Upon hearing the word—the abasement in her voice—the man’s shoulders drop slightly. He regards her.
“Very well,” he says. “Briefly.”
“We can go to my car.”
“We can go to the kitchen,” says the man.
• • •
The kitchen is enormous. The elderly couple sit across from her at a large table. The husband, arms and legs crossed, leans back in his chair.
Judy clutches the pad in her hands. She doesn’t want to put it on the table; she doesn’t want either of them to read it upside down.
“Name?” she begins.
“Peter Wallingford Van Laar the Second,” says the man.
“Date of birth?” says Judy.
The man raises an eyebrow.
“February twenty-third, 1898.”
Judy notes these facts in the lined pad. And adds to them: Demeanor: tense.
“What’s your relation to the victim?” Judy asks.
“Victim?”
“To Miss Van Laar,” says Judy.
“I would appreciate it if you’d refrain from referring to my granddaughter as a victim,” says the man.
Judy flushes. He’s correct.
“There’s your answer, anyway,” says Mr. Van Laar. “I’m her grandfather. This is her grandmother,” he says, inclining his head toward his wife. “Mrs. Helen Van Laar. Date of birth May the third, 1898.”
These facts, Judy dutifully notes as well.
Then she pauses, waiting for her training to kick in.
“Can you both tell me about your day today? What time you woke up, what you did after that?”
The man sighs heavily. He’s the sort of person from whom disapproval radiates nearly autonomically. He folds his hands on the table.
“Miss . . .” he says.
“Luptack.”
Investigator Luptack, thinks Judy.
“Miss Luptack, you look very young,” says Mr. Van Laar. His wife glances at him swiftly. “You might be—twenty years old? Twenty-two?”
He waits. Twenty-six, thinks Judy. She doesn’t say it.
“My guess is you have not been doing this work very long,” says Mr. Van Laar. “Allow me to assist you.”
“Peter,” says his wife—the first word she has spoken—but her husband holds one hand out in her direction, and she doesn’t continue.
“Our granddaughter has run away,” he says. “The reason I know this is because she has threatened to run away nearly every day for two years. Increasingly, ‘appeasing Barbara,’ ‘not upsetting Barbara,’ has become nearly the only topic of conversation in my son’s household. She’s a thirteen-year-old girl acting the way that most thirteen-year-old girls act. Only worse.”
He pauses. Coughs.
“Our whereabouts this morning are not important pieces of the puzzle you’re trying to solve. What you and your people need to be doing is sending a large search party into those woods. Because they’re the only danger to Barbara in this moment, aside from Barbara herself.”
He stands up abruptly, then looks down at his wife, waiting for her to follow suit. More tentatively, she does.
“Now,” says Mr. Van Laar. “That’s where I’m heading, with some dogs. That’s where I was heading when you detained me. Jot that down in your notebook. In case any of your superiors are looking for me.” He walks out of the room. His wife looks at Judy for a moment before following, her expression inscrutable.
“Sir,” says Judy. The word comes out before she knows what she’ll say next.
He waits. “What is it?”
“It’s just—in light of your grandson’s disappearance,” says Judy. “It seems as if we should treat Barbara’s with the same care.”
The man’s expression changes completely. He has been annoyed with the conversation; now he’s enraged. He opens his mouth to speak, and Judy is reminded of an animal baring its teeth.
“Don’t talk about my grandson,” says Mr. Van Laar. “Don’t even speak his name.”
