“You’re making absolutely no sense,” Nderi said.
Out on the road, Shpetim thought that he wasn’t making sense. He was bumping along in the downtown traffic in Mattatuck, and he had no idea what he was going to do when he got where he was going. He passed The Feldman Funeral Home and noticed the crime tape up along the sidewalk. That was where the body of Chester Morton had disappeared from just last night. Maybe the problem was that they weren’t paying attention to anything. Shpetim was not entirely clear in his mind who “they” were. “They” were definitely the police, but “they” were also the television news reporters, and the people at the newspaper, and that kind of thing.
He got to the central station of the Mattatuck Police Department and pulled around the back to park. He sat for a moment behind the wheel of the truck and tried to think of what he wanted to say. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know who he wanted to talk to.
He got out of the truck and went around the front to enter the building by the door there. The door at the back was labeled OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY, which was just another way of saying, “Keep Out.” This was a beautiful building, too, near new and very well kept. The town of Mattatuck might not know what it was doing in a lot of ways, but it did know what it was doing with buildings.
There was a counter just inside the door, and past the counter were dozens of people in uniform doing things at computers. Shpetim walked up to the counter and waited. A middle-aged woman in a police uniform came up to greet him, holding a clipboard in her hand.
“Yes?” she said.
Communism or capitalism, Shpetim thought, public officials were rude.
“I’d like to talk to somebody,” he said.
It sounded lame even as it was coming out of his mouth. He looked around the big area full of people in uniforms. All of a sudden, he was frantic. He was here, and he had no idea why he was here. Then he saw a young man he recognized, and felt better immediately.
“I want to talk to him,” he said, pointing. “That one over there.”
The middle-aged woman turned around. “Which one?”
“That one. The one with the—the young man. He’s got a folder that he’s carrying.”
“They’ve all got folders that they’re carrying,” the middle-aged woman said. “Do you mean that one over near the cooler? Officer Holborn?”
Shpetim tried desperately to remember the names of the officers who had come to the building site when they’d called about the baby in the backpack, but he couldn’t. He was still willing to bet that the young man with the folder was one of them.
“All right,” he said. “Yes. Officer Holborn.”
The middle-aged woman gave him a look. Then she turned around and shouted, “Hey, Kyle. Somebody here to see you.”
Shpetim waited patiently while Kyle Holborn came up to the counter. He didn’t look glad to have been called. There was something else about public officials—communist or capitalist, they didn’t like being called on to do any work.
“Yes?” Kyle Holborn said, stopping at the counter.
The middle-aged woman seemed to have disappeared. Shpetim straightened up a little.
“I am Shpetim Kika,” he said. “I remember you. It is my company that is building the new tech building for the community college. You came to the building site with another policeman on the night we found a yellow backpack with a skeleton in it.”
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Yes, yes I did. But I’m not on that case anymore.”
Shpetim had no idea how to interpret this. “I have come to find out what is happening about the baby in the backpack,” he said. “You came to the building site and took away the backpack and the skeleton, and then there was a mention in the news the next day, and after that there was nothing. Nothing. A baby is dead, and it seems to me nobody is doing nothing.”
“I’m sure people are doing something,” Kyle said. “We don’t tell the newspeople everything. But I’m not on that case anymore.”
“I want to know what is being done about the baby in the backpack,” Shpetim said again. “Do you know what a horrible thing it was, to find it like that? Maybe you’re a policeman, you see things like that every day, it doesn’t bother you. I don’t see things like that every day. There were the tiny bones. There was the tiny head, cracked in half like you do with eggs. And all of it lying there on top of schoolbooks. I can still see those school books. Current Issues, that was one of them. And The Everyday Writer. I know The Everyday Writer. My son, Nderi, had that book when he was in the community college.”