Moonlight Mile - By Dennis Lehane Page 0,40

let me tell you something, we can't compete with that ."

"That?"

"That." He pointed at his windows. "The world out there."

I followed his gaze. I considered mentioning that the World Out There didn't kick her out of her own home, the World In Here did. But I said nothing instead.

"We just can't." He let loose another gargantuan sigh and arched his back against the couch cushion to reach for his wallet. He rummaged around in it and came out with a business card. He handed it to me.

ANDRE STILES

Caseworker

Department of Children amp; Families

"Sophie's DCF worker. He worked with her up until recently, I think, when she turned seventeen. I'm not sure if she still sees him, but it's worth a shot."

"Where do you think she is?"

"I don't know."

"If you absolutely, positively had to guess."

He gave it some thought as he returned the wallet to his back pocket. "Where she always is. With that friend of hers, the one you're looking for."

"Amanda."

He nodded. "I thought, at first, she was a stabilizing influence on Sophie, but then I discovered more about her background. It was pretty sordid."

"Yeah," I said, "it was."

"I don't like sordid. There's no place for it in a respectable life."

I looked at his white-on-white living room and his white Christmas tree. "You know anyone named Zippo?"

He blinked a few times. "Is Sophie still seeing him?"

"I don't know. I'm just compiling data until it makes sense."

"That's part of your job, eh?"

"That is my job."

"Zippo's name is James Lighter." He turned his palm up toward me. "Hence the nickname. I don't know anything else about him except that the one time I met him he smelled of pot and looked like a punk. Exactly the type of boy I would have hoped would never enter my daughter's life-tattoos everywhere, droopy pants with the boxers exposed, rings in his eyebrows, one of those tufts of hair between his bottom lip and his chin." His face had torqued into a fist. "Not a suitable human being at all."

"Do you know of any places your daughter and Amanda, and maybe even Zippo, any places they hang out that I might not know about?"

He thought about it long enough for us both to drain our water bottles.

Eventually, he said, "No. Not really."

I flipped open my notepad, found the page from earlier in the day. "One of Amanda's and Sophie's schoolmates told me Sophie and four other people went into a room. Two people in the room died, but-"

"Oh, dear God."

"-four people walked back out. Does this make any sense to you?"

"What? No. It's gibberish." He came off the couch, one hand jiggling the keys in his pocket as he rocked back and forth against his heels. "Is my daughter dead?"

I held his desperate gaze for a moment.

"I have no idea."

He looked away and then back again. "Well, that's the problem when it comes to kids, isn't it? We have no idea. Not one of us."
Chapter Twelve
While she'd been smoking her cigarette, Angie had called 411 for the phone number of Elaine Murrow of Exeter, New Hampshire. She'd then called Elaine, who agreed to see us.

We spent the early portion of our thirty-minute drive to the Granite State in silence. Angie looked out the window at the bare brown trees along the highway, the cake frosting of last night's snow hugging the ground in quickly balding patches.

"I just wanted to go over that coffee table," she said eventually, "and gouge his fucking eyes out of his head."

"Amazing you never got invited to the debutantes ball," I said.

"Seriously." She turned from the window. "He's sitting there talking about 'values' as he sends his daughter to sleep on some bench in some bus station. And calling me 'Angela' like he fucking knows me. I hate, hate, fucking hate when people do that. And, Jesus, did you hear him ranting on about the dead mother's 'wholly unfit environment'? Because, what, she liked granola and watching The L Word ?"

"You done?"

"Am I what?" she said.

"Done," I said. "Because I was there to get information on a missing girl who can lead me to another missing girl. I was doing, ya know, my job."

"Oh, I thought you were shining his shoes with your tongue."

"My other option was what? To get all self-righteous and blow up at him?"

"I didn't blow up at him."

"You were unprofessional. He could feel you judging him."

"Isn't that what they say about you at Duhamel?"

Damn. Not bad.

"But I was never a tenth as bad as you were in there."

"A