“Maybe she’s not by herself. Maybe ‘out there’ ain’t so bad.”
“It’s pretty bad sometimes.”
“Have you seen where she lives?” She lit a cigarette.
I shook my head.
“Well, break in sometime, m’ man. Check out the microwave for starters.”
“The microwave.”
She repeated it as she blew a series of smoke O’s out of her mouth. “The mi-cro-wave. Yes.”
I looked in her dark eyes, which were fringed by even darker eye shadow. “Amanda doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl who takes friends by her house.”
“I never said it was Amanda who brought me into her house.”
It took me a few seconds. “You went there with Sophie?”
The girl said nothing, just chewed the left corner of her upper lip.
“Okay. So is Sophie still there?”
“Might be,” the girl said.
“And Amanda—where’s she?”
“I honestly don’t know. Swear.”
“Why are you talking to me if you don’t want me to find her?”
She crossed her arms so that her right elbow was cupped in her left palm as she took another drag. A smattering of pink scars rose up her inner arms like railroad ties. “I heard a story going around about Amanda and Sophie. I heard five people went into a room over Thanksgiving. You with me so far?”
“Yeah, I think I can follow.”
“Two people in that room died. But four people walked back out.”
I chuckled. “What are you smoking besides that cigarette?”
“Just remember what I said.”
“Could you be more cryptic?”
She shrugged and bit a nail. “Gotta go.”
As she walked past me, I said, “Why talk to me?”
“Because Zippo was a friend of mine. Last year? He was more than a friend. First more-than-a-friend I ever had.”
“Who’s Zippo?”
Her façade of apathetic cool collapsed and she looked about nine years old. Nine years old and abandoned by her parents at the mall. “You’re serious?”
“I am.”
“Christ,” she said, and her voice cracked. “You don’t know anything.”
“Who’s Zippo?” I said again.
“Buzzer’s buzzed, man.” She flicked her cigarette to the street. “Gots to get my education on. You drive safe.”
She walked up the street as the melted snow continued to rush along the gutters and the sky turned to slate. As she vanished through the same door Principal Nghiem had gone through, I realized I’d never gotten her name. The door closed, and I climbed in my Jeep and drove back across the river.
Chapter Eleven
While I’d spent the morning interviewing annoying prep-school girls, Angie’s friend, PR, had agreed to watch Gabby for a few afternoons. So it was that my wife joined me on casework for the first time in almost five years, and we drove north of the city to meet Sophie Corliss’s father.
Brian Corliss lived in Reading on a maple-lined street with wide white sidewalks and lawns that looked like they shaved twice a day. It was a solidly middle-class section of town, leaning toward upper maybe, but not to an elitist degree. The garages were two-car, not four, and the cars were Audis and 4Runner Limiteds, not Lexuses and BMW 740s. All the houses looked well cared for, and all were adorned with Christmas lights and decorations. None more so than the Corliss house, a white Colonial with black shutters and window trim, a black front door. White icicle lights dripped from the gutters, porch posts, and railings. A wreath as big as the sun hung above the garage door. In front of the bushes on the front lawn stood a manger replica and figures of the three kings, Mary, Joseph, and a menagerie of animals arrayed around an empty cradle. To their right stood a somewhat incongruous menagerie of snowmen, elves, reindeer, Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a leering Grinch. On the roof, a sled sat by the chimney and more lights spelled out MERRY CHRISTMAS. The mailbox post was a candy cane.
When we pulled up the driveway, Brian was in his garage, unloading groceries from the back of an Infiniti SUV. He greeted us with a wave and a smile as open as a heartland prairie. He was a trim man who wore a denim Oxford unbuttoned over a white T tucked into a pair of sharply pressed khakis. His canvas safari jacket was maroon with a black leather collar. He was in his mid-forties and looked to be in exceptional shape. This made sense, because he’d made his living the last ten years first as a fitness trainer and then as a fitness guru. He traveled New England speaking to small companies about how they could raise their productivity by getting their employees into better shape. He’d even written a book, Lose the Fat and All That, which had become a local bestseller for a few weeks, and a cursory study of his Web sites (he had three) and his autobiography suggested he hadn’t neared his career ceiling yet. He shook our hands, not overdoing the grip the way a lot of workout fiends do, and thanked us for coming and apologized for not being able to meet us halfway.
“It’s just the city traffic, you know? After two, forget about it. But I mentioned it to Donna and she said, ‘But won’t the detectives have to drive back in that same traffic?’ ”
“Donna’s your wife?”
He nodded. “She had a point. So I feel guilty.”
“But we’re imposing on you,” I said.
He waved that off. “You’re not imposing at all. If you can help bring my daughter back to me, you’re most definitely not imposing.”
He lifted a grocery bag off the floor of the garage. There were six of them, and I reached for two. Angie took two more.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I can get them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Angie said. “It’s the least we can do.”
“Jeesh,” he said. “You’re very kind. Thank you.”
He closed the hatch of the Infiniti and I was mildly surprised to see one of those moronic 9/11 Terrorist Hunting Permit decals on the rear window. I suppose I should have felt safer knowing that if Bin Laden dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, Brian Corliss was ready to put out his lights for America, but mostly I just felt annoyed that the thousands who had died on September 11 were being exploited for a dumb fucking decal. Before my mouth could get me into trouble, though, we were following Brian Corliss up the path to the black front door and entering his two-hundred-year-old house.
We stood by the granite kitchen counter as he unloaded the groceries into the fridge and cabinets. The first floor had been gut-remodeled so recently you could smell the sawdust. Two hundred years ago, I doubt the builder had seen the need to go with the sunken living room or the pressed copper ceiling in the dining room or the Sub-Zero in the kitchen. All the window frames were new and uniform eggshell. Even so, the house had a mismatched feel. The living room was white on white—white couch, white throw rugs, off-white fireplace mantel, ash-white logs in the ivory metal log basket, a huge white Christmas tree towering over it all from a corner. The kitchen was dark—cherrywood cabinets and dark granite counters and black granite backsplash. Even the Sub-Zero and the chimney hood above the stove were black. The dining room was Danish Modern, a clean, blond hard-edged table surrounded by hard-edged high-backed chairs. The ultimate effect was of a house that had been furnished from too many catalogs.