I wanted to stay with them, to sit with Louise, but I had another call and I left them. I thought about the time Louise tricked me. Then I was new to the force and Louise comes along, all of thirteen years, and rooks me into giving her a ride home. At one point, I remember, she put her bare feet up on the dash and she opened the ashtray, and I knew she was trouble. She’s trouble now. I can figure that out. I got back to my office like I’d done a good deed and learned that Louise was a runaway, that the superintendent was looking for her, had been for days. The chief of police heard me talking about her, called me into his office, proud I’d detained her, commending me even. Me, green-horned and grinning with authority until I figured out the chief thought I still had her, that I had locked her up or turned her over to the state. It seems she’d left the boarding school. She’d been running, they told me. We can’t catch the little shit. I stood there, suddenly in the backwash of my own incompetence, with my uniform hat in my hand, my big badge gleaming on my chest, remembering how Louise had smiled at me when she waved good-bye. I’d waved back, feeling good. She had to hurry home, she had said. I remembered the dust print of Louise’s toes stamped on my dash.