The Devil's Deep

by Michael Wallace

“Maybe I’ll swing by Rosa’s apartment and see if anything turns up. And I’ll talk to my mom. Maybe she knows something.”

  Damned if he could see a connection between Rosa and that phone conversation. And what if he did uncover something? This was his mother he was talking about. What was he going to do? Call the police?

  #

  “I need a one-eyed pirate, a hunchback, and a whore. Take your pick.”

  “Who has the best lines?” Wes asked.

  His father thumbed through the script. “I’m thinking the whore. Not as much time on stage, but she’s got some great one-liners. Man in drag is perfect for that role. Totally over the top.”

  Dad hadn’t been satisfied with the auditions. He’d filled the major roles, but still had a few comic relief types to fill. So long as Wes was sticking around, his father figured he may as well take a part.

  “Did you call your professor yet?” his mother asked from the kitchen. It was her night for dinner, and unlike Dad, who usually microwaved a frozen pizza or lasagna, she had an actual meal on the way. Smelled garlicky.

  “I’m driving to Cambridge on Friday.”

  “But aren’t you missing class already?”

  “I missed one. It won’t kill me. And Friday I’ll talk to Dr. Caliari and explain the situation.”

  “Oh, Wesley.”

  He wasn’t going to get into it with her, not now. He’d been avoiding her since she got home from work. Truth was, he was afraid he would blurt out the questions that had been troubling him since that morning.

  Fortunately, Dad dominated the dinner conversation, reading from his script, planning out sets, and then switching conversation to the telescope he’d ordered online. He had joined a group of amateur astronomers who were searching for near earth objects with the goal of detecting asteroids and comets that might pose a threat to the earth. Naturally, this necessitated a high-end telescope.

  His mother had complained about the cost of this latest adventure. “Are you kidding? Two thousand dollars? Have you seen the state of our checking account?” But Wes’s father was no more interested in Pilson family finances than in the mating habits of white nosed coatis. Come to think of it, probably less; Dad had once talked about opening a animal rescue center in Costa Rica. Never mind, the telescope was ordered. It would see intense use for a year or two before it found its way to the attic or eBay.

  Dad disappeared to the den after dinner to play with his casting list. Wes washed the bigger pans by hand while his mother loaded the dishwasher.

  “Mom, what do you know about Rosa Solorio?”

  She paused a beat, her back facing him as she bent over the dishwasher. “Who?”

  When she straightened, he turned her around to face him. “I’m serious, Mom. The girl at Riverwood. I know you’ve been talking to her.”

  “Does Eric have a new HT?”

  “What? No. Rosa worked with the low-functioning residents, not Eric’s team.”

  “Then I don’t know. I talk to people when I visit. Oh, and there was a woman subbing for Rod when I picked up Eric the other day. Is that who you’re talking about?”

  It sounded plausible coming from her mouth, but he’d seen hesitation and a flicker of doubt as he’d turned her around. He felt his jaws clench. “Can you pretend for a minute I’m not ten years old anymore?”

  He’d been ten when his parents had institutionalized Eric. They could no longer manage or afford round-the-clock care with Ellen Pilson pulling double shifts to dig out from debt. Wes came home from school one day to discover his brother gone. They hadn’t asked his opinion. They hadn’t asked Eric, either.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not ten, and I’m not an idiot. I know there’s something going on. Something that has to do with me and with Eric and that girl from Costa Rica. Did you have her deported, is that what happened?”

  “What girl from Costa Rica?” she asked and for the moment her confusion looked genuine, but maybe she’d just got herself into character more thoroughly. “You mean this Rosa person?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly who I mean. Well, she’s gone. Left in the middle of her shift. Come on, Mom. What’s going on? Why would they deport her? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what happened to Rosa.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, but hesitated. He waited. “Mom?”

  “You’re worked up over nothing, Wesley.” Her tone had changed. “There’s nothing going on with Eric and now you’re grasping at something else. Why don’t you go back to Cambridge tonight? I don’t know, maybe you need to see someone.”

  “A shrink?”

  “A school psychologist. Someone. You seem stressed out.” She gave him a concerned look. “It can’t be easy trying to keep up with school and worrying about your brother. Reminds me of when I was trying to finish nursing school and pulling double shifts waiting tables. Totally exhausted, trying not to fall asleep in class, stressed about grades. Started to get paranoid. I was actually worried that Dad was having an affair, he seemed so distracted and I hadn’t been giving him any attention.”

  “Dad?” He couldn’t see it.

  She laughed. “I know, totally stupid. He was having an affair with that dumb radio station is what it was. There was one night I got so worked up I just lay in bed, totally wrung-out, dozing in and out of various nightmares where every table in the restaurant was filled and I was the only waitress on duty. And every time I woke up I stared at your father and imagined him sleeping with another woman.”

  She’d so neatly deflected his attention that for a moment he was fooled. He was ready to discount everything Rosa’s friends had told him and his own concerns as paranoia. Except for that overheard phone call.

  Meanwhile, his mother turned back to the dishes. Any crack Wes had opened in her defenses now closed over and it occurred to him for the first time that if he was right this was not a casual lie. She’d been hiding something for a long time. Long enough to protect her lie with a variety of moats, drawbridges, and battlements.

  “I’m going out for a bit,” Wes said. “Just to clear my head.” He gave her a peck on the cheek as she filled the soap holders and started the dishwasher.

  He wasn’t ready to escalate this to the police. His mother’s equivocating aside, he still thought there must be a reasonable explanation for Rosa’s disappearance. Maybe he’d have more answers after checking out Rosa’s apartment.

  The address Yamila had given led Wes downtown, a few blocks from Riverwood, to a nice, quiet neighborhood near the river. The apartment building itself overlooked a snow-covered park on one side and woods on the other. He parked in front of the building and took the exterior stairs to her apartment on the second floor.

  Rosa’s friends had driven by the apartment, letting themselves in with Rosa’s spare key, given to Yamila for safekeeping. She’d been gone, but had left almost all her personal effects behind, including furniture and clothing.

  “Sure, but if they’d deported her,” Wes had retorted, “the INS wouldn’t bother confiscating her coffee mugs and end tables. All it means is that she left in a hurry.”

  To his surprise, the door was open and the lights on in Rosa’s apartment. An elderly man stuffed newspapers, books, and other personal belongings into a garbage sack while a younger woman, wearing rubber gloves, cleaned the windows.

  Something had been bothering him as he’d parked and climbed the stairs and now it became obvious. The building looked like an oversize Vermont farmhouse, rather than a boxy, cinderblock thing. Brass lamps lit the brick walkway. It had more mature landscaping than you’d expect from a newer building. An upscale place.

  “You here about the apartment?” the man asked, spotting Wes at the doorway. He had one of those old-time Vermont accents, where ‘apartment’ became ‘apahtment.’

  “I’m looking for Rosa. I used to work with her. Wanted to see if she still lived here.”

  “Nah, she moved out in the middle of the
night. People have already called from her work. Told ‘em to call me if they got ahold of her.”

  “She didn’t seem the sort to move out in a hurry.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of funny,” the younger woman said. She looked like the man’s daughter. “She always paid her rent on time.”

  “About the rent,” Wes said. “What do your apartments run, anyway?”

  “Two bedroom apartments like this one are fifteen-fifty per month,” she said.

  “That much?”

  “It’s a good value. Granite countertops, hardwood floors, large master with a view. Come take a look, if you’d like.” Her tone wasn’t defensive, just matter-of-fact. Take it or leave it.

  “Sure,” he said, stepping in.

  It wasn’t a question of whether or not it was a good deal, he thought as he walked through. It was a nice apartment, the kind that would go for two, three times that in Cambridge, Mass. But what did Riverwood pay the HTs? Ten bucks an hour, right? Maybe eleven or twelve for someone who’d been there a few years. So let’s say Rosa made twelve, that’d be what? Two thousand a month, gross. No way she could afford this place.

  Not to mention the furniture. He’d assumed that Yamila and Carolina were talking about particle board stuff from Wal-Mart, second hand couches and the like. No, this was high-quality, not top of the line, but new, matching, and comfortable.

  “Rosa didn’t send anyone for the furniture?”

  “No. Pretty much too late by now.” He met the woman’s eyes, then saw her father look away and realized they probably meant to sell the furniture to cover the lost rent. Or rather, it was a perk of the job, as he doubted they owned the place.

  “Whatever,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out why she left without her stuff.”

  “Happens more than you’d think,” the old man said.

  “Yeah, but not usually here, Dad.” The woman turned to Wes. “We manage another place, and people are always cutting without warning. Usually, about the time we start calling to ask why their rent is late again. Someone like that will take as much as you’ll give them, then, when you won’t take anymore, they move on to scam someone else.”

  “But that’s not what Rosa is like,” Wes said. It was a statement, but also a question. “I mean, she’s the sort to pay her rent on time. Right?”

  “Sure. Always arrived in the mail by the first. Money order.” She shrugged. “Look, if you don’t know what happened to her, there’s nothing we can tell you. Wouldn’t even recognize her if I saw her. We’ve got enough tenants that I only know the ones who call to bitch about every little thing, or who can’t pay their rent on time. And like I said, that wasn’t Rosa. So unless you really want to check out the apartment…”

  Wes did just that. The apartment was clean, but disheveled. Closet doors and medicine cabinets hung open, their contents pushed around. He went to the bedroom. The bed was made, but the mattress askew.

  “Did you leave these drawers pulled half out?” he called from her bedroom. Clothes lay on the floor or shoved to the side of the drawers.

  “We haven’t touched that room yet.”

  He didn’t find anything personal. No papers, no pictures, nothing that indicated who lived here. He could see the dusty outline of what looked like a picture frame on the nightstand, and he thought about that. Would she take a picture, but leave all her clothes and furniture? Maybe. But surely there’d be a bill or a jotted phone number, or a receipt, or something.

  Wes could have explained away everything, assuming he took it in pieces. But when you added it together—Rosa’s disappearance, his mother’s phone call, this expensive apartment—there was a hell of a lot of coincidence to explain.

  He walked back to the front room where the two managers were loading dinner plates into a box. “Can you guys stop what you’re doing for a little bit?”

  They turned with a frown. So he explained that people were worried about Rosa. The police might want to come check it out. It would help if they didn’t scrub down every surface. There might be fingerprints or other items of interest.

  “Well, I guess we can stop for tonight if you think the police would be interested in having a look. Dad?”

  The old man nodded. He looked troubled. “I never thought…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Wes said. “The whole thing is probably nothing, but you know, Rosa’s friends are worried about her. I don’t know if the police will come, or what they’ll look for if they do. But if you could hold off for, I don’t know, even until morning, I’d appreciate it. Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll let you know one way or another.”

  Wes left with their name and phone number. It was about 7:30 and he figured he could still stop in at the police station and tell them what he’d learned. It was only a few blocks away.

  But when he got back to the car and tried the door, it was locked. He frowned. He wasn’t in the habit of locking the door while he was in Vermont. Suddenly paranoid, he glanced in the back seat of the car, but couldn’t see anything. Still, it was dark, and…

  A movement behind him. He started to turn. Something jabbed him in the back. It was like a fire on his spine and as he flinched away, the pain followed as his muscles convulsed. He fell hard, disoriented. There was a man behind him, but he couldn’t move or control his body in any way. The attacker rolled Wes onto his stomach and twisted his arm behind his back, then drove his knee into Wes’s spine to hold him down.

  “I don’t believe in warnings,” said the man on his back. “A waste of time, generally. By the time someone needs a warning, it’s too late.”

  The tongs of the stun gun, or whatever it was that had knocked him to the ground, tickled the back of Wes’s neck. If he could just roll over and knock the man off balance, maybe he could gain his feet. But he was afraid of the stun gun.

  “But you stumbled into this by accident. And I’m very sorry about that. Tell you what. Walk away now, go back to school and this can stay our little secret. Keep stumbling around and someone’s going to get hurt. Several someones. Your parents, your brother. You.”

  He tried to turn to say something and perhaps get a glimpse of his attacker. But the man held his head down. “Okay, I understand,” Wes said. “I’m done.”

  “Good. Now, I’m sorry for this.”

  He released Wes, then gave him another jolt. It went on for what seemed like forever, though it probably only lasted a few seconds. When it was over, he lay in a fetal position, groaning. A figure strode away into the darkness.

  At last he leaned against the wheel of his car and took in deep breaths of the chill night air. He calmed himself. He brushed away the gravel and bits of ice from his cheek. His muscles ached.

  He looked around but saw nobody on the street. Just darkened cars, a few houses and apartments, but no moving vehicles. No sign of his attacker. It was anger, now, that flooded him. That last, long jolt hadn’t been meant to frighten him. It had been pure, vicious sadism. Watch him twitch like a bug impaled on a pin.

  Wes spoke into the darkness. “This isn’t over.”

  Chapter Five: Lieutenant Roger Stiles worked a squeeze ball with alternating hands while Wes shared his fears that something had happened to Rosa Solorio. Wes told the officer that a couple of her friends had approached him (being careful not to give personal details about the women who were likely not in the country legally) and that he’d talked to her landlord and what the man and his daughter had said that made him suspicious.

  Wes hadn’t been happy to see Stiles on duty and could tell the feeling was mutual. Stiles hadn’t taken the initial complaint about Wes’s brother well, either, said it was a matter for the state. As Becca had confirmed. Stiles’s tone of voice only confirmed his skepticism. “So let me get this straight. You got a job at Riverwood. Dropped out of law school. Is that right?”

  “I didn’t drop out. I’m dropping one class and I’ve shifted a single project.”

  “But you dropped your class to keep
an eye on your brother, is that right? Then why are you worried about this woman? What’s that got to do with your brother?”

  “Well, see, I speak Spanish, and…”

  “You already said that. She needs an advocate and all that. But what’s your angle? Romantic?”

  “What? No. I never even met her.” He hated the defensive tone in his voice.

  “Then I don’t see your interest in the matter.”

  “Look, there’s something else. When I was coming back to my car after checking out this woman’s apartment, someone attacked me.”

  Stiles leaned back in his chair. “Attacked?”

  “Look at this.” Wes lifted his shirt to show his back; he’d checked himself in the mirror to see the stun gun had left marks on the skin. “Some kind of a stun gun or taser. Went right through my shirt. Some guy jumped me when I was getting in my car.”

  But Stiles just leaned further back. “And?”

  “It was like someone kicked my legs out from under me. This guy pinned me down and threatened me. He told me to back off about Rosa Solorio or next time it would be worse.”

  “Anyone else see the alleged attack?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you get a look at this guy?” Stiles asked with a subtle quote/unquote around ‘this guy.’

  “It was dark. He was strong and held me face-down. Gave me another shock before he left. When I got up, he was gone.”

  “Why don’t you stop right there?” Stiles said. “Before you dig yourself any deeper.”

  Wes mentally kicked himself. What an idiot. He’d gone about this backwards. He should have said first thing, “Someone attacked me,” showed the marks on his back, and then told Stiles about Rosa.

  “If you’ll just look at my back.”

  “Did you know my dad worked for your grandfather?” Lieutenant Stiles asked. “Twenty years at the gravel pit as foreman. Earned good money. His dad, too. Grandpa got his start operating a horse-drawn scraper, back when Northrock was still called Vermont Rock and Gravel.”

  “Lieutenant Stiles.”

  Stiles ignored his interruption. “You know, your grandfather saved this town during the Depression. Built a road on Mount Mansfield that nobody paid him for. Practically ran his own CCC before the government started hiring men to build the dam on the Little River. He must have lost a hell of a lot of money. My grandpa and my dad worshipped your grandfather.