She thought of Willa, stepping into the front office that Ruby had broken into, saying,Frank. She didn’t want to tell that story.
“Maybe ask Willa,” she said.
“Willa thinks you stole a motel key.”
“She say why I would need to do that?”
She turned to the cadet.
“I was thinking about how we never found Betty,” she said, speaking directly to the girl. She liked to saywebecause the world was a we. “I’d like to know about other women reported missing down here.”
The officer looked very young, too. He couldn’t have been out of his early twenties.
“It’s all public record,” Ruby said. “All I want is for you to run a search in your system. Just type ‘missing’ into your search bar, and then add ‘women.’”
We know how to run a search,his face said.
The cadet looked up at him, her face questioning.
“Go ahead,” he said. He retreated toward a back hallway, where she knew he would be calling the district attorney.
Ruby stayed, leaning against the cool, firm counter, as the cadet typed. There were brand-new computers on the desks. The carpet was new, too, the office chairs ergonomic and plush. Blinds covered the windows, and an air conditioner filled the air with crystal coolness. A gumball machine was in the corner for the visiting school groups.
Ruby’s eyes went to the back hallway the officer had disappeared to. Back there were the holding cells, she thought. That’s where they would have taken Mitchell. She imagined the concrete cells, the one inmate—since there was always an inmate given this task—assigned with washing them out with bleach.
The printer in the corner hummed. The cadet rose, nervous, to fetch the printout. She handed the warm papers to Ruby, smiling, hopeful she might leave now.
Ruby glanced at the results. She rifled through the listings. There were plenty, but she had suspected there would be more.
“These don’t go back very far,” she said. “Let’s check your hard copies, too.”
“Not today.” The officer was coming back. He looked stern. He had been told to be tough—to get her moving.
“How come?”
“They’re in the archives.”
“The limestone vaults?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“All right. I’ll get to them later.”
She stopped to get a gumball on the way out of the station. She was hoping for grape, but the machine spit out a pink one. The officer and cadet watched her go sit in her car in the lot, which was nearly empty except for all the brand-new police cars lining the edges. The fancy cars for chasing criminals that never came, the tanks in the back for drug lords that never arrived. The lines of riot gear. All the money spent in policing that never seemed to make anyone safer.
I really need coffee, Ruby thought, feeling woozy from lack of sleep. It had been two days. She hadn’t slept at the motel, either.
She held the printout in her lap, seeing dozens of names that organized themselves into letters and then broke apart. I am too tired to read this list, she thought. I thought it said—
She shook her head, clearing it.
She had read it right. The most recent report had been called in that very morning. The Georgia state police had taken the call, and entered it into the system. At least that part had changed for the better.
A woman named Emma Griffin, née Higginbottom, had called toreport that when she was a little girl, her mother had disappeared. But her mom had not disappeared from Georgia. She had gone missing in Oregon.
Complainant alleges her father told her that her mother ran away. Initial searches have not located any signs of Rosanna Higginbottom, née Bouchard. Last known location was Chinook, Oregon. There is a wedding certificate.
The sheriff, Ruby thought. His wife.
