Innocent Monster by Reed Farrel Coleman

father, it was late for her. Too late. I hoped like hell he was wrong and I hoped it was just a feeling he had and not something he knew for sure.
    “Tell me about Sashi’s friends.”
    “She didn’t have many friends.”
    Didn’t. Past tense.
    “In a lot of the stories I read about her, there were often mentions of her playing with friends at shows,” I said.
    “When she was little... Yeah, she had lots of friends, but she really became very much a prisoner of her work. I’m to blame for that. I encouraged her, maybe pushed her too hard. Most ten- or elevenyear-olds aren’t working on their version of the Mona Lisa. I was such a complete fuck-up at my art, I wanted her to succeed so bad. I guess I wanted it too much. Her friends just sort of fell away. And the criticism and exposés didn’t help. We tried to shield her from that, but you can’t protect kids, not when some guy on CNN calls you a fraud, not with the Net and social networks. She heard it. She felt the pressure.”
    “She had to have some friends.”
    “There’s Ming,” he said.
    “Ming?”
    “Ming Parson. Her and Sashi have been buddies forever, but in the last year or so...”
    “I’ll want her address.”
    “Sure.” Max scribbled something out on a pad, ripped the top sheet off, and handed it to me.
    “Thanks. How are you guys doing financially?”
    You throw enough punches, some are bound to land. This one landed square on his jaw and the Max I disliked suddenly reappeared out of the past. He shook his head in disgust and that familiar cocky curled lip returned, the grief and mourning vanishing as if I’d taken an eraser to his face.
    “Fuck you! You and that cop, you’re both the same. Get the fuck out of my house. Now!”
    Now it was my turn to oblige him. I left. Staying wouldn’t have done anything for either one of us and it almost certainly would have done my cause harm. I’d pissed the man off. I might have been pissed off, too, had someone implied my precious daughter’s disappearance was somehow about money. Clearly, McKenna had done more than imply it.

    The Parsons’ house was rather more modest than the grand Victorian on the cliff. It was a cute, slightly worse-for-wear little bungalow on the same block as one of the two Russian Orthodox churches in town. The bungalow was on a small lot with a tiny front yard and a gravel driveway barely big enough for a full-size car to park on, but it looked cozy and lived in, comfortable as a pair of old jeans. I knocked on the front door and a woman answered. She was forty, on the short and heavy side, not pretty, yet attractive in the way her house was.
    “Hello there.” Her voice was warm and welcoming. “How can I help you?”
    “Hi. Mrs. Parson?”
    “Dawn.”
    “Dawn, my name’s Moe Prager. I’m an old friend of Candy Blunt-stone.”
    That took the warmth and sparkle right out of her. She stepped out of the house, closing the door behind her. “Look, mister, I’ve talked to the police about this several times and I don’t want to discuss it anymore. My daughter talked to them too. She hasn’t slept well since Sashi disappeared. At this age they know enough to understand what might have happened, but not enough to make sense of it.”
    “I don’t think we ever get old enough to make sense of it.”
    “I’m sorry for Candy and I’m scared for Sashi, but I have my own child to protect.”
    I didn’t say a word. Instead, I reached into my wallet, removed two items, and handed them to Dawn Parson. One of the items was an old card I kept to remind me of what I used to be. The other was a photo of Sarah that was taken when she was in fifth grade and was about the same age as Ming and Sashi. It was as manipulative as hell, but I’d worry about paying that bill later.
    “She’s a beautiful little girl. My god, such amazing red hair.”
    “Her name’s Sarah and she’s grown into a beautiful woman. The hair’s a little darker now,” I said. “Candy used to