Ghosts of Bergen County by Dana Cann Page B

flat hand over her eyes like a visor and scanned the crowd. She looked behind the bench, where children were scrambling up and down the hill to the side of the school. Little girls who wore glasses were few. She could find none now. She hadn’t seen the girl with no arms since the kindergarten concert. Maybe she took a bus home after school. Maybe her mother picked her up and whisked her away to an appointment for vision therapy or psychotherapy or occupational therapy. Maybe she was at home being punished for a poor report card in the final marking period. Maybe she watched TV after school because she had no friends. Maybe all the TV she watched accounted for her poor vision and inappropriate behavior.
    â€œWho are you looking for?”
    Mary Beth looked down, where a girl in pigtails stood squinting up at her. She was one child, by herself, no one Mary Beth knew or thought she knew. She clutched her phone in her fingers. “Catherine,” she said.
    â€œOh.” The girl squinted harder. “Who’s Catherine?”
    Mary Beth realized her face was contorted. She could feel it now, as the girl regarded her. She often wished she could get outside of herself so that she could see what she was really like. She let her muscles go. She tried on a smile. “ My Catherine.”
    â€œI don’t know Catherine.”
    Mary Beth held her smile. “What’s your name?” she asked.
    â€œI’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” The girl turned and ran across the field.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Ferko was on Sixth Avenue, on the wide sidewalk between Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth. He could see his office building now, the white façade and the blue-flecked windows. He was planning on shutting his computer down. Prauer was gone. Grove was dead. Ferko had nothing, really, to do. He would go home and investigate Mary Beth’s burst of energy. He hoped it was something sustainable, something that his presence wouldn’t quell. Maybe this weekend would shed light on things in a way that all the therapy they’d attended, both separately and together, in fits and starts, hadn’t.
    From his seat on the plane, in his descent into Newark, he’d looked for landmarks—I-287 or the Parkway—but found only farms and fields, industrial parks and towns, residential developments buffered from other developments and highways by thin stands of trees. A pastiche, random and indiscernible. And if you were in this landscape, you could have looked up into the sky and watched the plane descend. Unless you heard the brakes squeal and your attention was drawn to the street, where the blue car dragged the green stroller, paused, and then left.
    Now there was a break in traffic, and he crossed Sixth Avenue. His phone rang, a number he didn’t recognize. He answered anyway.
    â€œFerko?” There was interference, other voices competing with the caller.
    â€œYeah?” he said.
    â€œShit.”
    â€œWho is this?”
    â€œJen.”
    â€œJen? Where are you?”
    â€œFuck.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œI got hit by a car.”
    â€œJesus. Are you okay?”
    â€œI’m scraped, but my bike’s fucked. Can you come here?”
    â€œOf course. Where’s her e ?”
    â€œWhere’s her e ? Fifth and Thirty-Eighth.”
    â€œWhere’re the police?”
    â€œNo police.”
    â€œWhat about the driver?”
    â€œHere, looking like a moron. He’s Chinese. Doesn’t speak English, or pretends not to. His daughter is drawing flowers on the sidewalk with chalk. He offered me three hundred dollars. I’m asking for five. He’s got it. I saw his wallet.”
    â€œAre you sure you’re okay? If he walks—”
    â€œNo police,” she said. “No doctors. I know what I’m doing.”
    Ferko was standing on the curb, just north of his building, when Lisa Becker and George Cosler emerged from the revolving door.