They're Gone

by E. A. Barres

  “That sounds like an excuse,” Rebecca countered.

  “It is, a little,” Deb admitted. “Mainly because I don’t think people are always secretly bad.”

  But Deb thought about Grant and wondered if she still believed that.

  “Me neither,” Rebecca replied. “I think they’re unintentionally bad.”

  “You don’t think someone will find what you’re saying now unintentionally bad twenty or fifty years later?”

  Rebecca smiled again. “I mean, I hope not.”

  Her smile warmed Deb. She did like Rebecca.

  She wondered how Grant would have reacted to Rebecca, and to Kim’s changing identity. Politically and culturally, Grant had been liberal, but a relatively untested one. He championed stances—pro-choice, anti-capital punishment—that had yet to affect him. But Deb had noticed his views had a tendency to narrow, to traffic largely in self-interest, when something directly impacted him. Like taxes or proposed city ordinances. Under scrutiny or application, Deb had often thought Grant’s views would drop like leaves from December trees.

  She doubted he’d be able to easily accept his daughter was bisexual or that she was dating a black woman.

  That thought annoyed her more.

  “Sorry,” Rebecca said. “I’m in your house, and I’m getting all political and feisty.”

  “That’s okay,” Deb said. “I like it.”

  “I yell at her all the time,” Nicole confided to Rebecca. “It’s cool.”

  “Do you, um, want me to go or stay?” Levi asked.

  Deb was relieved when Kim and Rebecca laughed.

  “No, but let’s talk about something else,” Kim said.

  They finished dinner without Levi annoying anyone again, and instead talked about college life, how Kim and Rebecca were enjoying it, where Rebecca was from. Deb learned that Rebecca had been born in Annapolis; her father taught at the Naval Academy, and her mother was a lawyer. She hoped to become a professor like her dad.

  And she noticed how Kim watched her as Rebecca spoke, with admiration, adoration.

  Her daughter was smitten.

  “Well,” Levi said as they finished their food, and the conversation drew to a close, “this ended up better than it started, but I need to go.”

  “Me too,” Rebecca said, glancing at her watch, then at Deb. “But it was really nice meeting you.”

  “Lovely meeting you too. Make sure my daughter treats you well.”

  “Cripes, mom,” Kim said, but with humor.

  The small group walked to the front door, and sadness started creeping through Deb. It was the sadness she’d felt when Kim first left for college, that sense of abandonment, the empty feeling a once-crowded house brings.

  She was happy Nicole was with her.

  “We have a lot to talk about,” Deb whispered to Nicole.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Nicole whispered back, and she headed into the living room.

  Kim and Rebecca were talking by Rebecca’s car, a small Prius. Levi glanced at Deb, and his expression turned troubled.

  “You okay?”

  Deb nodded.

  “Kind of forgot about everything during dinner, right? And now it’s all back?”

  Deb nodded again, surprised at Levi’s prescience.

  “Yeah,” he went on. “I thought that might happen. You go through a tragedy, and your mind wants you to forget. Your body wants to heal. Like any bruise or injury. It’s just your body trying to scab over.”

  “I guess so,” Deb said.

  “I’m not a shrink or anything,” Levi added, “but you ever need to talk, I’m here.”

  Deb still had her eyes fixed on her daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend. She was watching them, but her mind was elsewhere. Back in that Capitol Hill apartment building, on the staircase with Maria Vasquez.

  “Thanks for being so nice to me,” she told Levi distantly.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “I’m wondering what Maria’s going to tell me on Friday.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  CESSY BLEW INTO her cupped hands. It was cold inside Scoops Ice Cream Shop, but it wasn’t just the temperature making her tense. She picked up her coffee, took a sip.

  She was already nervous, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to add caffeine to her fraying nerves, but Cessy wanted warmth. And she had an addiction to caffeine. Cessy often downed extravagant coffees from Starbucks during work breaks, let energy drinks fuel her mornings. She glanced at the other customers in the shop—a young couple with two kids, a group of talkative high school kids in the corner—and wondered if this was enough of a crowd to stop anything bad from happening. If anyone here would actually jump up to help her if she needed it.

  A hand fell on her shoulder.

  Cessy almost screamed.

  Smith and Harris walked around her, took the opposite two seats at her table.

  “How’d you get behind me?” Cessy asked. She turned, saw a door for staff. “You guys work here?”

  Harris smiled. Smith didn’t. Once again, they were wearing nearly identical outfits—blue jeans and black T-shirts. Harris’s arms were heavily tattooed, so much so that she couldn’t actually tell what the designs were. Smith’s arms were bare.

  “We don’t work here,” Harris said. “We just know a lot of people.”

  “Even the people at Scoops?”

  “Every business has a boss,” Harris said. “And every boss has a boss.”

  Cessy thought about that, about the warning Barry had given her.

  They’re killers.

  And they’re everywhere.

  “Do you have our money?” Smith asked, his voice soft but menacing.

  Cessy took a breath. “Not even a little of it.”

  “Then why are we here?” Harris asked.

  “Because I wanted to tell you that you’re right. I did put Barry in the hospital. After he attacked me.”

  Neither of the men allowed themselves much of a response. Harris rubbed the stubble on his chin.

  “He’s still there,” Harris said. “Hasn’t woken up.”

  “I know. I’ve been checking.”

  “Why’d you tell us?” Smith asked.

  “Because you should know what I’m capable of,” Cessy told them, and immediately realized how hollow the words sounded. But it was the truth.

  She wanted them to know she’d fight back.

  At least, that’s what Cessy had planned ahead of time. She’d had no idea how unconvincing her threat would sound.

  Or how little they’d care.

  “Where’s our money?” Smith asked.

  “I told you, I don’t have it.”

  Their expressions didn’t change.

  “But I have something else,” Cessy went on, and bent down to reach into her handbag.

  “Ah,” one of the men said. Cessy looked up. From her bent position, she could see under the table, and she saw a gun in each man’s lap, pointed at her.

  “Sit back up,” Harris said.

  Cessy did, slowly, leaving her handbag on the floor

  “You don’t want to move too fast around us,” Smith told her. “We get nervous.”

  Cessy inhaled. It felt like she hadn’t taken a breath in hours. “How’d you get your guns out so quickly?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Smith said.

  “And what’s in the purse?” Harris asked. “Is it our money?”

  “You have a one-track mind,” Cessy joked, but she couldn’t keep her voice steady or strong. She’d grown up around guns in Arizona, but never had one pointed at her. Knowing that any slip of the finger, any increase in tension, could end her life brought a panic she could barely keep at bay.

  “It’s not the money?” Smith asked.

  “It’s something else in my purse. Can I show you?”

  Smith reached down and picked up her handbag. He opened it up and glanced inside.

  “It’s in the enve
lope,” Cessy told him.

  Smith handed her the envelope, and his hands disappeared back under the table.

  Cessy paused before opening the envelope.

  “Please put your guns away. They make me really nervous.”

  Neither man moved.

  “Seriously, it’s hard to concentrate or do anything,” Cessy continued, her voice low. “Could you at least point them somewhere else?”

  “Open the envelope,” Harris told her.

  Cessy was so shaky that she felt like the envelope might drop to the floor, but she managed to tear it open. She pulled out copies of the photos she’d found in Hector’s nightstand. Placed them on the table.

  Harris flipped through them with one hand.

  Smith looked at her, and she didn’t like his look. It felt invasive and angry, like he was staring at something that had been stolen from him.

  It took Harris a few minutes to finish leafing through the photos. But he finally set them down, pushed them toward his partner.

  Smith glanced through them.

  Cessy watched him carefully.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  “You know what they are.”

  “Awfully blurry,” he said. “Hard to see anything. Harder to prove anything.”

  “Really? Because I think it proves Hector was working with some disreputable shit. Including a bald guy with tattoos who probably wishes he was out of the frame.”

  “You’re looking at this like an execution, like we did it,” Smith said. “This was taken after we found the bodies.”

  That hadn’t occurred to Cessy.

  “But what are you saying?” Smith asked, his expression still maddeningly blank. “You’re threatening to take this to the cops?”

  “I’m saying I can because, no matter what, I’m sure you don’t want them to see this. So drop the money Hector owed and forget I ever knew you. Let me do my thing, you do yours, and we never see each other again.”

  “Well, see,” Harris drawled, “you just made that kind of impossible.”

  Despair started filling Cessy, like it was being poured from a pitcher. “What do you mean?”

  “You show us these pictures, and you think we can just let it go?”

  “But … you don’t have a choice.”

  “No?”

  “I have a friend who has a copy of these, and she’s ready to go to the cops if anything happens to me.”

  That was a lie, but Cessy hoped it was a good one.

  The thumb drive with the pictures was at the bar, beneath a loose floorboard.

  “You think you can blackmail us?” Smith asked.

  “I think I can make a deal with you. You don’t mess with me, and I don’t mess with you. That’s it. We go our separate ways.”

  “Why should we trust you?”

  “Because I’d have already gone to the cops if you couldn’t.”

  The two men regarded her, then abruptly stood. Their guns were hidden once again.

  “We’ll let you know,” Harris told her.

  “When?”

  “You’ll know when.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  THEY CAME TWICE a week to collect from Maria Vasquez, to take her money and divide it up, to ask her questions about her clients, to find out what she’d learned. To give her new questions to ask.

  They would bring her food and clothes and bed sheets and towels. Check to see if there was anything she needed. Sometimes even bring her what she wanted. Most of the time they ignored her requests.

  They came Wednesday and Sunday mornings between nine and eleven. They came after the men who fucked her in the morning; before the men who fucked her on their lunch breaks. And never in the evenings, when her schedule was full.

  Long ago, Maria had stopped keeping track of how many men she’d been with, how many showed up at the apartment down the hall throughout the day. How often she had to smile, pretend that they were the first one she’d been with that day. How she’d learned to disguise the noises she made from pain, make them think it was pleasure.

  That was the most important thing, the lesson ingrained in her forever.

  Maria had learned that the men who liked hearing her in pain, and there were many, only wanted more. They wanted to push Maria to the point of begging, breaking, death. They yanked her hair so hard the roots were torn, callously smacked her, wrapped burly arms around her throat.

  And Maria acted like nothing ever hurt or scared her, buried her grimace in their shoulders or chests or the pillow or bed sheets.

  They’d already been by on Wednesday and brought her money and questions. But Maria wouldn’t be there when they stopped by on Sunday.

  Maria planned to be gone by then.

  Grant’s death and Deb’s visit had shaken her. Set off an unease that refused to settle. Something wasn’t right, and Maria didn’t know what it was, but she knew she had to leave. Maybe head back to Michigan, get a job waiting tables, leave the past three years in DC behind. Pretend they never happened. It wouldn’t be hard.

  There was nothing here she wanted to remember.

  And tonight was the perfect time to leave. The other girls were gone, called away to go to dinner or something. They’d return and she’d have disappeared. With luck, no one here would know she’d even existed.

  Maria didn’t have much money, but she had enough for a bus ticket that would take her a state or two away. Had a bag halfway packed.

  She wondered about her mother, wondered if her mother would even want to talk with her again. It had been three years since Maria had run away from home, and she didn’t know if her mother’s worry and concern had turned to resentment. Maria had been cruel to leave and never contact her, and didn’t know if that cruelty was reparable.

  But she wanted to try. Wanted to return to that little house outside Detroit, knock on the door, the way someone was knocking on her apartment door.

  She wanted to see her mother’s face again, even if it was angry.

  Maria walked to the door, pulled it open mid-knock.

  Something smashed into the side of her head.

  It took Maria a few moments to realize she was on her hands and knees. To feel blood. To understand that gasping sound was coming from her.

  The brass knuckles sank into her forehead again, tearing skin, cracking bone.

  The killer hit Maria twice more until she was lying down, until her hands trembled beside her.

  Until blood poured from her skull like wine from a spilled goblet.

  That’s when the killer took off the knuckles, pulled on gloves, and searched the apartment.

  Searched for any incriminating information Maria had collected about the men she worked for. Or anything about Grant Thomas.

  And, like the killer’s search through Deb Thomas’s basement, nothing was found. Except for Maria’s half-packed suitcase. The killer unpacked it, hung the clothes back up, returned the toiletries to the bathroom. Hid any signs Maria was distressed or running.

  Last, the killer washed off the brass knuckles.

  The DC night was dark, the way darkness descended on the city in winter, like the suddenness of a hand clamping down over someone’s mouth. A man walking a dog stared down into his glowing phone. A woman hurried up the street, an oversized satchel slapping her side with each step, with the quick pace women assume when walking alone at night.

  Something started gnawing in the killer’s gut. Distress. Not about what the killer had just done. Distress because the killer knew the same thing would need to be done to Deb Thomas, soon.

  She was getting closer.

  CHAPTER

  21

  DANA LAUGHED AND bit down on a doughnut. “No way,” he said to Cessy, wiping jelly off his chin. “You almost drowned in a kiddie pool?”

  “Hey!” Cessy said, pretending to sound sharp, but only for Dana’s amusement. She liked seeing him laugh. “Lots of people drown every year. It’s not funny.”

  “Yes, but n
ot in kiddie pools when they’re seventeen.”

  “I never learned how to swim! We didn’t have very many oceans or lakes in Arizona, you know.”

  “But you had pools, right?”

  “Sorry I wasn’t born into luxury, like you, so I could take swimming lessons. And horseback riding. And— I don’t know—archery, probably.”

  Dana was still laughing. “I just can’t get over the image of you splashing around in two feet of water.”

  “You know,” Cessy said, “it’s pretty terrifying for someone who doesn’t know how to swim, thank you very much.”

  “But you know how to stand up, right? You could have done that.”

  “I never should have told you this.”

  “No kidding.” Dana finished off his doughnut. “You definitely should have kept this to yourself.”

  “Well, I made the whole thing up to make you laugh. You’re welcome.”

  He looked at her, his face wonderfully light and uncomplicated. “No, you didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cessy admitted.

  Dana stretched back in his bedroom’s chair, raised his hands to the ceiling. “I will say one nice perk of being here are the free doughnuts.”

  “Every Friday morning,” Cessy said. “Rose really should put that in the brochure—if she had a brochure.”

  “No kidding,” Dana said. “I’d bring dates here. You sure you don’t want one?”

  Cessy hadn’t, but the Diablo Doughnuts box she’d passed on her way in, and seeing how ravenously Dana devoured his, changed her mind. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right back.”

  She headed into the hallway, listening to the televisions in the other bedrooms, decided to stop in the bathroom for a quick pee. One of the inexplicable things Cessy liked was the sounds of televisions behind closed doors. She wasn’t sure why, but thought it might be because it reminded her of a trip she’d once taken with her brother and mother when she was six years old. They’d gone to a family-friendly hotel in Phoenix, one that had its own water park on the premises, and she remembered running with Chris down the outdoor hall smelling of chlorine, with flip-flops smacking against their soles, their mother, somewhere behind them, calling to them to slow down.