by E. A. Barres
And there was the time a white girlfriend had confessed to her that she’d never let her children date someone from another race. “Not because I’m racist,” her friend had explained, “but it’d just be so hard for them.” As if Deb was supposed to sympathize. As if Deb was supposed to realize the problems she presented. As if racism was her burden, her fault.
There was something about the casualness in all of Deb’s experiences with bigotry that was so ingrained, so deep-seated, that it didn’t seem possible to dislodge, like a stone sunk into the earth. And it didn’t seem fair to Deb that she should be expected to dislodge that stone, to stain her hands with someone else’s dirt.
Kim’s race hadn’t been the kind of pained thorn Deb had experienced, as far as Deb knew anyway. But she was desperately determined to give Kim somewhere safe, a place she could run to. Race and sexuality weren’t the same, but bigotry was bigotry, and Deb was fucking tired of it.
She and Kim had lost so much. It was nice to have something gained, to hear the hope and love beneath Kim’s words.
“What’s Rebecca like?” Deb asked.
“She’s really nice.”
Deb waited.
“Like, really nice, but maybe a little edgier than I am? Like, she wears a lot of black and listens to so much music. You’d be so impressed at how much she knows about music and musicians. And she’s really smart. So smart. We have the best talks. She’s not really into fashion, but she always looks good. Like it’s just part of her, you know? And …”
Her daughter kept talking.
Deb listened, tired but happy that her daughter wanted to talk to her. They talked as light broke through the windows. They talked as a new day began.
CHAPTER
8
CESSY WANTED A distraction, and so she was happier than usual for her monthly trip to Baltimore’s Halfway House for Victims of Sex Trafficking, Domestic Violence, and Other Forms of Modern Human Slavery. She loved volunteering at the Federal Hill home, even if the halfway house needed, in addition to a shorter name, a new everything else. The bars over the windows were rusted, the marble steps cracked, graffiti still visible under the white paint meant to cover it.
“How’s it going, Rose?” Cessy asked as she pulled the stubborn front door closed.
Rose seemed smaller to Cessy, the way she did every visit. Not only in height; her face, hands, everything about her seemed to be turning into a miniaturized version of herself. Cessy knew it wasn’t just because Rose had recently hit seventy. It was the victims, the escapees, their PTSD, often their desperate fight to stave off drugs. The pressures of running the house were crippling.
And Rose ran a strict program, a mix of counseling and community service, tasking the residents with projects ranging from picking up trash to cooking and serving food, to repairing donated clothing.
“It’s going fine,” Rose told her. “All four rooms taken.”
“That a good thing?”
“Eh.”
“Anyone new?”
“One. Want to go up and say hi? That what the bag’s for?” Rose pointed to the plastic shopping bag Cessy carried.
Cessy opened it, showed Rose the contents. “Nothing exciting,” she said. “Just some snacks. The new girl okay with visitors?”
“It’s you, so yes.” Rose studied her, then asked Cessy the same question Rose had asked for the past three months, ever since she’d accidentally seen bruises on Cessy’s shoulder. “Did you leave that asshole son of a bitch?”
“Well, that asshole son of a bitch is dead. So yes.”
Years of working with battered women had hardened Rose. “Good. Cheaper than a divorce.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“Did someone kill him? Figured Hector was getting into stupid shit with stupid people.”
“That’s exactly what happened.”
Rose grunted. “You should have told me what he was doing a lot earlier.”
“Probably.” Something in the conversation bothered Cessy; Rose’s satisfaction with Hector’s death. That attitude didn’t feel right to Cessy, regardless of what Hector had done. Regardless of how Cessy had grown to hate him.
And it reminded her of the text she’d received an hour earlier. The message waiting for her response.
“I’m going up,” she said. “What’s the new girl’s name? And what room?”
“Dana. Second room on the left.”
Cessy walked up the creaky narrow stairs, holding on to a loose banister with chipped white paint. The stairs led to a narrow hall with faded, flat brown carpet. Two doorways were on her right, two on her left, the halls bookended by small, outdated bathrooms. Baltimore’s Halfway House for Victims of Sex Trafficking, Domestic Violence, and Other Forms of Modern Human Slavery did many good things, but no one would call it luxurious.
Cessy walked to Dana’s room, heard the whispers of televisions from the three other rooms in the hall. This was one of the few hours the residents had to themselves.
She knocked. A mattress creaked. Footsteps approached the door.
“Who is it?”
The voice was deeper than Cessy would have guessed.
“Cessy Castillo. I’m a friend of Rose.”
The door opened. A tall, thin young black man peered at Cessy from behind square-framed glasses.
Cessy glanced past him, confused.
“Looking for a woman?” he asked.
“Well, yeah. Rose didn’t tell me.” Cessy thought back to their conversation. “Or correct me.”
His caution broke into a smile. “What’s in the bag?”
“Chips, Coke.”
“When you say Coke, you mean …?”
“Nice try.”
“Eh, come in anyway.” He stepped back and let Cessy in his room. “Sorry, I haven’t done much with the place.”
A bed in the corner, a narrow writing desk under a window on the other side, a small closet, an outdated television mounted on a stand. A poster on the wall dictated the house rules:
No drinking, no drugs.
No fighting or stealing.
Think: Would an asshole do this? Then don’t.
Cessy pulled out the chair from the writing desk. “You could ‘guy’ it up. Put up some posters of topless chicks on motorcycles, that sort of thing.”
Dana made a face. “Yeah, that sort of thing isn’t really my sort of thing.”
Cessy grinned. She reached into the shopping bag, pulled out a Coke, handed him one, opened one for herself. They both drank deeply. She savored how the soda sizzled down her throat.
Cessy opened the chips. “How do you like the place?”
“I mean, it’s okay,” Dana reached for a handful. “Better than where I was. Rose seems cool. Maybe a little strict.”
“Maybe?”
“I can’t complain, right? Got free food, a free bed, so she can make whatever rules she wants.” He stuffed the potato chips in his mouth.
“You been in a place like this before?”
“Not a house like this. But I just got out of rehab.”
She glanced at his arms. “You don’t have tracks.”
“Alcohol. Mainly.” Dana didn’t elaborate. Cessy could sense him retreating back into his shell.
“The food here sucks though, right?” Cessy asked. “Rose is a shitty cook.”
Dana nodded.
“Sorry I asked about your past.” Cessy offered a smile. “I’m not a trained counselor or doc, so I don’t really know what I’m doing with these conversations.”
“Then why are you here?”
“My mom was on the streets.”
“Working?”
“That’s right.” Cessy paused, thought again about the text message waiting for her response. “It really messed me and my brother up.”
Cessy leaned over her crossed legs, paused.
She had to speak carefully here. This always affected her, and Cessy had learned that whatever she said needed to be like a pebble s
kipping over a lake.
If she lingered, she risked slipping under the surface.
Cessy couldn’t risk remembering what she and her brother had done. If she did, she’d drown.
“My brother and I went separate ways after our mom died,” she said. “I moved here, ended up in group counseling. That’s where I met Rose. She asked me to start coming here about a year ago.”
“To what, check up on everyone? See who she’ll have trouble with?”
Cessy touched her throat as if she could smooth away the lump, the memory of her mother. “I don’t know how to tell who she’ll have trouble with. Most of the people who come here are scared. Desperate. The only trouble they cause is when they sneak out and leave. Rose doesn’t let them back.”
“That’s what I mean. Strict.” Dana ate a chip, and his face softened. “How’s Rose afford this place anyway?”
“She made a ton of money in the nineties dot-com boom. Got out before it went bust, invested it, and those investments paid off. Now she runs this place.”
“The nineties?”
“She’s not exactly young. Anyway, that’s my story. What’s yours?”
“My grandfather wouldn’t stop sleeping with me. Never ended until I ran away.”
Cessy wanted to ask more but didn’t. Just ate some chips and waited.
“I ended up dating different men. A couple of them put me on the street.”
“Said they needed money, right?”
“Exactly.” Dana munched for a moment. “Didn’t take long for them to turn from boyfriends to pimps.”
They ate in silence, both lost in their past, each wondering how much to share. Cessy hadn’t lied about anything she’d said, including being new at this. She didn’t have formal training or instructions. Rose just wanted her to talk to new arrivals.
Cessy had never been sure why Rose had singled her out, why she had taken her aside after one of the meetings in the basement of that church on Light Street, asked her to come by her house. And Cessy wasn’t sure why she’d gone, how she’d ended up sitting at a table with Rose and a young newcomer to the home. The newcomer had come to the house recalcitrant, reluctant, but ended up talking with Cessy, the two of them soon laughing.
Cessy often felt like everything she did was still with the hope of escaping what she’d left when she first came to Baltimore. And maybe that was why new residents of the house opened up to her. They sensed a fellow runaway.
Or maybe they sensed that Cessy was still running, and they needed that. The comfort of knowing everything was temporary, because permanence had been a nightmare.
Her phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket, glanced down at the screen.
“I need to take this.”
Cessy left the bedroom, headed down one of the halls to a communal bathroom. Closed and locked the door behind her.
Read the text again. It was the same one she’d received earlier.
You decided what to do?
She didn’t recognize the number, but knew who the message was from.
The blond man who’d come to her apartment about the money Hector owed.
He was done waiting.
CHAPTER
9
DEB GAVE UP on reading, set the Anne Tyler novel on her garden bench. Fault didn’t lie with the author; it was hard for Deb to concentrate on anything without grief slipping through like cold air through a window crack.
Deb ran her hands through her hair, briefly massaged the back of her neck. And heard the distant sound of her doorbell.
Deb left the garden, walked through the house, assuming it was a delivery man with another gift from sympathizing friends or family.
Grant’s family, anyway. Her mother had passed away years ago.
A man stood on her porch. He wore a dark suit, the jacket unbuttoned, a thin black tie.
“Mrs. Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Levi Price.” He pronounced Levi the opposite of the jeans: “leh-vee.” “I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I need to talk to you.”
He handed her an ID.
“Why?” Deb looked down at the badge in her hand. Stared into the stern photo, gold shield, embossed lettering. She couldn’t help but be suspicious. Nicole had warned her about people who took advantage of widowers, cons who sought victims at their most troubled. Damaged people who formed some sort of attachment to a news story, like strangers calling the police to confess to a crime they hadn’t committed.
“It’s about your husband,” Levi said after she gave the billfold back. “But we really shouldn’t talk here. May I come inside?”
Deb ignored his request. “What about my husband?”
Still the present tense of the phrase—my husband. Like Deb was still connected to Grant, to a body, not just a soul.
Deb wondered if that would ever change.
She wondered if she would let it.
“He wasn’t killed in a robbery.”
Something in Deb stiffened.
“What do you mean?”
Her own voice sounded unfamiliar to her. Rough.
“Your husband was under investigation by the FBI,” Levi said patiently, his blue eyes soft. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way. The investigation didn’t extend to his family.”
“Why?”
That small word was a big question, could refer to hundreds of different questions Deb had asked herself over the past weeks.
Levi glanced around again. “I really think we should talk someplace more private.”
She didn’t offer him a drink when they sat down at her kitchen table, in the window nook overlooking her backyard.
Levi leaned forward in his chair, one elbow on the table.
Deb sat across from him.
“There have been a number of recent deaths in the area,” he began. “All men, all shot in the same way as your husband.”
“I know, I keep seeing it on the news.” Deb’s voice was scraping, coarsening sadness. “The police told me that too. But they said they don’t know who’s doing it.”
Levi was cautious when he spoke again.
“Did your husband ever mention a woman named Maria Vasquez?”
Deb shook her head. “Who is she?”
“Maria was a prostitute. Grant was one of her clients.”
Deb stood, walked over to the sink, leaned over it.
She didn’t feel the metal under her hands, couldn’t even see straight. Her legs felt like they were threatening to float away.
When had she started crying?
“We don’t believe Vasquez killed him,” Levi went on, his voice patient and persistent. “But we have reason to believe these murders are being committed by a different prostitute. That this is some sort of revenge against clients.”
Clients.
Deb’s hands tightened over the edge of the sink.
“Grant was a client?”
“I’m sorry,” Levi said.
Deb searched her memories. She tried to remember the late nights Grant worked, the trips he’d taken, any guilt or distraction. There were some oddities—days or weeks when he was distant to her—but Deb had always ascribed those times to the normalcies of any marriage. The rough spots, raising Kim when her relationship with Grant was strained. The small arguments she and Grant had—about money, about the house—that spiraled into heated fights.
But nothing to warrant this.
Nothing to deserve this.
“Were there other women your husband mentioned in a way that seemed unusual?” Levi was asking.
“What?”
“Did your husband ever mention other women in a way that seemed unusual?”
“I don’t know.”
Deb’s own voice was faint to her ears.
Grant had always had female friends, a fact that bothered Deb early in their relationship. It was never something she got used to or fully accepted, and although she trusted him, she rarely trusted any of th
e women he knew. Not completely. He was a natural flirt but claimed to be a harmless one and, to be fair, Deb never had reason to doubt him. Even in tough times during their marriage, Grant had never strayed.
At least, not that she had known.
Deb had always felt like she’d be the one to wander. She’d experienced passing or lingering attractions to other men, coworkers, a neighbor or two, once a friend’s husband. But none of those had moved beyond a playful flirtation, at least on her part. Occasionally the men seemed to want more, and then she’d guiltily retreat, ashamed, worried she’d led them on.
But Deb had pondered her resilience, wondered what would happen if the perfect opportunity presented itself. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine having an affair.
Even if it was more a case of teasing herself.
“I didn’t think he’d been with anyone else,” she said. “Ever.”
Levi watched her.
Except for this prostitute he’d paid.
All this time she’d doubted Grant had the willingness to cheat on her, that he’d never take any of those relationships beyond a friendship.
A prostitute.
The idea of Grant having sex with a woman on the streets, the money and the disease, felt like it would sicken her.
“Did Grant ever mention men’s names you didn’t recognize?”
“Men?”
“It’s possible they could be other clients or pimps. We need to find them. Before she does.” Levi rubbed the back of his neck. “The other similarity these victims shared is the amount of money they spent. It was beyond the normal cost of solicitation. Enough to warrant our involvement. In some cases, these men embezzled from their companies.”
Another knife in Deb.
“How much did Grant give her?”
A pause.