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I place my hand on his forearm and give it a squeeze. “Do you not like my coffee?”
“I’m not a fan of drugs before noon,” he retorts, and I laugh. Henry and I, despite our disagreements, we understand one another. He points at the screen. “Are you watching?”
“Of course.” The girl glances from one side of the room to the other, and I realize there’s someone else aside from her and the cameraman.
“Drop the shirt and turn slowly,” a gruff voice just out of shot says.
Henry thinks watching this is going to count for something. I know better. It changes nothing. It tells us nothing. The room is bare. The walls are concrete, and the floor is carpeted. It’s not cheap carpet, and still, it could be any room, anywhere. The camera zooms in on her face before pulling back. “Now,” the man demands.
Henry and I watch as the T-shirt falls to the floor.
“She could be older,” I say, even though I doubt it. “Fifteen…sixteen.”
“A little slower,” the man tells her. His accent is decidedly American. To me, it doesn’t sound like Geoffrey Dunsmore.
The girl turns clockwise. When she faces the camera again, she is asked to state her name.
“Elena.” It comes out as a whisper. The way her index finger scrapes back and forth against the cuticle of her thumb leads me to believe she’s probably telling the truth. “And how old are you, Elena?”
Her gaze remains fixed on the floor. “Twelve.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Elena?”
“A dancer.”
There’s a distinct rattling sound off camera before the video ends abruptly.
“Motherfucker,” Henry spits. “This has Dunsmore written all over it. And yet—it gives us nothing.”
“Not nothing.”
“She’ll be dead in forty-eight hours.”
“She’s dead now,” I say.
Henry’s eyes meet mine as he realizes I’ve gotten the point he has come here to make. This is not the first video of its kind we’ve seen. Nor will it be the last. It’s certainly not the worst of them. “Maybe we should watch it again.”
“We can watch it a billion times,” I tell him, taking the phone. “And still it will be the same.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we have what we need.”
“And what’s that?”
“A reason to tell the agency to go to hell—to let me do my job. And for you to get the fuck out of my kitchen.”
Chapter Sixteen
JC
She’s not one of those people who shies away from the limelight, something I find equally surprising and fun to watch. It’s charming, even slightly endearing, in a sad kind of way.
She pretends not to like the attention, although it’s clear that she does, something that becomes very apparent when she gives the second interview. I do
n’t think she means to offer herself up to the cameras in the way that she does, but there they are, happily camped on her lawn, after all. When she opens her mouth and tells the world what a terrible burden this all has become for her, it’s almost like she becomes someone entirely new. Fake. Fake. Fake.
She certainly doesn’t appear burdened, and it only looks like she’s crying when she dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse and begs for space for her children’s sake.
