Vanishing Girls

The redheaded cop gives me a curious look as he slips by me, and I catch a brief whiff of cigarette smoke and, weirdly, bubble gum. The receptionist withdraws, closing the door, leaving me alone with Hernandez.

I still haven’t moved. Hernandez looks up at me. His eyes are bloodshot. “All right then,” he says lightly, as if we’re old friends, sharing a joke. “Don’t sit if you don’t want to.” He leans back in his chair. “You have something to tell me about the Snow disappearance, you said?”

He’s being nice enough, but the way he asks the question makes it clear that he doesn’t think I’ll have anything important to tell him. This is a question he’s asked a dozen times, maybe a hundred, when some random woman looking for attention comes in to accuse her ex-husband of abducting Madeline, or a random truck driver en route to Florida claims to have seen a blond girl acting strange at a rest stop.

“I think I know what happened to Madeline,” I say quickly, before I can second-guess myself. “And those pictures you were looking at? I know where they were taken.”

But as soon as I say the words, it occurs to me that at Beamer’s I didn’t see a room like the one pictured in Dara’s photographs. Could I have missed a door somewhere, or a secondary staircase?

Hernandez’s right hand tightens momentarily on the armrest. But he’s a good cop. He doesn’t otherwise flinch. “You do, do you?” Even his voice betrays no signs, one way or the other, about whether or not he believes me. Abruptly, to my surprise, he stands up. He’s a lot taller than I expected—at least six-three. Suddenly the room constricts, as if the walls are shrink-wrap grabbing for my skin. “How about some water?” he says. “You want some water?”

I’m desperate to talk. With every second it seems as if the memory of what happened at Beamer’s might simply disappear, evaporating like liquid. But my throat is dust-dry, and as soon as Hernandez suggests water, I realize I’m desperately thirsty. “Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

“Make yourself at home,” he says, indicating the chair again. This time I recognize not just an invitation, but an order. He moves the pile of file folders himself, dumping them unceremoniously onto the windowsill, already mounded with papers, creating a landslide effect. “I’ll be right back.”

He disappears into the hall and I sit down, my bare thighs sticky on the fake leather seat. I wonder if it was a mistake to have come, and whether Hernandez will believe anything I say. I wonder if he’ll send out a search party for Dara.

I wonder if she’s all right.

He reappears a minute later, carrying a small bottle of water, room temperature. Still, I drink eagerly. He takes a seat again, leaning forward on the desk with his arms crossed. Outside the glassed-in office walls, the redheaded cop goes by, consulting a file, his mouth pursed as if he’s whistling.

“Hate this fucking place,” Hernandez says, when he catches me staring. I’m surprised to hear him say fucking, and wonder if he did it to make me like him more. It works, a little. “It’s like living in a fishbowl. All right, then. What do you know about Madeline?”

In his absence, I’ve had time to think about what I want to say. I take a deep breath.

“I think . . . I think her older sister was working at a place called Beamer’s on the shore,” I say. “I think my sister worked there, too.”

Hernandez looks disappointed. “Beamer’s?” he says. “The bar off Route 101?” I nod. “They were waitressing there?”

“Not waitressing,” I say, remembering how the woman, Casey, had laughed when I told her I had no experience. If you can walk and chew gum at the same time, you’ll be fine. “Something else.”

“What?” He’s watching me intently now, like a cat about to pounce on a chew toy.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “But—” I take a deep breath. “But it might have to do with those photographs. I don’t know.” I’m getting confused now, losing the thread. Somehow it comes down to Beamer’s and that red sofa. But there was no red sofa in Beamer’s, at least no red sofa that looked like the one in the photographs. “Madeline didn’t just disappear into thin air, did she? Maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. And now my sister . . . She’s gone, too. She left me a note—”

He straightens up, hyperalert. “What kind of note?”

I shake my head. “It was a kind of challenge. She wanted me to come find her.” Seeing his confusion, I add, “She’s like that. Dramatic. But why would she run away on her own birthday? Something bad happened to her. I can feel it.” My voice cracks and I take another long sip of water, swallowing back the spasm in my throat.

Hernandez turns businesslike. He grabs a notepad and a pen, which he uncaps with his teeth. “When was the last time you saw your sister?” he asks.

I debate whether to tell Hernandez that I saw Dara earlier in the evening, boarding a bus, but decide against it. He’ll no doubt tell me I’m being paranoid, that she’s probably out with friends, that I have to wait twenty-four hours before filing a report. Instead I say, “I don’t know. Yesterday morning?”

“Spell her name for me.”

“Dara. Dara Warren.”

His hand freezes, like it has temporarily hit an invisible glitch. But then he smoothly writes the remainder of her name. When he looks up again, I notice for the first time that his eyes are a dark, stormy gray. “You’re from . . . ?”