One Cold Night

they stepped in, and the surrounding mirrors repeated them both endlessly and in diminishing size.
    Ramos checked every room in the loft, glanced through Lisa’s things, then borrowed the bathroom. Susan used the time to get jackets and consider what she wanted to say to the detective; she felt awful about her misjudgments, yet somehow not entitled to her guilt. You say it, you play it, she had once heard a kid on the subway say to his friend. It seemed that tonight Susan was layering herself in hypocrisy, saying what she wanted to and wishing she could take it all back.
    “Listen, Detective Ramos, I’m sorry about —” Susan began when the detective came out of the bathroom.
    “No.” Ramos lifted one hand, palm out, and Susan noticed how pink it was. “Not necessary.”
    Susan felt a trickle of gratitude but she had to say it. “This night’s been so confusing; I had no right to judge you.” She then noticed that Ramos was holding Lisa’s blue-sparkly plastic hairbrush, a tissue separating her fingers from the handle, and Susan’s newly found patience vanished. “That’s Lisa’s brush.”
    “That’s what I was hoping. Anyone else use it?”
    “No. She’s very particular about that.”
    “Good. You gotta Ziploc bag or something?”
    Susan didn’t have to ask what she wanted it for; she had read enough in the newspapers to know that Lisa’s hair contained DNA and that her fingerprints would be all over the plastic handle. She got a bag from the kitchen and gave it to Ramos, who sealed the brush inside.
    “It’s almost twenty minutes now,” Ramos said. “Let’s get back; I got some balls to bust.”
    Susan held the door for Ramos to pass through, which she did in full form, like a queen, and it occurred to Susan that this slight, imperious woman shared qualities with Lisa. If Lupe Ramos had been half the girl Lisa was, with gifts that had propelled her beyond obvious stereotypes into possession of a New York City police department’s coveted gold shield, then Susan realized she ought to trust the woman.
    “Detective Ramos?”
    The elevator arrived. As both women stepped in, Ramos cast Susan an ironic but warm half smile. “Lupe to you, okay?”
    “Lupe,” Susan said. “How long do fingerprints take?”
    “A day, maybe two...”
    Disappointment must have shown on Susan’s face; she could not possibly wait a whole day or even two to learn if Lisa herself had painted the yellow line.
    “For most people. For me? Coupla hours, tops.” In the mirrored cube of the elevator, Lupe Ramos smiled a few dozen smiles. “So you really don’t think she ran away, huh?”
    “I know she didn’t.” They were back on the sidewalk now, Ramos walking briskly and Susan keeping up. “Lisa’s the kind of kid who would tell me if she was going to run away.”
    “I know just what you mean.” Ramos issued a cynical snort. “I got one just the opposite at home.”
    So she was a mother, too. Susan felt a moment of camaraderie before a stinging question arose in her mind: Was she a mother, if she had always pretendednot to be? When she thought mother she thought of her own mother, Carole, with two daughters; Carole Bailey, the woman who had troubled to raise both girls from birth.
    “Forensics better be done dusting that door,” Ramos said as she pawed her way along Water Street in the direction of what appeared to be a crowd of police. “I wanna get in there, have a look around. Plus I got me a hankering for some good, strong dark chocolate.”
    Lupe Ramos got right to work, shouting like a carnival barker into the busy scene in front of the chocolaterie. Susan tucked herself into a quiet pocket, off to the side. She could see Dave, down the street with the Russian detective, trying to get into the building where he may have seen someone looking out the window earlier that night. Even from a distance he looked frustrated, and the Russian looked like an angry bear.
    Under the dim light of a street lamp, Susan took out her BlackBerry.
    I remember you when you were five in your Spiderman costume and how offended you were whenever someone called you Spider girl. You just can’t imagine how cute you were, running around in that costume. But then I started to have this same dream: little Spiderman, running down Front Street — in the dream, a steeper slope than in real life — turning onto Water Street, while underwater-slow dream-me calls for you to stop. The distance between us expands the harder I