“I told the press that you are a bunch of bumblers who would make a beat cop look like a genius, and the only reason you get away with such ineptitude is the public has a bizarre and inexplicable belief in the FBI. I’m pretty sure they quoted most of that.”
“All except the ‘bizarre’ part. No one likes to question the public.”
Naomi turned. She saw the ghost of a smile on the man’s face. Well. Maybe this was a new breed of special agent.
He came to the window. Both of them studied the river. “That’s six now,” he said, quietly.
He turned towards her. She saw his eyes were brown, and his eyebrows unruly. He had freckles on his cheeks. Another human. “I’ve got a good man on it, undercover,” he said. “He’s trying to break it from inside.”
Naomi thought of the Floyd case. Nick Floyd was a generic-looking man who had led a generic-looking life, only he had kidnapped and murdered over twenty children. The previous FBI agent had fumbled the case badly, first releasing confidential information, then targeting a false subject for no other reason than that he was black and mumbled when he talked. By the time that poor man had finally been let out of jail, the trail had gone cold, and since the media had moved on, the FBI had tried to ignore the whole mess.
Naomi had been hired by the parents of one of the boys. It turned out the evidence had been under the agents’ noses the entire time: a wet, almost indecipherable receipt from a feed store stuck in the bottom of the boy’s backpack. The family owned no livestock. The receipt had led to a common point of intersection for all the children: the Floyd Family Feed Store, where kids were welcome to pet the baby chickens.
Naomi knew it wasn’t callousness or indifference. The Feds just didn’t have the right experience. They wanted to think men like Nick Floyd were smarter, more brilliant and cunning and unique than themselves. They didn’t want to accept that the reason so many crimes against women and children went unsolved was not because a handful of brilliant sociopaths were outwitting the police at every turn. It was because people let such crimes happen.
It puzzled Naomi because she knew from experience that most people were good, or wanted to be good. They just couldn’t see that fellow people were capable of being monsters, their own family and friends included. So they had to pretend such men were different, and in pretending they took away their own greatest power to stop them.
For Naomi, the men—and occasional woman—who took children were not her concern. The only thing that mattered was how they got away with it. They were doors to walk through to find the children. She refused to romanticize them by pretending they were extraordinary. This, she told herself, would include her own captor. If she found him—and finding her sister would probably mean finding him—she would look at him and know there was nothing special about him at all. She hoped.
“I still don’t think you guys are right for it,” she said. “Winfield knows more. Hell, I know more. Go back to busting PTA moms stealing the bingo money and claim it was first-degree embezzlement.”
Sean Richardson surprised her by laughing. His brown eyes were on her, and he seemed delighted. Naomi suddenly felt mysteriously close to him. Maybe love was in these offices, too.
“Do you have a daughter?” she asked.
“No.” He swung his hand towards the river, the city. “The world is my child. Funny, I know. But I feel that way. That’s how I came to this work.”
“I like you,” Naomi said.
“Then you are going to leave well enough alone?”
“No.”
* * *
For years Naomi had no memory of her captivity except for running through that strawberry field at night, her naked heels striking the black dirt. Running in terror to escape, only to turn back, horror filling her, not knowing why. Until one morning she had woken from sleep screaming a single word.
Sister.
After realizing she had left her sister behind, Naomi had expected that more memories would come—an avalanche of them, burying her in fear and regret. But that hadn’t happened. What Naomi had willed herself to forget as a child had stayed forgotten. Maybe that part of her mind had erased the experiences, tossing them away like spoiled food. Or maybe the memories were waiting for when she was strong enough to access them.
Only one detail had come back. She was with her sister, deep underground, while the ceiling dripped. It was dark in the bunker, and a lamp cast yellow shadows. Her little sister was looking up, trust in her face, hazel eyes like her own.
Naomi was singing to her sister, softly. The lamplight flicked over them.
“Swing slow, sweet chariot,” she had whisper-sung, “coming for to carry me home.”
The song had a meaning that now filled Naomi with remorse. If you get there before I do, tell all my friends I’m coming, too.
It was a sin, Naomi knew, to forget. People stop existing once you forget them. Naomi had committed an unpardonable sin, and it didn’t matter how many times others made excuses for her, like saying she had been a child or she had lived in terror. She had forgotten the one who mattered the most, and there would be no life, no future, until she found her. When she found her sister, she would beg forgiveness.
Naomi spent the rest of the day exploring downtown, hanging flyers in businesses and talking to people. Not just in the growing skid row district, where the street kids would prostitute themselves later. She walked all of it. The shopping malls, the delis and cafés tucked in the alcoves of buildings. She saw where the drug dealers hung out, and the addicts, and the women leaving department stores, wrangling large shopping bags and chattering like magpies.
Naomi thought about what it would be like to be one of the homeless kids she had seen. She wondered what it was like to live on the streets, where every doorway was a different hiding place, every tall man a knife.
On a deserted street back on the edge of skid row, she went into a corner market and got a drink. Outside she tried calling Jerome. His phone didn’t pick up. She hoped it meant he was finding work. Maybe it was unfair to ask him to work, but the thought of not looking for her sister made Naomi feel sick at heart.
Dusk was falling, and a cold fog was rolling up the emptying streets. Walking along the street, Naomi found the downtown public library. The stone facade was lovely, damp with the mist.
Public libraries were often places where street people hung out.
She would talk to the librarians and post some of her flyers.
Chapter 9
Celia was in the library. It was her favorite place to be, besides her own imagination.
She perched, sneakers swinging, in one of the wood chairs. The hard chair didn’t bother her. Nothing bothered her in the library. Her head floated up to the clouds, the ornate ceiling above, and when her hand touched the burnished rails of the marble staircase, she became part of the world.
The best part of the library was becoming one with the butterflies.
She carefully turned a page. She was reading her favorite book on butterflies, the one with the dull blue cover that gave no hint to the treasures inside. The edges were grayed to the point of silver. Like the dust of butterfly wings, Celia thought. The elderly librarian kept this book behind the counter just for Celia. It was a secret they shared—a good kind of secret. Once, when she was in third grade, a neighbor had invited Celia to her house for soup. The librarian reminded Celia of that neighbor. It helped her remember there were nice people in the world. She didn’t blame them for what happened. They were too busy taking care of each other.