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had broken most of his assumptions about his future; he had felt pulled to become a cop like his father and grandfather before him, and at the same time pulled not to become a cop so he could follow his more intellectual leanings. He had thought, for a while, that he might teach or even write or possibly both. But then Lolita clarified everything for him. Lo. Lola. Dolly. Plain Dolores. A girl charmed and manipulated and finally kidnapped, raped and heldhostage for two years by her handsome stepfather-monster Humbert Humbert (avowedly hiding behind that ironic pseudonym), Lolita was transformed by a cunning mix of authorial brilliance and morally ambivalent cultural interpretation into a “nymphet” at the center of a profound if indecent love story. “The great love story of our century,” touted a magazine quote plastered on the front cover of Dave’s copy. When he’d finished reading tonight, he’d flipped to the cover to see if the quote really called it a love story. Three reads in, he was still sure that was not what Nabokov had meant. In his thesis, Dave had reconstructed Lolita into, simply, a victim, received a middling grade and been told he had missed the point. Simplistic, his thesis adviser had noted. Remember that on page xx she seduces him. As if a child’s seductiveness could ever bear responsibility in the context of adult sexuality, particularly that of a pedophile. Frustrated and appalled, Dave had finished college with misgivings about the usefulness of literary interpretation, and became determined to stop the Humbert Humberts of the world, deciding it was more valuable to save little girls from the blind, narcissistic misogyny of a half-baked culture than interpret them into its fabric.
    Most people didn’t know that his college career had ended bitterly for him (good grades, bad attitude), and his Harvard degree certainly hadn’t hurt his ability to climb the ranks of the NYPD. He had worked the streets, made detective, gloried in heroics — and yes, he had managed to save some little girls and also little boys and women and men. Seventeen years into it and he was a bona fide old hand; it was a gratifying job when it went well and a genuine torment when itdidn’t. Failing to close the Rothka case had sealed that sense of torment into him; he studied her files at least twice weekly, and she was never, not for a single hour, far from his thoughts.
    He had tried to find her; how he had tried. One year ago, in the chilly days of October, he had searched his heart out for the thirteen-year-old girl. It was a case that went from bad to worse. The first taunting phone call from the bad guy came to Becky’s mother, Marie, the morning after the abduction. That afternoon the family received a letter in handwriting forged to resemble a child’s; it was signed in Becky’s name but had obviously not been written by her. This was the one piece of evidence that had been withheld from the public and press; even Susan didn’t know about it. Dave would never forget the faint script asking for a closed-casket funeral and the instant nausea that had forced him to swallow an upsurge of bile. He would never forget Marie Rothka’s shaking hands as she read that letter. The next morning, traces of Becky’s blood were identified in a Dumpster in the Bronx. Dave’s entire squad had pitched in and searched. Becky’s Brooklyn neighborhood had rallied, and so had the area around the Bronx Dumpster. Everyone had wanted to find Becky. But to this day, she was still officially missing.
    Becky Rothka was the one case Dave had failed completely, which her abductor — they had dubbed him “the groom” for his phoned-in promise to marry Becky before he killed her — liked to remind them all of in his smarmy voice. Over the past year the groom had called Marie Rothka numerous times just for the pleasure of taunting her. He never told her whether Becky was dead or alive, just showered her with splintersof