Page 14 of Views
Yasira swallows. Yes. Worse would be the day when she had to ring Frank Palmer’s doorbell again to report that his daughter was dead.
“Sometimes it’s only the worry about Emil,” Palmer explains, “that keeps me going.”
“We’ll find the men...” Michael begins.
“I’m not really interested in that,” interrupts Palmer. “I mean...” He falters. “... of course I hate these guys. But all I really want to know is what happened to my daughter after the crime.”
“I understand,” says Yasira.
“Part of me is convinced that she’s going to walk in here any minute,” Palmer says. “That’s why I made salagna.” He hesitates. “But if she’s still alive, why haven’t I heard anything from her? Not from her or from any kidnappers?”
“There’s always hope,” Yasira replies, but she probably doesn’t sound very convincing.
“Isn’t hope the last evil to hatch from Pandora’s box?” asks Frank Palmer.
“True, but I don’t think it was one of the evils.”
“You’re right. Of course I’m still hoping. But what if my hope is in vain? Isn’t false hope an evil?”
Yasira has no good answer.
“We’ll do our best to find your daughter quickly,” says Michael.
“May we see Lena’s room?” asks Yasira. The rooms often know more about the children than the fathers do.
LENA
There are family photos from happier days hanging in the Palmers’ hallway. The four of them. On vacation. By the sea. In the mountains. In some amusement park. What a fragile thing happiness is. Frank Palmer opens the door to Lena’s room. Yasira and Michael enter respectfully, knowing that a teenager’s own four walls are their sanctuary.
The tabby cat is lying on Lena’s unmade bed. She looks at the intruders briefly and then closes her eyes again.
“I have the feeling Minka has been lying here since Lena disappeared,” says Frank Palmer. “You’d almost think she understands what’s happened.” He hasn’t entered the room; he’s still standing in front of the door. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait in the kitchen. I... I... can’t be here.”
“Of course,” says Yasira.
Palmer leaves them alone. Michael and Yasira put on gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and begin searching Lena’s room. It’s not very big. School books are mixed in with makeup stuff on the desk. Next to an old MacBook is a makeup mirror.
“Smells like teen spirit,” says Michael.
Yasira nods. The room does smell like a teenager. It even smells similar to Zara’s room. Yasira has to close her eyes for a moment to control all the emotions that this stirs up inside her. Then she plucks some hair from Lena’s brush and puts it in a plastic bag. It might be helpful to have a DNA profile of the girl.
There are two posters on the wall. One is from the Barbie movie. The other is of some German rapper that Yasira doesn’t know, but who probably has more number one hits than the Beatles. How Lena reconciles his surely sexist lyrics with the supposedly feminist new version of Barbie is just as puzzling as Zara’s simultaneous enthusiasm for Fridays for Future and utterly dumb influencers who travel halfway around the globe just to showcase lifestyle products on camera. Sometimes you just have to endure contradictions. Isn’t Yasira full of contradictions herself? An emancipated woman who loves cheesy musicals. A policewoman who questions authority. Isn’t everyone just a bunch of contradictions wrapped in duct tape?
The bookshelf is modest. Harry Potter and the like. The books are pretty dusty. Obviously not much in use. There’s only one book that Lena seems to have taken out more often.Catching Fire.Yasira pulls it out. Behind it, she finds a small resealable plastic bag with leftover weed. This type of fire catching, then. She shows the marijuana to Michael. He just nods. Then she puts it back and places the book in front of it again. Nothing unusual. Maybe she’d find a similar bag if she turned Zara’s room upside down. And then there’d be trouble again. Though—truth be told—back in Yasira’s teenage years, you might have occasionally found a little bag like that in her room. Then again... no, not really. She only ever smoked with others. Never bought her own. She wouldn’t have dared. Her father would have gone crazy. Would Frank Palmer have freaked out too?
Yasira opens Lena’s closet. A whole bunch of short dresses. Very short dresses. Did she really just think that? How infuriating. The dresses are short. So what? Even if Lena had walked around in a bikini, no one would have... Yasira pauses. She takes a flowered dress out of the wardrobe and shows it to Michael.
“Doesn’t this look like the dress Lena is wearing in the video?”
“Maybe her favorite dress,” Michael says. “Apparently she’s got it twice.”
Yasira’s cell phone rings. It’s Katja Jürgens. Yasira hangs the dress back and puts the call on speakerphone so that Michael can listen in.
“Probably Mali,” says Katja.
“Mali?” asks Yasira.
“You wanted to know if our experts could match the perpetrators’ French to a specific region of origin, and that was the answer.”
