by Chris Culver
Aldon climbed the stairs. He and his wife could have packed an emergency bag for a typical kid in moments, but Daria had needs beyond the usual. At night, she slept with a special hypoallergenic pillow and a white noise machine. She also had two stuffed animals she loved and couldn’t sleep without. Her autism had also made toilet training difficult, so she still wore diapers.
Leaving a familiar setting at home was hard enough for her, but leaving without her stuffed animals, her favorite clothes, or her favorite pillow would have been cruel. They could chance a few minutes. Once they got Daria’s stuff together—a process that took about ten minutes—Aldon carried the bags to the hallway while his wife turned off the lights. His feet were lighter than they had been all day. They had a plan now. They’d run. Maybe it wasn’t a perfect plan, but it’d keep them alive.
Then, their imperfect plan blew up when Daria opened the front door.
“Hi. Do you like fish?”
Aldon dropped the bags, and Jennifer gasped. Daria’s sweet voice became an ice pick stabbing his heart. Aldon held his breath.
“I love fish, darling. Do you know what else I love? Elephants,” came the response in a man’s soft, southern accent. “You get a bunch of elephants together, you know what they’re called? A parade. Everybody loves a parade.”
Daria didn’t respond. Aldon held his breath.
Please, God, don’t let him hurt her.
“I’m lookin’ for your daddy,” said the voice again. “I work with him. Is he around?”
Jennifer shot her eyes to her husband. Aldon removed the weapon from his holster and crept toward the landing at the top of the steps.
“Hey, Daria, take a step back,” said Aldon, turning the corner into the foyer. An unfamiliar man stood at the bottom of the steps. He was about fifty or fifty-five, and he had curly hair. He wore a beige linen sports coat, dark jeans, and a white shirt. Though the jacket partially concealed it, he had a black semiautomatic firearm in a holster against his chest. “Come upstairs, baby.”
“She’s fine here,” said the man. “You and I need to talk in private, Mr. McKenzie. How about we go for a ride? My car’s out front.”
Aldon stopped walking and stood straighter. The man in the entryway didn’t even react to the gun Aldon carried. From his vantage at the top of the steps, Aldon had a clear shot on him from about ten yards, but if Aldon missed, the man would have a clear, open shot on his little girl. Aldon’s gut wrenched, and his knees threatened to buckle. He should have gotten his family out hours ago.
“Where do you want to go?” asked Aldon.
“Away from here,” said the man, nodding. “It’s a nice night. I’m not from around here, so I thought you could show me the sights. Please leave your sidearm at the house. Guns make me jumpy.”
Aldon looked back to his wife and mouthed that he loved her before putting his firearm on the ground. She had tears on her cheeks as he climbed down the steps. Daria smiled at him from the entryway.
“Clownfish form symbiotic mutualisms with sea anemones in the wild,” she said, repeating something she had heard on a documentary a few hours ago. She’d repeat the same sentence all night if Jennifer let her. Doctors called it echolalia. It was common among those with autism.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “You’ll always be my baby.”
She smiled and looked at him out of the corner of her eye before speaking again.
“Clownfish form symbiotic mutualisms with sea anemones in the wild.”
He blew her a kiss and stepped onto the porch. The curly-haired man put a hand on his elbow and led him to a Toyota sedan in the driveway.
“Are you going to kill me?” asked Aldon.
The man hesitated before nodding. “Not in front of your family.”
“And if I don’t cooperate, you’ll kill them?”
“My partner will. If he has to do it, he’ll make it quick,” said the curly-haired man. “Please don’t make us do that. I don’t like killing innocent people.”
“Did you kill Laura, too?”
Again, the curly-haired man nodded. “Yeah. She didn’t suffer.”
“Okay,” he said. Aldon’s legs trembled, and his lungs felt tight, but his mind was clear, and his heart was light. He opened the sedan’s rear door and sat down, knowing he was about to take a ride to his death but also knowing Jennifer and Daria would live. They gave his life meaning and purpose. His death would keep them alive. That seemed fitting.
As the curly-haired man drove away, Aldon turned and looked out the rear window to see Daria standing on the front porch. She didn’t wave or blink. She just watched. That was his autistic daughter in a nutshell. He memorized the way she looked standing there. She was perfect.
“For what it’s worth, you don’t deserve this. You were doing your job. Your co-workers screwed up. You got caught in the mess.”
Aldon turned around.
“You can let me go,” he said. “I won’t talk. Let me go home. Jennifer and I will leave. You won’t ever see us again.”
The man looked in the rearview mirror. “I wish I could, but this isn’t my call. If I let you go, I’ll get visitors at my house. They won’t hesitate to kill my kids.”
They drove for about ten minutes before pulling off on a side road in the woods. Aldon had driven by that side road dozens of times over the years, but he had never noticed the abandoned home in the woods. Vines covered the front porch and broke through the siding and windows. The curly-haired man led him inside. Clear plastic tarps covered the walls. That was when it hit him. This was the end.
“You can stand, or you can kneel. Whichever you want. Once we’re done here, I’ll call my partner to let him know what happened. Your family will never even know he was nearby.”
Aldon knelt in the center of the floor without saying a word. As he closed his eyes, he pictured Daria as she had been on his front porch. She and Jennifer would live because of him.
He never even heard the gunshot that ended his life. At the moment of his death, all he saw, all he knew, all he felt was love for his little girl and his wife, and that was fine with him.
13
While Detective Blatch called in a team of dedicated forensic technicians to search Laura’s house, I drove to her law office. It was in a strip mall about a quarter of a mile from I-55 on Telegraph Road. There was an old Waffle House restaurant in the parking lot and a pet shop at the end of the row of shops. Laura’s office had a simple sign above it that said Lawyer in faded red letters.
I parked along the side of the building and walked to the front door. As expected, no one was inside. Through the dusty glass window, I saw desks and a waiting room. A hand-painted sign in the lobby advertised her services. Uncontested divorces started at $250, while simple wills started at $300. The sign was quick to note that all costs were negotiable.
Laura’s practice was on the fringes of the legal profession, but that was the life she had chosen. I liked that. It was a shame she had died.
A sign on the door listed her hours, but it also gave a number to call in case of emergencies. I called it on my cell. A woman answered on the third ring.
“Rojas and Associates,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Yeah, hi, my name is Joe Court,” I said, looking around to make sure no one could hear me. “I’m outside your office right now. Who am I talking to?”
“Rojas and Associates, attorneys at law,” she said. “What can I help you with?”
“Who is this?”
The woman paused. “Tina. What do you need?”
“I need to talk to you in person.”
“Look, ma’am, we’re not taking on clients right now. If you tell me what the problem is, I can refer you to an attorney who can help you out.”
I paced in front of the office. The sun was setting, sending purple and orange streaks across the sky so that the horizon almost looked as if it were on fire.
“Has anyone called you about Laura Rojas in
the past few days?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“It is my concern,” I said, “because I’m a detective from St. Augustine County and Laura Rojas is dead. We found her body two days ago. I’m trying to find out who killed her. Since you were Laura’s assistant, you might know something. If you’d like, I can call the county police and ask for somebody to pick you up.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Laura’s dead?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sorry to tell you.”
“If you’re a detective and you’re calling me, you think someone murdered her.”
“I’m positive someone murdered her.”
“Oh, God,” she said. She paused for a moment. Her voice was high, almost squeaky when she spoke. “I’m on my way. I’ll be at the office as soon as I can.”
She hung up before I said anything else. My stomach rumbled, so I walked over to the Waffle House, where I drank coffee and ate biscuits and gravy. It wasn’t the healthiest dinner around, but everyone deserved an indulgence now and again.
By the time I finished eating, a white Kia Optima had parked beside my SUV. A woman stepped out. She was in her late forties or early fifties and had strawberry blond hair and a deep, even tan. I walked toward her and flashed her my badge. She nodded and lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.
“Are you Tina?” I asked, stepping close. She was smoking a menthol, and her face and neck had the bronzed patina of a long-term smoker. She nodded.
“Tina Babcock,” she said, holding the cigarette to her lips. She didn’t offer to shake my hand.
“I’m Detective Joe Court with the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. What kind of law do you guys practice?”
She shrugged and sucked on her cigarette so its tip burned orange.
“All kinds. Family law, DUI defense, things like that,” she said. “Laura wasn’t particular. She liked the work.”
I nodded and took out a notepad.
“Like I told you on the phone, I’m investigating Ms. Rojas’s murder. We found her body deep in the woods in St. Augustine County. Did she have clients in St. Augustine?”
Babcock looked at me and then drew on her cigarette. Her fingers had stopped trembling, and her expression had become calm and self-assured. We had stepped into her comfort zone now. I had the feeling she had given police officers that emotionless stare before.
“Do you have a warrant that would give you access to our client list?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I can’t answer that question,” she said. “Get a warrant, and I will comply to the extent the law requires me.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “That’s fair. I understand you’re a law office and that you need to take care of your clients. Hypothetically, would she take on a client from St. Augustine?”
Ms. Babcock tilted her head to the side. “To answer that question, you’d have to get a hypothetical warrant.”
I let the smile leave my face.
“Okay, how about this: I’m from St. Augustine. My neighbor keeps throwing his shit on my lawn. I’d like to hire a lawyer to draft a letter requesting that he refrain from doing that. Could your firm help me out?”
Ms. Babcock’s expression didn’t change.
“Is he throwing literal shit, or do you use that term to refer to household refuse?”
“Does it matter?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“One is a serious sanitation issue, while the other might give you cause for a civil action.”
“Fine,” I said, closing my eyes. “It’s refuse. It’s not literal feces.”
She said nothing until I opened my eyes. Then she smiled and shrugged.
“My firm is no longer taking on any new clients. It seems our principal attorney has just died. If you’d like, I can give you the name of an excellent attorney who might help you out.”
I almost told her off. Instead, I looked down at the ground.
“You liked Laura, didn’t you?”
Tina drew on her cigarette. For a moment, her expression softened, but then she looked at me with hard, brown eyes.
“She signed my paycheck every week. I liked her fine.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, shaking my head. “You almost cried when I said she was dead. You liked her. The two of you were friends. Most people would help the police try to solve a friend’s murder.”
She drew on her cigarette again. “Laura believed in the law, Detective. Nobody’s above it. If you get a warrant, I’ll answer every question the warrant requires me to answer. That’s what Laura would have wanted. It’s the least I can do for a friend.”
“As her friend, you can answer this, then: Was she considering moving to St. Augustine?”
She narrowed her eyes and jerked her head back.
“No. Why would she move there?”
“Friendly people, beautiful landscapes, good restaurants…the usual reasons people move to small towns.”
She shook her head and tapped the end of her cigarette to knock off the ash. “If she moved anywhere, she’d move to Chicago. She liked it there and had a license to practice in Illinois.”
“I found printouts from a realtor’s website from St. Augustine at her house,” I said. “Does that seem strange to you?”
She shrugged. “Maybe she was looking for a friend.”
“That’s possible,” I said, nodding. “Did she tell you she was pregnant?”
Babcock raised an eye and lowered her cigarette. She stood straighter.
“No.”
“Do you know who the father was?”
She blinked a few times and then shook her head.
“I may have bitched about my husband some, but Laura and I didn’t talk about our love lives at work often. How far along was she?”
“Not far,” I said. “Ten or eleven weeks.”
She sighed and brought her cigarette to her lips again.
“That’s sad,” she said. “Laura was a nice woman. She would have made a good mom.”
“You sure you don’t want to talk about her?”
She shook her head. “I would if I could.”
“All right,” I said, reaching into my purse for a business card. “If you change your mind, call me.”
She took the card.
“Thank you for considering Rojas and Associates, Detective Court,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Me, too,” I said. I walked to my car where I closed my eyes and took two deep breaths. Even if we got a warrant to search Laura’s office, it would come with so many stipulations to protect her clients we wouldn’t find a thing. The office was a dead end for the moment, so I took out my cell and called Dr. Sheridan. It took three rings for him to answer.
“Doc, it’s Joe Court. Did you contact Laura Rojas’s family?”
“I did,” he said. “They cried a lot.”
“I need to talk to them, so I need their address,” I said, flipping through pages in my notepad. He gave me the information I needed and wished me luck before hanging up. At least that conversation had gone well. As I pulled out of my parking spot, Tina Babcock climbed into her car.
Part of me wanted to hate her, but an even bigger part of me liked her. Laura’s death upset her, but she didn’t break down, and she didn’t stop doing her job. I liked that. I liked even more that Laura Rojas had seen that in her and hired her when she could have gone with someone from a temp agency or a legal staffing firm.
I had never met Laura when she was alive, but I was getting a picture of her in death. She may have been a drug dealer, but she had guts.
I put her parents’ address into my GPS and drove. The Rojas family lived in a brick ranch home off Tesson Ferry Road. The home had mature trees in the front lawn and well-landscaped flower beds. An American flag hung near the front door, while boys played basketball in the driveway. As I parked, the boys took their ball and ran to the backyard of the home next door.
A wom
an with black hair and brown eyes opened the front door as I crossed the front lawn. She was the spitting image of her daughter. I gave her a tight, understanding smile but didn’t receive one in return.
“Mrs. Rojas?” I asked. She nodded. “I’m Detective Joe Court. I’m trying to find out who killed your daughter, and to do that, I need information. Can we talk for a few minutes?”
She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame. Her eyes looked as if she was close to tears, but she nodded.
“Who would kill my baby?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “From all I’ve found so far, Laura was a special person. It’s always sad when someone like her dies.”
“Don’t use her name like you know her,” she said, her voice sharp. I stepped back and nodded.
“You’re right. I never met her,” I said. “I apologize if I was presumptuous.”
“Just ask your questions and leave us alone.”
I took a notepad from my pocket. Interviews with the loved ones of a murder victim were always hard, so I started with open-ended questions that would get her comfortable talking. She told me Laura was the first person in her family to go to college, but after watching her succeed, three of her cousins had followed her footsteps and enrolled in the University of Missouri. Two more had enrolled in trade schools.
Laura’s mom was proud of her, and she had every reason to be, but she saw her daughter through a mom’s rose-colored glasses. In her view, Laura may have had flaws, but they weren’t serious. She shut me down when I asked about drugs, and, when I asked about a potential boyfriend, she told me her daughter was a virgin who would remain so until her wedding night. She deserved to know Laura was pregnant at the time of her death, but she didn’t need to hear that from me.
The conversation didn’t waste my time, but it came close. Mrs. Rojas said Laura had a cell phone, though, which we had yet to find. We presumed she had one, but we hadn’t found it. Now that we knew the number, we could track it down.
Before leaving, I told Mrs. Rojas once more that I was sorry for her loss and promised that I would do my best to find out what had happened to her daughter. Back in my car, I flipped through my very sparse notes as waves of frustration washed over me.