Every Secret Thing

She was a statue. She would not cry in front of Lenhardt.

Finally, she said, “You haven’t been straight with me, Sergeant.”

Lenhardt looked surprised, hurt even. “What do you mean?”

“When you moved us up in the rotation-you told Infante that it was because Jeffries was lame. But Cynthia Barnes had already called you when you made that decision. You made me work this case because you knew.”

“Knew what, Nancy? That you found Olivia Barnes? Lots of people know that. After all, you got a lot of attention for that, didn’t you?”

“Some.”

“Besides, why would that make me move you up in the rotation? What would be the point in that?”

He wasn’t denying it, Nancy realized. He was making her think it through. Why did Lenhardt want her to work on this case?

“You were testing me.”

“Yeah?”

“You wanted to see if…if the things they said about me were true.”

“What did they say about you, Nancy?”

She was a statue. She stared into the middle distance, refusing to make eye contact.

“Nancy?”

“They said I liked attention. They said I needed to be a star, all the time. And when I was just a cop like any other, they said I couldn’t stand it, so I would do anything to get attention. Anything.”

“Anything including making a big stink out of being harassed by a fellow officer?”

“I didn’t.” Not about that, she amended in her head. Other times, yes, she had sought attention, craved it. Attention, more than food, then, was the thing she desired, and she could not get enough of it. She didn’t know why. She even suspected that it was bad for her, an addiction like any other, and she would keep needing more and more and more. Every day that passed without a reporter calling or a television station asking her to come on-every day without attention had seemed flat and gray.

“You tell me you didn’t go to the press, I believe you. That’s not why I wanted you on this case, Nancy. I don’t have the luxury of using this office as a character-building exercise, or to explore the i

“Did Cynthia Barnes ask for me? Or did you have another reason for making me take this case?”

“Cynthia Barnes mentioned you, yes. She remembered you, she knew you were out here. But it was my call. And I asked you to do it for the exact reasons I said-because you’re good.”

“Oh.”

“Pretty good. You could be better, Nancy. You’re tentative. Yeah, you’re great at finding tiny things on the ground-casings, earrings-but you’re not so good at talking to people. And I give that eyesight of yours about ten years before it starts to go, so I need you to get good at the other stuff, okay?”

“Why this case?”

“I get a call, a lady says we need to look at these two girls who killed her child. I think-Nancy can do this. She can talk to two eighteen-year-olds because she won’t be scared of them, won’t be worried that they’re going to grab her ass. And Jeffries is a piece of shit.”

“You weren’t testing me to see if I’d call the press and remind them that I found the Barnes baby?”

“No. But-be honest, Nancy. You did like all the attention back then, didn’t you? And you missed it when it went away.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I was scared that I had…peaked at twenty-two. And I knew I wasn’t a good police yet, but suddenly people wanted me to be, like, this prodigy. The more attention I got, the more the other cops hated me, the more I needed the attention to make up for them hating me.”

“I remember you on television,” Lenhardt said. “You looked like you were twelve.”

“ ‘Heroes for our times.’ Except I wasn’t a hero. I was an insubordinate cadet. No one liked me, no one wanted to work with me, and then this major, Dolores Dorsey, says, ‘Come work for me in Northwest, I’ll take care of you.’ ”

“I knew Dolores when she was on foot patrol in Northern. I could have told you that the only person Dolores ever took care of was herself. And you know what that makes her, Nancy?”

“What?”

“Pretty much like everyone else.”

“You’re not like that.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I just go about it different. I see value in having detectives who learn to do their job and do it well. Other people want speedier results. The goose that lays the golden egg, right? Dolores brought you out to Northwest to bask in your reflected glory. Only there wasn’t any glory forthcoming because you were just a dumb kid who made a lucky find once upon a time. So she cut you open. And-surprise, surprise-no eggs came out.”

“She said she had no choice. She said if she didn’t report what was going on, I could end up suing later, that it had to go through cha

“You believe her?”

“Sometimes. Other times, I thought she wanted to embarrass me and humiliate me, and I never knew why.”

“She probably doesn’t either, Nancy. But it was four years ago, in a different department. Everyone else has forgotten about it. Except you.”

A stray comment from Infante, one that hadn’t made much of an impression at the time, came back to Nancy.

“Sarge, will you tell me about the Epstein case?”

“No.”

“No?” She might have expected “not now” or “over a beer,” but it had never occurred to her that Lenhardt would refuse to answer one of his detective’s questions.

“No. I put it out of my head, and I’m not going to put it back in. Some things are better forgotten.”

Nancy went back to her desk. She wished it worked that way. She wished someone could say, “Get over it,” and you did. There should be a pill like that-Oblivital. Four years later, she remembered every detail-the discovery of the graffiti, the workmen coming out to remove the door, the ultimate humiliation of seeing the door loaded into a truck, uncovered, to be taken downtown. “Why can’t we just paint it over?” Nancy had asked the major. “There are procedures for these things,” the major had said briskly. “It’s out of my hands.” “I can handle it,” Nancy had said. “It’s okay, I don’t care. Let me show the guys they can’t get to me by doing something stupid like that.”

But no, the ladies’ room door had been carried away and submitted to Internal Affairs, still bearing the legend: “Potrcuntski.” Nancy didn’t know if she was supposed to be more offended as a woman or a Polack. Her grandfather would have killed the man who did that to his name. Nancy had to work with him, had to take it with a smile. And when the story made its way into the newspaper, in expurgated form, everyone assumed she had told, that she had tipped the reporter.

Because she had. Old habits die hard. Shamed by her treatment, punished for being a victim, she had tipped a metro columnist who had been good to her, back when she was known for finding Olivia Barnes. But the story had boomeranged, and she became radioactive. The county was the only place she could go, once it got out that she had put in another officer. Her original instinct had been right. She needed to suck it up, take it.

Infante picked up the upended box and started going through the scattered files.

“Holly’s looking at the earring,” he said. “But she doesn’t think there’s anything she can pull off it. ‘Now if it were a nose ring,’ she says, ‘I might have a shot.’ And a tongue piercing might have a residue of saliva. Or so she says.”

“Too much information.”

“Yeah,” Infante agreed.

“Sort of like the situation we’ve got here.”

“Yeah, but they’re here and we’re here, so what the fuck. Holly might pull something off that earring. And I can’t think of a single thing to do, and I can’t bear to go home. Working a case without a body is the worst.”

“Yeah.” She took a seat at her own desk, dipped into a file box, and began sca