“Morris.” No preamble, no title, just his name. The way he always answered his phone whether at home or work. In the ten years that Lucy had known him he had not changed, and that dependability soothed her now.
     “Hi, Tom, it’s Lucy.”
     “Lucy, I have you on my list to call today. How are you?”
     “Your list?” Lucy was confused.
     “I need to ask you some questions.”
     “What was it that you were doing yesterday morning?” Lucy could hear the sharpness in her voice and knew it was unfair. Tom had not been probing or the least insensitive when they had talked about Emmy yesterday. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to dissect Emmy’s life, not yet.
      Morris ignored her tone. “We need to know about her background, her friends, her habits. If we hope to solve this, we’ll need your cooperation.”
     “I understand,” Lucy capitulated. “I want to ask you a few questions, myself.”
     “Can you be here at two this afternoon?”
     “I’ll be there,” Lucy said.
     She had four hours. May as well get some work done. She did have a deadline to meet, if she wanted to pay the bills. The boycott piece was organized and all she needed to do was draft and polish. It would take her mind off of everything else. Lucy set the alarm on her computer for 1:15.
     For a few hours she lost herself in work. But, later, driving into town, she had to force her mind away from Emmy. She focused on Detective Tom Morris. They had met when Lucy was covering the police department for The People’s Voice, a short-lived alternative paper that was concerned with police activity in the community, among a host of other issues. Morris told her that he had lost a coin toss and was appointed the paper’s contact in the department. He wasn’t working on homicide then. He was in vice, “Chasing prostitutes and johns,” Morris said. “It’s like an ocean, every wave has got a different mix of water and hits a slightly different shore, but it all looks the same and isn’t essentially any different.” In spite of that cynical opinion, Lucy had come to realize that Tom Morris was dedicated, believed in what he was doing and believed in the structure of the system of which he was a part.
     They developed a working friendship and, she believed, mutual respect. At some point she came to trust him and hoped that it didn’t mean she had lost her reporter’s edge where he was concerned. When the paper folded after two years, she started freelancing and the issue of her objectivity about Morris no longer mattered. Lucy sold articles mostly to left-of-center national and regional magazines. She wrote grants for nonprofits and taught the occasional journalism class at community colleges in the tri-county area.
     It was in one of those classes that Lucy first met Emmy. The girl was a perpetual student. It didn’t surprise Lucy that Will had also taught her.
     Emmy’s excitement and idealism had also drawn both of them to her and to her causes. Emmy persuaded Lucy to accompany her to the meetings of assorted activist groups. They marched against the death penalty and fed homeless people out of the basement of a church. Emmy seemed to have a desire to make a family out of the whole world.
     Marta had been on the streets for six months when Emmy, handing out sandwiches on Hawthorne, encountered her. There was Marta with her hand out. “Hey Marta, happy birthday.” Marta replied that birthdays were shit. Emmy claimed that she knew it was just a matter of time before Marta decided to get it together and give her mom a break.
     I don’t know what you did, Emmy, but you gave her back to me, and I’m not going to rest until I know who did this to you, Lucy promised, as she pulled into a parking lot near the Justice Center.
     “Hello, Lucy,” Detective Morris took her hand in both of his and held it tightly. She sensed his desire to comfort her, conflicting with his obedience to protocol. She was a witness of sorts, after all. It wouldn’t be appropriate, no matter how much he sympathized with her.
     Morris had a small office. It was furnished with one four-drawer filing cabinet, a metal desk and two chairs. He invited her to sit, pulling one of the chairs up next to his desk so that they weren’t separated by it. An electric pencil sharpener, a one-month-calendar ink blotter, and three stacking trays shared the surface of his desk. There were no pictures. A three ring binder labeled “D’Angelo” lay on the blotter. For a moment, Lucy allowed herself to imagine what the binder held. Will’s interview, a catalogue of evidence, crime scene photos, photos of Emmy, autopsy photos, all the grim minutiae that accompanied an unnatural death.
     “How are you holding up?” Morris asked.
     Lucy shook her head. “Let’s just get down to business, Tom. Do you want to start or shall I?”
     Morris gave her a long look. “Okay, Lucy.” He pulled a yellow note-pad from his desk. “How long have you known Ms D’Angelo?”
     “Five years,” Lucy said.
     “How well did you know her?”
     That was a question a little less easy to answer in light of what Will said yesterday. “I thought I knew her as well as I know Marta. In some ways better. There are things that mothers and daughters don’t talk about. But if Emmy was into S&M, I think she would have told me.”
     “But not necessarily?”
     Lucy nodded, reluctantly. After all, would she have confided in Emmy if she had a masochistic bent herself? “Emmy did tell me she was pregnant, and she didn’t tell anyone else so far as I know. Marta didn’t know, and they were pretty close. She hadn’t even told Will.”
     “How do you know that she didn’t tell him? He was the father, wasn’t he?”
     “She didn’t say anything to him before he left for Eugene. I asked her. She said she was going to talk to him when he got back. She wanted to keep the baby and she didn’t want to lose Will, but she really didn’t know how he was going to take it.”
     Morris made a note and asked, “You’re sure that no one else could have known?”
     Lucy thought for a moment. “There is one other person she might have told. Her cousin, Doug Bartlett. He was an uncle/father-figure to her, and since he is about Will’s age, she might have thought he would have some perspective on Will’s position.”
     “What about this ROOF group? Is there anyone among the members who might have been involved with her?”
     “Tom, Emmy was in love with Will. She was incapable of being disloyal to him. She wasn’t involved with anyone else. Emmy D’Angelo was murdered. This wasn’t some sex thing gone bad.” Lucy could momentarily imagine Emmy being a little kinky, but she could not imagine her going out on Will.
     “Let’s say you’re right for the moment,” Morris adjusted his tack. “Was there anyone who was interested in her?”
     Lucy thought about Colin Doherty, an outspoken member of ROOF. Colin was interested in every female that he encountered, including Lucy, herself. He was self-absorbed, frequently obnoxious, but they all, including Emmy, tolerated him because he was sincere about his politics and he knew how to communicate his ideas. “Not that I know of,” she said.
     But Morris was reading her mind. “What about Colin Doherty? I understand he’s got an eye for the girls.”
     “Who told you that?”
     Morris leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.
     Maybe Marta’s right about police informants and surveillance, Lucy considered. “There is something you should know, Tom. There have been a couple of incidents. Colin was beat up by some skinhead types and two of the street kids were roughed up and threatened. Marta thinks there is a link between what happened to them and what happened to Emmy.”
     “I’ll look into it,” Morris said, his face impassive. “I don’t think I’m breaking any procedure here to tell you that we are very interested in William Adelhardt and he is on a very short list of interesting people. You’re a grown woman, intelligent, capable, but a particularly adept predator can manipulate even the smartest, most successful person. You might want to keep your distance.”
     Lucy was stunned. Were police especially thick headed or was it a cultural malaise to suspect everyone. A sort of job risk. Will Adelhardt, a predator? It was absurd. So much so, that she wasn’t even angry at the blatant insinuation.
      “It’s my turn,” Lucy said. “What can you tell me? What do you know about Emmy’s death?”
     Morris hesitated. He fingered the notebook in front of him and Lucy held her breath. She really didn’t want to see crime scene photos. Finally, he held up one hand, fingers extended and began to tick off the facts. “Emmy D’Angelo was strangled. She had no evidence of smoke in her lungs, which isn’t surprising since she was dead for approximately three hours before the fire started. The fire was set in another part of the house and was extinguished before it did much damage to the room she where she was found. It is not clear that the arson is connected to her death. Though her clothes were found in the room she was in, no ID was found. A van fitting the description of Doherty’s was seen leaving the neighborhood by the man who reported the fire.”
     “Was there evidence of intercourse? Did someone actually…?” Lucy stumbled. “…and the missing identification–what about her pack, wasn’t it there?”
     “Her pack? No, but I wouldn’t jump at straws. This wasn’t a mugging. It wasn’t about stealing her purse.” Morris paused. “As to your first question–no conclusive evidence, but there’s more than one way to have sex.”
     Morris tore the pages he’d written on from the notepad and placed them in the top stacking tray. The interview was over.
     As Lucy stood to leave, Morris said, “There is something I need to tell you, Lucy. I probably shouldn’t, but I think Marta is a good kid and she may be mixed up in something dangerous.”
     Lucy felt weak. “What do you mean?”
     “There have been several young girls reported missing over the last few months. This Colin character seems to be at the center of it and Marta’s name has come up.”
     “What do you mean her name has come up? How long have you known about this, Tom?”
     “Settle down, Lucy. Remember that I work homicide. I only found out about it because we’re checking out everyone who knew Emmy and to make a long story short, Colin Doherty’s name was recognized by a detective working missing persons.”
     Missing persons and subversives no doubt, Lucy thought, gritting her teeth. Next thing you know they’ll be forming red squads again. “Goodbye, Detective.”
     “Lucy, there is something else.”
     She was already at his office door, her hand reaching for the knob. She stopped, but did not turn until he said Madeline’s name.
     “What about Madeline. You can’t think Marta or Colin had anything to do with her disappearance.” Lucy turned to face him, but did not move toward him. She let her fingers drop to rest on the doorknob.
     “We are pretty confident that she ran away. There is her schoolmate’s statement that Madeline told her she was going to run.”
     “So, why are you bringing her up now?”
     “Maybe the other missing girls are runaways, too,” Morris said. “Maybe Marta thinks she is helping them.”
     “You keep saying that like you think she is involved. Marta is not involved.”
     Her hand closed around the doorknob, and this time he did not try to stop her. In the corridor, Lucy discovered she was violently shaking inside. She took a deep breath and kept moving, walking rapidly now toward the lobby and the street. Out of this place where everything was distorted, turned inside out. She was almost running by the time she burst through the doors and onto the sidewalk.