Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [6]
“George Warren,” the man says. “Call me Warren. Want a coffee?”
My father shakes his head. “This is my daughter, Nicky,” my father says. Warren holds out his hand and I shake it.
“She was with you when you found the baby?” Warren asks.
My father nods.
“I’m a detective with the state police,” Warren says. He takes some change from his pocket and inserts it into the coffee machine. “You told Chief Boyd you found the baby on Bott Hill,” he says with his back to my father.
“I did,” my father says.
A heavy paper cup tumbles into place. I watch the coffee run from the spigot. Warren picks up the cup and blows over the top.
“The sleeping bag and the towel should still be there,” my father adds. “I found her in a sleeping bag.”
Warren stirs the coffee with a wooden stick. His hair is gray but his face is young. “Why’d you leave it there?” he asks. “The sleeping bag.”
“It was too slippery,” my father says. “I was afraid I’d drop the baby.”
“How did you carry her?”
“I put her inside my jacket.”
Warren’s eyes slide to my father’s jacket. The detective draws a chair back from the table with the toe of his Timberland boot. He sits down. “Can I see some ID?” he asks.
“I left my wallet at the house,” my father says. “I was hurrying, trying to get the baby to the hospital.”
“You didn’t call the police? An ambulance?”
“We live at the end of a long hilly drive. The town doesn’t maintain it very well. I was afraid an ambulance would get stuck.”
Warren eyes my father over the rim of his cup. “Tell me about the sleeping bag,” he says.
“It was shiny blue on the outside, plaid on the inside,” my father says. “Cheap, like you’d buy at Ames. There was a towel, too. White and bloody.”
“You’ve lived on Bott Hill a long time?” Warren takes another tentative sip of coffee. His eyes are both alert and distant, as if all the important stuff were going on somewhere else.
“Two years.”
“Where are you from?”
“I grew up in Indiana, but I came here from New York.”
“The city?” Warren says, pulling on an earlobe.
“I worked in the city, but we lived just north of it.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, Mr. Dillon,” Warren says, “we’d have found a couple of bones in the spring.”
My father looks at me. I hold my breath. I don’t want to think about the bones.
“You hot?” Warren asks my father. “Take off your jacket.”
My father shrugs, but anyone can see he’s sweating in the overheated room.
“What were you doing when you found the infant?” the detective asks.
“We were taking a walk.”
“When?”
My father thinks a minute. What time was it? He no longer wears a watch because he catches it too often in his tools. I glance up at the clock over the door. Six twenty-five. It feels like midnight.
“It was after sunset,” my father says. “The sun had just set over the top of the hill. I’d say we found her maybe ten, fifteen minutes after that.”
“You were in the woods,” Warren says.
“Yes.”
“You often go walking in the woods after sunset?”
The detective sets the coffee cup on the table, reaches into the pocket of his overcoat, and takes out a small notebook. He flips it open and makes a notation with a short pencil. I want one of those short pencils.
“On good days,” my father says. “I usually quit working around three forty-five or so. We try to take a walk before it gets completely dark.”
“You and your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?” the detective asks me.
“Twelve,” I say.
“Seventh grade?”
“Yes.”
“The Regional?”
I nod.
“You get off the bus what time?”
“Three fifteen,” I say.
“It takes another fifteen minutes to walk the rest of the way up the hill,” my father adds.
Warren turns back to my father. “How’d you find the baby, Mr. Dillon?”
“With a flashlight. We’d heard her crying. We were looking for her by then. Well, for a baby.”
“How long had you been walking?”
A voice over the loudspeaker, asking for Dr. Gibson, interrupts them. I wonder if there’s an emergency with the baby. “About thirty minutes,” my father says.
“You hear anything unusual?”
“I thought it was a cat at first,” my father says. “I heard a car door shutting.