Maybe it’s because I’ve watched him fail too many times.
“I would advise you not to do anything impulsive,” he says to me now, his eyes still on the crowd. Then his neck slowly twists so he’s back to staring at me again, reminding me of all the times he interrogated me at the station. Grilling me, hard, over and over and over again. Asking the exact same questions, worded in slightly different ways; making me repeat my statement as he studied my fa?ade for cracks.
“What do you mean?” I ask, although I already know.
He stares at me a beat longer, ignoring my question. “I heard about your performance last night.”
Performance.
“I’ll have some names for you shortly,” I say, although I know that’s not why he brought it up. “This list is longer than the others. It’ll take some time to sift through.”
“Mrs. Drake, you are looking for a needle in a haystack. We are working on it. Let us do our jobs.”
“Will you look into the names if I send them to you?”
“We’ll look into them,” he says. “But like I’ve said many times before, it’s a waste of our time. You could be pulling resources away from working another angle. And I’m sure you don’t want that, now, do you?”
“Of course not,” I say. “Do you have another angle? Because if so, I’d love to hear it.”
He’s quiet, but I can see the muscles in his jaw tense. He doesn’t answer, which tells me everything I need to know.
His eyes flutter away from mine and over my shoulder, back to the growing crowd gathering behind me. Then he exhales, digging his thumbs back into his belt loops.
“Your husband’s here,” he says at last, turning around and walking toward a cluster of trees. “I’ll be in the back if you need me.”
CHAPTER TEN
The first thing I notice about Ben is his wedding ring. It’s snug around his finger, the way it always is when we find ourselves in public. It wasn’t there earlier when he showed up on my doorstep. I know because I checked.
He walks over to me now, his arms outstretched, and gives me a hug, burying his nose into my collar. I can feel his other ring around my neck push deep into my chest, and I inhale, smelling those familiar smells: his cologne up close, the spearmint of his mouthwash, the spiced clove of his aftershave that he always dabs on with too heavy a hand. But what I’m really looking for is something else, something different.
I’m looking for traces of her.
“Are your parents here?” Ben asks as he pulls back. I watch him glance around the square, looking for their faces hidden somewhere in the crowd, but I shake my head.
“No, they couldn’t make it.”
Not the truth, really. But not exactly a lie, either.
“Let’s go ahead and get started, then. It’s about time.”
I nod, looking back at the fountain. The sun has set beneath the trees now, and the water seems to be glowing, trickling over the metal lip like molten silver. It reminds me of the marsh in my parent’s backyard; the way the moonlight makes it glisten like a pane of smooth glass.
I shiver, whether from the sudden chill in the air or the rush of memories, I can’t be sure.
Ben grabs my hand, and we slowly walk to the front. People step aside, making room—too much room—like we give off some kind of aura, a magnetic field that forces everything else away. When we reach the head of the square, I turn around. Just like last night, standing on stage in that auditorium, I feel the gaze of eyes on my skin.
Scrutinizing me as I scrutinize them.
“Thank you all for coming,” Ben says, his voice the perfect swirl of gratitude and grief. “As you all know, tonight marks one year since our Mason was taken.”
The crowd has grown fairly large by now. There are some stragglers on the outside of the circle; curious tourists, maybe, or people too uncomfortable to get too close. I recognize a few faces—old coworkers, neighbors. Mason’s day-care teacher is at the very front, tears in her eyes. Most people are holding candles or cell phones, little dots of light dancing in the air, and I watch as a young girl walks self-consciously toward the fountain and places a stuffed dinosaur on the ground like some kind of ritual sacrifice.
“We’re now going to hold a moment of silence,” Ben continues, bowing his head. “We ask that you use this time to lift Mason up in prayer. It is our hope that wherever he is, he knows he is loved, and that he’ll be brought back to us soon.”
I hear a few sniffles erupt; the strangled chokes of the sentimental ones trying to stifle their sobs. Everyone’s eyes are on the ground now, but mine stay straight ahead. I want to memorize this crowd. I want to see who stands out—an unlikely face, maybe, or a total stranger who seems out of place. I see a flash of movement in the back, something red, and as I strain to catch a glimpse, my eyes land squarely on Detective Dozier’s, watching me from the back. His eyes burrowing into my skull like a warning.