Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

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.”

Ronnie was sitting, staring into space. Even awake the girl had an eerie quality about her, almost as if she drifted in and out of a semi-catatonic state. Good Ronnie or Bad Ronnie?

“Where’s this from?” Ronnie said, poking the bagel, then pulling a small piece off and chewing it carefully, as if she might decide to spit it out.

“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, Ronnie?”

“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?”

Ronnie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“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 Ronnie’s eyes as best she could. They were an unexpected blue beneath all that dark hair. Her brows were wild, her complexion a little spotty. But she could be pretty if she made the smallest effort.

“Ronnie, I can’t undo anything you’ve done, and you can’t undo anything someone else has done. But you can keep it from getting worse, you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t,” Ronnie said, “because I don’t know anything.”

“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 Ronnie seemed far more vulnerable on that score.

Nancy pushed the photograph of Brittany Little across the table.

“She’s pretty,” Ronnie said.

“Does she look like anyone you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, she does. A little.”

“Who does she look like, Ronnie?”

“Like Alice?”

“Like Alice ? This girl is biracial and has curly hair.”

Ronnie looked confused. “You’re right. I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out. Sometimes I say Alice. I don’t know why.”

“Ronnie, do you think about Alice a lot?”

“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.”

Ronnie’s eyes were wide. “A lot?”

“Enough to worry us. Also enough to test-and guess what?” She waited a beat to see if Ronnie would volunteer anything. “It wasn’t the girl’s blood.”

“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?” Ronnie stiffened and jerked her head back.

“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?”

Ronnie shook her head both ways, from a tentative yes to an increasingly vehement no. She was almost like one of those bobble-head dolls-once her head started to move, she couldn’t seem to regain control of it. Only instead of swaying gently up and down, it continued to swing from side to side. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

“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, Ronnie, because you don’t know what happened-if it’s not your blood, we have to leave you alone.”

“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, Ronnie? It will make all the difference in the world if we find her and she’s still alive. And if she’s dead-well, we’ll go easier on the one who helps us. I can’t make a deal, I’m just a police, but it’s always better to be the one who cooperates.”

“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, Ronnie was muttering to herself, and Nancy could just barely make out the words.

“Nobody cuts me but me. Nobody cuts me but me .”

“You should go to her.”

“What?” Cynthia Barnes snapped her head away from the television screen in the kitchen and fumbled without success for the power switch on the remote, as if she had been caught doing something illicit.