Lenore nodded. “That’ll work.”
We’d discovered that it was much easier to find people carrying cash near businesses that only accepted cash, which was the case with most of the food trucks.
“Let’s go.” I drained the last of my decaf, then gripped the back of my chair to help push myself to my ungainly feet.
“Delilah.” Zy’s fierce whisper seized my attention, but it was her grip on my hand that held it. “Look.”
Chill bumps rose on my arms in spite of the sunlight shining through the coffee shop window as I followed her gaze to the table behind ours. The nosy and disapproving woman had been replaced by a man in khakis and a polo shirt, watching a live news feed on his coffee shop tablet. He was wearing earbuds, so I couldn’t hear what the newscaster was saying. But the image on-screen was clear, and the headline even more so.
Mirela and Lala, Rommily’s sisters, had been captured.
August 24, 1986
“And they were asleep when you got home?” the detective asked, studying what he’d already written in a small spiral notebook as flashes of red and blue light washed over the entire neighborhood from the tops of a dozen cop cars. “Still covered in blood? They didn’t even change their clothes?”
Rebecca understood his disbelief. The truth didn’t make sense to her, either, and the longer she stood outside her house, surrounded by cops and barricades and flashing lights, the less real it seemed.
Her parents hadn’t even tried to run when she’d barricaded herself inside Mrs. Madsen’s house and called the police. They’d just headed home. To wait on the cops.
Her mother, evidently, had brewed a pot of coffee.
“Yes, they were asleep. I could hear my dad snoring. But I didn’t know about the blood. Not then.” Rebecca hardly even heard what she was saying. Her focus was on little Erica, who sat on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance, being checked out by a paramedic who’d given her a small stuffed bear to hold.
The woman squatting in heels next to the stretcher had introduced herself as a child psychologist working with the police.
Beyond the ambulance and the cop cars, the whole neighborhood stood gathered on the sidewalk, behind a length of yellow crime scene tape. Some of the women had pink foam rollers in their hair. Most of the men were smoking cigarettes, the ends glowing like tiny coals in the night, as red and blue lights continued to flash over them all from the tops of the police cars.
They’d been awakened by the sirens and hypnotized by the scandal. Not that they actually knew what was happening. The police weren’t answering questions, and the crowd was kept out of earshot of the detective questioning Rebecca.
“Did your parents say anything to you? Did they tell you what happened?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“And your sister? Did she say anything?”
“Not about...what happened.” Mrs. Madsen had given her a glass of milk and two Oreos while they’d waited for the police, and Erica had eaten her snack as if that were a normal thing for a six-year-old to do at one-thirty in the morning at a neighbor’s house. “But I can ask her, if you’ll—”
“That would not be a good idea.” Rebecca turned to see the child psychologist, Dr. Emory, heading toward her. “Being made to talk about whatever she saw could be psychologically damaging.”
“I wasn’t going tomakeher...”
“Questions would best be left to the experts, in a controlled environment,” Dr. Emory insisted. “Where her statements can be recorded for the investigation.”
Rebecca nodded, but all she’d really processed was that she wasn’t allowed to ask her sister any questions. The rest was lost to exhaustion and encroaching numbness—an oblivion she welcomed.
Dr. Emory gave her a concerned frown. “I think that’s enough for now,” she told the detective. “Let’s let the girls rest. You can ask the rest of your questions later, at the station.”
The detective’s jaw tightened, but he gave the psychologist a curt nod.
“Come on.” Dr. Emory put an arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and led her toward the ambulance, where Erica sat on the end of the stretcher, swinging her chubby little legs. And her bloodstained feet. “You’ve been a rock tonight, Rebecca. You saved your sister’s life.”
But had she?
Rebecca forced her thoughts into focus as Dr. Emory lifted Erica from the end of the stretcher and set her on the ground. Their parents had left Erica sleeping peacefully in her own bed. Untouched.
If they’d wanted to hurt her—
“Becca!”
