“Back then?”

“You’d be surprised how years of sexual servitude break your will.”

Willoughby liked the way that the detective nodded, as if sympathetic, but didn’t let this information throw her off her stride. Yeah, yeah, years of sexual servitude, that old thing.

“It’s-what time is it, when you go to the Karmelkorn?”

“Almost five. I told you.”

“How did you know the time?”

“I had a Snoopy watch.” Recited in an oh-so-bored voice. “A yellow-faced watch on a wide leather band. It had belonged to Sunny, in fact, and she no longer wore it. I thought it was funny. But the way his arms moved, it was hard to ever know the exact time. So all I can say is, it was going on five.”

“And where was the Karmelkorn?”

“I couldn’t tell you in terms of north or south, if that’s what you want. Security Square was shaped like a plus sign, only one end was much longer than the other. The Karmelkorn would have been on the short, stumpy end that faced where the J. C. Penney was going in, but hadn’t opened yet. It was a great place to sit. Even if you weren’t eating, the smell was so rich and buttery.”

“So you were sitting?”

“Yes, on the edge of a fountain. It wasn’t a wishing fountain, but people had thrown coins in. I remember wondering what would happen if I fished them out, if I would get in trouble.”

“But you were a goody-goody, you said.”

“Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that’s what defines us. We’re always thinking about the things we don’t dare do, figuring out where the lines are drawn, so we can go right up to the edge of things, then plead innocence on the ground of a technicality.”

“Was Sunny a goody-goody?”

“No, she was something worse.”

“What was that?”

“Someone who wanted to be bad and didn’t know how.”

7:10 P.M.

Jane Eyrefinished-Reader, I married him, he was blind, what other choice did he have?-Kay realized she was without a book. She probably had one in the trunk of her car, but she wasn’t sure they would buzz her back into the building if she left. She could ask someone, but she felt that strange adolescent self-consciousness that she had never quite lost. She studied the notices pinned to the bulletin board, the pamphlets. DARE-Drug Awareness Education. No, wait, that didn’t add up: Drug Abuse Resistance Education. An infelicitous name, all to create an acronym that didn’t work, in Kay’s opinion. It was too close to Drug Abuse Resists Education.

The impromptu trip to the mall still bothered her. Should she tell someone? To whom did she owe her loyalty, if anyone? Should she leave? But all that waited for her was an empty house on a Saturday night.

7:35 P.M.

“You want a soda?”

“No.”

“Because I do. I’ll be right back, okay? I’m just going to get a soda. Gloria?”

“I’m fine.”

Left alone, the lawyer said to her client, “They’re listening to us, just so you know. If we want to speak privately, however, all you have to do is ask.”

“I know. I’m fine.”

7:55 P.M.

“So where were we?”

“You were getting a soda.”

“No, I mean when I left. Where were you, in the story? Oh, yeah, on the edge of the fountain, thinking about the coins.”

“A man tapped me on the shoulder-”

“Show me.”

“Show you?”

Nancy perched on the table between them. “I’m you. Did he come up from behind you? Which side? Show me.”

She approached Nancy from behind, flicking her left shoulder with a little more vehemence than a tap would require.

“So you turn and you see this guy-what did he look like?”

“He was just an old guy to me. Very short hair, gray and brown. Ordinary-looking. He was in his fifties, but I’d only find that out later. At the time the only thing I thought was, He’s old.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He asked if I was Heather Bethany. He knew my name.”

“And did that seem strange to you?”

“No. I was a kid. Grown-ups were always knowing things about me that I didn’t know how they knew them. Grown-ups were like gods. Back then.”

“Did you know him?”

“No, but he showed me his badge, right away, told me he was a police officer.”

“What did the badge look like?”

“I don’t know. A badge. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he had a badge, and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to doubt anything he said.”

“Which was?”

“‘Your sister’s been hurt. Come with me.’ So I went. I followed him down a corridor, where the restrooms were. There was an exit back there, marked ‘For Emergencies Only,’ but it was an emergency, so it made sense to me that we were going that way, rather than the usual entrances.”

“Did an alarm sound?”

“An alarm?”

“You walk out doors marked Emergency Exit Only, an alarm usually sounds.”

“I don’t remember one. Maybe he disabled it. Maybe there wasn’t one. I don’t know.”

“The corridor was…where?”

“Between the center atrium and Sears. It was where the restrooms were, and also where they did the surveys.”

“Surveys?”

“Consumer stuff. Sunny told me about it. You could get, like, five dollars for answering questions. But you had to be at least fifteen, so I never got to do it.”

8:40 P.M.

Infante slipped into the room where Willoughby and Lenhardt were watching the interrogation.

“You’re supposed to be at the airport, waiting for the mom,” Lenhardt said to him, but not in a mean, ballbusting way, not to Willoughby ’s ears.

“I got in early, and she’s going to be at least two hours late according to the monitors. I thought I had time to run up here, see how things were going.”

“ Nancy ’s doing good,” Lenhardt said. “She’s taking her time. She’s had her going almost four hours now, and she keeps bringing her up to the edge of the actual kidnapping, then going back to the beginning. It’s driving her crazy. She’s bursting to tell us the bad shit, for some reason.”

Infante glanced at his watch. “I’ll have to leave for the airport by nine-thirty. You think I’ll catch the main show?”

Lenhardt balled his fists and rotated his wrists, peering at his clenched fingers. “Magic Eight Ball says all signs look good.”

8:50 P.M.

“So you’re outside, and…is it dark?”

“No, it’s still light. It’s March twenty-ninth. The days were getting longer. We got outside-”

“No alarm on the door?”

“No, no alarm on the door. And there was a van. He opened the door, and Sunny was inside. Before I could register anything-the fact that she was lying down, tied up, the fact that this wasn’t a police car-he had caught me up and thrown me back there. I fought, if you could call it that, a little girl flailing her arms at a grown man. But it was completely ineffectual. I wonder-do you think he got Sunny the same way, with the same story? How did he know us? Have you figured that out, Detective? How did Stan Dunham know us? Why did he target us?”

“Stan Dunham’s in a retirement community out in Sykesville.” A pause. “Did you know that?”

“It’s not as if we’re pen pals.” Said with dry disgust. Yet without worry, Willoughby noticed. Again, they had considered carefully what they would say about Dunham. They had no intention of telling her that he couldn’t contradict his own name at this point. But the fact that he was still alive didn’t seem to make as much of an impression as it should have. Even if she were telling the truth, shouldn’t she be more taken aback by the revelation that her captor, the man who had ruined her life, was just thirty miles west of where she sat?

“Okay, okay-when he grabbed you, did you…lose anything? Leave anything behind?”

“What do you mean?”