Cold Case

I was pretty sure that he knew

what had happened to her that night,

even if he wasn’t the one

who made her disappear.

But the detective says

they’ve ruled him out as a suspect

or a witness.

But I know that he knows.

I follow him to the café,

where he sits near the revolving door.

He sips a latte and stares at his laptop

and doesn’t meet the eyes

of anyone around him.

Because he knows we all know

that he knows,

and he hasn’t been talking,

and he’s been letting us suffer

with the horrible visions of “what if.”

Is there some way to pry information

out of the mouth of another?

I wonder what he gets out of it,

what perverse thrill,

of having the answer

that could stop the sobbing of a brokenhearted mother

and the binge-drinking of her lost brother.

I follow him to the grocery store.

I park outside his home.

I stare at him as he stares at the TV,

and I will never stop

until he tells.

Because you can’t stop

when you know that he knows

that you know that he knows.