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Ma looks at the kids, and they bob their heads. “Nana, we’restarving,” one of them says.
She presses a palm to her bosom, then bustles back over to her chair, reciting a rapid-fire blessing over the food like one of those disclaimers at the end of a radio commercial. Then, finally, come the words we’ve all been waiting to hear: “All right, y’all. Dig in.”
There’s an explosion of movement and voices, of passing plates and scooping spoons, of people tearing into the heaping platters like they haven’t eaten since last week. The Durand version of a food fight, Emma calls it, a complete free-for-all. So much commotion that I almost miss the buzzing at my hip.
I see the name, and a shot of adrenaline hits my veins like liquid fire. There were a dozen reasons for me to become a cop—my firstborn’s need for order and control; our jailbird father, who dropped dead halfway through his fourteen-year sentence; the way I had to work two jobs to supplement his nonexistent life insurance. But this feeling when something breaks, punch-drunk with energy and a pulsing in my chest, that’s the reason I stay. It’s a high as addictive as a pull from a crack pipe.
I pull my cell phone from the holder, wave it in the air by my ear, and Ma shoos me off with a flick of her fingers. Some mothers dream of their sons becoming priests; for mine, there is no more honorable profession than cop.
In three strides I’m in the kitchen.
“I got something,” Charlie says in that gruff smoker’s voice that sounds like he could keel over at any minute.
Thank fuck.
Charlie is an ex-cop, a freelance detective specialized in finding the unfindable, and my go-to secret weapon. His methods may be a little questionable—according to the Chief, alotquestionable—but he’s discreet, and he always gets the job done. I pay him under the table and from my own pocket. So far he’s been worth every hard-earned penny.
I unlock the sliding glass door and step out, onto the tiny deck overlooking Ma’s backyard. The late afternoon sun slants through the trees, lighting up Ma’s beds of Early Girl tomatoes and E-Z Pick beans and whatever the hell else she’s got sprouting in the greenhouse at the very back.
“I found an application for an apartment in Tulsa,” Charlie says. “Some place called...” Papers rustle in the background. “The District at River Bend. I checked it out, more hipsters there than you can beat with a stick, which is exactly what I wanted to do, beat ’em with a stick. Anyway, the leasing manager conducted a background check that went nowhere. Your gal disappeared before she could sign the lease.”
Charlie’s message hits me, and I clench my jaw so hard something pops in my temple. My “gal” knew what she was doing when she filled in that application. She knew that as soon as she forked over her license and social security number and whatever else needed for the background check, they would act as beacons, lighting up her location on a map. An electronic trail leading the police straight to her.
“It’s a bait and switch,” I say. “She’s on the run.”
Charlie’s grunt says he agrees. “I called the numbers she gave the leasing manager as references. Both took me to QuikTrip, one for the corporate offices in Tulsa, the other for a gas station south of Oklahoma City. That’s two places of employment a hundred and twenty miles away from each other. I thought that was kind of funny. Don’t you think that’s kind of funny?”
“Fucking hilarious.”
“Both of them were dead ends, of course.”
Of course. I suck in enough air to pop a lung, then I blow it out long and slow while I count to ten. A ridiculous technique I learned from the department psychologist, and just like when Chief Eubanks sent me to the shrink under threat of administrative leave, it doesn’t do anything other than piss me off.
“If she laid a trail to the west, that means she probably went east,” I say. “She’d stay in the South so her accent wouldn’t stick out.”
“Memphis?”
“Nah, too close. I’m guessing she’d put at least a day or two’s drive between us. Start with the cities.”
“Got it.”
“And Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
“She’ll have dropped some balls by now. I don’t know what yet. But find them.”
“Roger that.”
He hangs up, and I slide the phone into my pocket and stand there for a long minute, white-knuckling the railing and watching a bird tug a worm from the dirt. The worm is flailing about, struggling to keep itself tethered to the earth, but the bird claws the ground and holds fast.
“Uncle Marcus?”
I turn, and there’s Annabelle, her pretty face crinkled with worry. Behind her the sliding door stands open, just enough space for her tiny body to slip through.
“Hi, princess.” I smile down at her, trying to assess from her expression how long she’s been standing there, listening. How much she’s heard.
She tips her head back, squinting into the sun. “You said a bad word.”