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Lenhardt shrugged. “Go for it. But you gotta go home after, get some sleep.”
The sergeant had brought them a bag of bagels that morning. Nancy picked out one of the sweeter ones, a blueberry, and took it into the interview room with an orange soda.
“Here,” she said. “Breakfast of champions.”
Ro
“Where’s this from?” Ro
“Einstein’s, over on Goucher Boulevard.”
“Ours are better. I mean, this is okay, but the texture is different. We use a frozen dough from Brooklyn, so it’s almost like a New York bagel. Which is what people want, Clarice says. She worked another place where the bagels were too sweet-she called it a Montreal bagel-and that’s not what people want in Baltimore.”
“Clarice?”
“The manager at the Bagel Barn. You met her.”
“Yeah, that’s right. We talked to her after you ran away.”
“Oh. Yeah.” She seemed embarrassed and surprised, as if she had hoped the incident would never be mentioned again.
“Why did you run away, Ro
“I told you.” Her voice was weary, but patient. It occurred to Nancy that the girl would never ask to leave, didn’t assume she had any rights at all. “I knew you were cops, and I don’t get a fair shake with cops. I didn’t last time.”
“How so?”
Ro
“Except you’re here. So it does matter.”
“I mean-no one believed me then, so why would anyone believe me now? People made up their minds what happened, so that’s what happened.”
Nancy had been sitting, an untouched bagel in front of her, trying to act as if this were an ordinary breakfast between two people who happened to be sharing a table in a crowded diner. Now she hunkered down, her chin barely an inch above the table, and stared into Ro
“Ro
“No, I don’t,” Ro
“Doesn’t it strike you as kind of a coincidence that this happens so near where you work? And that-” Nancy stopped, still not willing to reveal the missing child’s resemblance to the sister of Olivia Barnes. She needed the girl to volunteer that piece of information. Sharon Kerpelman had said Alice was suggestible, that she would agree to anything in order to be helpful. But Ro
Nancy pushed the photograph of Brittany Little across the table.
“She’s pretty,” Ro
“Does she look like anyone you know?”
“Yeah, yeah, she does. A little.”
“Who does she look like, Ro
“Like Alice?”
“Like Alice? This girl is biracial and has curly hair.”
Ro
“Ro
“No.” She paused. “Not a lot.”
“It would be understandable if you did.”
“Why?”
The girl seemed genuine in her need for a reply, almost yearning. “Because…because of the history you share. I would guess that’s something you don’t forget.”
“Ever?”
“What?”
“Do you think one day I might forget? A man-a doctor-said I might. He said as time went by, I would have other things to think about, other things that would…define me.”
Stumped for something to say, Nancy picked up the photograph and looked at the smiling girl. Are you alive? Please tell me you’re alive.
“You know, we found her clothes in the bathroom.” She wouldn’t mention the hair, not yet. They didn’t want that detail out. Not even the girl’s mother had been told she had been shorn, in part because her own boyfriend might have done it, just to create the illusion of a stranger abduction. “There was blood on them. And blood on a T-shirt.”
Ro
“Enough to worry us. Also enough to test-and guess what?” She waited a beat to see if Ro
“How could you tell?”
“Blood’s like a fingerprint. It’s unique. It wasn’t her blood, and it wasn’t her mother’s blood. We compared them.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, it’s amazing what we can do with a little blood. You know, if we took some of your blood and compared it to what we found, and found out it was different, we could let you go home.”
“You want me to give you blood?” Ro
“You don’t have to. But it could speed things up. We can take it from your finger, with just a little prick. You ever make yourself blood sisters with someone when you were a kid?”
Ro
“It’s just a tiny prick, you wouldn’t even notice. And if it’s not your blood-and it won’t be your blood, right, Ro
“No.” It wasn’t quite a scream, yet something in the girl’s tone made Nancy jump. “Nobody cuts me but me.”
“What?”
“I mean-I don’t want to. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.”
She began striking her palms on the table now to underscore her words until Nancy finally had to grab her by the wrists to make her stop. For one crazed moment the girl looked as if she wanted to bite her. Her small white teeth snapped near Nancy ’s face, the way a terrier might.
Then she went limp, and Nancy released her arms, letting her fall to the table. Cradling her head in her hands, the girl began to cry.
“Is Brittany Little still alive, Ro
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Ask Alice. Take her blood. Ask Alice. Cut Alice.” She looked up then, sniffing, and said the magic words. “I want to go home now. Can I go home now? Can I call my mom? Do I need to call a lawyer?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “I mean, yes, you can go, and yes, you can call your mom. You don’t really need a lawyer, though.”
Not yet.
She escorted the girl from the room to her desk, and let her use the phone there. As she walked, Ro
“Nobody cuts me but me. Nobody cuts me but me.”