Asap.
She looked up the police blotter from the past two months on the Denville Daily Tribune website—domestic violence, shoplifting, and minor drug busts, all for oxycodone, Vicodin, Percocet, heroin. And more oxy and more heroin. She went back a year or two, looking for times when the Denville Police Department had made the news. In 2013, budget cuts required reduction of the department by five officers. In 2014, a scandal—a former high school football star overdosed on oxy in the holding cell where he was awaiting processing.
Vega scanned the photos; she paused on the detective who had resigned to avoid further attention from the Schuylkill County district attorney. The photo was from a better day, the detective smiling and standing with another man, shutting one eye into the sun, both of them holding thin silver fish on lines. She felt like she recognized him, his smile and curly brown hair, but maybe he had one of those faces.
She checked the time in the corner of her screen: 2:42 a.m. She was not the least bit tired.
—
Downtown Denville was made up entirely of shabby storefronts on narrow streets and neighborhoods with weighty American names from a more industrious time, evoking coal mines and lumberyards: Bullrush, Rockland, Black Creek.
Vega didn’t see one black or Hispanic or Asian person. Everyone was white, and smoked cigarettes and drove cars with dents. At an intersection there was a man in a hospital gown and flip-flops, hitchhiking. His face was unshaven, gaunt, calm. Vega drove closely past him but did not stop.
The police department was an unadorned three-story beige building on a corner. Vega parked her rental on the street and saw three or four news vans in the parking lot; she recognized Channel 12 from the night before at Gail and Arlen White’s house.
Inside, the station smelled like every other one she’d ever been in, half government facility and half men’s locker room: astringent, with the smell of old shoes and sweat.
The lobby was full of people, sitting in the folding chairs against the walls, standing, talking to each other or on phones. Behind the reception counter were two women, one fat, one thin. The fat one wore a cop’s uniform and was explaining a form on a clipboard to a man who kept saying, “Do I need a lawyer? Should I call a lawyer?” The thin one was not a cop, wore wide-rimmed glasses and an oversized sweater.
Vega stood in line for forty minutes and listened as the women behind the counter gave out forms and phone numbers, telling everyone they had to talk to someone else or wait or come back later. Vega eventually stepped up to the front of the line and faced the thin woman with the glasses.
“Can I help you?” she said to Vega.
“I’d like to speak to Captain Hollows.”
The thin woman wasn’t happy to hear this.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Alice Vega.”
“What’s that?”
“Alice Vega. V-E-G-A.”
Vega watched the woman write on a pad, “Alice Veja.”
“Does he know what this is in regards to?”
“I have some information about the Brandt girls.”
Vega watched the woman’s eyes go wide but only a little. She picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. She cupped her hand around the receiver to create a little shield.
“Alice Vay-zha is here to see you. She has information about the Brandt girls? Yeah, okay.”
She hung up and said, “Someone’s going to come down for you.”
“Thanks.”
Vega waited. Clock on the wall said 9:17.
A cop with a shaved head and heavy eyes came down the stairs. Plainclothes, white shirt and brown pants, comfortable shoes. A look of either apathy or exhaustion. Around six feet tall. Vega could have picked him out as a cop in a dark movie theater.
“You here for the Captain?”
“Yes.”
He turned around and started walking back the way he had come, up the stairs.
“You in town for long?” he said, still facing forward.
“A little while,” said Vega.
“How long, do you know?”
It didn’t exactly sound like he was accusing her of something, but that he might be starting soon.
“Not sure yet,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” he said, a little dare.
Vega guessed he wasn’t crazy about the idea of her being in town at all. She was a quarter Mexican with dark hair and light eyes, her skin fair but easily tanned; she looked more ethnic depending on the day. Maybe this was one of those days, and maybe he didn’t like that.
Or maybe he just didn’t like strangers.
They came to the second floor, full of cubicles and cops, plainclothes and uniforms, phones ringing, one man yelling over another to be heard, a snap of laughter.
“It’s a nice place,” the cop said. “You’ll enjoy it more than you think.”
“Sure.”
They stopped in front of a glass door, and the cop opened it and showed Vega in.
The man behind the desk was on the phone. He said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.
“Hi, Miss Vega, right?” he said, coming toward her. “Greg Hollows. Everyone calls me Junior.”
He shook her hand, then pointed at the cop who had brought her. “You’ve met Detective Ralz.”
“Sure.”
Ralz left without a sound.
“Please, have a seat.”
Vega sat in a chair opposite the desk. She glanced up at the ceiling, peeling paint in the corners. The radiator under the one window made crackling noises.
Hollows did not sit. He leaned backward against his desk so he was standing over her. He had a boyish face, big blue eyes and hair a little long in the front that she suspected he would have to constantly push back from his forehead, boyishly.
He smiled at her.
“When you get into town?”
He asked like he was an old friend, someone she had run into at a high school reunion, making chitchat over a beer.
“Last night.”
“What do you think of Denville?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s a nice place to live.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Planning on staying long?”
“A few days.”
“That’s all it’ll take, huh?”
“That’s all what will take?”
Hollows scratched his chin and then laughed gently. He leaned down so his face was close to her ear.
“I know who you are, Miss Vega. And I know why you’re here.”
Then he went back behind his desk, sat down.
“I had a chat with Maggie Shambley this morning. She’s a nice lady.”
Vega said nothing.
“I know she hired you to find the Brandt girls.”
They stared at each other. They waited.
He rubbed his eyes and said, “I’m glad you came to see me. Because I would’ve come to see you this afternoon. I have every man in my shop working the Brandt case around the clock. They are capable, professional, and determined, and they will find these girls. We have no need for a private detective here.”
He paused.
“I realize you have special skills.”
He turned to his computer and tapped a key, then swiveled the screen toward Vega. She saw an old photo alongside an article. It was her and Sheriff Colson with Ethan Moreno and his parents.
“You’re pretty famous out in California, huh?”