“I was away for a while. And it took me some time to sort things out. I couldn’t pin the kid on you. I couldn’t do that.”

“It could come back on you.”

“It could. I’m guilty of it. I’m guilty.”

“We’re all guilty,” I said. “My friend Frank used to say that all you could do was just to live and be guilty.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“You know I wasn’t running stuff, right?”

“I know that. Now.”

“You know what I got out of it?”

He shook his head.

“The same as you. Nothing. So far. But I’ll get something for myself out of it, maybe something for the both of us.”

It didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to get anything done. It was done to me first.

33

EVA

I TRIED TO DO SOMETHING RIGHT AND ALL IT DID WAS CAUSE MORE WRONG. Two days after I gave Denise the money, I got an anonymous text. “How’s Eva?” I didn’t respond, but called Denise right away. She was worried. Eva hadn’t come home from school. No one knew where she was.

“Someone’s got her,” I said and told her about the text. She wanted to call the police. It took a lot of convincing to stop her and I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t still call later. “I’ll get her back,” I told her. “They won’t do anything to her. They just want something from me. I’ll take care of it.”

“Who’s they?” she said, but she didn’t really want to know. “It’s Froehmer, isn’t it?”

“It’s not Froehmer.” And that conversation went on longer than it should have.

“I should call the police,” she said near the end.

“Give me some time before that,” I told her again. “I’ll get her back soon. I promise. Just give me a little time.”

I texted back. “What do you want?”

“You have something.”

“What?”

“Goat.”

“I don’t have it. I swear.”

“Then get it. For Eva.”

And that was it. They didn’t respond to more texts from me. I sat around and thought about what to do. I didn’t think about it long enough. I called Froehmer and told him that I had to see him, that it was urgent.

We met a couple of blocks from the diner. I got into the backseat of Froehmer’s car. Froehmer was in the passenger seat, and Mobley was driving. “Somebody’s got Eva,” I told him “And I need to find out who it is.”

“What do they want?”

“Something I don’t have. That trophy from a while back. You think it’s the people who hired you? You think you could talk to them?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Froehmer said. “They wouldn’t do that.”

“Then who?”

“Give me some time,” Froehmer said.