She tried Andrews Public Affairs again, this being the fifth time, to see if, now that the crash had faded pretty far out of the news, one of their flacks might tell her what kind of ambulance carried the pilot. Can you tell me it wasn’t a District ambulance? No, the flack said. Can you tell me it was a military ambulance? No. So she tried Walter Reed Public Affairs again, just to make sure they hadn’t had a change of heart, since she’d been awfully respectful to the flack there, but the flack there said that ambulance information was not something she could make public, even though, “if there were anyone I could make it public for, it would be you, Vera.”

The last thing she could try again was Baby. So Vera decided to try Baby again. It was close to two in the morning when she found her at the Amoco. She was wearing a white pinafore, high-tops, and nothing else. Her pimp had sent her to the ramp and showed her how to hide in the woods near the boathouse.

They walked across Rock Creek Parkway to the bike path. Not too far down the parkway, the path ran close to the river. They went in the opposite direction, which ran into the woods. Vera had her flashlight, but they didn’t really need it. Vera, working night cops for at least a year now, had noticed a while back that the night sky always stayed mauve, never reached true black. They took a turn away from the bike path toward the boathouse. It wasn’t cold; in fact, it was warm for November. They could hear crickets.

Vera wondered how Baby had seen anything from her vantage at the Amoco. Vera couldn’t see the street at all from where they were, let alone the gas station. But she kept quiet. Her idea to find the paramedics had gone everywhere but where she wanted it to go. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was hoping to find on this expedition with Baby. More than anything, Vera wanted to see the tree. She wanted to put her hand on it.

Baby wasn’t chatty. She looked dirty. On closer inspection, Vera could see that her pinafore was actually two aprons tied together so her backside was in view, along with a tattoo that said Ram Me. Baby must have caught Vera looking, because she said, “Ain’t real. Comes off in the wash.” It pained Vera that Baby even gave a thought to her disapproving of a permanent tattoo.

They heard a bird’s wings flapping hard, then another joining it.

“They have ducks back here,” Baby said. “I seen them a lot.”

“Ducks. Well, this is a national park. Or part of one.”

“Real ducks. No cartoon ducks.”

Vera nodded. “Daffy Duck,” she said.

“These are my first ducks, these ducks back here, that I seen, you know, alive and walking.”