But if Clarice found out about Olivia Barnes, she would think Ronnie was one of those white people who hated black people. That had been another one of the lies told by Maddy’s mom. Of all the things that Ronnie had done, or been accused of doing, this detail remained so sharp. She had said a horrible word, the one word you could never take back. That was why most people believed Alice over her, when it came down to it. Alice had never said the horrible word.

“I just have to go in the back,” she told the detectives, “and hang up my apron. We’re not allowed to wear them on break. It has something to do with the Health Department.”

Clarice probably gave her an odd look at that, knowing it for the lie it was, but Ronnie didn’t care. She pushed her way back into the kitchen, where O’lene was studying the ovens.

“Hey, Ronnie,” she said, “do I have to put in a new batch of anything? Or can we make it to three P.M. with what we’ve got?”

“What we’ve got,” Ronnie said tonelessly. She folded her apron, put it on top of one of the boxes, and opened the back door, the one used for delivery.

“Hey, what the-”

But she was already out of O’lene’s earshot, running blindly toward Route 40. She didn’t know where she was going to go, or what she was going to do. The only thing she knew was that when they came for you, their minds were already made up. So you might as well run, and be free for a few hours longer. You might as well run.

It was just before 6 P.M. when Alice let herself into the house, blinking violently. Helen didn’t approve of air-conditioning-that was her exact word, approve, as if it were an idea, or a habit-and she kept the house dark and shuttered in the summertime. It worked, actually, and the living room was surprisingly pleasant. But the abrupt change in light was hard on Alice ’s eyes. She swore she could actually feel her irises opening, desperate to find enough light to focus in the dim room.

Then she saw Helen, sitting in an old easy chair unearthed from the Salvation Army and covered in a bright flowery print that Helen had raved about. Marimekko, Alice recalled. “I had dresses made out of this when I was your age,” Helen had said. Now she sat in the chair, still in her robe, although it was almost dinnertime.

“Some people came looking for you.”

“People?”

“Police detectives.”

“What did they want?”

“They want to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“They wouldn’t tell me. Why don’t you?”

“How can I tell you what I don’t know?”

“Are you sure you don’t know?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Alice lowered herself onto the sofa, removed her shoes, and examined the soles of her feet. She had been using a special cream on her heels, but they were still cracked and split from her rambling, as she had come to think of her long walks. She wished she knew someone other than Helen who might ask what she was up to these days, because she would like to use that answer: “Me? Oh, I’ve been rambling.” It sounded romantic.

“ Alice -I can’t go through this again.”

“What?”

“You know.”

Alice did, but she wanted Helen to say it. “I don’t have a clue what you mean.”

“ Alice, baby.”

“Don’t call me baby.”

“You are my baby. My one and only. You will always be my baby.”

“Right,” Alice said, with a short bark of a laugh. “Right.”

“Why would the police want to talk to you?”

“I told you, I don’t know. But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

She held out her hand, weary in a way she hadn’t been coming up the walk. Then she had felt energized, despite her long day of rambling. She had been thinking about their Saturday night pizza, which Helen insisted on ordering from one of those gourmet places that served pizza with things like shrimp and chicken fajitas and even stuffed grape leaves. Alice would have been happy with a plain cheese from Domino’s. Instead, she usually ordered something called a “margherita,” which was just tomato-and-cheese in disguise. So Helen. She kept giving ordinary things the most extraordinary names. A tomato-and-cheese pizza became margherita, a piece of fabric was Marimekko.

Helen stared, perplexed, at Alice ’s outstretched hand.

“They gave you a card, right? Well, give it to me.”

Helen fished it out of her robe pocket and handed it over. Nancy Porter. Baltimore County Homicide.

“Are you going to call?” Helen asked, as if Alice were the adult, the one who got to make decisions.

“After dinner. It’s pizza night, remember?”

“They might have gone home by then.”

“Then I’ll talk to them Monday.”

“But-”

“If it’s important to them, they’ll come back,” Alice said, going into the kitchen to grab the carryout menu from beneath the refrigerator magnet shaped like Glinda the Good. Even though she knew the menu and the phone number by heart, she liked to study it before ordering, just in case she decided to try something other than her usual. “They always come back.”

Nancy and Infante managed to make good use of their time that afternoon-canvassing the mall’s shops, looking for anyone who might have sold scissors or a new outfit for a toddler. The people they interviewed were all helpful, too, which wasn’t always the case. At least they wished to be helpful. A missing girl generated that kind of response. But no one really knew anything, and ignorance took longer to process and assess than pertinent information.

Still, Nancy and Infante felt almost at peace with the day they had put in. Almost. Flight was tantamount to confession. Ronnie Fuller was hiding something, and she would tell them what it was when they found her. And they would find her. A teenage girl who worked in a bagel shop and lived with her parents could hide only so long. Ronnie didn’t even know how to drive- Nancy and Infante had learned that from her mother, a woman who wasn’t so much pale as gray and lumpy, like a doll left outside too long. Ronnie didn’t have a boyfriend, or any friends, period. That was how her mother put it, sitting at her kitchen table, head bowed in shame: “No boyfriend. No friends. Period.”

But what if time mattered? Even if their client was a corpse-which was Lenhardt’s private slogan for their department, “Your corpse is our client”-time was important. But if the girl was being kept alive, as Olivia Barnes had been, then time was an enemy and an ally, a tease and a cheat. Every minute that passed gave them hope. Every minute filled them with despair.

“And you know what would be the worst possible outcome?” Nancy said, speaking as if she had been airing her thoughts out loud all along.

Infante caught up with her, a ballroom dancer used to following a partner’s improvisations.

“If she was alive for a while and now isn’t,” he said. “I mean, if she’s going to be dead, it’s better if she’s been dead all along, since early Friday night. Otherwise, it’s lose-lose. People will be second-guessing us, and whatever we did will be the wrong thing in hindsight. Solving the case won’t matter.”

“It won’t matter as much.”

“I gotta say, I think she’s dead.”

“I don’t know what to think. It doesn’t make sense. Cutting the hair and changing the clothes suggests abduction for a purpose. But then there’s this T-shirt with blood on it.”

“Only not her blood.”

“It just doesn’t sound like what they would do. The girls, I mean. It’s nothing like what they did last time.”

“That’s right-you know them, don’t you?” Infante’s tone was supercasual, the kind of tone he might use in an interrogation. Nancy wondered what Lenhardt had confided in Infante last night, in the men’s room. She was told he wanted them to work the case because Jeffries was up, and Jeffries wasn’t much good. A year from his twenty-and-out, he was like a piece of furniture that had gone out of style and they just kept shifting him around the room, too sentimental to call bulk trash to haul him away. So it was credible that Lenhardt didn’t want him to work this case. Credible, plausible-but Lenhardt would be the first to remind Nancy that those words didn’t guarantee truth, just a reasonable facsimile. Credible stories were the kind they picked apart every day.