by Helga Zeiner
“The juice calmed you down?” Stanley asks. “What kind of juice was it?”
“I don’t know. Gracie wanted me to feel good. When I felt bad, she suffered with me; she always said so. It hurt her more than me when I had an ache or something. The juice was like medicine, and it helped me relax. I didn’t like it but I didn’t want Gracie to fret so much over me, so I always drank it.”
“Do you know why you felt so uptight?” Stanley asks.
“Sure I do,” I tell him. “They made me do all sorts of artsy things which made me feel very uncomfortable. I hated doing them.”
“Can you describe one to me, so I understand better?”
Most of it is lost in a fog, but one especially bad session raises its ugly head and beckons me to remember.
I see myself, already fully made up, when Gracie tells me to undress completely. We are doing a very special art number today. Gracie urges me to drink more juice and leaves. I’m sitting there in the nude, drinking as I’m told, and then the Purple Shadow comes in and dresses me up, but this time the costume isn’t a fancy fantasy creation, it’s just a few ropes. I remember me starting to cry because I felt more embarrassed than usual—I had started to feel embarrassed about everything they made me do, I guess that’s normal at that age—and because the ropes were at places that cut painfully into me.
“They hurt me!” I’m surprised at the sudden revelation. “They tied me up like a goddamn parcel and made me sit and lie on those ropes for hours.”
“How did Gracie react when she came back?”
I shrug, trying to collect myself again. This is embarrassing me, I shouldn’t have told him.
“Didn’t you tell her what they had done to you?”
My memory quickly colors in the fine lines of the emerging recollection. I ran to her as soon as she came in, sobbing uncontrollably. She ushered me out of the studio and into her car. There I showed her the welts on my thighs where the ropes had cut into, and she gave me a Kleenex to dry my tears and told me it wasn’t too bad, they would disappear again.
“But she was upset about it,” I said to Stanley. “Honestly.”
He doesn’t believe me. Half-truths are not his thing, he’s too smart for that.
“No, really. She sometimes couldn’t show it so well. But she did care about me. Life isn’t always a bed of roses and no matter how much we wish for our loved ones to be happy, it isn’t always working out like that, right?”
“Is that Gracie talking?”
“In the end she told me to stop whining. She explained it to me. It’s art, she said. My pictures don’t sell because I’m a cute little kid, and it’s my own fault for having messed up my chances to become a famous beauty queen. I’m too old for that now, there is no way back, and unless I prefer that we all starve to death, I better do as I’m told. There is nothing to it, I shouldn’t be such a baby. I am nearly grown up and have to take on my responsibilities like everyone else. You get the gist.”
He did. “Looking back at it now, did you realize then that those pictures were for a certain purpose?”
“Of course I understood that. They were art. But I was at an age when I didn’t give a shit about art, and that’s why I hated it so much.”
“Do you still think they were art?”
I nod.
“Tying up a naked young girl—doesn’t that strike you as odd when you think back now?” he insists.
“No, not really. Of course it’s a bit freaky, but I’ve seen those type of pictures before.”
“Where?”
“Here in Vancouver. I often crashed at a girlfriend’s place—you know, when I couldn’t handle being close to my mom—and she had one of those coffee table books full of bondage pictures. By Madonna. You know Madonna?”
“The singer, yes, of course.”
I have to laugh. Me, digging into his brain all of a sudden, now isn’t that hilarious.
“See. She’s famous and had those artsy pictures taken.” I pause. “Are you surprised I know the word bondage? You look a little freaked out.”
Now he is laughing too. It’s good to be on the same level again.
“You never let on how much you know about sexual practices.”
My laughter wilts in my throat, a dying bunch of daisies.
“That wasn’t sexual.”
Every fiber of my inside screams but it was but it was but it was.
Before I get lost in too much thinking, he changes the subject. “Tell me about your girlfriend. I thought you didn’t have any friends.”
“She wasn’t really. I met Connie about a year after we came back. I took to wandering around the area, not going anywhere in particular. She was a hooker, working the Eastside. She told me to go home, said I’m too young to be on the streets, and I guess she took pity on me when I told her why I didn’t want to spend much time at home.”
“And why was that?”
“I told you, I can’t stand being close to my mom.”
“And your friend Connie, she accepted this reason?”
Damn, he is good.
“Okay, I lied to her. I said my mother is trying to make me do things I don’t want to do, you know, with men.”
“I see. Wasn’t that the truth? Didn’t your mother make you do those sessions?”
Not so good after all.
“That was Gracie. How often do I have to tell you? It was Gracie who was in charge of all that picture taking, my mom had nothing to do with it.”
Change of subject. Dove-doc tries to redirect my mounting aggression.
“So, Connie took you in.”
“I reminded her of her little sister, Connie said. I could always crash at her place. Wasn’t much, but it was comfortable and peaceful there. Nobody ever came. She didn’t bring work home, if you are wondering. Needed a place for herself too. We hung out together, not doing anything in particular, just watching silly shows and a shit-load of movies on TV and then talking about what we’d seen and having a few laughs together. She’s been easy to be with, never bugged me, never touched me, never demanded anything of me.”
“Okay, let’s go back to the time after your tenth birthday, to that terrible session. Was there only The Purple Shadow and Gracie’s photographer friend present?”
This question annoys the hell out of me. Suddenly I can see two black holes. There were two cameras. One that made ‘click-click’ and another producing a constant humming noise. A movie camera! Both black eyes staring at me.
“Gracie left, and then there were only those two—and me.” That’s my girl! That’s my girl! “The photographer always told the Purple Shadow what to do and then the two black holes sucked me in.”
“Did your sponsor never show up at any of those sessions?”
“No, never. If she was there, I would remember, wouldn’t I?”
“And you have no idea who the Purple Shadow was?”
“No. All I remember is that they get me ready and then purple fog swallows me up. I know they are there but it doesn’t matter what they do. Or what I do. Because I’m not really there. I’m far away. And the next thing I know is me sitting in the car with Gracie, driving home. Anything in-between is … just not there, it’s kind of … uh, I don’t know. I’m soaked in purple liquid, swimming in it … drifting ... drowning …, uh, I really can’t describe it.” It’s so frustrating not to get a clear picture. I must look so stupid. What kind of fool forgets stuff like that?
Stanley feels my desperation and guides me away from fruitless self-reproach. “Did you tell your mother about the rope session when you came home?”
I sigh and explain for the umpteenth time that I never-never-ever talked to my mom about those sessions. Why should I mention that particular one? Sure, it felt worse than the ones before, but only because I got more sensitive, more irritable, more touchy, more whatever.
No, no, no, that was not the moment the train stopped and derailed. That came about another week later. It was early September, and I’m pretty
certain about this because I know when the storm hit, and it had everything to do with the storm. Now the memories roll in so powerful, I stumble over my own words to make sure I get it all out.
Stanley doesn’t interrupt me once.
Hurricane Ike was racing toward the Gulf Coast, and Galveston and Houston were in its direct path. The authorities warned the people living in the low-lying houses of Galveston Island that they faced ‘certain death from flooding’ if they didn’t evacuate. For several days, there was nothing else on the radio and TV but those warnings. The forecasters predicted a wall of water so high, it would flood the whole coast.
Since that scary night in the shelter when Katrina had hit the coast I was terrified of storms. Strong winds and rain turned me into a gibbering nit-wit. In the days leading up to Ike’s landfall, clouds darkened the sky, driven by furious gusts. I wanted to hide in my room, in my bed, under my blanket, but nowadays Gracie locked my room during the day so I couldn’t get in. She had argued with Mom that I needed to stop shutting myself away. I needed to be more out-going—funny choice of words that was.
So I spent the hours curled up on the narrow kitchen bench, shaking uncontrollably. I couldn’t articulate what I felt, I was simply beside myself with fear.
Mom sat glued to the TV. To hear those constant warnings and see frantic evacuees, packing their belongings in haste, leaving our neighborhood, didn’t exactly calm her down either. Mom had been packing all morning long, waiting for Gracie to get back. When she finally did, Gracie laughed at her.
“Have you lost our marbles? The mandatory evacuation order is only for the Island, we live off the coast, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Mom told Gracie what she’d heard on TV. They were evacuating more than a hundred-thousand, so it couldn’t just be Galveston Island. I think she was nearly as panicky as I was.
“Sure,” Gracie said, “we go if you feel so strongly about it, eventually, but I’ve got one important session lined up for Tia this afternoon. I can’t really cancel that one.”
The wind was rattling on our tin roof when she said that. I thought its roaring power would rip it off and then suck me out. It would hurl me into space and then drop me back to the ground. I would crash and burst like a pumpkin.
Mom actually stood her ground for all of ten minutes. She argued that it was way too dangerous to wait much longer, and if Gracie ventured out there for a session as if no hurricane was approaching, she’d be stuck in this house all be herself, with no way to leave if things got worse.
“I’m the one with hurricane experience,” Gracie said. “Hurricane Carla in 1961 was much bigger than Ike, and my parents hadn’t left then either. And what about Hurricane Gustav earlier this month? That had blown over with hardly a dent. God, the authorities always panic, they have to, so they won’t get sued later on. We’re safe here.”
“But the studio is in Texas City,” Mom said, in a last desperate effort to change Gracie’s mind, “that’s even closer to the coast than La Marque.”
It was in vain. Gracie got her Princess Tia bag, took my hand and dragged me out of the house. After the initial half-hearted struggle, I went limp. The short distance from the house to the car was a walk to the gallows—often enough portrait in those old history movies, when the innocent is dragged to his death. Halfway there he turns all calm, accepting his fate.
We drove out of Azalea Lane and onto the highway, turning south. I can still see all the cars bumper to bumper in the north-heading lanes, ours empty. Everybody tried to leave the coast—everybody, except Gracie and me. Gracie didn’t have the radio on. She didn’t want to know.
She stopped at the Island View Motel, saying we wouldn’t be doing the session in the studio, we’d do it in here. The motel smelled moldy like all cheap hotels close to the ocean do. They had boarded up all windows with plywood planks, so it was dark inside. Only some dim lights guided us to the room at the end of the hallway—all the way down.
The pattern of the carpet, entwined golden leaves and vines on solid burgundy, was only recognizable along its borders; the middle part, the one I was staring at while trudging along, had long ago faded into a dirty brown beaten path.
We got to our room, which felt as shabby as the carpet. It was dominated by a large bed with a purple spread so shiny it looked like plastic. Same entwined gold leaves. Gracie said I should sit on it, she’d make me up for the session now. I looked around. No photographer friend, but there was a double door with a slide lock. She unlocked this door and explained that the session would happen in the next room.
The wind got stronger. I could hear it rattling the plywood safety-shutters. A wild creature, trying to get to the hidden prey. Me.
Most of what Gracie said while she changed my dress and slapped some color on me got lost in the raucous cacophony of screeching and whistling and rattling. The storm-beast increased its efforts to dig into my lair.
Gracie was in a hurry to finish.
“You stay here now and wait until somebody comes to get you.”
I started to cry.
”You be a good girl.” Her voice sounded quivery. “You be a good girl and it’ll all be over before you know it.”
“Gracie, don’t go.”
Gracie stiffened inside my vise embrace then pried herself out of it, shaking a little. My thin arms can’t hold her.
“Pull yourself together,” she said. “You’re a big girl now. Just wait until somebody gets you.”
With that she left me. I’m all alone. Who will get me? The storm? The monster? The demon creature? I wait, shivering and scared to death.
Suddenly, a huge bang, like an explosion, like thunder, really close. The light on the bedside table goes puff, total darkness engulfs me.
Now I cry. Stanley touches my arm, I recoil. The unexpected caress is more than I can handle. I sob even harder.
“She left me alone in the dark. There was nothing, not even a shape. Pitch black. I was, I was—” I can barely speak. “I was all alone in the dark.”
Very gently—without touching me—Stanley tells me to take my time. But I can see it in his face, he wants to know what happened next.
So do I.
“I don’t remember anything after that,” I say. “It’s all black.”
Chapter 39
When it comes to crimes, Vancouver is like every other big city; it doesn’t sleep. Another shooting had occurred, in South Vancouver, this time a thankfully easy case. Two rival gangs were spiraling out of control. They shot at each other in broad daylight, and plenty of witnesses had seen the attacker’s car speed off after fatally wounding one gang member.
Sergeant Tong assigned Macintosh and Harding to the South Vancouver case. It didn’t need much police work to reconstruct the case, but it would still result in loads of paperwork, time-consuming but necessary to supply the courts with enough munitions to convict those sleazy suburbia-terrorists.
This was on top of the cases they were already dealing with. Tiara’s was slipping into obscurity faster than a politician caught cheating on his tax return. Macintosh felt the pressure. He knew he couldn’t let go of the Princess case. Tiara deserved better—hell, he deserved better than going into retirement with a half-baked case that would send an already troubled girl into an uncertain future. Whatever she had done, she deserved better than the judicial system chalking it up to juvenile crime. And he deserved better than sitting alone in his country home wondering where it had gone wrong. He really had to try harder, but where to find the time?
He was half-heartedly shuffling some documents around when Harding approached his desk with a distinct spring in his step.
“Found the aunt!”
Harding placed a file on Macintosh’ desk and sat down. The chair creaked precariously.
“Shit, you got to do something about this chair before somebody breaks his neck. I’m a featherweight in comparison to our average detective around here.”
Macintosh opened his hands like a saint.
“Don’t worry, if you break yours, it’s early retirement.”
“Is that all you ever think about—retirement?”
“Gone hunting! That’s what’s written on my door. Nine months and three days and counting.”
He tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling.
“I’ll get up north, start breathing fresh air, go for long walks in the mountains, actually see the sun rise and set again, and eat moose roast and deer stew with vegetables from my own garden. Don’t be jealous, your time will come.”
“And until your time has come, use your hunter’s instinct for the job at hand. We found her.”
Macintosh moved back in position.
“Great. Tell.”
Harding took a seat and opened the file.
“I figured an aunt in Texas would most likely be a relative from the father’s side. So I asked Josh to look into that. It took him a few days, with the guy being dead for so long, there wasn’t really much to go on. But good old Josh sent a request to the Military and a Miguel Rodriguez was listed under the same address Melissa Brown gave us initially, you remember, the Caroline Road one that doesn’t exist anymore. He had only one sibling, a sister. Her name is Graciella Rodriguez. Josh routinely ran her name through the system and came up with a few very interesting facts.”
Macintosh settled back in his chair, enjoying the moment. Maybe a few details would begin to make sense now.
“After she moved from the Galveston home, her driver’s license states her address as 4341 Azalea Lane, La Marque.” Harding tapped on the address written on the top sheet of his file. “That’s a town north of Galveston, south of Houston. There is no official record of a Melissa or Tiara Brown at this address, but I checked the registry of the Little Miss Texas Beauty Pageant online for the years 2000 to 2010 and found a Tia Rodriguez listed as a participant in 2006 with the La Marque address. She didn’t win that year, so there’s no picture of her online, but it’s fair to say that Tiara and her mother were living there with Graciella, at least in 2006.”