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kitchen.
    A young girl, maybe seventeen, sat at the kitchen table, her hands folded in her lap. Her gaze never met Yakov's, and remained directed toward the single window. “When we first moved here,” she said, “there were apple orchards. This house was the first to be built in this district, and all the rest was just gardens, and the woods past the railroad tracks. There were owls there-I could hear them hooting every night. The trains whistling and the owls hooting, this is how I remember it. Especially in the summer."
    "I'm with the police,” Yakov said. “We got a report of a missing person?"
    "My mom,” the girl said, stubbornly staring out of the window. Her voice wavered a bit, and with a sinking heart Yakov realized that she'd been crying.
    He never knew what to say to the crying people, especially the younger ones. It made him panic and make promises he couldn't possibly keep, just to stem the tears and the heartbreak. “Please,” he said. “Don't cry. We'll find your mom. But you'll have to help me there, all right?"
    The girl rubbed her face with her palm angrily, and shot him a smoldering look, furious that he'd seen her like this, red-eyed and snot-nosed. He pitied her for her grief and for her plain face and sharp nose, for her thin mousy braids, for her obvious awkwardness.
    "When did you last see her?” Yakov asked, and sat down at the table though no invitation was forthcoming.
    "Friday morning,” the girl said. “She went to work but she didn't come back."
    "Where does she work?"
    "At the meat processing plant across the railroad tracks.” The girl pointed. “Where the woods used to be. They say she didn't come to work Friday."
    He wrote it down. “Do you have any relatives you can stay with meanwhile?"
    "No.” She gave him a dark look from her eyes reddened with recent tears. “I can take care of myself."
    He nodded. “We'll call you if we find anything. Your name is…?"
    "Darya,” the girl said. “And you?"
    "Yakov,” Yakov said. “If you call your local police station, just ask for me, all right?"
    "All right,” the girl said, and turned back to the window.
    Yakov headed for the door. There was a yelp, and he spun and ran back into the kitchen, imagining something horrible happening to the girl. Instead, he found her unharmed but pale as she pointed at something outside the window. He looked at the flock of birds winging their way toward the building, not understanding at first. And then he saw.
    The birds were owls, squinting in the luminous sunlight, but circling nonetheless.
    "Where did they come from?” Yakov muttered, looking over the expanse of asphalt and construction.
    The owls seemed confused as well. They remained silent, and their wings, soft as down, made no noise; they were phantoms, not birds of flesh and bone, he thought. They were not real because they were not supposed to be here, had no right to exist, had no reason to fly about in daylight. Yet Darya saw them too and waved at the birds, shooing them away or inviting them closer, Yakov couldn't tell.
    One of the owls split from the flock and headed directly for the window. Its eyes, huge and round and yellow, set in a white triangular face, gripped Yakov's. The bird screeched once and slammed into the windowpane, its speckled feathers erupting at the impact and showering down, falling just seconds before the dead owl's body hit the asphalt below. Darya cried.
    * * * *
    It was dark when he arrived at the last address, not too far from the station-he planned it that way. An older woman opened the door; her eyes were haunted. A stained and wet housecoat clung to her spindly legs, and the buttons were missing, showing a yellowing slip underneath. The woman motioned for him to come in, and he heard water rushing into the bathtub and a baby crying.
    "Doing the laundry,” the woman explained. “My daughter's missing. This is her baby."
    "I can wait a little,” Yakov said.
    The woman nodded and disappeared down the