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It’s nearly 1:00 am, but I pull up my home number anyway More and erous, so Andre and Sarah Snow and Kennedy and maybe even Nicholas Sanderson, whoever the hell he is Maybe Dara figured out that Andre was responsible for what happened to Madeline
Maybe he decided to make sure she kept her mouth shut
I press my phone to my ear,the caller to speak now or forever hold your peace I quickly hang up and try again Nothing My mom’s probably passed out cold
I try ht to voice ht I click off the call, cursing, shoving a sudden e of Cheryl, nipped and tucked and freckled, walking around my dad’s house naked
Focus
What next? I have to talk to someone
A cop car has just pulled into the McDonald’s, and two guys in unifor, One of theun, like he’s trying to draw attention to it Suddenly ain to verify the nae of the Madeline Snow case
My phone is protesting its low battery, flashing a arning light in my direction when I make the last turn indicated by my GPS app and arrive abruptly at the police station, a hulking stone building that looks like a child’s idea of an old prison The precinct is set back on a s lot, which so various strips of grass and narrow, dirt-filled garden plots I park on the street instead
Springfield is four times the size of Somerville, and even at 1:00 a: the doors hiss open and shut, ad in doubled-over drunks or kids high on so or sullen-eyed, tattooed men who look as appropriate to the landscape as those pathetic flower beds
Inside, high fluorescent lights illue office space, where a dozen desks are fitted at angles to one another and thickly roped cables snake from computer to computer There are stacks of paper everywhere, in-boxes and out-boxes overflowing, as if a blizzard of forh and then settled It’s surprisingly loud Phones trill every few seconds, and there’s a TV going so I had earlier, standing in the Beaine Madeline Snow vanishing in full view of the Applebee’s: iainst the everyday, that they exist side by side
"Can I help you?" A wo behind the front desk, her black hair slicked into so severe a bun it looks like a giant spider clinging desperately to her head