“What about the trailer park?” Saffy asked. “What if he’s still there?”
Olympia had given a detailed description of Ansel’s trailer, inside and out. She’d described his strange behavior, his paranoid ramblings. He was always going on about the universe, Olympia had said. About multiple realities or something.
“Unlikely. Didn’t your witness say he was going to college? She didn’t have any evidence, Singh.”
“What about the trinkets? The jewelry? What if he has them?”
“It’s a stretch.”
The night felt heavy. Out the window, a brisk autumn wind battered the trees, the summer critters retreated and gone. Saffy let the chill creep up her spine.
“Look,” Moretti said, with an unbearable sort of tenderness. “I know what it’s like, to want something to be true. That does not make it so, and you can’t let that cloud your judgment or close your eyes to other leads. Things are different for us here, okay? It’s important that we don’t let our emotions get in the way of our reasoning. Sometimes—sometimes it’s our job not to feel however we do. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
*
Kristen’s house looked like a movie set. It was rustic, cabin-pretty, with big windows overlooking the hills and centralized heat. Even from the stoop, it smelled like air freshener and expensive candles. It was a Saturday evening, nearly Halloween, the sun setting over the treetops in ghostly rays. Saffy had done her face up using the makeup samples Kristen had gifted, which the salon received for free—the foundation was always two shades too light for Saffy’s skin, but this was not something she could tell Kristen without embarrassing her.
“Hi, hi, come in,” Kristen said. “I just popped the pizza in the oven. I hope you’re not starving.”
Saffy shed her shoes while Kristen chattered. Kristen’s house had been Jake’s until six months ago, when he’d asked her to move in—already, Saffy could see where her friend had taken over. Little calligraphy signs and pillows with needlepoint catchphrases like Laughter Is the Best Medicine and It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere! Kristen’s technician’s apron had its own hook in the front hall, glitter smeared across the fabric. Kristen was obsessed with the impending Y2K disaster, and as they crept closer to the New Year, her fixation only grew. She had lined every shelf in the house with stores of canned food and tubs of bottled water.
“Do you mind?” Kristen asked, sheepish, as she pulled half a bottle of chardonnay from the fridge.
Saffy shook her head. Moretti had a set of unbreakable rules—no substances, however casual. By the time Saffy applied to the NYSP, she had gotten entirely clean, with no proof of her past, no arrest records or criminal charges.
“Are you okay?” Saffy asked, as they settled on the couch, Kristen’s fingers fidgeting the stem of her wineglass.
“I’m fine,” Kristen said.
A long quiet.
“Lila,” Saffy said finally.
She and Kristen rarely talked about those years, in which Saffy had drifted through the underbelly of this unforgiving town, mirroring Lila’s downward spiral. Now, Saffy wanted to tell Kristen how the drugs had felt, melting through her veins, how she’d passed entire days lying on a dusty mattress. How she’d known Lila’s life and then grown out of it—how Lila had not gotten the chance to do the same.
“Kristen,” Saffy started. “Do you remember Ansel Packer?”
“Of course,” she said. “That kid was so weird. He was transferred too, when Miss Gemma got sick. Aren’t you working that robbery case?”
“Moretti got me transferred to this one. To Lila’s.”
“God, that woman loves you.”
“I don’t know why she—”
“Oh, shut up,” Kristen said. “You’re the best young investigator they’ve seen in decades. And besides, you make a good story, Saff. Wayward teen turns her life around. You’re like a detective from a TV show, the poor little orphan haunted by her past. Plus, you found that missing boy all on your own—”
“Ansel Packer,” Saffy interrupted. “Do you remember anything strange about him? Anything worrying?”
“I remember he had this way of staring. Like he was trying to figure out how useful you’d be.”
“Anything else?”
“Come on, Saff. He was just a kid. It’s not healthy to go back like this.”
But what else was there? There was only going back. Tracing the lines, there to here. Self to self.