t out very long, two hours at the most, before I was awakened by the morning sounds of working people. I was sitting on the edge of the cot, running my fingers through my hair, when Mike came in to get me. I was rumpled and grouchy and in dire need of repair. Mike, on the other hand, had shaved and put on a fresh shirt.

“Feel better?” he asked, damnably chipper.

“I think so. You wouldn’t just have another clean shirt in your locker, would you?”

“I might.”

I went into the closest rest room and did the best I could with the materials I had to work with, liquid soap, water, and a borrowed comb. Mike knocked on the door and handed through a red cotton golf shirt with “Robbery-Homicide” and a cartoon gangster with a tommy gun embroidered on the left breast. I traded my wrinkled oxford-cloth for his shirt, tucking it into the top of my 501s as I opened the door.

Everyone I saw in the hall wore regulation button-down and flannel and had a gun riding a belt holster. I felt conspicuously civilian.

Mike said, with a gleam in his eye, “Elizabeth Ramsdale is on her way up.”

“Her way up from where?”

“Guest registration. I want to talk to her before they book her.”

“I want to be there,” I said.

Mike took my arm. “I think you’ve earned that privilege. Just stand at the back and look menacing. For some reason, some women are more intimidated by another woman than by a man. Just go along with everything I say and don’t ever look surprised. And for God’s sake don’t ever contradict me. Got it?”

“Got it.” I felt suddenly energized.

We were waiting in an interrogation room when Elizabeth was led in, handcuffed, by a pair of uniformed women officers.

After a night in the Cabo jail, followed by an escorted flight north, Elizabeth was a bit mussed, though her expensive haircut was money well spent, and she had enough tan that she didn’t need makeup. For a monster, she was very nice-looking, and smaller, more slender than I had expected. There was something about her that put me off, as if the exquisite frame beneath her face had been formed out of stainless steel instead of ordinary bone. She was slender inside a blue jail-issue jumper. She had turned up the collar, rolled the cuffs, pushed up the sleeves. With her haughty carriage, she could easily have passed among the yacht-club set. Except maybe for the handcuffs.

Mike pulled out a chair for her.

“I’m Detective Flint, Mrs. Ramsdale. We spoke night before last. And this is MacGowen. Have a seat.”

He left the cuffs on her.

I leaned against the wall, maybe three feet to her side, with my arms crossed, doing my best woman-officer impression. Mike stood, too, facing Elizabeth across the table. First thing, Mike dropped the doctored photograph of Ricco Zambotti onto the table in front of her. I watched her face fade about two days’ worth of tan when she saw it. She didn’t say anything.

“Coast Guard flew in Mr. Zambotti last night, Mrs. Ramsdale.”

“Did you say flew him in? Where’s my boat?”

“Afraid you have to write off the boat.” Mike shook his head, sympathetic. “Ricco’s quite a talker when he gets going. You want to hear about it?”

“I want my attorney.”

“Sure thing.” Next to Ricco’s picture, Mike laid down the enhanced image Guido had made of George. Elizabeth’s big eyes grew wider. She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth and bit it.

“You should be more careful about the friends and enemies you make, Mrs. Ramsdale,” he said, his voice friendly. He was being Uncle Ned out on the front porch. “You hooked yourself up with some real conversational folks. Now, I personally cannot see how one little bitty woman could have pushed around two great big men. So, I thought maybe you would like a chance to make your own statement. You know, correct any errors or false impressions they may have given.”

“I want my lawyer,” she said.

“No problem,” he said. “Let’s just clear up a few details while we’re here. The big picture is obvious enough, it’s just that I don’t have a real good handle on who did what and when they did it. Goes around and around in my mind, stuck. That ever happen to you? You get something stuck in your head? I do, all the time. This ditty is stuck in there right now, going round and round:

“About the Shark, the phlegmatical one,

Pale sot of the Maldive sea,

The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,

How alert in attendance be.

“That’s Melville,” he said. “Herman Melville. You ever have to memorize little poems like that in school? Boy, I did. Every time I try to sort out this case, I start thinking about that poem. In a way, I guess it is like a bunch of fish swimming around down there. Only, you can’t tell one fish from the other. Except for the shark. Even that is pretty murky, Mrs. Ramsdale. Maybe you can help me out. The waters are so stirred up, I can’t tell for sure which one of you is the shark.”

Elizabeth looked away from him, saw me, dropped her eyes. She said, “I won’t talk to you.”

“That’s fine,” he said, smiling. “Long as you don’t mind listening. Too bad you’re all alone, because the way I read it, the three of you are going to take the fall together. What you need to start worrying about is special circumstances. We have a multiple-murder situation here. Add to that a couple of counts of conspiracy, assault with intent, child-selling, abuse, and neglect. I could go on for a while, but you know what went down. In the end, it adds up to three lifetime passes with a mileage bonus upgrade for seats on death row.”

Elizabeth had been biting that big lip during Mike’s entire speech. I saw blood around the small, even teeth. She didn’t say anything, and Mike went on:

“The state hasn’t executed a woman for a lot of years.” He was slipping away from Uncle Ned. “But the environment is getting ripe for it. Seems to me the murder of an innocent little girl by her stepmother might be just the case the public and the courts decide to jump on.

“There are a lot of ways this could go down, Mrs. Ramsdale. Make it easy on yourself, give the state a hand. Usually, the DA wants to fry the triggerman. Or, in this case, the slasher. My take on this is that you’re the shark and the other two danced attendance. But they did the dirty deeds, not you. So do yourself a favor. Tell me a story.”

“I want my attorney,” she said.

“Absolutely.” Mike smiled. “Soon as we get you booked. Give me a few more minutes and I’ll have you taken right back downstairs.” Mike leafed through the file that had come up with Elizabeth. “Did you have your strip search? I don’t see that here.”

She hissed through clenched jaws, “Yes. I did.”

“I don’t see the paperwork.” He closed the file and smiled more. “Not a big thing. We can do it again.”

I was biting my tongue. One more minute and I was going to go out and call her an attorney. I thought Mike was skating near the edge.

“Ricco and George,” Mike said. “Hard to keep prisoners segregated downstairs. I hate it when they get together, work out their stories. Sure plays hell, especially if they decide to scapegoat a third person. The story we’re getting goes something like this. Your husband was leaving you. With the prenuptial agreement you signed, you’d be back waiting tables. Then, lucky you, you found him with his throat cut. You sank him in the front yard so no one would find him until you had drained the Ramsdale assets. The delay pissed off George. He wanted Randy declared dead so he could reclaim his little girl and cash in on Randy’s estate – that was all part of his original deal with Randy when he handed over his kid. She was his heir. Did you know Hillary’s identity, Mrs. Ramsdale?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Okay. This is how I read it. You need the kid for a while longer. You do everything you can to scare the shit out of her so she’ll stay away from George. You harass her night and day, tell her George wants to steal her back. This makes some sense to her, because she can remember being snatched – she was four – and she can remember George helping Randy take her. You use her nightmares, you give her some new ones. You go too far, though, because after a while she decides she’s safer living on the streets than living with you. What did you do to her, Elizabeth? Did you tell her about Randy? Did you tell her his body was out in front of the house? Did you take her swimming and show her?”

Blood trickled from her lip, and she wiped it with the back of her hand. Looking down at the red smear, she said, “I want my attorney.”

“Uh huh. You were okay as long as Hillary stayed away. To make sure she didn’t come back at some inconvenient moment, you located her and canceled her return ticket for good. Just two weeks before Mother’s Day. That ever occur to you, Mother’s Day?”

She gave Mike a defiant glare. “I won’t say anything.”

“You don’t have to.” Mike kicked the chair next to her, making both of us jump. “We’ll just let Ricco and George tell it their way, Elizabeth, if that’s what you want.”

“Ricco won’t say anything.” She looked Mike right in the eye. “He loves me.”

“He loves you? Is that why he left you in a Mexican jail? His best shot is to make a deal, go state’s evidence and testify against you. If he has any brains, that’s what he’ll do.”

“You’re trying to scare me.”

Like a blackjack dealer, Mike laid down another card, the computer-enhanced picture of the driver of the Corvette. When Elizabeth saw the grotesque image of Richard Nixon, she began to have some trouble with regular breathing.

Mike leaned over the table, putting his face near hers. “You forgot to cover your hands that night, Elizabeth. You forgot to vacuum loose hair out of the mask when you took it off, wash out the traces of sweat and saliva. That was dumb. Really dumb. But you know where you really messed up?”

“Yes,” she said, snapping her head up to confront Mike. “I know where I messed up.” Angrily she swept away the pictures of Ricco and George, making a racket with her handcuffs: “I learned a long time ago that if you want something done right you’ve got to do it yourself. No matter how dirty it is. And that’s all I have to say.”

“If that’s the way you want it.” Mike pulled out a fourth picture, a group shot of junior-high-aged kids mugging for the camera. I recognized them, the journalism class at Hillary’s school. Mike had torn a page from her yearbook. The paper was a bit wrinkled from being in salt water, but Hillary’s happy face was absolutely clear in the front row center.

Mike put the page on the table in front of Elizabeth. “The individual I sincerely want to talk to is Hillary. Of course, that’s impossible. But I really would like to hear what she has to say. She looks like one great kid.”

Elizabeth suddenly lost all of her starch, and nearly collapsed from her chair.

Mike, with complete emotional detachment, grabbed Elizabeth and righted her. When she had herself in control again, he backed away from her. He stood shoulder to shoulder with me. With arms crossed, back against the wall, dramatically sad-faced, he said again, “One great kid.”

“Please,” she begged, “let me go lie down somewhere.”

Mike frowned. “What did Hillary say to Ricco before he cut her? Think she asked him to let go of her? Think she told him he was hurting her? Think she wanted to go lie down somewhere?”

Each question caught her like a blow to the face. I wished I could deliver the real thing to her. No, I wished Leslie Metrano had five minutes alone with her. I tossed off any notion of calling her attorney for her. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I want my attorney.”

“Sure thing,” Mike said. But he didn’t move.

She took a moment’s time out for hard thinking. Then she turned her lovely eyes on Mike, looking up at him through the curly lashes. “You have to believe me. I didn’t intend for the child to get hurt.”

Mike shook his head. “You did some detective work, or maybe she called you. You found where she was cooping on the street and you sent Ricco to get her.”

“He was only supposed to pick her up,” Elizabeth insisted. “I’m telling you the truth. We were going to take her to Mexico with us, put her in a boarding school there for a while.”

“Doesn’t work, Mrs. Ramsdale,” Mike said. “If all he wanted was to pick her up, why did Ricco take a razor with him? You can’t tell me he had to protect himself. She only weighed ninety pounds. What I think is this. He cut her on the street to make it look like a hooker-client thing, hoping no one would pay much attention to it. But just for insurance, he made the razor cut look a lot like the one across Randy’s jugular. Then if George started to get froggy, you could use that little detail to settle him down. The way I put it together, George was a bigger problem for you than the cops. What were your plans for him? Guess I should ask, when were you planning to do him?”

Elizabeth reached up to fluff her hair, and the chain between the cuffs banged her chin. She rubbed the spot as she looked from me to Mike.

“The question is,” she said, “when was George planning to kill me?”

“MacGowen,” Mike said, nudging my shoulder. “You have an answer for that question?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “As soon as you showed up at your house. Metrano has been lying in wait for you ever since you told him his daughter was dead. Now that you’re in custody, guess he’s missed his shot.”

“He hasn’t missed anything,” Mike said. “He’s taking his shot right now. He’s spilling his guts, Elizabeth. He finally got smart. He’s going to let the state do his dirty work for him.”

Elizabeth was more scared than she let on. The armpits of the jumpsuit were sweated through. I gave her credit for hanging tough, though. When Mike asked if she had anything to say, she said:

“Yes. Fuck you.”

“Nice way to talk,” Mike said.

“I want my attorney,” she said.

“You got it.” Mike stepped out into the hall and summoned the uniformed officers to come fetch Elizabeth. I saw disappointment in the faces of a couple of the detectives who had been keeping the young female officers entertained. They were both lively, hard-bodied types, apparently holding their own in the mandatory war-story swap.

I followed Elizabeth as far as the door.

“Nice meeting you,” I said to her back.

She turned and glared at me. “Fuck you, too.”

Mike laughed.

“Be careful, Flint,” I said when we were alone. “I may beef you with the ACLU. I am sure that interrogation was not within guidelines.”

“Fuck the ACLU,” he said, shrugging.

“I pay dues to the ACLU.”

He smiled his wry smile. “Figures.”

“She’s quite a babe, isn’t she?” I said as we walked out toward the elevators. “You have to admit, she’s strong on determination.”

“Cold bitch. The woman knows what she wants and she’s going to get it, no matter what the cost is to her or anyone else. Feels no guilt – complete sociopath. A lot of career criminals are like that. And politicians.”

“Will she ever talk?” I asked.

“She just did,” he exploded. “She told us she’s going to let Ricco take the fall for killing Hillary. For the rest, did she deny anything? You saw her. Was any of this new information to her? No way. She told us plenty.”

We stepped into the elevator.

“Where did you find the Nixon mask?” I asked.

“Did I say we’d found the mask?”

“Pictures of her hands?”

He just grinned.

In retaliation, I took a handful of his rear end just as the doors opened onto the lobby full of police. “You’re such a good liar.”

“When I need to be,” he said, grabbing my hand away. “The important thing is to keep her off guard for a while. As soon as her attorney shows up, she’s going to find out what we do and don’t have, mainly, Ricco and George. Tell you what, though – I’d sure like to be there when she finds out she’s going to take the dive all by herself. Our shark swims alone this time.”

“Herman Melville,” I laughed. “Give me a break. Where did that come from?”

“From you,” he said. “You said you like Melville.”

We walked outside into the hazy sunshine. I squinted against the glare as I looked out across the patchy brown lawn in front of Parker Center. Little family groups, some with picnics and toys to occupy the legions of tiny children, clustered here and there wearing the same solemn faces you see in hospital waiting rooms. A young Latino was passing out bright blue fliers for the bail bondsman down the street. I saw the edges of the fliers sticking out of several of the picnic bags and a couple of shirt pockets.

I took Mike’s arm. “What you laid out for Elizabeth – except for the obvious bullshit – is the way it happened, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m glad they self-destructed, but I still can’t comprehend the terror they must have put Hillary through. And I don’t mean the month Elizabeth had her alone. From the time George gave her up, I think she was doomed. I try to imagine what it must have been like for her. As you said, Mike, she was four and a half when they took her away from her mother. She would remember her family. In the beginning, she would have cried for them. Remember what Mrs. Sinclair said? George came and settled Amy down after she was supposed to be Hillary because she was so upset. What could he have told her? ‘Mom and I don’t want you anymore’? ‘Mom is dead’? What?”

“Unless Mrs. Sinclair has more to tell us, we’ll never know,”

Mike sighed. The bright sunlight was unkind to his fatigued face.

I turned away from the sun and started walking. “The big crime was forcing the child to abandon not only her family, but herself. They gave her new parents, changed her hair, her name, gave her a dimple. Even changed her birthday. Can a child survive that sort of uprooting intact?”

“Maybe.” Mike turned up his palms. “Depends on the kid, I guess. And how they treated her. After a while, she probably settled in okay.”

“Everyone said she was the kind of kid who was always trying to please. So maybe she seemed settled in, but she had nightmares. Or else she thought her memories of Amy were bad dreams. Whatever, she was afraid of those pictures in her mind, the pictures of George.” We stopped at the corner, at the edge of a crowd waiting for the pedestrian light to change. “She could never feel really safe. How could she ever be sure that someone wouldn’t snatch her away again, make her start all over as someone new? And the household itself was hardly settled. Hanna died and left her. After Hanna, there were two stepmothers, both disasters. Old Randy was a constant, but from what I hear, he was never very tightly wrapped. In the end, even he disappeared.”

The light changed and walkers surged around us to get into the crosswalk. The light had turned red again before I thought to move. I pushed the walk button again.

“When Randy was gone,” I said, “Hillary set off on an odyssey to find the truth. When what she found was her nightmares personified, she did for herself what Randy, Hanna, and George had done before. She re-created herself. Pisces, child of the streets. A kid with no history at all.”

“You really liked her, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I would have, if I’d had time to get to know her.”

The light was green again. As I stepped off the curb, Mike reached for my arm and pulled me back.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Across the street.”

“Why?”

I had no answer. I had simply followed the flow of the crowd. I looked at the opposite side of the street, at the columns of gray-suited city workers trekking down into the mall for lunch. I put my hand against Mike’s tie and looked up into his face.

“Make me an offer,” I said. “Where shall we go?”

“Time to take your bearings, Maggie,” he said, covering my hand, pressing it against his chest. “Time to figure out where it is you really want to go.”

“I’ve had that figured out for quite a while, Mike,” I said. “I just don’t know how to get there.”

“Where is that?”

“I want to go home with you.”