Free After Her by Joyce Maynard

his clothes off, for instance, or (after we saw Grease, John Travolta)—and making him our slave—could have interested me.
    â€œSometimes you have to do this kind of thing, in the line of duty,” I told her. “You think Dad hasn’t ever had to do something gross like that?” The Angels didn’t, but real life was different.
    â€œHe could get here pretty fast, once I told him what was going on,” I said. “He’d turn on the siren in his glove compartment and bring backup.”
    We imagined the scene then: Our father in his black leather jacket, gold watch glinting in the sun, snapping handcuffs on the killer. The other officers leading the offender away as he shuffled down the hill, drool coming out of his mouth. As he passed Patty and me, he’d spit out some curse words, but we’d just laugh.
    After, our father would lift us up and whirl us around—both at once, knowing how strong he was. “If something ever happened to you two . . .” he’d start, but he couldn’t even finish the sentence. “What do you say the three of us go out for spaghetti and meatballs at Marin Joe’s?”
    We would get our favorite booth in the back, with the picture of Tony Bennett hanging on the wall behind us, and Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Franciosa. The waitress would know our father, naturally. “A couple of beautiful daughters you got there, Anthony,” she’d say. “You better keep your eye on those two.”
    â€œAny guy tries to get his hands on my girls,” our father said, lighting his cigarette, “he’s going to have to deal with me first.”
    I N THE INTEREST OF PROTECTING the investigation, according to the Marin Independent Journal, Detective Torricelli was saying almost nothing about the particulars concerning the murder—what leads the police had uncovered, or if the killer had left clues. But in those first days after they located the body, there were a couple of articles about Charlene Gray, with a photograph of her at her senior prom and another of her and her brother at a Giants game, wearing their baseball caps backward and holding hot dogs. There was an interview with her boyfriend—initially a Person of Interest but swiftly eliminated as a suspect—in which he talked about Charlene’s love of hiking, as well as the students in the church youth group she led, the music she listened to (the Carpenters), and her collection of stuffed koala bears.
    Except for the one sock, she had been naked when they found her. No mention in the article of whether her clothes had been left at the scene of the crime. My father was quoted in the article, explaining that for reasons of pursuing the investigation effectively, the sheriff’s department was not at liberty to divulge information about the crime scene.
    For three full days after the murder, police swarmed the mountain near our house. It wasn’t something either of our parents shared with us, but we knew why they were there. Our father had told us stories in the past about how he approached a crime scene—if it happened in a house, the importance of not disturbing a single piece of furniture, or even the position of a coffee cup on a table, a cigarette butt in an ashtray, or even the ash. The breakthrough that led a detective to his suspect might be nothing more than a hair. Nothing more than an eyelash.
    â€œFirst thing I do when I arrive at the scene,” he told us, “is nothing. Just stand there a long time, taking it in. You only get one chance for that. Once the homicide team gets to work, everything changes. I need to lock in the picture of how it was the moment it happened.”
    Now the crime scene was our own backyard, practically. As good a job as we knew our father would do, collecting evidence, it seemed obvious we should try to locate something ourselves. This was our Charlie’s Angels moment at last.
    There was no