"The mother is on her phone," Angie whispered as Patrick stepped beside her. "She hasn't looked up in twenty minutes."
He drove. He told himself he was going to tell her to go home, to let the police handle it, to stop being a ghost hunter. But when he pulled up to the curb, he saw Angie standing under a rusted oak tree, her coat collar turned up against the wind. She didn't look at him; she looked at a black SUV idling near the swing sets.
"She has the same look, Patrick," Angie’s voice cracked. "That same 'look' we saw in the photos of the ones who don't come back. Please. Just come look." Gone Baby Gone
"Angie, we aren't doing this anymore," Patrick said, his heart hammering against his ribs.
As the police led the man away, a detective Patrick knew—a man named Miller—walked up, shaking his head. "Good catch, Kenzie. He’s been on the wire for three states." "The mother is on her phone," Angie whispered
People in Dorchester didn't look at him the same way anymore. To some, he was a hero who brought a child home. To others, he was the man who took a little girl away from a life of sun and safety and dropped her back into the grey, cigarette-smoke reality of a mother who forgot her lunchbox. His phone buzzed. It was a restricted number.
The neon sign of the Tip Top Tap flickered in the persistent drizzle of South Boston, casting a rhythmic red glow over Patrick’s tired face. He leaned against his battered Jeep, the damp salt air of the Atlantic stinging his eyes. It had been six months since the Helene McCready case had torn the neighborhood—and his life—apart. But when he pulled up to the curb,
Patrick looked at the mother, who was already reaching for her fallen phone even as she held her daughter. He thought of Helene McCready. He thought of the quiet house in the woods where a little girl could have been a princess, and the loud, messy apartment where she was just a burden. "For today," Patrick said.