often I think of that girl and what she must be going through? I pray for her, and I keep asking myself who would do something like this to an innocent girl, and I just feel … powerless.”
“It’s not your job to save her.”
Her eyes shone, fierce and haunted. “In the Gospel of John it says, ‘We know that we are children of God and the whole world is under the control of the evil one.’ I never got that before. Like, what’s that supposed to mean? That Satan’s in charge of the whole show? But now I’m starting to get it. Maybe there’s just … evil in the world that even God is powerless to do anything about. And that’s the real point.”
“Why do bad things happen to good people?” I said softly. “I’ve stopped asking the big questions like that. I just keep my head down and do my job.”
“I’m sorry, Nick. I promised myself never to bring my religion to the office.”
“I never expected you to leave it at home. So tell me what you’re stuck on.”
She hesitated only briefly. “Okay, listen to this.”
She tapped a key, moved the mouse and clicked it, and we were back to that same loop of Alexa speaking. Dorothy raised the volume. Under Alexa’s words a hum grew steadily louder. Then the image froze and broke up into tiny bits.
“You hear the noise, right?”
“A car or truck, like we said. So?”
She shook her head. “Notice the noise is always followed by the picture breaking up? Every single time.”
“Okay.”
“Thing is, a car or a truck or a train, they’re not going to interrupt the video transmission like that.”
“So?”
She gave me the Look: she widened her eyes, lowered her brows, and glowered. The Look could turn a lesser being into stone or a pillar of salt. Our old boss, Jay Stoddard, found the Look so unsettling that he refused to deal with her directly unless forced to. Staring back was pointless. It was like a staring contest with the sun. One of you was going to go blind, and it wasn’t likely to be the sun.
“‘So’?” she said. “It’s going to tell us where Alexa Marcus is.”
62.
“There is some problem, Officer?”
Dragomir had learned that American policemen liked it when you used the honorific “Officer.” They craved respect and so rarely got it.
“Well, no big deal, sir. We just like to introduce ourselves, just so’s you know who to call in case you ever need any help.”
The young man’s ears and cheeks had gone crimson. When he smiled, his gums showed.
“Is good to know.” Exaggerating his bad English was disarming to most people. It made him seem more hapless. Dragomir had made a habit of studying other people as a butterfly collector examines a specimen.
The policeman shifted his weight from foot to foot again. The porch floorboards creaked. He drummed his fingertips against his thighs and said, “So you, ah, work for the Aldersons?”
Dragomir shook his head, a modest grin. “Just caretaker. I do work for family. Fix up.”
“Oh, okay, right. So I guess one of your neighbors kinda noticed some construction equipment?”
“Yes?”
“Just want to make sure there’s no, um, infractions of the building code? You know, like, if you’re building an extension without a permit?”
The youngster projected no authority whatsoever. He was almost apologetic for being here. Not like the police in Russia, who treated everyone like a criminal.
“Just landscape.”
“Is that—you’re not doing construction here, or…?”
This was going too far. If Dragomir insisted on a search warrant, the boy would be back in an hour with two other policemen and a court order, and they’d search the house too, just to show they could.
He shrugged, said hospitably, “Please.”
Officer Kent seemed relieved. “You know, just so I can tell the chief I did my job, right?”
“We all have to do our jobs.”
He followed the policeman around the back, onto the field of bare earth. The officer seemed to be looking at the tracks in the hard soil, then the gray vent pipe in the middle of the field, and he approached it.
“That a septic tank, um, Andros?”
Dragomir went still. He hadn’t told the cop his name. Obviously the neighbor had.
This concerned him.
“Is to vent the soil,” Dragomir said as they stood next to the pipe. “From the landfill, the … compost pile.” An improvisation, the best he could do.