say. “Right before I came here. She said you’ve got nothing.”
“Why did you go there first?” he asks. His eyes narrow in on mine, and it takes me a second to process his response.
“What?” I say.
“To Ms. Diaz’s,” he clarifies. “If you want to help us find Ms. Sullivan so badly, and if you’re Lily, as you claim, why wouldn’t you have come to us first?”
Because I was running from my father, I could say. Because I was running toward the one person who would feel as adrift as I do. I wanted to see Rita, I could say, to learn about the girl we’re both missing. Even if we’re missing her in completely different ways.
“It’s complicated,” I tell him. And I leave it at that.
“Of course,” he says. “Our investigation is complicated too.” He winks at me. Smiles on one side of his mouth. “So if you’ll let us get back to it, Ms. Douglas…” He shifts in his chair, nods toward the door behind me.
“But I just got here,” I say. “You haven’t even taken my statement.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think you want me to take your statement.”
“Why not? Of course I do.”
“If we have it on record,” he says, speaking to me like he would a child, “that you made a statement which we then discover to be false—that wouldn’t be good for you. That’s a crime.”
“But I’m not making this up.”
“That’s what the other Lilys have said.”
“But I’m—”
“Listen,” he snaps. “If you can give us some proof to corroborate your claim, then yes, I’ll be happy to have you in for a formal interview. But until then, you’re wasting police time and resources.”
“How-how am I wasting it?” I stammer. “Nobody’s doing anything out there.”
Dixon watches me. Chuckles once and then falls silent. Dread pools in my stomach, and when the phone on his desk bleats out a ring, I flinch.
“Dixon,” he answers, his lips rubbing against the mouthpiece. “Oh, already? Tell him I’ll be right out.” He hangs up, then puts his palms on his desk. Hoists himself up from his chair. “I’ll see you out, Ms. Douglas. I’m heading that way myself.”
I spring up to follow him. He opens the door, steps into the main room of the station, but I’m still trailing questions behind him: “That’s it? Really? You don’t want to ask me anything else?”
Glancing at the officers at their desks, I lock eyes with one in particular. He snickers, then nudges the woman beside him. She turns from her desk to look at me, too, and the two of them laugh.
I put my head down. Stare at the off-white tile beneath my feet as I walk. Police who laugh instead of listen. Police who see victimizers instead of victims.
We reach the hip-high wooden gate at the front of the station.
“Thank you for coming all this way,” Dixon says. At first, I think he’s talking to me, but then he adds, “Especially on such short notice.”
I look up, but his broad back blocks my view of the person he’s greeting.
“As I said on the phone,” he continues, “I would have been happy to make the trip down to you, but this is very helpful, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“It’s no problem at all, Chief,” a man says. “It really wasn’t that far.”
His voice sounds familiar—accommodating and docile, but with an edge of condescension. I step aside to get a better look, and when I see him, my body tenses.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Father Murphy blinks at me in surprise. “Oh,” he says. But he quickly recovers. “Hello. It’s nice to see you again. I’m sorry, I don’t recall your name.”
Dixon looks back and forth between us. “You two know each other?”
“She stopped by St. Cecilia’s yesterday,” Father Murphy replies. “We had quite a lovely chat.”
My forehead furrows. Lovely is not the word I would use to describe our “chat.” But then again, he told me he had a “very good conversation” with Astrid the day she disappeared. The same conversation in which he called her sinful, warned her that “Hell is no place for a girl.”
“Well,” Dixon says, turning to me, “you’ve certainly been getting around.” He opens the gate, gestures for me to pass through it. “Thanks for stopping by, Ms. Douglas.”
“Wait,” I say, stepping into the station’s foyer, pushed forward by Dixon’s bulky hand. Father Murphy passes me, fills the space I’ve left behind on the other side of the gate, and doesn’t meet my eyes.