“No, it’s dried Kool-Aid. If you want to be a detective, be a detective,” he says.
Still, it kind of freaks me out. “It looks like the same uniform everyone wore.”
Virgil keeps rummaging. “Here we go,” he says, pulling out a bag that is so flat there can’t possibly be anything in it. The evidence tag says #859, LOOSE HAIR INSIDE BODY BAG. He takes the bag and slips it into his pocket. Then he picks up two of the boxes and carries them toward the entrance, glancing over his shoulder. “Make yourself useful.”
I follow him, the other boxes stacked in my arms. I’m pretty sure he took the lighter ones on purpose. These feel like they’re full of rocks. At the entrance, Ralph glances up from the nap he’s been taking. “Good to catch up, Virgil.”
Virgil points his finger. “You never saw me.”
“Saw what?” Ralph says.
We duck out the same back entrance of the police station and carry the boxes to Virgil’s truck. He manages to stuff them into the backseat, which is already jammed with food wrappers and old CD cases and paper towels and sweatshirts and empty bottles. I climb into the passenger seat. “Now what?”
“Now we have to go sweet-talk a lab into doing a mitochondrial DNA test.”
I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like something that would be part of a thorough investigation. I’m impressed. I glance at Virgil, who, I should say, has cleaned up pretty nicely now that he’s not completely drunk. He’s showered and shaved, so he smells like a pine forest instead of stale gin. “Why did you leave?”
He glances at me. “Because we got what we came for.”
“I meant the police department. Didn’t you want to be a detective?”
“Apparently not as much as you do,” Virgil murmurs.
“I think I deserve to know what I’m getting for my money.”
He snorts. “A bargain.”
He backs up too fast, and one of the boxes tumbles over. The storage bags inside spill out, so I unbuckle my seat belt and twist around, trying to right the mess. “It’s hard to tell what’s evidence and what’s your trash,” I say. The tape has peeled off one of the brown paper bags, and the evidence inside has fallen into a nest of McDonald’s fish fillet wrappers. “This is gross. Who eats fifteen fish fillets?”
“It wasn’t all at once,” Virgil says.
But I’m barely listening, because my hand has closed around the evidence that was dislodged. I pivot forward, still holding the tiny pink Converse sneaker.
Then I look down at my feet.
I’ve had pink Converse high-tops for as long as I can remember. Longer. They’re my one indulgence, the only items of clothing I ever ask my grandmother for.
I’m wearing them in every photograph of me as an infant: propped up against a clan of teddy bears, sitting on a blanket with a pair of huge sunglasses balanced on my nose; brushing my teeth at the sink, naked except for those shoes. My mother had a pair, too—old, beaten ones that she had kept from her college days. We did not wear identical dresses or have the same haircut; we didn’t practice putting on makeup. But in this one small thing, we matched.
I still wear my sneakers, practically every day. They’re kind of like a good-luck charm, or maybe a superstition. If I haven’t taken mine off, then maybe … well. You get it.
The roof of my mouth feels like a desert. “This was mine.”
Virgil looks at me. “You’re sure?”
I nod.
“Did you ever run around barefoot when you were in the sanctuary with your mother?”
I shake my head. That was a rule; no one went inside without footwear. “It wasn’t like a golf course,” I said. “There were knobs of grass and thicket and bush. You could trip in the holes that the elephants dug.” I turn the tiny shoe over in my hand. “I was there, that night. And I still don’t know what happened.”
Had I gotten out of bed and wandered into the enclosures? Had my mom been looking for me?
Am I the reason she’s gone?
My mother’s research comes thundering into my head. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten.
Virgil’s face is unreadable. “Your father told us you were asleep,” he says.
“Well, I didn’t go to sleep wearing shoes. Someone must have put them on me and tied the laces.”
“Someone,” Virgil repeats.
Last night, I dreamed about my father. He was creeping through the tall grass near the pond in the sanctuary enclosure, calling my name. Jenna! Come out, come out, wherever you are!
We were safe out here, because the two African elephants were inside the barn having their feet examined. I knew that home base in this game was the wide wall of the barn. I knew that my father always won, because he could run faster than me. But this time, I was not going to let him.