“I told you I don’t care. What you do in your personal life is none of my business. I’m here to because you said it’s important. Because I’ll do anything to help you locate Ash. Anything else is wasting my time,” Becca said.

Beside her Christian tensed, then nodded at Wishard to continue. She opened her notebook, visibly relieved that the personal discussion was over. She gestured for the waiter in that take-charge manner detectives always possessed, as if the entire world were at their beck and call.

“Three coffees with milk,” Wishard said. “Anyone else hungry?”

Christian mumbled no. Becca shook her head. She could still see that poor girl’s face lying on the ground. She wasn’t sure she would ever be hungry.

“Hope it’s okay if I eat.” She didn’t wait for them to answer. “I’ll have an egg white omelet, whole wheat toast, and a side of fruit.”

She shot Becca a wry smile. “Low blood sugar. I have to eat every few hours, or it’s not pretty,” she said. This always amazed Becca, the detachment of detectives, how they could compartmentalize. A necessary function of the job, she’d learned. Those officers who couldn’t do that didn’t last. “Now, Dr. Ortiz, can you tell me the last time you saw your foster daughter?” Wishard asked, her pen poised and at the ready.

There it was again. Foster daughter. “I saw Ash yesterday evening. We watched TV after dinner and she went up to bed around midnight. I don’t know what time she left. I woke up around seven-thirty, and she was gone.”

“Was there anything bothering her? Any problems you two were having?” Wishard asked.

Becca hesitated. “Dr. Ortiz, I’ve read Ash’s file, so I already know about her history of drug abuse. Anything else you can tell me that might help us fill in the pieces?”

Ash’s file. Becca read it too. Her file said nothing about who Ash was, only the laws she broke. Shoplifting. Theft. Excessive drug use. They talked about the abuse she’d endured, the reports sent from Georgia from social workers who came to visit and did nothing to help this child. A file that told you nothing about how sweet and resilient Ash really was. Wishard didn’t want that. She wanted things related to the investigation. “Ash got picked up yesterday by an undercover for trying to score at the reservoir.”

“Were charges filed?”

Becca looked down at her hands, knowing how bad this sounded. “My partner, Officer Stanton, spoke with the officer. It was just a few pills. He agreed to drop the charges if we sought counseling. Which I planned to do,” Becca said defensively.

“So just to be clear you asked the officer to bury the arrest?” Wishard asked.