by R. H. Herron
Laurie stole a peek at Frank Shepherd. “Frank, you see this, right? It’s obvious.”
Frank—the scaredy-cat—shrugged.
She sat up straight. The sooner this was over, the sooner she could get back to Jojo.
Fuck Ramsay. He’d killed himself like a coward, but what if he knew something—what if he knew everything?
At the same time, her head throbbed, her throat full of salt. Ramsay had been her friend. Once, long ago, they’d gotten bombed in La Precia at eight in the morning after Laurie’s first suicide-by-hanging call. He’d just sat there with her, letting her cry, buying her more margaritas, and then driving her home.
“Laurie?”
When she was done giving her statement, she and Jojo could go right home and stay there. Preferably forever. “Harper Cunningham was sleeping with Ramsay. Harper Cunningham is missing, and Ramsay is dead. Harper was with my daughter before she was 261’d at a house in which a man was killed. Jesus, you guys. These four things are related.” She hated herself for not being able to say “raped.” But she just couldn’t, not again.
“I know this is hard, Laurie. Especially with Omid in the hospital. It’s emotional.” Colson patted her hand.
She wanted to slap him with it. Colson wasn’t stupid, so why this stupid routine? Was it some cop-protecting-cop bullshit? If only Omid were here—wheels would be moving so much faster. “Are we done?”
Shepherd flipped the pages of his notebook. “Yeah. That’s about it.” He leaned back as if he were getting ready to chat about baseball. “So tell us how Omid is. Someone said he’s got to stay in there another couple of days? And how’s Jojo holding up? It’s been a hell of a twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?”
Laurie didn’t answer. She stood and left the room, slamming the door behind her. They’d talk shit about her in T-minus three seconds, and she didn’t care.
“Hey,” she said to Maria Bagley, who was at the traffic desk. “You seen Jojo?”
“Today?”
Genius. “Never mind.”
The break room held only a couple of uniforms eating burritos. It smelled like carne asada, and Laurie felt her stomach rumble. “Have you seen Jojo?”
Connors nodded. “She was headed down to dispatch, I think.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Laurie!” Will Yarwood again, strutting his short chicken walk as he came out of the firing range door. “How’s she doing?”
Laurie ignored him completely. She took the steps down two at a time, so fast her feet were blurred when she looked down. It was comforting, that every cop in town knew Jojo. It was nice knowing that Jojo couldn’t get up to much in San Bernal without Laurie and Omid hearing about it. (Though they hadn’t heard about Steiner catching her smoking weed—Laurie would talk to him about that.)
Laurie had seriously thought their biggest problem would be helping Jojo decide where to go to college.
And now? She went around the corner, dodging Captain Marbella’s ficus plant. Now her daughter’s accused rapist, a man who might be a murderer, was sitting upstairs in the exact cell the girls had been in.
And where the hell was Harper?
She punched in the code to enter dispatch.
Inside the ComCen, Jojo was sitting at an empty terminal, pecking at her cell. Shonda was on the phone, Maury was talking on the police radio, so only Charity was free to gawk at Laurie’s entrance.
Jojo was who mattered. “Hey, cookie.” God, she hadn’t called her daughter that for ten years. She’d almost forgotten the endearment entirely. “Want to go home?”
Jojo nodded without looking up.
Laurie felt tears start at the back of her throat as the eyes of her co-workers fixed on her, looking at her like she was someone else, someone they didn’t recognize or know how to handle. That was rich. Dispatchers always knew how to handle everything.
But they didn’t know how to handle this.
Maury moved first. He rose. “Laurie.”
She put her hands out. “Don’t hug me.” If he did, she’d crack. “Thanks for watching her.”
Jojo stalked out, no doubt offended by the idea that anyone at all had been watching her like a kid. The door shut behind her.
“Did she say anything to you? About Harper or anything?”
Maury shook his head. “We told her she didn’t have to talk. You okay?”
I can’t do this by myself. I need Omid.
Laurie folded her lips tight and shook her head.
TWENTY-FIVE
IN THE HOSPITAL Jojo felt nauseated. The smell of bleach and something acrid, almost burned, wasn’t making it better. She felt deep-down sick, like she was going to throw up again.
At least Dad wasn’t giving her those big sad eyes anymore. Now he was working. Being Dad, dealing with death and murder.
And his daughter’s rape.
The thought made her feel sicker—was this something that was going to hit the media at some point? Even if they didn’t officially name her, it would get out. God, why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d be the one that got raped, right? Everyone at school would think about her, unconscious and—Jesus.
Jojo wanted her father to stop it. To put a halt to all of it.
But he couldn’t. He was out of commission, and Mom was just a dispatcher, and Jojo was shit out of luck. She balanced on her toes while holding lightly on to the bar at the foot of the bed. No one noticed when she wobbled and whacked her hip on the blood pressure machine.
Dad had both his cell phones out and was typing furiously with his thumbs, all the while asking Mom questions. “Who’s doing the ID at Ramsay’s?”
“Veronica and Rattan.”
“Veronica’s not ready for that. She’s done one homicide in her whole career.”
“Two now. She’s doing Zachary Gordon’s, too. And Rattan is good. You know that.”
Dad shook his head. “If she fucks it up—I’ve got to get Thompson over there, too.” He stabbed at his phone some more.
“Don’t forget,” said Mom. “You’re not the chief right now.”
Dad’s eyes tightened. “Don’t tell me.”
“Brent Stanley.”
“Seriously? That’s who’s on rotation?”
Mom nodded. “But can you imagine if Darren Dixon was still around? He’d have been next on the list.”
“Screw that guy,” Dad said cheerfully. Dixon had posted anti-Muslim shit on the department’s Facebook page when Dad had been promoted to chief. One of Dad’s first responsibilities in his new position as chief three years ago had been to fire him. Dad wasn’t even Muslim, just a first-generation Iranian American raised nominally Christian, but the press didn’t care—it had been a good scandal. Jojo had forgotten all about that until now. How many other people hated Dad because they thought he was Muslim?
How many people hated her for the same reason?
Mom’s cell rang, and she held up a finger. “Yeah? Go ahead.” Then she shot Jojo a look. “Hang on.” She pressed the phone to her chest. “I’ll be right back.” She went into the hall.
Jojo folded her arms over her stomach, slightly relieved it was just her and Dad now, even though he was pecking at his phone.
What would Veronica do? Cut Zach open? Like they did in the movies? Was that for Identification or the coroner? Did they work together? What about Ramsay? Would they need to do that to him, even though his cause of death was obvious? Well, presumably Zach’s was obvious, too.
All that blood inside the bodies of everyone she knew, ready to spill out at any time.
She shook her head. Think of anything else. “You call Veronica by her first name but Rattan by his last. Why do you do that?”
“What?” Dad looked startled, his wide, dark eyebrows lifting.
“It’s, like, totally a respect thing. You do it all the
time. Like Maria Bagley. You call her Maria. You only call women by their first names. That’s sexist.”
Dad barely looked up. “It’s not sexist. We call her Bagley, too. Veronica’s ID, not a sworn officer, so it’s different.”
“But Rattan isn’t sworn, and you use his last name.” It was only a matter of time before he found out she’d broken into the jail and had seen Kevin. “I just think it’s messed up. Yet another act of diminishment within the patriarchy.”
Dad actually snorted.
“Really?” She wasn’t a baby. She’d seen a dead friend—okay, it might be a stretch to call Ramsay a friend, but she’d known him her whole life—today. He gave her a tea set when she was like five, and she’d loved it. She’d seen his blood still flowing. Presumably still hot from his veins. And then there was the pale image in her mind of Harper, moving against Ramsay. . . . Bile rose in the back of her throat again. It wasn’t Dad’s fault, but she could glare at him like it was.
“I was just clearing my throat. Honey, how are you?” His voice was weirdly hoarse, and his eyes, now that they were on her, were too intense. His gaze made her feel prickly, like he was searching for something that she didn’t know how to give.
“Fine.”
“You’ve had to deal with so much.” He dropped his cell to the bed. “So much. It breaks my fucking heart, you know that?”
Dad tried never to swear in front of her. His casual f-bomb made Jojo’s stomach tighten. “I’m fine, really. We just have to find Harper.”
“Do you think she could be off with someone? Her boyfriend? Like she did in the past? You know, stoned and sleeping it off somewhere?”
“You’re the one who says there’s no such thing as coincidence. I was with Harper, shit happens to me, and Harper turns up missing?”
“They’re looking.” His voice was louder than necessary.
“How? I just saw people in the station doing their everyday things. Like it didn’t matter. Like she doesn’t matter.”
Dad’s hands were shaking on top of the sheet. “She matters. You have no idea what’s going on, honey. You know how much I love you, right?” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. “If you were missing . . .”
Jojo was the only one he ever got emotional about, and she usually loved it. Not today. “What’s your main priority right now?”
He answered without appearing to think. “To fuck up the animal who hurt you. But I can’t. Instead”—he shook the bed rail so hard it clattered and jumped—“I’m trapped in here.”
It was the wrong answer. “Harper is missing. I’m here. She’s not.”
Dad cleared his throat. “It’s not like we can organize a grid search or something. They’re doing the best they can with what they have.”
“Why not?” Jojo swallowed hard, pushing down the queasiness. “Why can’t you do one?”
“I’d love to do one, but we can’t. She’s not a little kid or an Alzheimer patient who wandered off. Sending out all our officers to sweep the streets for her without a clue where to look is a misuse of the few resources we have right now. I don’t think she just got lost, do you?”
What else did lost look like? “Yeah. She’s lost.”
“If she wandered off and lost her way, even if she was roofied like you were, she would have come to her senses by now.”
“She doesn’t have her phone.”
“She has abilities, though. She’d be able to flag someone down. To ask to borrow a phone. She would have called her parents. She’s not disoriented in the woods somewhere, Jojo.” Dad’s eyes were all work now, and Jojo didn’t like it one bit.
And the fact being drilled home that Harper wasn’t simply lost was crushing, even though Jojo’d already kind of known it. “Oh.” She took a breath. Dad was staring at her like she was something breakable, which was crap. She might not feel great—it was that morning-after pill, or maybe the Ambien—but she wasn’t going to shatter. “What about the dogs? You can get the dogs in, right?”
Dad nodded. “K9’s been in already.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Jojo narrowed her eyes. “They didn’t have anything to track. I have a sweatshirt of hers at home. I can go get it.” She held up her phone. “Look, Harper’s mom is blowing me up. She can bring a piece of clothing to the station.” As if on cue, her phone pinged with another message from Pamela. Anything? What’s going on? Can you ask your father to call me? Or your mom?
Dad shook his head. “They had a shirt her mother gave them to track.”
Mom barreled back in. Her mouth was open to speak, and then she looked at Jojo. She stopped.
Dad spoke instead. “Did you get the e-mail about what they found in the kitchen at Leeds’s?”
Mom blinked. “The white stuff in the kitchen?”
Jojo stuck out her chin. “I bet it’s flour.”
Dad’s head swiveled to her. “How did you know that?”
She gave a groan. “Because he likes to bake when he’s not running balls for millions of dollars or actively working to help oppressed people rise up. Is that against the law or something? He’s not the killer rapist you think he is.” She wouldn’t be able to prove it to them. There was no way they’d ever believe her.
Jojo caught the look that flew between her mother and father. “What?”
Dad put his glasses on and tapped his phone faster. He read something. Then he made a low noise in the back of his throat that raised goose bumps on Jojo’s arms.
“What?”
“Jojo, leave the room. I need to talk to Mom.”
“No, tell me.”
Mom took a step toward her, but Jojo backed up to keep the space between them the same width.
“There was blood at the scene.”
Jojo’s stomach lurched. “Zach’s.” Jojo hadn’t been bleeding. Not as far as she could tell, anyway.
Her parents stayed silent.
“Tell me.”
“Sugar, they ran a DNA test on it.” Mom looked at her own phone.
“And?” Jojo couldn’t breathe.
“They took a sample of Pamela’s when she made the report. ID just matched it to Pamela’s blood sample by DNA. It was Harper’s blood.”
TWENTY-SIX
JOJO SHOOK HER head. “No.” She felt her legs start to shake again.
Harper was her person.
Harper saw her.
Harper loved her.
Jojo’s parents extolled her virtues, telling her she was good at math, at science, at English. She’d make a good scientist, they said. Or she liked animals—why didn’t she want to be a veterinarian? Never a cop, or a firefighter, or a paramedic. They didn’t listen when she said that she wanted to help people—that kids who wanted to be accountants and journalists baffled her. Where was the fun in just making a paycheck when you could run toward emergencies and prevent some of the fallout? Maybe save a life? Her parents, though, wanted her to be boring and safe, never thinking about what Jojo actually wanted.
Harper saw into Jojo’s heart and didn’t give a shit what Jojo was good or bad at. She didn’t care what she became in the future, what she would eventually turn into. She could give a crap if Jojo ended up a police detective or an arsonist. She just loved her. Harper was her person.
Jojo felt herself start to sway.
Dad said, “You see, Laurie? This is why we weren’t going to tell her. Goddamn it.”
“No! Don’t hide things from me! This is my life. Harper’s life!” Jojo lurched at the side of the bed and gripped her father’s wrist, the way he used to when pulling back her arm from things that might hurt her—a hot stove, a growling dog. “Tell me. When you know things, tell me.”
Dad’s face was perfectly still. His work face again. This was the face he used in morning lineup, when telling h
is officers how to do their job. This was the face he used when he was pissed off with the world, or with Mom, or with her. But he said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay. You tell me everything, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Jojo didn’t want to tell him every single thing, though. Not yet. “What about Ramsay? I was thinking about that movie Room, and what if he has, like, a shed or something, and she’s in there? She was seeing him after all, right?” How had Harper not told her? “What if something happened to her at Kevin’s house, and she called Ramsay, and he came and got her, and he was keeping her hidden? And Ray is kind of close to the name Ramsay, right?”
Dad shook his head and held up his cell phone, as if it were proof he was telling her the truth. “Full search. Nothing.”
“What if he has a secret room? Like in the walls?”
“Thermal-imaging camera says no one else is there.”
Jojo took a moment to breathe and think. Thermal. Looking for Harper’s body heat.
But if she was dead, there’d be no thermal image.
Dad had for sure thought about that.
As if reading her mind, he said, “K9 was there, remember? No match, no hit.”
Mom gave a small, high-pitched sigh that hurt to hear. Then she said, “Jojo, everything keeps pointing back to Kevin Leeds as the best suspect.”
“Then where is she? If you think he did it, wouldn’t he have her somewhere?” Jojo shook her head so hard the top of her brain hurt. “It wasn’t him.”
“Honey—” Mom did that reaching thing again, and Jojo shrank back farther, so that her shoulder jostled a vase of red carnations someone had sent Dad. It didn’t quite fall, but Mom pulled back.
“Mom. Stop.”
Mom’s fists clenched at her sides. “Joshi, I know that Harper’s our number one concern right now, but, honey, please hear me when I say this: Your first time is still coming. That didn’t count. It doesn’t count.”
Nausea swelled again, and Jojo’s stomach tightened. Her mother was bringing this up now, when she could have said it at the house, or in the car, but now? In front of Dad, too? “What makes you think that was my first time?”