benefit than for Izzy’s. It’s the holdback question. The one only someone who has seen the bodies can answer.
“Was there anything on their faces? Anything that maybe shouldn’t have been there?”
Izzy fades for a moment then pumps his big head furiously. “They had tapes on their mouths. Gray tapes. It was on their mouths. Like this.”
Izzy draws a circle around his head with his finger. He returns Frank’s smile.
Chapter 19
Based on Izzy Miron’s new information, Frank revises her suspect profile. After his initial revelation he didn’t have much more to add. In retrospect, Mrs. Miron remembered shooing him out of the house because it was sunny and telling him not to go out of the yard. But Izzy was fascinated with the abandoned lot next door and frequently snuck over. Sometimes nice kids were there, sometimes mean kids. That Saturday morning it was dead kids. Only Izzy didn’t know that. He just knew they were sleeping a long time. People that slept a long time couldn’t talk, like his Papi and his dolls.
The children were wrapped in a blanket but Izzy carefully undid them and laid them side by side. They were just like big dolls. Only their blanket smelled like his sister’s boyfriend. Mrs. Miron explained that meant the blanket smelled like smoke, which Noah had made reference to in his notes.
After hearing Izzy’s story it made sense to Mrs. Miron why her son had been pestering her for a blanket for his new dolls. She wouldn’t give him a blanket to take outside, it was too muddy, and she’d tried to distract him with a Barney video and his coloring books. Eventually he’d settled down. The next day he’d gotten sick and been in bed for three days. By the time he got back to the lot the dolls were gone and he forgot about them.
She’d asked if he’d seen anyone else that morning or taken anything from the casita, but he just wagged his ponderous head like a friendly dog.
Frank waves a finger at the Pryce pictures she’s propped against an empty flower vase.
“You were holding out on me,” she tells the children. “You knew that all along. Naughty kids. How am I supposed to find the bad guy if you won’t work with me?”
Frank has taken to animated conversations with the mute, smiling faces. In a more talkative person the habit might be amusing. Contrasted against Frank’s natural reticence, the trait is ominous. Heedless of the portent, she circles the dining room tables, damaging as much of a fifth as she can before going to Gail’s.
She’s come to dread the hours of her leaving. Gail has become an image on the periphery of Frank’s vision, an annoying shadow that will neither go away nor come into focus. Gail deserves more than her slightly besotted and grudging tolerance, but that’s the best Frank can muster these days. She tells herself her apathy will pass, that someday she’ll be able to see Gail clearly again and will remember why she fell in love with the doc. But for the moment, memory eludes her.
Frank sighs and glances at her wrist. She has an hour and twenty minutes left with her kids.
“Back to one perp,” she tells them. “No problem. That’s where we started this whole ride. So what have we got? One male, black. Age? I’m thinking older than your average bear. Anywhere from early thirties to mid-forties. Why, you say? Elementary, children.”
For each point she makes Frank pops a finger from her fist.
“Your abduction—spontaneous as it may have been—was very well executed. It took nerve and finesse, not a combination usually found in your younger perps. The quality of the overall execution, from abduction through the assault to the dump, tells me this guy’s either been thinking about this for a long time or he’s done this before.
“Now, you might ask, if he’s done this before, and he’s a local boy like you insist, why don’t we have similar cases popping up in the databases? Excellent question. To wit, I think he’s also very smart.
“Was there anything on their faces? Anything that maybe shouldn’t have been there?”
Izzy fades for a moment then pumps his big head furiously. “They had tapes on their mouths. Gray tapes. It was on their mouths. Like this.”
Izzy draws a circle around his head with his finger. He returns Frank’s smile.
Chapter 19
Based on Izzy Miron’s new information, Frank revises her suspect profile. After his initial revelation he didn’t have much more to add. In retrospect, Mrs. Miron remembered shooing him out of the house because it was sunny and telling him not to go out of the yard. But Izzy was fascinated with the abandoned lot next door and frequently snuck over. Sometimes nice kids were there, sometimes mean kids. That Saturday morning it was dead kids. Only Izzy didn’t know that. He just knew they were sleeping a long time. People that slept a long time couldn’t talk, like his Papi and his dolls.
The children were wrapped in a blanket but Izzy carefully undid them and laid them side by side. They were just like big dolls. Only their blanket smelled like his sister’s boyfriend. Mrs. Miron explained that meant the blanket smelled like smoke, which Noah had made reference to in his notes.
After hearing Izzy’s story it made sense to Mrs. Miron why her son had been pestering her for a blanket for his new dolls. She wouldn’t give him a blanket to take outside, it was too muddy, and she’d tried to distract him with a Barney video and his coloring books. Eventually he’d settled down. The next day he’d gotten sick and been in bed for three days. By the time he got back to the lot the dolls were gone and he forgot about them.
She’d asked if he’d seen anyone else that morning or taken anything from the casita, but he just wagged his ponderous head like a friendly dog.
Frank waves a finger at the Pryce pictures she’s propped against an empty flower vase.
“You were holding out on me,” she tells the children. “You knew that all along. Naughty kids. How am I supposed to find the bad guy if you won’t work with me?”
Frank has taken to animated conversations with the mute, smiling faces. In a more talkative person the habit might be amusing. Contrasted against Frank’s natural reticence, the trait is ominous. Heedless of the portent, she circles the dining room tables, damaging as much of a fifth as she can before going to Gail’s.
She’s come to dread the hours of her leaving. Gail has become an image on the periphery of Frank’s vision, an annoying shadow that will neither go away nor come into focus. Gail deserves more than her slightly besotted and grudging tolerance, but that’s the best Frank can muster these days. She tells herself her apathy will pass, that someday she’ll be able to see Gail clearly again and will remember why she fell in love with the doc. But for the moment, memory eludes her.
Frank sighs and glances at her wrist. She has an hour and twenty minutes left with her kids.
“Back to one perp,” she tells them. “No problem. That’s where we started this whole ride. So what have we got? One male, black. Age? I’m thinking older than your average bear. Anywhere from early thirties to mid-forties. Why, you say? Elementary, children.”
For each point she makes Frank pops a finger from her fist.
“Your abduction—spontaneous as it may have been—was very well executed. It took nerve and finesse, not a combination usually found in your younger perps. The quality of the overall execution, from abduction through the assault to the dump, tells me this guy’s either been thinking about this for a long time or he’s done this before.
“Now, you might ask, if he’s done this before, and he’s a local boy like you insist, why don’t we have similar cases popping up in the databases? Excellent question. To wit, I think he’s also very smart.
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