Seven Minutes to Noon (7 page)

CARROLL GARDENS WOMAN MISSING, NINE MONTHS PREGNANT
read the headline. Not quite nine months, Alice thought, wishing she could correct the detail. In a half column, a reporter named Erin Brinkley summarized Lauren’s disappearance, listing facts and circumstances that Alice already knew.

She put the paper down and swallowed a knot of anxiety. It was only six o’clock. She dressed in clean clothes pulled from the dryer, wrote a note for Mike and left the house. Walking down President Street, she saw the yellow
MISSING
signs everywhere. Lauren, summarized on paper, imploring help. Alice had always liked being out early in the morning in the sleepy lull before the world began to stir, but there was no peace in it today. Her eyes trailed a bronze Mini Cooper that zipped past
her and turned onto Hoyt Street. Then, once again, she was alone.

She crossed Hoyt, turned right and took the next left onto Carroll Street. Without having consciously decided to, she found herself heading toward the Gowanus Canal. It was where Christine Craddock’s cell phone had been found. And presumably it was one of the last walks Lauren had taken on her way to Pilates. Although Lauren lived on Union Street, which had its own canal overpass, she had once said she preferred the older Carroll Street Bridge, which took you through a slightly less industrial area.

It was downhill all the way to Bond, then leveled off for the half block just before the bridge. On the left was a concrete office building with a blue awning that read
BOND STREET LIMO
. A large man with neatly trimmed gray hair stood outside, smoking a cigarette. He nodded to Alice as she passed. She nodded back, assuming he was a limo driver even though he wasn’t in uniform. He had creepy eyes — one blue and one green — that stayed on her as she moved toward the bridge. His attention felt intrusive and she walked faster, away from him. She saw the flare of his flicked cigarette butt as it cartwheeled into the street. Moments later a long black limousine slid past her, but every window was one-way glass and she couldn’t see if he was driving.

To the right was a round building, an artist’s house. Alice remembered hearing about a whimsical fountain with jets reaching a hundred feet, misting passersby, but had never seen it. Lauren had complained about being sprayed by toxic canal water. She hadn’t liked it.

Alice walked onto the bridge and stopped midway. She set both her hands on the blue-painted iron railing and looked out. She knew she was facing the ocean, though it was blocked by the industrial silhouette of Third Street. Beyond that was the Buttermilk Channel, into which the canal emptied through its filtering grate. She looked down into the thread of dull green water, which undulated only slightly in the tranquil air. For
years the water had been too murky to see into, like a solid mass, or a long, old secret. Alice stared into the canal until its drab surface seemed to shimmer awake. She wanted to see the crabs and turtles and trout that had supposedly reinvigorated the canal since the old pump was fixed two years ago. For a moment she thought she saw a small, swimming creature. But it was just a passing shadow. She stared and stared until the water seemed to have collected every last bit of ambient light and reflected it back at her, making it impossible to see beneath the surface.

The morning was gathering heat when Alice turned around and headed back up the steep hill into Carroll Gardens. She could not look at the yellow
MISSING
signs as she walked along Hoyt Street, past her own block, and turned up Union. Allowing herself just a quick glance at the front door of Lauren’s building, Alice kept moving. Going. Walking. One step at a time toward the Seventy-sixth Precinct.

The detectives had urged them to come forward with anything.
Anything at all could be important,
Giometti had said.

It seemed as if the canal and the streets and the neighborhood had simultaneously sealed Lauren in and spit her out. But there was one thing Alice could do. There was one seal she could break in an effort to find the truth, and that was Maggie’s lie about Ivy.

Alice climbed the steps of the Seventy-sixth Precinct, a squat concrete building with a blue-tiled facade, and was struck by its incongruity on a block of antique brown-stones. The faded modernist precinct building on western Union Street had the visual impact of a broken promise, a husk that resonated with vacated architectural and social ideals, yet housed a vital civil service.

Just inside the entrance, a bleached-blond older woman in a purple leisure suit sat at a small desk. She greeted Alice impassively: “Yeah?”

“Is Detective Viola or Detective Giometti in?”

The woman picked up her phone and dialed an extension, averting her eyes from Alice. Just beyond, three uniformed officers sat at a counter, fielding phone calls and a constant frizzle of police dispatches. On the wall was a chalkboard logging the precinct’s squad cars and vans.

“Okay,” the woman told Alice, without specifying exactly whom she had reached this early in the morning. “You wanna wait in there?”

Alice walked through a swinging half door and entered the large common area. She stood next to a group of tables in the center of the room, glancing over bulletin boards displaying crime statistics charts and wanted posters. Her attention landed on the mug shot of a man whose face sagged so deeply that it seemed pulled by an extraordinary gravity. Across the room, a large fish tank
sat on a low wooden cabinet. There was one very large fish in the tank, and beneath it, a handful of small ones swimming quickly in circles. The walls were lined with snack and soda machines, the sight of which sent a bolt of queasiness through her. Never in three pregnancies had she suffered morning sickness, which was supposed to hit you in the first trimester, though she knew as well as anyone that there were exceptions to every rule.

Someone tapped her shoulder and she turned around.

“You’re up early,” Frannie said.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I hear you.” Frannie looked tired, like she’d been up all night too. “I pulled the graveyard shift on rotation last night. You want to talk?”

Alice nodded. Why else would she be there?

She followed Frannie past a glass door that read
ARREST PROCESSING (NO GUNS BEYOND THIS POINT).
A glance in showed an industrial metal desk, a chair and two unoccupied cells. They walked through a doorway just to the right of Arrest Processing and up a flight of worn stairs, at the top of which a bulletin board announced the precinct’s annual Labor Day picnic, already outdated. Frannie pushed open a door announcing
PDU.
Alice followed her in, past a short hallway crammed with old file cabinets hand-labeled
COLD CASES, WARRANTS PENDING, M/E REPORTS.
The tiny hallway blossomed into a large room packed with clusters of mismatched desks. Light filtered weakly through the closed venetian blinds on a row of windows. Toward the back of the room a young Hispanic man pecked at the keys of an old typewriter. Alice noticed that for every computer in the room, there was one of these old relics.

“I haven’t seen a typewriter in years,” Alice said.

“Old habits die hard. We have a state-of-the-art database but we still type our reports. Maybe they printed up too many forms, like, twenty years ago.” Frannie stopped at a desk near a long, shallow cell whose black iron bars covered half the expanse of one wall. A skinny,
pallid-looking man was draped across the cell’s single bench. She glanced at the sleeping man, then spoke to the other detective. “Hey, Jose, anyone in the interview room?”

Jose glanced up, smiled and shook his head. “Nope, baby, it’s all yours.” He continued typing.

Frannie sucked back a little hissing sound.
Baby.
Alice got the feeling the PDU wasn’t used to
girl detectives.

“Let’s go in there. It’s more private,” Frannie said. She picked up her mug of half-finished coffee. “You want some? We’ve got decaf too.”

“No thanks. I’m good.” The mere thought of coffee made her want to throw up.

“Come on, then.”

Frannie and Alice wove between desks to cross the room. The interview room announced itself as such with a computer-printed label affixed with yellowing tape to the door. Inside was a drab box of a room, with a table pushed against one wall and four uncomfortable-looking straight-backed metal chairs. Again, the blinds were fully drawn, giving the space a cramped, murky feel. A small, rectangular window sat three-quarters of the way up the opposite wall. One-way glass, Alice guessed by its dull, mirrorlike glaze.

They sat across from each other at the linoleum table, scarred across the middle by a deep, jagged scratch. Alice wondered who had done it and how. With a key? She could see it. Left alone in this suffocating room, staring at the blind eye of the one-way glass, you would be desperate for something, anything, to do. It was an awful room, she decided. Or maybe the myopia of her exhaustion was plunging her mood into darkness.

Frannie reached across the table and touched Alice’s hand. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until Frannie’s touch sent a jolt of warmth through her. Alice took a deep breath and began.

“There’s something I need to clear up.”

Frannie’s face was free of expression, the dark swaths
beneath her eyes the only indication of strain on her pale skin. No smile or furrowed brows or clenched jaw. Just the open channel of her listening.

“Yesterday, at the store, we told you Lauren didn’t know the sex of her baby.”

“Maggie told us that, yes.”

Frannie was giving her a little out, nudging her off the hook. It was true, Maggie had said it. Alice simply hadn’t contradicted her. She felt herself begin to relax, the words now flowing a little more easily.

Alice looked squarely into Frannie’s black eyes. “It isn’t true.”

Frannie waited. Listened. Reached out for Alice’s other hand.

“Lauren’s known for months her baby’s a girl.”

“A girl,” Frannie repeated softly.

“Her name’s going to be Ivy. Or is Ivy. Or—” Alice pulled one of her hands away to cover her eyes.

“Thank you, Alice. It might help to know.”

Alice wiped her eyes dry and finished. “There’s one more thing.”

Frannie nodded.

“Tim doesn’t know.”

“About the name?”

“The name or the sex,” Alice said. “He didn’t want to know. He wanted to be surprised. That’s why Maggie didn’t want to tell you.”

“I can understand that,” Frannie said, her gaze sweeping from Alice’s face to her fingers. Alice now realized she had been tracing the scratch in the linoleum, back and forth, for at least a minute.

“Are you going to find Lauren?”

“Yes.” The deep confidence of Frannie’s voice was an island of hope. Irrational, but necessary, hope. “I won’t give up on her, Alice, no matter what.” Frannie’s lean arms tensed as she shifted her chair closer to the table. This woman was strong, Alice thought, stronger even than she looked. “The task force is going out again today. They’re knocking on every door, talking to everyone.
There’s a transient element to the area, a lot of young people moving in and out, folks coming for the restaurants. You never really know who’s going to turn up one day to the next.”

“You should go home and sleep,” Alice said, not meaning it at all. She wanted Frannie out there every minute of every day and every night until Lauren materialized back into the world.

“I can’t sleep anyway,” Frannie said. “I don’t know about some of the guys around here, but when women start disappearing in my neighborhood, it bothers me. I’ll be pitching the case at roll call this morning and working the rest of the day.”

One of Alice’s babies began to move, and soon both were shifting inside her. She stood up. “I should go. My family’s waiting at home.”

“I’ll walk you out.”

In the precinct lobby, the women shook hands.

“Thanks again,” Frannie said. “I’ll call you if anything happens.”

Alice walked alone into a morning whose sleepy quiet had bubbled awake while she was inside the precinct. A little girl in a flower-power helmet raced by on a hot-pink two-wheeler, her father trotting steadily beside her. An old woman in a cotton day dress swept her front stoop. Alice couldn’t wait to see Mike and the kids. Maybe, she thought, she could manage a nap this morning. Maybe today things would turn around. Lauren would safely return. Frannie would call with good news.

But that, it turned out, was wishful thinking.

Frannie never called. The day passed. By evening, Alice’s agitation was unbearable. Finally she phoned the precinct, expecting nothing, and was surprised when Frannie told her there was, in fact, something to report.

“We’ve got a witness,” Frannie said. “Our first lead.”

The children’s melodious voices floated from the backyard through the screen door into the kitchen. Alice sat at the table, watching Mike at the stove, where he patiently stirred his special risotto. It was her favorite dish. Dense, creamy rice, ham, onions, carrots, peas. A hint of lemon.

“He’s an artist,” Frannie continued. “Lives right there on the canal, in that round house with all the skylights. He had his easel set up on the Carroll Street Bridge Friday morning. He saw Lauren at quarter to twelve, crossing the bridge.”

Quarter to twelve. On her way to Pilates.

“This guy,” Frannie continued, “he didn’t know about Lauren going missing. He’s one of those people who hates the news, doesn’t watch TV, won’t read the paper. Travels a lot. Only likes the pretty picture, if you know what I mean.”

Alice heard sounds of shouting behind Frannie.

“What’s happening?”

“Some idiot’s blocking the box.”
Traffic fools
was what Mike called drivers who lamely jammed an intersection.

“Frannie, did he talk to Lauren?”

“They smiled at each other. Lauren seemed ‘pleasant and civilized,’ the guy said. She did not appear to be in labor.”

“Then?”

“He went back to his painting. Stayed another three hours, packed up and went home.”

The kids barreled in from outside and Mike indulged them in an extra round of TV so Alice could concentrate on the call. He turned off the flame under the risotto and sat next to her at the kitchen table, wiping his hands on his floral-and-stain-patterned apron. A trace of dirt darkened his fingernails. He had been working so hard lately, preparing for his booth at a big furniture expo in Las Vegas next month, dust and grime finding every exposed fissure of skin. She reached over and pressed her fingers between his; for twenty years, a perfect fit.