The Art of Fear (The Little Things That Kill Series Book 1)

by Pamela Crane

  Benny had mentioned a Chevy Vega or Ford Festiva, and while they matched the body style I was looking for, only the Pinto had the yawning rear window I vividly recalled in my session with Dr. Weaver. I was 99 percent sure that was the vehicle I was looking for. Lucky for me, they weren’t a popular vehicle in 2002.

  “A guy with a Pinto? Sounds like the cream of the crop. You sure know how to pick ’em. I’m guessing this has something to do with your sister?”

  “You’re a smart one, you.”

  “That I am.”

  His fingers clacked along the keyboard as he entered the DMV registry, pulling up all records of orange Ford Pintos and their VINs.

  “Looks like you’re in luck. There are only a handful of Pintos in Durham, and only one orange one. I’m guessing that’s our VIN, assuming the car is still in North Carolina. But the title is with a junkyard. I’ll trace back the owners to see who owned it in 2002.”

  Biting on his lower lip, he concentrated in the most adorable way. Damn, I wanted to take a nibble myself. He made no attempt to push me away as I draped myself over his shoulder. A minute later he had a half-page list of names with corresponding dates of title transfer. Then he narrowed it to the year 2002. The list was knocked down to one name.

  “You can ooh and aaah now,” he said proudly, swiveling his chair around to face me. “Debra Littleton. I’m guessing she is a relative of the guy you’re looking for. Maybe his wife. Well, assuming the driver was male. But don’t you go getting any ideas, Ari,” he said with a warning in his tone. “I will handle this. I’ll contact her and see what I can find out. Got it?”

  I glanced to the side, avoiding eye contact. Me—getting uninvolved? That was like asking a crackhead to give up his next fix. Not gonna happen.

  “I need to talk to her myself,” I pleaded.

  “You don’t know this person. She could be skittish about what happened back then—defensive. And it could get dangerous.”

  “Ha. I laugh in the face of danger. Besides, how dangerous can someone named Debra be?”

  “Clearly you haven’t met the kind of Debras I have. Someone’s gotta look out for you, Ari.”

  I wanted to tell him that yes, I had met my fair share of meth-addled, knife-toting ex-con Debras, no thanks to my family for putting me in that position. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t some damn sugarcoated innocent baby doll who needed doors opened for her and flowers delivered to her doorstep. I wanted to tell him that I was no dainty Southern belle giggling behind her church fan and looking to be set on a pedestal. I’d been taking care of myself, looking out for myself, and fending for myself my entire damn life. I didn’t need him or anyone else telling me what I could or couldn’t do.

  But instead of saying those things, I tucked them away. I folded them into orderly thoughts, slid them into my back pocket, and breathed. He was trying to help, and getting agitated would get me nowhere.

  “Look, having a cop show up will feel like an interrogation. Having a nice chitchat with another woman might be a better tactic. Please?”

  He rolled his eyes in surrender. “Fine, but I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

  My smile did a victory lap. I was only one detour away from catching Carli’s killer. Like Tristan really had a say in the matter. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Chapter 33

  Rosalita

  San Luis, Mexico

  2000

  A newborn baby cooed from a cardboard box in the corner as Rosalita, Mercedes, and Josef held their shot glasses high, clinking them together in their fourth toast of the evening. The alcohol was flowing freely tonight, even if it did cost them nearly two weeks’ worth of meals. Despite Rosalita’s protests, it was day to celebrate. And celebrate they did.

  “A toast to Killian, my new son!” Josef cheered, his voice thick with liquor.

  “Salud!” Mercedes cried in muddled merriment.

  They had emptied half the bottle of Jose Cuervo Clasico Silver upon the arrival of mother and son from the hospital, and now hours later they were all feeling it. The potent tequila coursed through their veins, warmed their stomachs, and loosened the noose of the day.

  Mercedes had birthed a boy! It was something to commemorate, Josef declared. Four hours ago she had arrived home carrying the bundle of brown flesh and ribbon of black curls, showing him off to neighbors as family after family dropped by with enough food to last a week and gifts rising halfway up Sophia’s bedroom wall. The two-year-old had wanted to unwrap them all herself, but tuckered out about halfway through when she fell asleep on the sofa playing with a partially unwrapped knitted doll.

  Now tucked away in bed, Sophia slept soundly while her parents and grandmother toasted to a new life of prosperity, a perfect family now complete, and general good health. By the fourth toast they were running out of blessings, and Rosalita was running out of patience.

  She was certainly happy for the young couple and their beautiful boy. But with Josef out of work and another mouth to feed, her sewing income couldn’t support a family of five. Especially since Mercedes refused to give up her comfortable lifestyle at home in order to pick up some odd housekeeping jobs to help out. As much as he tried, Josef’s job prospects grew scarcer by the month. Too many laborers and not enough labor.

  Despite Josef’s promise that things would get better, from where Rosalita sat, their future was hidden behind dark, brooding clouds.

  Poverty.

  Hunger.

  Weariness.

  Death.

  These were the heartbreaking conditions they had become accustomed to. Sophia still squeezed into her twelve-month clothes, if she wore clothes at all. The food they were blessed with today would have to be rationed to last as long as possible if they were going to get through the next month. And the gifts! While Mercedes and Sophia oohed and ahhed over each unwrapped gift, Rosalita mentally calculated how much she could sell them for to cover their monthly expenses.

  It was a cycle of despair that gathered them up like a tornado and spit them out battered and weary.

  Her reminders of their reality only infuriated Josef and Mercedes. Rosalita had become the dreaded mother-in-law, always nagging. But tonight she wouldn’t harp about such things. She would savor this one small joy. Tomorrow the hardship would resume, as it always did.

  “So, you’re a proud abuela, si?” Mercedes turned to Rosalita, her eyes mere slivers of almonds as the alcohol swept through her.

  “Of course.” Rosalita’s words held the obligatory accord Mercedes sought.

  Today Rosalita knew better than to speak her mind to any of her family, lest her meager joy in life—mainly Sophia—unravel like balled yarn. They didn’t know about her darkest hour—the death she caused, the anguish that flooded the family—for if they ever found out, her life wouldn’t be worth living when they filched her time with her grandkids.

  “I gave you a grandson … now you owe me, don’t you?” Mercedes laughed haughtily, leaving her mother-in-law puzzled.

  If anything, Rosalita felt the brunt of the family burden. Hadn’t she done everything for these two ungrateful children? For that is what they were. Spoiled brats. Unwilling to grow up. Josef lazily sleeping in day after day while Mercedes squandered their money away on extravagances. Who watched Sophia day in and day out, taking her to school and helping her with her homework? Rosalita. Who prepared meals and worked her fingers to the bone paying for their bills and buying groceries? Rosalita. And who, dear God, who was going to take care of yet another baby, an unwanted result of this lie of a marriage? Who else but Rosalita.

  The weight of debt was heavily in her favor.

  “Owe you, dear? What ever for?”

  “Oh, you know what for. I married your good-for-nothing son, gave up everything for your family, first Sophia and now him”—she pointed a wobbly finger at the napping baby in the corner—“so I think some gratitude is owed.”

  “Good-for-nothing son?” Josef shot back. “You shouldn
’t be so prideful, puta. Your looks are fading fast, now that you’ve squeezed out two melons. No one will want you now.”

  “I don’t see you turning down my sweet chocho in the bedroom, you piece of trash,” Mercedes shot back.

  The drunken tension was simmering, about to explode into a boil. Rosalita had seen these two go at it too many times before, making her and Sophia their casualties of war, and the last thing she wanted was them waking a sleeping newborn with this nonsense.

  Slap some sense into them—that’s what she wanted to do. But she knew one step was one step too far. If she struck out, she’d never stop, like an attack dog gritting its teeth on its mark. There were moments when the killer instinct she spent a lifetime cramming into the heart-shaped hole in her soul would flare up wildly, ready to do damage. And every time she stuffed the rage back down, praying the thoughts could be overcome with sheer self-will and Dios’ help.

  So far she was barely hanging on to her sanity.

  Rosalita longed for the nights when her dreams carried her to a land without Mercedes and Josef, to an imaginary shelter where she doted on her grandchildren and lived without the chronic sinister regret. That perfect place—that heaven—soon became an obsession, an obsession that with a dismal acceptance she knew was far beyond her reach. Too many sins held her soul captive to eternal hell. No prayer could save her soul now.

  A whimper from the corner of the room rose amid the persistent bickering.

  “Let’s not fight,” Rosalita urged. “It’s a time to celebrate the food, the gifts, the bebé …” She raised her shot glass one more time, urging the couple to do the same. “To always protecting our loved ones, no matter the cost.”

  Meeting Josef and Mercedes’s eyes in turn, she saw their drunken accord and the tide shift.

  “Salud!”

  Chapter 34

  Ari

  Two days until dead

  If you go poking around in shadows, you’ll find darkness.

  Shirley Road was not the kind of street a lone girl should have been traipsing down after dark. Police sirens screamed from a block away, waking a fussy infant in the house a driveway’s width from where I stood knocking on Debra Littleton’s front door.

  An open window a couple doors down unleashed a dog’s bark, a deep reverberating sound from something large and presumably with sharp, pointy teeth, like a Rottweiler. Amid the procession of decrepit homes, fancy cars dotted the streets, a stark incongruity. A shiny Lexus across the street, windows tinted impenetrable black. A custom-painted sparkly blue Hummer a few doors down, just waiting to be stolen. A red Corvette snugly nestled in the driveway that I had just parked in—presumably Debra’s.

  I had never understood the mentality: house poor, car rich. It was a common paradox on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. The blight of poverty had such baffling patterns.

  Others turned a blind eye to the slums, joking that a good carpet bombing was the best kind of urban renewal. And yet I felt oddly at home here.

  Maybe because I was unwanted, just like the ghetto.

  It wasn’t the broken concrete footpaths or sea of trash in the yards that quickened a visitor’s pace from their car to their front porch while Latin hip-hop blared from the stereo of a passing vehicle. It wasn’t the decrepit pawnshops, run-down liquor stores, or multitudinous check-cashing storefronts. It wasn’t even the boarded up windows graffitied with cryptic gang messages and Spanish profanities that scared most people away from places like this. It was the way the shadows moved, shifting menacingly. It was the huddle of bodies shrouded in hoodies, milling about on corners and sidewalks, moving without purpose. Streets barren during the day became a sea teeming with life at night.

  Idle hands are the devil’s tools.

  In ghost towns old men observed passersby with watchful purpose from their creaky rocking chair perches, their eagle eyes like spotlights. It felt safe with them as the keepers. There was an eerie serenity about ghost towns. But here, in the slums, people felt the stark contrast as hidden watchers laid in wait with no other purpose than to intimidate, like a predator stalking prey.

  I knew this because once upon a time I was the predator.

  I had grown up as one of these kids. To the rest of the world I was the outsider, the hoodlum, the threat, but in the slums I belonged.

  It was my home.

  But today I was a visitor.

  My knuckles rapped a little more feverishly on the door this time. If Tristan found out I had come without him, I knew he’d really pitch a fit. But he’d never know. It was my little secret … to add to the heaping stash of other ones I’d been hiding.

  “What d’ya want?” The snarl from the other side of the door sounded like a former soprano leadened from decades of cigarettes.

  “I’m looking for Debra Littleton.” I was talking to a peeling strip of paint flaking off at my eye level.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Did you used to own an orange Ford Pinto?”

  No response. Then a slivery gap opened between us. A haggish old woman with thread-thin lips peeked out at me.

  “Why the hell are you lookin’ for a car I owned years ago?”

  “Because whoever was driving it killed my sister.”

  **

  A pebble wedged itself in the back of my throat, resting contentedly where my voice box should have been. I coughed, hoping to dislodge the words I wanted to speak but instead tasted only the salty residue of unshed tears. There was no explaining the way I felt, sitting across from Debra Littleton, lonely widow and doting mother. What do you say to the mother of your sister’s murderer? What words are enough? What words can heal a wound so cauterized that even I couldn’t differentiate the scab from the rest of my broken heart?

  Thanks for raising a killer.

  How could you let him hide this for over a decade?

  Why didn’t you turn your son in?

  Life clearly hadn’t treated Debra kindly. Her hair looked like a giant wad of frayed steel wool with rusty patches that indicated her hair might once have been auburn. She had no eyebrows at all; dunes of fat surrounded her eyes, rheumy dots full of suspicion and judgment. She had wings that hung like fleshy hammocks under her arms, but the legs sticking out of her Wal-Mart shorts were slender, almost girlish. From head to toe her skin was sallow and crêpey. Her jack-o’-lantern mouth was overcrowded with nicotine-stained teeth poking this way and that, with occasional gaps where her tongue slipped through when she spoke. Her voice sounded raspy and strained, as if each word was a huge burden.

  I glanced at the crushed pack of Winstons on the coffee table and wondered how many cancer sticks Debra had smoked in her lifetime. Obviously not enough to kill her yet, but she was trying. She waved the lit Winston around in her hand like a little baton when she wasn’t sucking it into the hellish maw that was her mouth. I did my best to inhale as little as possible of the pollution she spewed into the room.

  Perhaps I didn’t understand the normality behind a mother protecting her child at all costs. It wasn’t something I was ever exposed to. Mine tossed me aside at the first sign of hardship, but the depths and breadths of the innate mama bear instinct wasn’t just a myth. The evidence was sitting cattycorner from me on a sofa smelling of cat piss and coffee.

  “I figured one of these days you’d show up here,” she said, the sentence rattling in her mouth behind those teeth. Those brown teeth that I felt the urge to scrape with my fingernail to see how much of it was rotting enamel and how much was calcified tarter. “Either you or the cops. I knew someone eventually would figure out my Richie was behind the wheel. Secrets don’t stay buried forever, y’know.”

  Anger and confusion swirled within me, like a reckless tornado picking up momentum. I choked back a few choice cuss words, then more calmly said, “I don’t understand what happened.” I just needed an explanation. Anything to give context to the nightmares, the horrors I had lived through.

  “Nothin’ much to tell. Richard was c
oming home from a friend’s house and was going too fast. Hit the brakes a moment too late. Got scared and took the hell off. By the time he got home he was afraid that he’d be in trouble for leavin’ the scene, so he kept it a secret. I didn’t find out until about a year later, when he was havin’ regular panic attacks. The whole thing really messed him up. By that point it was too late to confess. No point in ruining two lives over a mistake he couldn’t fix. That’s all there is to tell.”

  It didn’t make sense. None of it. What about the angle of the car? And why did he hide it so long from his mother? What was he really fleeing?

  “Do you remember what friend he was visiting—where they lived?”

  She gave vent to an explosive smoker’s cough that just about rattled the windows. I involuntarily covered my mouth. “I don’t know, honey. That was so long ago. I didn’t ask for details. I just wanted him to move on. When he done told me what he did, I begged him to come clean to the cops, but he couldn’t bear to think—well, you know what they do to sensitive boys in those jails. Richie’d never survive the night.”

  “But you could have given my family closure. Why didn’t you?”

  “I’m his mama, darlin’. You don’t have kids of your own yet, I guess, but when you do, you’ll understand. A mama does anything—anything—to protect her young.”

  There was a buried warning there, the low hum of a threat that this was as far as this would go. A dead girl wasn’t her problem. Her son’s freedom was all she cared about. Period.

  “Can I talk to Richard?”

  “I don’t think so, darlin’. He’s not home and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “I just want to ask him a couple things to get … peace … about it. Certainly you can understand that.”

  For a moment I thought she was contemplating my request, maybe even empathizing with my trauma. Until she shook her head, the double chin jiggling like a bowl of Jell-O. “Best you just let it go, honey. I shouldn’ta told you anything to begin with, but that there’s your peace. He didn’t mean to, and it’s time to move on. And if you dare say something to the cops”—a thick, stained fingertip poked my chest—“I’ll deny this conversation ever happened.”