like a small medical chart. She wrote something, shielding the paper from Ana. “So Mr. Ridgemore took him to daycare. Does he do that most days?”
“I told you. Three days a week.”
“I mean, he’s the one who gets him up?”
“I have to be at work very early. James works from home.”
“What does he do again?” she asked this in a false voice, the “again” a silly little effort at intimacy.
“He’s a writer.”
“Lucky you. Husband does all the hard stuff, huh?” she smiled. Her teeth were too small for her mouth. Ana wanted to snap them off, one by one.
“Did he call you today? Tell you anything about the boy?”
“Like what?”
“Did they have a fight? Anything unusual?”
“No. I don’t think I heard from him today.” The cop raised her eyebrow.
“Really? I got two kids, eight and ten, boy and a girl. If their dad’s with them, I’m calling every ten minutes: How are they? What’d you screw up? What’d I miss?” she was grinning. “They go to my mom’s after school. We never had to put them in daycare. We’re lucky like that.”
Ana said nothing, attempting to dissect this line of questioning, wondering if it was a strategy of some kind, or if the strain of contempt was how mothers were expected to talk to one another.
The cop held her gaze steady. After a moment of silence, she said: “Is there anything you want to say that you can’t tell me in front of your husband?”
Ana’s disdain for this cop and her simple view of the world rose up in her throat: the beautiful house must have the dungeon in the basement. The beautiful wife must barely survive the monstrous husband.
“There’s nothing I can’t say in front of him.”
The woman cop looked at Ana expectantly. Ana was meant to crucify him now, and she could have. She thought of the e-mail, and the secret visits to Sarah’s room. But she said: “James is a good father to this boy.”
The cop nodded. She didn’t write anything in her notebook.
“You should write that down: He’s a father to that boy. He would never neglect him. He would never hurt him. This is a freak occurrence, something that must happen every Halloween. Children try to get candy, they try to make their way without their parents, right? That’s what kids do.”
“Absolutely, Ms. Laframboise. Is there someone we can call to corroborate your being at work today?”
Ana found Elspeth’s number on her cell phone and handed it to the cop.
“Now please,” said Ana. “Can you stop talking and find him?”
Voices echoed up and down the street: “Finn! Finn! Finn!” People James had never seen before were crouched under cars, banging on doorways.
James saw Chuckles’s shadow looming, black on black night. He went to him.
“We’ve checked every house on that side of the street where people are home,” Chuckles said. “We need to finish this side, then cross over.”
They were in front of the brothel house. The windows were dark, almost invisible. An empty cat food tin, congealed, lay on the patchy grass by James’s foot.
“I think this house is a brothel,” said James. “I think there’s sex trafficking going on in there.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Chuckles.
James shook his head. He sounded insane. He always sounded insane around this guy. “Ah, fuck! I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m talking about.” He went to the door and banged hard. No answer. He banged again. Chuckles stood behind him, saying nothing.
“Come on!” James kicked at the door, and his swollen foot shot heat up his leg. “Fuck! Mother fucker!” He jumped up and down on his good foot, grabbing at his damaged toes.
Chuckles stepped in front of James and rang a doorbell.
“I didn’t see the bell,” said James.
The door flew open. A warm yellow light flooded the stoop, and churning music escaped, accordions and guitars and incomprehensible foreign moaning. A young woman stood in front of them with thin brown hair wearing sweatpants with the word “Juicy” crawling up one thigh.
“Yes?” she said.
Chuckles was forceful: “We’re looking for a kid. A kid’s missing. He’s almost three, blonde. Have you seen him?”
She peered behind the men, at the police car down the street.
“You are missing a boy? Lots of kids come to the door tonight but I don’t have candy. I don’t know. My English not so good. I sorry. You are police?” she said.
“No. He’s my son,” said James, not tripping on the word at all. “We’re just trying to find