It takes her a moment, but then the giggle slips out again. “You spoke at my school. You said your name is really Officer Friendly.”
“And so it is,” the woman says, pointing to her name tag. “Hannah Friendly. While we were out looking for you, the hospital called your mom. Your dad is going to be just fine. And you’ll get to see both of them really soon.”
Nichelle looks over to Cara, but a wall of police officers blocks her view of the body. “I . . . I . . .”
“It’s okay, Nichelle, you can ask us anything.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, did I? She didn’t take me ’cuz I was bad?”
“Not a single thing,” I answer firmly. “She used to live here when she was a little girl. Her father was a bad man, and hurt her, and when she got really upset about some things, she thought your parents were hurting you, because you were in the same house. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did your parents. Promise.”
She studies my face like she’s memorizing it, her dark eyes lingering on the scars I got when I was only a year older than her, and finally nods. “Okay. And I can go home now?”
“Absolutely,” says Officer Friendly, offering her hand. Nichelle takes it and allows herself to be led away from me and Sterling. Eliza helps me stand, because my knees are a bit shaky in a way I can’t entirely blame on crouching.
And even though I probably shouldn’t, I find myself sidling between the officers to kneel down next to Cara, a safe distance away from the pool of blood from what used to be the back of her skull. A thin gold chain peeks above the collar of her white jumpsuit. Finding a sturdy-looking twig, I hook the chain and gently pull until a heart-shaped locket falls out.
“Does anyone have gloves?”
One of the agents from Kang’s team kneels across from me, wearing a pair. “Need something picked up?”
I gesture with the twig, setting the locket swaying. “I want to see what’s in it.”
He catches the pendant and opens it carefully. One on side, there’s a picture of teenaged Cara and her plain white teddy bear, red curtains in the back. A photo booth, probably. She’s grinning, and her hair is a faded red gold with blonde roots, growing out from the scarlet her father made it. On the other side, there’s a newsprint cutout of my face, with a halo drawn in sparkly gold ink.
My stomach churns, and I have to bite down on the urge to vomit. “You can close it, thank you,” I rasp.
“Is this healthy?” Cass asks wryly.
The question I asked Father Brendon rolls through my mind. How do we know when we’re doing more harm than good?
“Mercedes, nine years ago you rescued her, and you tried your damnedest to rescue her again today. What happened in between is not your fault. It’s also not your responsibility.”
“She got hurt in the system.”
“So did you.”
I look up at her at that, and she scowls down with an unimpressed glare. “Look, so you’ve never told me, and I’m not asking now, but I’m not completely unobservant, you know? I know you were in foster care for years, but the only home you talk about is the last one. You think I can’t read between the lines that shit happened at the other ones?”
“Only one was very bad,” I admit. “The rest of the time I was moved because my family kept trying to take me back.”
“Still. You, Mercedes Ramirez, you fucking martyr, are proof that the way she chose wasn’t the only way to choose.”
“Has anyone told you recently that you’re bad at this?”
She shrugs and hauls me up again. “I can’t be half as bad as Eddison.”
There might be something to that.
“Come on. Let’s get back to Hanoverian so you can get to Bethesda and check on Eddison.”
I look back at Cara, resisting the pull on my elbow. “I should—”
“Mercedes.” Losing patience waiting for me to look at her, she grabs my chin and forces it. “You gave her every kindness you could. Now try to be kind to yourself. No one is going to desecrate her. They’re just waiting for the medical examiner. Don’t kneel beside her like penance.”
But that’s exactly what it is, or what it should be. Penance. Vigil, maybe. She needed me to save her. Whether that’s fair or not, whether it was possible or not, she needed that from me, and I failed her.
Sterling slides her arm around my waist and joins in the tug-of-war, and the three of us tumble forward, catching ourselves just in time to prevent the Stafford PD from being able to mock us forever.
28
We get back to the Douglass house in time to see Nichelle and her mother ride off in an ambulance. Vic, standing in the driveway, checks over us with worried eyes before yanking all three of us into a hug. The gathered officers and agents laugh at our flailing attempts to regain balance, because Vic doesn’t really need to be landing on the concrete, but Vic just as clearly does not give a shit; he is not about to let us go.
Cass wriggles out first, flushed bright pink. She’s been loaned to our team on occasion, but I don’t think she’s ever had a Hanoverian Hug.
Sterling and I shift to settle more comfortably into the embrace, which feels like home. “Eddison got shot in the leg,” I mumble into his coat.
“I know. We’ll go see him. You just have to give a statement and we can go.”
That would mean letting go.
He keeps his arm around my shoulders even when we all finally stand up straight, and Cass calls Watts so we give our statements directly to her. It’s pretty no-frills, especially in light of what’s to come. An agent discharged a weapon and a suspect died, so IA automatically has to conduct an investigation. The fact that my presence on the scene was borderline not-allowed, requested by the agent in charge but technically against regulations, will make it a bit more complicated. So Watts just has us march through it all together, clustered around the phone like that Mystery Date game we played in middle and high school.
“I’ll get Eddison’s car back to Quantico,” Cass says when the call is done. “You and Watts can trade back in the next couple of days unless you need something right off.”
Sterling shrugs. “At this point, even if I did need something I wouldn’t know what it was,” she admits.
“Do you have an agent you’d trust to drive Watts’s car back to the garage?” Vic asks. “That way they can just ride up with me.”
“Sure. She’s let Cuomo drive it without too much grief, and he’s back in the woods. I’ll let him know.”
Sterling hands over the keys, and we pile into Vic’s car for the drive to Bethesda. It’s quiet, the CD player crooning one of his favorite Billie Holiday albums. The blood on my hands is starting to itch, but if I scratch or rub, it’s going to flake off all over Vic’s car. Which, granted, has seen a lot worse from his daughters, but still.
It feels a bit like penance, and Cass isn’t here to yell at me for this one.
“Our purses are in my car,” Sterling announces suddenly.
“Okay?”
“I drove to Stafford without my license.”
I twist around to stare at her in the middle seat. She meets my eyes with a sheepish smile and shrugs.
And suddenly I’m laughing my ass off, trying to imagine explaining to a police officer why we were going 135 without a license, and I can hear her giggling, too, and even Vic is chuckling, because he also knows how Sterling drives when she’s determined to get somewhere now. It’s stupid and ridiculous and I can’t stop laughing, until the laughter abruptly turns to tears and I’m sobbing into my shoulder so I don’t get blood all over my face.
Christ.
Sterling unbuckles her belt and slides up between the front seats as best she can, awkwardly bending over the center console, to wrap me in another hug. She’s saying something, her voice soft, no louder than Billie Holiday, really, but I don’t know what the words are. It takes me entirely too long to realize that’s because she is speaking Hebrew, and I wonder if it’s a prayer or a lullaby or a very gentle remonstrance for me to get my head out of my ass.