In the Dead of Summer (22 page)

He was being the detective. Mackenzie was being nothing, his entire self as inert as his leg.

“April is a good girl,” her mother said.

“Why would she want to leave us?” Thomas sounded as if he were issuing a challenge. “Why do you ask such questions? What do you think about this, Mister…”

“Dennison,” Five said. “And I don’t know what to think. That’s what I was hoping you’d help with.”

“The police have already asked all the questions. Over and over. About worries, fears, problems.”

“And they’ve come up with nothing,” Five said.
“That’s why I thought together we might have extra insight.”

I could see the hint of a lip curl on Mackenzie, and I could read his thoughts as if his skull were transparent. Another wannabe sleuth, he was thinking, and not with admiration.

“But if we of April’s family are content that the police are doing their best, if the police are content with what they know, why should not you be?” Thomas asked. “Is it not wrong for citizens to try to be the law keepers? My parents do not blame the school. This did not happen on school time.”

“I didn’t mean—” Five began.

“We are confident that all will be well,” Thomas said. “And that all effort is being made in the meantime.”

The older Truongs did not seem to share their son’s serenity. They looked wracked, devastated, had winced with pain each time April was mentioned, and they had been wringing their hands throughout the visit. But they didn’t contradict their son. I hoped their silence was due only to a problem with the language, or to a point of Vietnamese etiquette.

“It is kind of you to have come all this way and made this visit,” Thomas said, rising. “To have put yourself to this inconvenience.” His parents also stood and nodded, nearly bowing. “It is good to know her teachers care about April.”

“But—”

“We thank you.” And then Thomas quite literally showed us the door, and used it, too.

We stood on the street, the night close around us. “Was that peculiar or what?” I said. I expected no more response than grunts of assent, so Five startled me. He had been so intent inside the house, so much more aware of possible holes in the search than Mackenzie or I had been, so tuned into each answer given.

But what he said as he unlocked the car was, “Maybe I’ve caught their Asian sense of fatality or something.” He sounded relaxed, relieved, almost happy. “I think we should let go of it, too. Leave it to the pros.”

I could almost feel him slough the residue of all those questions without a backward glance. Case closed. Leave
it
to the pros. It?

But April wasn’t an
it
, and what about her? Suddenly, I heard echoes of Aldis’s judgment of the man, and I, too, wondered just how bright or observant Five really was, and how much he’d let slip by without his notice or comprehension.

“UP FOR A NIGHTCAP?” FIVE ASKED AS WE DROVE
around the edge of Penn’s campus and started for center city.

I was. Not particularly for the drink, but for the talk. I wanted to gnaw this over, pick apart strands, get to its center. But as I opened my mouth to accept, I turned around and saw Mackenzie’s eyes, even in the dark car, shouting absolutely not.

“Thanks,” I told Five, “but I’m exhausted. Those hooligans today…” The official story was that my car and I had been the victims of random violence. Same old, same old. Nobody questioned it.

“You sure? Maybe it’d be good to unwind. Plus, it’d be a chance to toss the topic around.”

“You said we should let it go,” Mackenzie said.

“Maybe not till we know what we’re letting go of.” Five’s voice filled the car interior. “I’d especially like to hear what a pro thinks. Unless you were pulling my leg about your leg, so to speak. The cops on crutches division? I know the division is a joke, but you are a cop, right?”

You tend to forget that even a handsome, all-American specimen such as Five could be lonely. The man needed friends, needed to feel comfortable in his new environment. He was trying. You could hear it in every word. The least I could do was not be a card-carrying example of why we were the Most Hostile City in the U.S.

“Of course I want to know what you think, too, Mandy,” he added, rather lamely.

“Well, then, sure. A quick one.”

At that exact second, Mackenzie’s slurry voice came from the backseat. “Some other time.”

“Not you, Crispin? No problem. We’ll drop you off first. Whereabouts do you live?”

I watched the words drop in front of Mackenzie like flags in front of a bull. “Changed my mind,” he said. “A quick drink’d be good.” And then he suggested a place about two blocks from the school. It was charming—dark, sleek, and cool, but not overly chilled. In the far corner a woman in a plumed extravaganza of a hat played piano just loudly enough, and more than well enough.

I’d never been there. I wondered when Mackenzie had. I knew that if I asked, he’d say he read a review or mention of it in the paper months ago, and that might be true—he had an amazing ability to store abstract knowledge. But still I wondered.

“Quite an interrogation you gave back there,” Mackenzie said when we were settled in and our orders taken. “Very smooth. Professional.”

Mackenzie had a keen appreciation for language.
Interrogation
wasn’t the right word, unless he meant to insult Five. Maybe an extension of the evening hadn’t been the best idea, after all. It was unwholesome fun, having two men circling each other because of me, and not particularly pleasant, not even in a guilty, secret way, since I wasn’t part of the game. At least not consciously.

The woman at the piano played “As Time Goes By,” but we were not the stuff of legends, not up to the standards of the
Casablanca
threesome.

“Interrogation? Did I seem to be drilling them?” Five sounded truly concerned.

“Didn’t mean it that way,” Mackenzie said. “Jus’ interested in your questions. Very systematic approach.”

“I should have let you do the asking,” Five said. “I’m not good at it, and it’s definitely more your line.”

Mackenzie shook his head. “Wouldn’t have known what to ask. Didn’t know the girl or the circumstances.”

Five’s eyes flicked from Mackenzie to me, then back. He
was translating knowledge of April into mating data, decid
ing whether Mackenzie’s know-nothing stance meant we didn’t see each other much or that we saw each other a whole lot but didn’t confide in each other much.

But we
had
talked about the missing girl. We’d talked it through a dozen times. So why, after practically putting yellow tape around me that said
POLICE LINE: KEEP BACK,
would Mackenzie lie in a way that was almost a quitclaim?

“What was your take on what they said?” Mackenzie asked Five.

“Not much. The parents didn’t know squat about their daughter, and the brother didn’t care. How about you?”

“You think they were tellin’ the truth? That nothin’ bothered her, she didn’t fear anybody or like anybody in particular?”

“Why would they lie?” Five asked. I wondered if he realized who was now the interrogator, whether he
minded.

Mackenzie’s shrug was barely perceptible. I’d known him long enough to translate it as All Kinds of Reasons, but he didn’t choose to share any of them.

“I can understand now how she might well go off on a joyride,” Five said. “Anything would be better than going back to a house where nobody talks to you. Nobody’s even awake when you’re there.”

“She didn’t see it that way,” I said. “There are younger children she cares for, and that didn’t seem a chore. They were a team, the family, and that was her job.”

“Surely Thomas isn’t playing on that family team of theirs. He’s in a gang that runs massage parlors. Not a wholesome lot, that group. Not exactly family values.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Mackenzie asked, but with curiosity, not hostility.

“Somebody told me.” Five looked at me. “Was it you?”

I shook my head. Even though I’d heard about Thomas from Woody or Miles or somebody, I’d never passed it on. Except to Mackenzie, who was choosing to play dumb.

“But I’m interested how you relate that to April,” Mackenzie said. “You think a gang member snatched her? Revenge against brother Thomas, maybe?”

“It sounds possible, doesn’t it? And then, it gets really murky when you get into the possibility of her being a…
a harlot.”

Five obviously wasn’t into PC talk, but even so, I was surprised by his choice of words. “But you knew her,” I said. “Didn’t she seem the least likely girl in the school to be a sex industry worker?”

“Sex industry worker,” Mackenzie grumbled. “Hard hats and pasties. As for the sex industry itself, the smokestacks and Environmental Impact studies show—”

“I didn’t know her well,” Five answered me. “Only through her classwork. We never talked about her personal life. We didn’t have that kind of time you must have had with her. She didn’t do special sessions with me.”

“Never at lunch?” I asked, hoping to relocate the conversation to the issue of what went on at noon. “She wasn’t ever part of your fan club?”

“My what?” His eyebrows rose.

“No false modesty. The lunch bunch. The summer scholars.”

“But I told you what really—”

“I’m teasing.” I decided on another tack. “Remember how you were asking me about April and drugs?” I said.

He nodded.

“Do you think much goes on at Philly Prep that way?”

“Drugs? There? I didn’t mean that—I meant in her neighborhood, with her friends,” Five said. “Not at your school!”

“Why not?” Mackenzie asked, semi-belligerently. “You think Philly Prep has some special dispensation, that rich kids are exempt? Who’d you think can afford the stuff?”

“I didn’t mean, I only… No.” He relaxed, looked at me, and answered my question. “I don’t think so. If there is, I’m unaware of it. Jesus, if I thought for one minute—I have zero tolerance for that business.”

But perhaps he was just naïve. I pressed on. “I’m still so jealous of whatever it is that makes your extra time with the kids work. Would it be possible—be honest, if this would be an imposition—could I visit some noon? Observe for a while?”

“Observe? Well…sure.” He seemed ill at ease, and I wondered what really was going on. “Except it isn’t like a lesson. I told you. So don’t expect too much,” he added. “And more important, I can’t let it establish precedent.”

“Meaning?” He’d lost me.

“Phyllis,” he hissed. “What if she decides to observe, too?”

Phyllis. That was all it was about. Not drugs but predatory females. Nonetheless, I’d pop in someday to set my mind at rest.

“Hate to backtrack,” Mackenzie said, lumbering into the talk. “But I’m still not clear on the gang connection. Did you think the brother seemed put off by your questions? You know, how he was about the cops having already asked about what they needed to know?”

“I’m sure he’s nervous about anybody asking anything that might involve him,” Five said. “He definitely wanted the interview closed. And who knows what the parents really thought?”

“I keep wondering if Thomas is at all connected with her disappearance,” Mackenzie said. “What’s your take?”

“I don’t know as I have one. I don’t think I knew what I was doing in there or where I was hoping to get. Looking back, I’m really embarrassed to have hogged the floor. I hoped that maybe asking around would get me somewhere, and then I’d know where to head from there, but it didn’t happen.”

“Why?” Mackenzie asked abruptly. “Why do you care so much?”

We were back to rude, and I didn’t see why.

“Be-Beeause, she’s—I—”

I really disliked my detective at that moment. “For heaven’s sake!” I said. “You can tell you’re not a teacher. And thank goodness for that. We
care
. Forgive me for speaking for both of us, Five, and feel free to disagree, but the question doesn’t make sense, Mackenzie. I don’t want to sound simplistic, but a young girl is gone. Swallowed up by the earth and somebody she struggled with. That’s scary. She’s our student. If there’s something to be done, then we’d want to do it. There’s a damn fine possibility that the police did not sufficiently question the people who were with her every day. Deedee Klein was nice enough, but nobody wanted to talk to her and she let it go at that. So there’s a good chance that they—the police—are missing something important that a lowly teacher might know. It’s as simple as that.”

“Didn’t mean the question to sound like a challenge,” Mackenzie said mildly. But I thought he had. He is a man who generally sounds precisely the way he intends to. “It’s real impressive that you care about your kids. But depressin’ as this is going to sound, she’s a girl who is not underage, who got into a van.”

“Was forced into it. She struggled,” I said.

“The witness thinks. For all we know, she was giggling hard, play-fightin’, or just shrugging off her backpack.”

“And leaving it there?”

“And leavin’ it all behind,” Mackenzie said. “The sad truth is that people take off and disappear all the time. Like that, and for keeps. Because they want to or because they don’t want to. But there is a spectacular lack of evidence here, of meaningful clues. Of anything. And this is an enormous country, and she could be anywhere in it by now. Legally. In places where nobody’s given a thought to looking for her. I’m going to be real surprised if she is found. Ever. Or at least, in time.”