Jodi Compton - The 37th Hour

“I’m not angling for professional courtesy with the ticket. I was speeding; I’ll pay the fine,” I assured him. “I’m here as part of an investigation. I was actually on my way to your department when you pulled me over. I have a phone number here without an address, and I was going to ask someone to get that for me tonight.” I smiled at him to let him know he’d be doing me a favor. “If you could radio this in to your department in advance, maybe they could have it by the time I get there.”

Deputy Johnson furrowed his brow. “You’re from what jurisdiction again?”

“I’m a detective from Hennepin County. I can give you the night number there for the investigation division, if anyone wants to check it out.”

“This is part of an investigation?” he reiterated.

“A missing-persons investigation, yes.”

It was beginning to dawn on Johnson that this was sort of an interesting break from manning the speed trap. “What’s the phone number you’re asking about?” he asked.

I gave him Ligieia’s phone number and he went back to the radio.

“They’re looking it up,” he said when he returned, and gave me directions to the sheriff’s substation. “Come back and talk to me if there’s anything I can do to help you while you’re in town, Detective Pribek,” he said. It sounded as if his job wasn’t keeping him too challenged.

It wasn’t until I got to the substation that someone asked the obvious question, somewhat indirectly.

“Hennepin County must have a real budget surplus to be able to send its detectives around the country to look for missing persons,” the deputy on duty said, lifting an ironic eyebrow.

“They don’t,” I said. “This is a rarity.”

He gave me the address, written on a Post-it with the sticky part folded over onto itself.

“This is a special case?” he said.

“Kind of.” I didn’t feel like explaining. “Hey, is that coffee?”

Ten minutes later I pulled up in front of a low wood-shingled cottage, not far from where the map indicated Bale College was. At the end of the driveway was an outdoor light modeled to look like a Victorian gas lamp. Its hundred-watt bulb cast a bright light over the front yard. The garage was closed, and there was no nondescript clean vehicle parked outside that would have suggested a visitor’s rental car to me.

I heard footsteps respond to my knock, but the door didn’t open immediately. Instead, a curtain moved in a side window, reflecting a wise female caution. A moment later, the door swung open about a foot.

A young woman stood in the opening. She was about five-six, with two dark-brown braids stiff with repressed curls. A crop top over plaid pajama pants exposed her flat stomach, a shade or two lighter than cocoa powder. Her feet were bare.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We spoke on the phone today. I’m Sarah Pribek. I was going to call you”-I pushed ahead with my explanation before she could speak-“but my flight was delayed, and I was late getting in.” That didn’t mean anything, but in its way it sounded like an excuse. “And in a missing-persons investigation, time is really of the essence, so I came straight here.”

Ligieia’s deep-brown eyes studied me, and she wasn’t saying no yet. I continued making my case. “I brought a legal pad along.” I touched my shoulder bag, where the notepad rode. “You won’t have to translate if it’s not convenient for you.”

She stepped back. “Come on in,” she said, grudgingly. “I’ll ask Sinclair if it’s okay.”

As she closed the door behind us, a little girl ran into the entryway. Her auburn hair was wet, and she was wrapped in a magenta bath towel held in place by her arms. She stopped alongside Ligieia and looked up at me, then she lifted her hands and began to gesture. The towel slipped to her feet.

“Hope!” Ligieia gasped, and knelt down to snatch up the towel and wrap the naked little girl again. Ligieia glanced up at me, and when she saw me starting to laugh, she began to laugh, too, rolling her eyes. It was the best icebreaker I could have asked for.

“Sinclair’s daughter?” I asked.

“Yeah, this is Hope,” Ligieia said. “The signing gives her away as Sinclair’s kid, I guess.”

I was looking down at Hope when I caught movement on the periphery of my vision. A tall woman stood behind Ligieia, her red hair loose. She trained a familiar assessing gaze on me from eyes that were just slightly Eurasian in their shape.

Sinclair. Ligieia hadn’t noticed her presence yet. I straightened and nodded to her, and she returned my greeting in kind.

The exchange had a formal feeling for me, and not just because I couldn’t speak directly to her. I had that feeling, like I’d found a missing person. Two days ago I hadn’t really known she’d existed, at least not by name, and now she felt like someone I’d been trying to locate for a long time.

“Hold on to that towel, honey,” Ligieia said to Hope, then she stood up and spoke to Sinclair, speaking and signing at once.

“This is Sarah Pribek.” Spelling out my name slowed Ligieia down. “She says that time is very important in a missing-persons situation, so she came up early. She wants to talk to you tonight.”

Hope watched the conversation silently. Sinclair lifted her hands and signed.

Ligieia looked at me. “Do you have a room in town?”

Damn, I thought, sensing a dismissal. “Not yet,” I said.

Sinclair signed again.

“She says she’s going to make up the spare room for you,” Ligieia translated.

Sinclair scooped her daughter up into her arms and walked back down the hall from which she’d come, while I stood taken aback by her unexpected display of hospitality. I was, after all, a total stranger.

Ligieia broke into my thoughts. “Why don’t you come into the kitchen with me? I was going to make some tea.”

“Look, I meant what I said about you not having to translate,” I repeated, following her. “You look like you were on the way to bed.”

“No,” Ligieia said. “I’m just studying. I have to have Act III of The Merchant of Venice finished by tomorrow.” She lifted a teakettle off the stove and shook it, checking the water level inside. “It seems kind of a waste of time. Hardly anyone performs Merchant anymore, and rightly so, because it’s so horribly anti-Semitic. I don’t think anyone even reads it anymore.” She struck a match before touching it to the burner: it was a very old stove.

“Have you known Sinclair long?” I asked her.

“Three years,” Ligieia said. “As long as she’s been at Bale. I was assigned to be her translator right away, and started doing her readings shortly after that.”

“Readings?”

“I perform her work at poetry readings and slams,” Ligieia explained. “There’s a lot of challenge in that, because I’m not just reciting her words. I’m translating the emotional content and trying to bring that across as well. I’ve had to really get to know Sinclair, to read her work like she would read it herself if she were a speaking person.”

I turned at the sound of light footsteps behind me and saw Hope, her copper hair combed, wearing a white nightdress and looking up at me with a child’s seriousness.

“Mommy says you’re a speaking person,” she announced, but she signed it as well, just in case. Her voice was pitch-perfect, clearly understandable. Until that moment I had thought she was deaf.

“Your mother’s right,” I said.

“Is your name Sarah?” she asked.

Ligieia interrupted. “Hope, does your mother know you’re in here?”

The girl looked at the floor. She didn’t want to lie.

“You know what I think?” Ligieia went on, bending slightly to address Hope. “I think she already put you to bed and thought you were going to stay there.” Ligieia straightened and pointed.