They're Gone

by E. A. Barres

“You … what? Why?”

  Cessy’s memory was spotty, just flashes of her running down the stairs and lifting the chair. “He tried to hurt me.”

  “So it was self-defense?”

  “Yeah.”

  Anthony exhaled.

  “Then it’s not your fault.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When the cops come. It won’t be your fault.”

  “I can’t go to the cops.”

  “Why not?”

  Cessy told Anthony about the money Hector owed, the demands that she pay it back. The warning about telling the police.

  Anthony rubbed his chin. “Well, shit.”

  “I think we need to get him to the hospital. Fast. Everything’s worse if he dies.”

  Anthony looked worriedly to the front door.

  “You thinking about running?” she asked.

  “Honestly? Yeah.”

  She reached out and held his hand. It was limp in hers.

  “I need your help, Anthony. I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  He grimaced.

  “Please.”

  He withdrew his hand. “Let’s get him to my car.”

  Anthony lifted Barry’s shoulders, Cessy took his feet. They dragged him through the living room and outside toward Anthony’s car, an old Nissan Maxima.

  “Trunk’s closed,” Cessy said. “Where are your keys?”

  Anthony dropped his half of Barry’s body. Barry’s shoulders and head landed hard on the driveway. Cessy winced. She could see Anthony digging in his pocket, and then he pulled his keys out and they flew into the night. “Oh shit!”

  “Keep your voice down!” Cessy hissed, just as she heard someone say, “Hello?”

  Cessy dropped Barry’s legs and walked around the car. An older white woman, walking a small terrier, was standing on the sidewalk, shining the flashlight from her phone on the front of Anthony’s car. The woman turned the flashlight toward Cessy.

  “Oh, hi,” Cessy said, squinting in the light. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes, grateful the woman wasn’t in a position to see Barry’s body behind the car. “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t recognize you,” the woman said, her voice flat and serious. “Or him.”

  She pointed her phone to the yard, and Cessy saw Anthony, butt high in the air, searching through the grass.

  “Hi!” Anthony said, his voice extra friendly, as nonthreatening as possible to white people. “Just looking for my keys.”

  “What are your names?” the woman asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Tell me or tell the cops. We get a little worried when we see … strangers in this neighborhood.”

  Cessy was pretty sure she knew exactly what this lady meant by “strangers.”

  “Sure,” Anthony said, still using his friendly tone. “I get that. Completely. My name’s Anthony Jenkins.”

  “And you?” The flashlight’s beam traveled up and down Cessy’s body.

  “Cessy Castillo.” She immediately wished they hadn’t given their real names. “We’re friends with Barry.”

  “Barry’s not here that often,” the lady said. “Seems like a nice fellow, though. Needs to work on his yard.”

  “You’re right!” Anthony called out, then went back to searching through the tall grass.

  “He’s really so nice,” Cessy confirmed.

  “Is he here now?” The older lady started up the driveway.

  Cessy stepped in front of her, trying to appear as casual as possible. “He had a headache, which is why we’re leaving. Probably already in bed.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.”

  “Yup.” Cessy wondered if there was any part of Barry’s body that the lady could see. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be looking in that direction. She kept glancing between Cessy and Anthony as he went through the yard.

  “And we were leaving,” Cessy added. “My friend Anthony there just lost his keys.”

  “Where are you two from?”

  Cessy was growing impatient with this line of questioning, but Anthony said, “Baltimore!”

  “Baltimore?” The lady said the word like she hated having it in her mouth. Cessy wasn’t surprised. It hadn’t taken her long, after moving here, to learn that everyone picked on the little city. They never bothered to see past the problems and find Baltimore’s beauty—the brightly painted row houses, the long lovely parks, the dramatic mix of people.

  “That’s right,” Cessy replied. “Baltimore.”

  “Where’s Trip?” the lady asked.

  “What?”

  “Trip, my terrier. He was standing right behind me.”

  Cessy took a step back, looked around. “You didn’t have him on a leash?”

  “Trip doesn’t need a leash,” the lady said defiantly. “He stays right with me.”

  She walked toward Anthony’s car, flashlight aimed at the ground.

  Cessy stopped her with a hand on the lady’s shoulder.

  “I’ll check here,” Cessy said. “You check the street. Make sure he didn’t run out there.”

  The lady inhaled sharply. “You’re right.” She turned and hurried to the sidewalk, calling out, “Trip! Trip!”

  “Found them!” Anthony cried out.

  “My Trip?”

  “Sorry, no. My keys.” He walked toward Cessy, asked in a low voice, “Should we move him now?”

  “While this puta’s twenty feet away?” Cessy whispered back. “No!” She walked toward the back of the car and Anthony followed her. She turned on her phone’s flashlight, pointed it down.

  “Oh shit,” Anthony said.

  The lady’s terrier was crouched next to Barry’s body and chewing on the handcuffs, his mouth covered in blue fur.

  Cessy slowly walked toward the dog. “Hey, Trip, it’s okay. Just drop that and come here. I’ll give you a treat.”

  Trip glared at her and growled, like he knew Cessy was lying about the treat. He kept chewing and kept a watchful eye on her.

  “Is he over there?” the lady called, her voice fortunately far away.

  “I don’t see him,” Cessy called back, her eyes locked with Trip’s. She took another step and he rose to his haunches, the handcuffs still in his mouth.

  She saw Anthony behind the dog and took another step. Trip turned and ran and Anthony scooped him up in his arms. Trip dropped the handcuffs and his teeth latched onto Anthony’s arm. Anthony yelped.

  “Is that him?” the lady cried out.

  “We got him,” Cessy said, and she pushed Anthony toward the sidewalk. He whimpered and walked.

  “Oh, Trip!” the lady said gratefully, then shined the light on Anthony’s strained face. “Is he biting you?”

  “It’s fine,” Anthony replied, his voice cracking.

  “Come here, sweetie,” the lady said, and she took Trip from Anthony’s arms. He stepped back, rubbing his left bicep.

  “Thanks to both of you,” she went on. “He never runs off. Must have been …”

  She took a step back. The flashlight’s beam had lowered to the ground.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Cessy and Anthony slowly turned.

  Saw the furry blue handcuffs illuminated on the driveway.

  They looked at each other, turned back toward the lady.

  “Like I said, Barry’s really nice,” Cessy told her.

  * * *

  The lady didn’t stick around long after that. Cessy and Anthony quickly loaded Barry’s body inside and closed the trunk.

  “Don’t drive crazy,” Cessy said when they climbed into the car. “Last thing we need is to get pulled over.”

  “What’s going to happen at the hospital?” Anthony asked.

  “We drop him by the door or down the street. Wherever’s less crowded.”

  They drove in silence.

  “And after that?” Anthony asked, eventually. “What are you going to do? What’s going to happen next?”

  Cessy wished sh
e knew.

  CHAPTER

  13

  THE DOOR TO the motel room swung open.

  Chris Castillo walked in from the South Carolina night, a plastic bag from Subway swinging from one hand, a half-eaten club sub sandwich in the other. He tossed the bag on the bed, closed the door with his foot. Took his Sig out from his jacket pocket, set it on the nightstand.

  Lay down on the bed, swallowed the hard bread.

  “This tastes like a sheep’s fart,” Chris said to no one. He laughed. “I don’t even know what that means.”

  He ate more, stared at an episode of M*A*S*H on the muted television set.

  When Chris finished his sandwich, he rolled off the bed, picked up the plastic bag. Pushed open the bathroom door and walked inside.

  Like the rest of the motel room, the bathroom was small, as if originally sized to be a closet. A chipped sink, small toilet, and tiny tub filled it and barely allowed for anything else. Even the towel rack seemed cramped.

  Chris pulled open the shower curtain. Removed the ball gag and blindfold from the older man chained to the pipes.

  The older man didn’t say anything. Didn’t glare or even open his eyes. He kept his face down.

  “Looks like we got to clean this,” Chris said. He unhooked the nozzle, turned on the water, washed away the blood threatening to stain the shower floor.

  “I’m going to do your back now, okay?”

  The older man’s eyes opened. He grimaced as water washed over the knife cuts crisscrossing his back.

  Chris was impressed.

  He’d seen men scream when water touched their wounds.

  He finished, hung the nozzle, sat on the toilet.

  “You want a sandwich?” he asked.

  A nod.

  Chris gave him the sandwich. The man took a bite, then spit the sandwich down to the wet floor.

  “You trying to poison me?”

  “That was from Subway.”

  “That explains it,” the man said and coughed. “You going to let me out of here?”

  “Maybe,” Chris lied.

  The older man frowned. “You’d better think about that. Like I told you, you kill me and the cops will never stop looking for you. People know me.”

  Chris shrugged. “Good thing I’m not staying.” He reached down into his ankle sheathe, pulled out a long knife.

  “Who are you?” the man asked, desperately.

  “I’m just some guy passing through Charleston. Heading north to see my sis.”

  “Please let me go. I won’t do anything like this again.”

  Chris wagged the knife at him. “Now see, I think you’ve done this before. I could tell by the way I heard you talking to her through the door. And I could tell, after I broke that door down, that she wasn’t your daughter like you tried to say she was. She was working for you! In the motel room next to mine. What are the odds?” Chris reflected for a moment. “Actually, pretty good, in this motel. I should stay in nicer places.”

  “You had no right …”

  “And I have the biggest problem with men buying women. You have no idea.”

  “I won’t do it anymore. Please!”

  Chris always hated it when they started to beg.

  “Listen,” Chris said. “You can just go.”

  He undid the handcuffs and the man’s arms dropped to his sides, flopped down like broken chicken wings.

  “What are you doing?”

  Chris shrugged. “I told you that you can go.” He handed him his shirt. “But you’ll probably screw this up instead.”

  The man took the shirt, tried to put it on, grimaced as he lifted his arms, gasped when the shirt touched his bleeding back.

  “Here’s your gun,” Chris said.

  Chris admired how the man’s face didn’t change, didn’t register surprise. He took the gun, ejected and examined the clip, shoved it back in.

  “Ready?” Chris asked.

  The man’s gun swung upward, but Chris was faster. He slashed the man’s forearm with his knife. The man cried out and his hand dropped, but he didn’t let go of the weapon. Chris grabbed the man’s hand, pointed the pistol away from him.

  And dragged his knife across the man’s throat.

  The man let go of the gun.

  He stepped back into the shower, his body pressed against the tiles. Sank to the floor, breathing wetly. His hands pushed against his neck, as if helplessly trying to stuff the blood back in.

  “You see, you did that,” Chris told the dying man.

  Blood was pooling in the small tub. Chris washed his hands, cleaned off his phone. Pulled up an app for driving directions to Baltimore as the man’s harsh gasps slowed.

  CHAPTER

  14

  DEB WANTED TO drive Kim back to Washington College to clear out her dorm room for winter break, and potentially the spring semester, but Kim thought it best she take the trip alone. “Trust me, Mom,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot of goodbyes and friends stopping by. You don’t want to see that.”

  “That sounds exactly like what I want to see. I want to meet your friends and watch the goodbyes. Don’t you know me?”

  They did the two-hour drive early one weekday morning, sitting in silence as they crawled through traffic. Deb could tell her daughter was upset, but couldn’t figure out why.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked Kim, after about an hour. They hadn’t said a word since the drive began. Instead, they’d been listening dourly to the radio play a tribute of Billy Joel songs. Which, Deb figured, could be a good enough reason for Kim to be angry.

  Kim stayed slouched in her chair, hands jammed in the pockets of her hoodie. “I’m fine.”

  “Is it because of “Uptown Girl”?”

  That brought a small smile. It didn’t last long. “No.”

  They reached the Bay Bridge, a rising curved structure that stretched high above the Chesapeake, comprised of four thin lanes that pushed cars close to the long drop to the water below. Driving over the bridge had always terrified Deb. She would sit in the passenger seat as Grant drove, close her eyes, count silently to herself. Squeeze her fists. In the course of driving back and forth to Washington College, they’d crossed the Bay Bridge dozens of times, and every time Deb felt panic build in her, almost overtake her. Grant would tease her, take his hands off the wheel or close his eyes, and Deb had fucking hated him for it.

  She wondered if Grant had thought about Maria Vasquez during these drives. Deb remembered their easy conversations, the laughing, the months—sometimes years—when nothing seemed wrong in their relationship. And she wondered how naïve she’d been.

  What else had Grant hidden?

  Had he been with even more women?

  And given all of that, he’d still had the audacity to try to scare her when they drove on this bridge?

  She turned her thoughts away from Grant and toward the drive, worried about getting distracted. It wasn’t just the height of the bridge that scared her; it was that bizarre, instinctual pull to the edge. The suddenness of the plummet, how close and easy it was. Not that Deb had notions toward suicide, but there was something about the immediacy of death that was both terrifying and magnetic.

  “You okay?” Kim asked.

  Deb stared hard out the windshield as their Grand Cherokee climbed over the water. “This bridge always makes me nervous.”

  “I can tell.”

  “How?”

  “Because your fingers are making indents in the steering wheel.”

  Deb didn’t relax her grip.

  The campus was quiet when they arrived at Washington College. Students were immersed in studying this close to finals, and only a few wandered through the brisk November chill, hurrying from one building to the next or walking with dazed, exhausted expressions. The diversity of the students warmed Deb. She hadn’t been sure if Maryland’s Eastern Shore held the same varied mix of races Northern Virginia offered, but the college had students from multiple ethnicit
ies and nationalities. Kim wasn’t alone.

  They walked into Kim’s dorm room, a plain square room with white brick walls and two thin beds. Deb had gone to college and lived in a similar environment, and couldn’t imagine now how she’d done it. Everything was so cramped and communal. After years of living in houses, she needed her space.

  That thought reminded Deb of her finances.

  My God, she thought as Kim went through her closet, I hope I don’t have to move in here.

  “I think I’ll just take my clothes,” Kim was saying. “I don’t need my books or the TV or anything.”

  “That’s your TV?” Deb asked. She walked over and examined the wall-mounted plasma.

  “Yeah, you don’t remember? Dad bought it for me.”

  Deb honestly didn’t, but the mention of “Dad” tightened her stomach and face.

  The door to the dorm opened. “Hey, Tasha,” a girl said, calling out for Kim’s roommate as she strolled inside. “Do you have …?”

  The girl, a blonde wearing a gray Washington College sweatshirt and black tights, stopped just inside the doorway.

  “Hey, Mary Beth,” Kim said.

  “Hi, Kim! I didn’t know you were coming back.”

  “I’m just here to get my stuff.”

  Silence.

  “This is my mom,” Kim said, gesturing at Deb.

  “Hi,” Deb offered. “Mary Beth, right?”

  “Right,” the girl said uneasily. She pulled at the bottom of her sweatshirt. “I’m sorry for what happened to your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mary Beth still seemed uneasy, as if she didn’t know what to say.

  Deb didn’t either. She gazed at Mary Beth, her pretty face and young body, and wondered if that’s what Grant had seen in Maria Vasquez. Was she young? Deb hadn’t asked Agent Levi Price for information about her, but wished she had.

  Ever since her meeting with Levi, Deb felt like she was staring into a dark room.

  And she wanted to turn on the light.

  She wanted to see Maria.

  The other prostitute, the one who had killed Grant, who had killed other men … that woman meant nothing to her. Grant was a casualty in her war, had maybe never even known who she was. But Maria was planted in Deb’s mind, like weeds or vines, growing and stretching and blotting out everything she could see.