“So how was it?”
Clara found Bren stretched out on the sofa with the remote in one hand and a wine glass in the other. It seemed she’d been having her own fun night, helping herself to a glass of chardonnay. Knowing Molly’s usual routine with babysitters, she might have earned it. Maybe even the whole bottle.
“Is Molly sleeping?” Clara dropped her coat, bag, and take-home box in a clump on the kitchen table.
“Yeah. So come on, tell me.”
“Was she okay? I hope she wasn’t too horrible.”
“Clara, come on, tell me all about it.”
She stood there for a moment, trying not to smile like a crazy person. But she slipped up, and a little giggle escaped out into the living room. She was instantly embarrassed at how fifteen she sounded.
“Clara,” Bren said teasingly. “Oh, my God.”
“I know.”
“It was that good?”
“It was hardly anything,” Clara said, trying to regain some composure as she sat on the sofa’s armrest. “We just had dinner, but . . .” She laughed, turning away from her friend and saying, “Oh, my God. I’m in trouble.”
“Oh, my God. Is he coming to your poetry reading?”
“No . . . Well, I don’t think so. But how was Molly, though? Was she really okay?”
“She was perfect.”
“Perfect?”
Bren smiled. “She might still be awake.”
“Oh, I’m sure of it.”
The faint sound of Bren’s laughter faded as Clara padded down the hall. She stuck her head through the doorway of Molly’s lair, looking in the slightly messy room, its walls filled with glowing rotating stars. The light machine was first used to ward off bad dreams. Now Molly just thought it was cool—or so she said. Clara would usually turn it off after an hour or so, but this time Molly was awake. Her little feet were kicking around in the blankets, and then out from that warm little jumble came a little, meek, tired voice, “Mommy?”
Clara crept over to her and knelt by her bed. “Hey, Sweetie.”
“What time is it?” Molly rolled over and scratched at her face.
Clara gripped at her tiny wrists, pulled one hand away, and looked at her sweet, sleep-deprived goblin. “Did you get any sleep yet?”
She nodded.
“You sure?” Clara asked softly. “You had a dream?” Molly’s hands went back to her face, rubbing her eyes. “I just came in to say goodnight, okay? Give me a kiss?”
Molly kept her head flush back on the pillow. “I think I had a good dream.”
“So did I.” Clara leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
3
Sam
Although stepping onto the neatly manicured grounds of a college campus brought back some unpleasant memories of work and of D.C., Sam was surprised to feel an overriding sense of freedom. A relief that he wasn’t the one stuck working there. That role fell onto his old college friend, David Allen, now law professor at Gulf A&M. All these students surrounding Sam were David’s problem. And a problem they were, indeed. Sam could hear it a half mile away, the dull crowd noise that became roaring chants as Sam approached. As he stepped into the center courtyard, distinct words emerged like “patriarchy” and “hate speech,” and then a little sing-song about white cis-gendered fascism and other cheery jingles to that effect. Sam knew them all. His own campus back in D.C. had been inundated by these same warriors for social justice. The group at George Washington University seemed no different, hundreds of them, right down to the thick-framed glasses, Che Guevara t-shirts and gray-blue hair. Here they had amassed themselves into a human chain, linking arms and blocking the wide center stairway for the campus library. Students would have to walk around to the side entrance. Somehow this made for a more fair, just university.
Sam walked in the other direction, moving quite happily away from the demonstration and toward a cluster of law buildings at the edge of the campus. He walked into the older-looking one, a four-story red-brick lined with ivy. And inside, thankful for the quiet, Sam looked up the directory placard and followed its directions to room 212. He knocked three times on the cracked-open door, his other hand holding the handle so that it wouldn’t shut by the force of his greeting. That greeting’s answer came in the form of a grumpy professor, his voice muffled into some book or another. “And could you please shut that door?” he said nasally. “Office hours just ended.”
Sam knew the feeling. Those fleeting moments of privacy and quiet, of anything but the questions, demands, and sometimes the tears of students. He was a little surprised no one had followed and tracked him down across the country. Yet. Forget his email. He hadn’t checked his school account in over a week. Maybe he’d never check it again.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” Sam said in his best meek student voice through the crack in the door.
“Then don’t.”
Sam held back a laugh. “But sir, it’s rather important.” He took a breath and summoned up his best pathetic tone. “My mom is here with me and—”
“Who the hell is it?” David sounded angry now.
Sam opened the door and grinned at his old friend. The professor was, as he imagined, hunched over his desk, a pencil stuck into his thick hair, with that look of squint-eyed annoyance at yet another intrusion.
“Sam?” The annoyance flashed away and he was standing and smiling. The expression looked a little strange on his face, as if anything but a scowl didn’t fit. “Sam,” he said again, marching over and shaking his hand, pulling him into a back-thumping hug. “What the hell’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“I came to extend your office hours.”
David laughed. “No thanks.” He moved quickly, shutting the door behind them.
“You look good, Dave.”
“Thanks,” Dave said, rolling his eyes.
“Can’t believe you’re not bald yet.”
Dave frowned. He tipped his head forward so that the pencil fell out into his hand. “You know I have that love-hate relationship with stress. I hate it. And it just loves me to death.”
“That’s how I feel about my school.” Sam took a seat opposite the law professor. “I’m currently on the run.”
“Playing hooky? Why New Orleans?”
“It started out as a work trip. My other job.”
Dave flashed him a confused look.
“Just some private detective stuff on the side,” Sam side. “But, uh, to be honest, I’m getting stick of the whole thing. Even coming here was sort of traumatizing.”
“You didn’t get savaged by the mob out there, right? They’ve been at it since 9 a.m.”
“No. I got savaged back at GW. So I’ve learned my lesson. There’s no debating with . . . them.”
“Us and them, huh?”
Sam sighed and said, “I don’t know, Dave. The country’s really gone to shit. And it’s not even about the people. It’s the . . . the whole . . .”
“Sounds like you’re dissatisfied with the pillars of our society. The schools, the government.” He chuckled a little. “The money?”
“Well, that’s just it. I’m getting paid well enough with my side job that I can probably quit teaching.”
“So you’re a private detective? That sounds pretty exciting.”
“Yeah . . .”
“More exciting than this shit, I bet.”
Sam shrugged a polite hell yes as Dave brushed aside a stack of file folders.
“What do you do?” Dave started closing up his books, stacking his papers. “Better yet, what the hell are you doing here? Not that I mind the interruption.”
“We’re more of a cybersecurity firm, really. I guess you could say that I take care of the human element.” Sam looked at his friend, who still had that perplexed look on his face. “The rest of the guys are hackers, tech heads. Except when they get out from behind the screen. I’m not the only former military guy. We work in the real world, too.”
“You mea
n with guns and grenades?”
“More of the former, but yeah.” Sam shrugged. He preferred to deal with intellect wherever possible, but he couldn’t deny there were times when his military training was infinitely useful. “We’re a boutique paramilitary, basically.”
Dave was smiling for some reason.
“I initially came down here to help a colleague out. During one of their investigations, they had a little run-in with a biker gang, and I guess they wanted me around to spot them in the crowd.”
Dave snorted. “Spot them in the crowd during Bike Week?”
“I wasn’t looking for bikers as much as I was looking for bad intentions. I can spot those from a mile away.” Sam looked around the room. There was a particular disorder to the place, unlike the Dave he knew. There was a row of full wastebaskets pushed up against the wall. Whatever couldn’t fit was strewn around them in small clusters of paper and packing plastic. “You got the janitors protesting, too?”
Dave kept his eyes on Sam. “Tell me more about this mission of yours.”
“Well, that’s it. It’s all pretty much wrapped up. Now, I’m basically trying to find excuses to stay away from D.C. Think you can help me out?”
“Sure. Break the law and I’ll be your lawyer. I’ll make sure you get a nice, long sentence in Orleans Parish Prison.”
“Is that the kind of performance that got you out of practicing?”
“No, that was my wife.” He pointed to his hair. “She convinced me. She wanted the hair to stay.”
“Great hair, Dave.”
“You joked about professor life being tough, but back when I was actually practicing, it was falling out in clumps. Maybe that’s what happens when you only get four hours of sleep every night.”
“That and a divorce, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, she warned me about that, too.” Dave leaned back and kicked his feet up over a messy desk. “So, what do you need?”
“Your research skills.”
Dave groaned. “Come on, I don’t do research anymore. Talk to my interns. Better yet, get a paralegal. They’re cheap. Dying for work. Fuck, most of them have their J.D.s now.”
“I need your access to case law.”
“What case?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
He groaned again. “Why couldn’t you just come here and ask me out for beers? I haven’t seen you in six years and here you are bringing me work.”
“We’ll still do beers.”
“I’ll need a lot to get motivated. What’s the area?”
“Huh?”
“Area of law.”
“Criminal.”
Dave just rolled his eyes.
“Federal? It has to do with crossing state lines.”
“Sounds like fun,” Dave said.
“Yeah?”
Dave sat motionless. “Yeah, I’ll get right on it.”
“Okay, and there’s one other thing.”
“Sure.”
“I was wondering if it would be possible to check if someone’s paying child support. And if not, why not?”
“That’s an easy one,” Dave said, sitting upright and waking up the desktop computer. “It’s just a records search. You could have done that.”
“I don’t know the father’s name.”
Dave chuckled. “Do you know the mother’s name?”
“Clara Miles. Daughter is Molly.”
Dave moved and clicked his mouse, waited for a page to load, and then started typing.
“Ever do lunch beers?” Sam asked. “I can take you out right now. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“I can see that,” Dave said, still focused on his work, concentrating, his face tight with it. And then his face suddenly softened.
“What is it?”
“Hold on,” Dave said curtly. He started typing, and a minute later he turned to Sam and said, “Kurtis Brevic has been ordered to pay child support by the state of Louisiana. But he hasn’t, because he’s currently held by the state of Louisiana.”
“Jail?”
Dave nodded. “Assault and battery.”
Sam’s mind immediately leapt to the most dramatic, horrific, and infuriating conclusion. Had the bastard laid his hands on Clara? He shouldn’t overact without all the facts, he knew that. But he also knew that for all his logic, somewhere deep inside was an illogical, vengeful caveman.
“But don’t worry,” Dave said. “He’ll be paying soon. He’s getting released in a week.”
4
Clara
It was usually a time for meditation, for escape. Whenever she sat typing in court, Clara would systematically shut down all those busy parts of her brain until all that remained was the tiny mechanism which turned words into twitches of hand muscles. Voices into phonetic code marks on a long roll of paper. She had roboticized herself for the whole process, shutting down emotions and opinions, quieting everything down so that some part of her working brain would hear the word and break it down into simple sounds. She would type out these sounds in short forms on a condensed keyboard. It was more like a musical keyboard than a computer’s, with the keys being pressed simultaneously to combine sound chunks. She felt that way, too, like a pianist, sitting rigidly still and upright and completely composed while the classical music flowed through her fingertips.
But today’s music was harsh and dissonant. It made meditation impossible. Escape, too.
. . . please the court to go over evidence A2, medical records, release records from Orleans Medical . . .
She tried not to let herself hear the words. That was the job of Stenographer Clara, the worker bee. The robot. She tried not to let them seep beyond the borders of her psyche, travel nowhere past that small, confined space in her brain that let the work happen.
. . . blunt-force trauma, deep tissue damage, puncture wounds from what could be discerned as . . .
No. She didn’t hear the rest. She only typed it out. She was only working.
. . . a truly savage attack . . .
She kept typing.
. . . were old bruises, old damage which points to a deeper, more systemic problem. A habitual problem.
It used to be habitual with Clara, too.
Fuck.
Keep typing.
Clara gritted her teeth as her fingers became more forceful, pounding down the levers, her fingers stabbing at each sound. Slamming. Stabbing. Hating. She worked this way until there was a brief pause in the action of the court room. Then she could finally stop, take a breath, and look around. No one had seemed to notice her little tantrum. Instead, all eyes seemed fixed at the front of the court, where the two attorneys approached and huddled around the judge’s bench. They were talking in tones way too quiet for Clara to pick up. That was not her job, anyway. That type of discussion was private. Clara had just wished that other things could stay private as well, things like the sickening details of her own abuse.
One year ago, someone, perhaps just like her, had to sit and type it all out. Clara’s own gory details going from their ear, to fingers, and to page, the necessity of all her damn secrets slipping into the public record. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done it—she’d found out later there had been other convictions before her—but it was the first time he’d been sent to jail.
God damn him.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” the judge said, slowly rising to her feet. “This court is now in recess until 2 p.m.”
There were some groans in the court, but she was feeling quite the opposite. A recess was the break she had desperately needed. A break from the bad memories. Maybe a smoke break? No. Hell no. She had to stay strong.
Outside, in the cool breeze of the open rooftop, Clara’s hand slid through her purse and along the top lid of the cardboard cigarette pack. It felt smooth and sure and delicious. The craving came on hard, her hand almost shaking for it.
She removed her hand and then looked down at the object she’d pulled out.
Her phone. One new voice message. She walked to a covered corner, out of the wind, and pressed the phone up against her ear.
“Hey, Clara . . .”
Her first reaction was to pull the phone away from her face, holding it out, as far away as possible. What she really wanted to do was to throw the fucking thing off the roof.
Was it really fucking him?
She put the phone back to her ear, keeping it hovering slightly so there was no direct contact. And there she listened to an old, familiar, raspy voice.
“ . . . uh, I didn’t know if you’d want to answer this call, so I just figured I’d leave a message and leave it up to you.”
It was him.
“But I just thought I should let you know . . . that, uh . . . that I’m getting out in three days.”
Getting out?! How the fuck could he get out that early? She wanted to scream back at him, at the message, at that horrible voice and the news it carried. And why the fuck was he even calling her? The audacity of it . . .
“And I was wondering if we could, whenever you’re ready, like, just sit down somewhere, like for coffee or whatever, and just, uh, like, talk about Molly and what we’re gonna do and all that.”
It just kept going from bad to worse. He was interested in his daughter, now, suddenly. The next thing Clara expected was to hear that he’d found God or something. But no, the message just ended with, “so I hope to see you guys soon,” like nothing at all had ever happened. Like he hadn’t beaten the fuck out of her and lost custody of Molly and then spent the last year rotting away like a caged animal. Her stomach lurched as she forced the message to the back of her mind and hurried back into court.
It had been an incredibly long day, but even though she’d been home for several hours, Clara hadn’t eaten. Not since she listened to the message. She felt she like she hadn’t even taken a full breath. It was just short nervous puffs in and out, all the way through the rest of work, white-knuckling over the keyboard, trying not to smoke, trying not to break down in tears in front of the whole court. Finally, on her way home, Clara had the chance to break out into an immense deluge of profanities until her face and throat felt sore. It felt good for the first several seconds, until she realized she would have to bottle it all up for home, for Molly. She’d made a quick meal, a chicken tender salad, and then let Molly go scamper off with her tablet, her screen. “Screen time” was usually tightly regulated, but on days like these . . .
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 90