Every Secret Thing

“We need some dailies to get downtown off my ass,” he said. “See what you can do with this.”

This was a press release a

“It could be more than a daily,” Mira said, seeing an opportunity to get out of the office, slip the short leash on which he tried to keep her. “Instead of just doing a talking heads piece, why not make it a centerpiece feature? I could go to one of the libraries in northwest, where they have a lot of Russian immigrants, see the system at work. Talk to librarians, see if other library systems have used this program. Plus, we need census figures, don’t we? How many foreign-speaking library patrons does Baltimore County have? Or maybe I should try the Catonsville branch-”

“Do whatever you like,” the editor said. “Just make sure I have ten to twelve inches by four P.M. My kid has a T-ball game tonight and I need to get out of here by six.”

Mira glanced at the clock in the upper right-hand corner of her computer. It was almost eleven. Even if she reached the bare-minimum sources on the first try, she would probably be reporting the story until two, and she would need another two hours to write because she wasn’t very fast on bureaucratic stories. Give her a straight narrative line and she could pound it out. Her infamous story on the civil rights park may have been bogus, but no one ever said it wasn’t well written. Feature stories flowed out of her. So would the Barnes piece, once she nailed it. Now she would have to resign herself to eating lunch at her desk, knocking out ten to twelve inches by four, then spending another tedious hour answering whatever inane, trivial questions the editors raised. But if her boss really left at six, she could be out of here by six-thirty. A high-powered woman like Cynthia Barnes probably had some big job in the private sector now, and wouldn’t be home during the day anyway.

Mira dialed the number to the county library flack and got voice-mail. Sighing, she left a message, then flagged down a colleague and asked him to bring her a Greek salad and Diet Pepsi from the deli.

Nancy and Infante caught Judge Prosser before lunch, as Lenhardt had recommended, which made him impatient and grumpy. They could have done it with a state’s attorney, but the state’s attorney said he’d rather the judge sign off on it, given that another state agency was involved. Nancy wondered if the state’s attorney was setting them up. Prosser, a short, fat man with a left eye that wandered when he removed his thick glasses, was picking apart their request, stabbing at typos with the earpiece of his horn-rims.

“All their medical records? Why should you get access to all their medical records when all you want to know is their blood type?”

“If we specify blood type and it turns out they actually have DNA samples on file, for whatever reason, God forbid that a smart attorney says we overstepped,” Infante said, adding a beat late, “Judge.”

“Is that the real reason or a glib, cover-your-ass reason that you just made up on the spot?”

“Can it be both?” Infante asked.

Another judge might have smiled, but Prosser trained his right eye on the document in front of him while his wandering left rolled toward the window. Nancy, whose stomach growled when she was standing over a corpse, found herself mildly ill watching the judge’s eye.

“Seems thin,” he said. “Mighty thin. Girl disappears, there’s some blood on her jumper and a T-shirt, but it’s not hers and it’s not a relative’s. You want to see if you can match the type to these two girls who killed the Barnes child all these years ago because Cynthia Barnes called you and made some noise. I can understand why the city cops might jump when Cynthia Barnes called, but why do you care, Detective?” He directed his question to Nancy, then didn’t wait for an answer. “Isaac Poole is a city judge.”

“Eliminating the girls as suspects would be helpful, too,” Nancy said. “We’re going in a lot of different directions on this case, and we’d like to narrow it down, be more efficient.”

“Such as?”

“The boyfriend. It’s really irksome-” Oh lord, what a stupid word. She wished she could take it back, but she couldn’t. “It’s troubling that not a single security camera in the mall yielded even a frame that shows the girl was there. We’re also doing checks on the custodian who claims to have found the clothes.”

“You know how many kids get kidnapped-kidnapped in Baltimore in a year? I mean, stranger abductions, with ransom notes and everything? One or two, maybe. Most missing children are runaways.”

“This child is three years old, judge.”

He scowled. “I know that. But why aren’t you going after the boyfriend’s blood?”

“He provided a sample, and it didn’t match,” Infante said. “We’re continuing to talk to him and the mother, looking for anyplace their stories fall down. I gotta say, though, they’re pretty consistent. And city Social Services doesn’t have anything on ’em, not even a neglect call.”

“You say their stories are consistent. But are they too consistent? Consistency is often the hallmark of something that’s been rehearsed. The hobgoblin of little minds, as Emerson would have it.”

Nancy, having already risked offending the judge, restrained herself from rolling her eyes. People who quoted other people were show-offs, plain and simple. “The mother seems genuinely grief-stricken. The boyfriend is sorry that his girlfriend is upset, if you get the distinction.”

“He’s not so unhappy to see the little girl gone?”

Nancy hesitated. The judge, for all his bluster and bullying, had managed to identify the one thing that disturbed her about the boyfriend. He seemed surprised by the profundity of his girlfriend’s grief, almost sullen about it. On Saturday, when Nancy and Infante had visited the couple and continued to question them, albeit in the guise of offering them sympathy and support, the boyfriend had held his weeping girlfriend and said: “You still got me, babe. You still got me.” But that could be because he had, in his heart of hearts, wished the child away and was horrified to realize the consequences of seeing his wish come true.

“He’s not the child’s father,” Nancy said at last. “And given the way things are, I don’t think he was pla

Infante leaned in. “The missing girl and the Barnes child really do look alike, judge. It’s unca

Harder to ignore, Nancy thought, that neither Ro

“Especially with Cynthia Barnes and her father breathing down your necks,” Judge Prosser replied, putting his glasses back on, which pulled his left eye back to center. “Very well. I’ll sign this. Although I’ll be surprised if they can even find the records. There are days when the juvenile system can’t find the kids in its custody, much less their paperwork. And they may have already forwarded the medical files to the girls’ private physicians.”

“The girls just left state custody in the past eight weeks. We’re counting on the state not being that efficient.”

“In my experience, it’s only efficient when you don’t want it to be,” the judge said, chuckling at his own wisdom. He added, almost as an afterthought, “I hope you find the little girl and that she hasn’t suffered. Just don’t be taken in by the Royal Family.”