An old woman appeared. Her skin was heavily wrinkled and most of her teeth were missing. She and Abigail exchanged words in Nyanja, and Joseph showed her the photograph of the girl. Agnes shook her head. She looked at Zoe and asked about the “muzungu”—foreigner.
Joseph chuckled. “She says your hair looks like gold. She wants to know if it’s real.”
Zoe smiled. In a country where almost all women wore wigs or hair extensions, she had been asked that question countless times. “Tell her I was born with it,” she said, leaning down so the old woman could touch it. “Does she know anything?”
He shook his head. “She’s never seen the girl before.”
Abigail bid Agnes goodbye and led them to the next house. A rotund woman was hanging clothes on a line. She smiled at Abigail but eyed Zoe with suspicion. The exchange between the women ended almost as quickly as it began.
“Her family was asleep at midnight,” Joseph explained.
Zoe thrust her hands in her pockets and took in her surroundings, trying to imagine the street as the girl had seen it. I bet it was almost deserted, she thought. In the compounds night was the handmaiden of violence. Those who were wise stayed indoors.
In the next half-hour, they spoke to two widows, a young mother nursing an infant, and a group of adolescent boys lounging under a tree. All of them denied having seen the child, and a couple of the youths made wisecracks about the girl’s appearance.
Zoe turned away, angered by their callousness. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.
Suddenly, a boy spoke up. “Hey, muzungu, why do you care what happens in Kanyama?”
She stared at him. “Where were you at midnight last night?”
He shrugged. “I was watching TV.”
“So you were awake?”
He elbowed one of his friends. “Do muzungus watch TV in their sleep?”
The joke elicited a chorus of guffaws.
She ignored them. “Did you see anything unusual? A person, a car you didn’t know?”
The boy glanced down the street, then crossed his arms. “I saw a truck.”
She caught her breath. “What color was it?”
“Silver. Like this.” He reached in his pocket and produced a foreign coin, no doubt the largesse of a tourist or an aid worker.
“Was it parked or driving?”
The boy flipped the coin in the air and caught it. “It was driving.”
She traded a look with Joseph. “Will you show us where you saw it?”
The boy considered this. “What’s it worth to you?”
She didn’t blink. In Africa everything had a price. “Fifty pin. But only after you tell me everything you know.”
The boy’s eyes lit up. Fifty thousand kwacha was the equivalent of ten dollars. He stood up and his friends joined him, their banter gone. “Bwera,” he said. “This way.”
He led them down the lane to a house with unpainted block walls and crumbling mortar. A gaunt woman wearing a sweat-stained shirt and chitenge skirt sat outside the door, holding a carton of cheap Lusaka beer. The boy pushed aside the curtain and sat down on a torn couch in the cramped living room, displacing a half-naked child who jumped up to make space for him.
“The truck drove by,” said the youth. “I was sitting here. I saw its lights.”
“What kind of truck was it?” Joseph asked.
“I think it was a Lexus. It went that way.”
“Was it an SUV?” Zoe asked, realizing the vehicle had been traveling toward Abigail’s house.
The boy nodded.
“What direction was the girl walking last night?” she asked Abigail.
The old woman pointed down the street in the same direction.
Zoe turned to the boy again. “You said you saw its lights. Did you see brake lights?”
He shook his head.
“What about the driver? Did you catch a glimpse of him?”
He gave her a blank look. “I saw nothing else.”
She examined his face and decided to believe him. Unzipping her backpack, she took out the money she had promised him. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Wisdom,” he replied.
“Wisdom is the finest beauty of a person. It’s a proverb. It applies as much to muzungu ladies and little girls with funny faces as it does to Zambian men. Think about it.”
She handed the boy the kwacha.
“We need to find someone near Abigail who saw the truck,” Joseph said.
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
They retraced their steps, questioning the people they had met and a few others who appeared on the street. None had seen the silver SUV. Zoe checked her watch. It was nearing five o’clock. From the way Abigail was walking, it was clear she was growing tired. Zoe was about to suggest that they take her home when Joseph led them toward Agnes’s shanty and knocked on the door. The old woman appeared, and Joseph spoke a few words in Nyanja. Agnes scratched her head and blinked a few times, then replied in the same language.
“What did she say?” Zoe inquired.
Joseph ignored her and asked Agnes another question. The old woman nodded and walked around the corner of her house, showing them an alleyway strewn with loose stones and litter. She gestured toward the road and spoke again in Nyanja.