by Matt Hilton
‘Yes.’ Emilia’s face was stricken. ‘But only to save their lives.’
‘What? Oh, Emilia, what have you gotten yourself into this time?’
‘The worst thing imaginable,’ Emilia said, and tears sprung fresh down her cheeks. ‘Promise me, Rachel: don’t contact them. Don’t tell them a thing. Don’t tell anyone you saw me, for their sake. For your sake, and for the sake of your babies too. Oh God! I shouldn’t have come here …’
She’d hurried away then, leaving Rachel staring in horror after her, and over again she repeated the same words she had as she emerged from the swamp. ‘Stay hidden, stay alive.’
By contacting her old school friend she’d already jeopardized the first rule. She couldn’t allow a similar mistake again. Instead of seeking a room in a hotel, she headed directly to the bus station and paid for a ticket out.
ELEVEN
‘Looks deserted,’ Tess said.
‘No kidding.’
The address Clara had supplied for Emilia led to a decrepit apartment over a convenience store that looked as if it had closed its doors many years ago. From the front seat of Pinky’s van, Po cast a glance over the grimy shop front, and an equally dissatisfied sweep of the surrounding streets. Emilia had moved out of the Chatard family home to live in a rundown section of town, and though he’d never met his sister, and had no idea of her character, he was angered – perhaps disappointed – by her living conditions. Then again, he had been bottling up his emotions since meeting with his mother, so the foul string of curses he emitted under his breath was hardly unexpected.
Tess patted him on his thigh. ‘We should still check she isn’t home.’
Po left the vehicle, and Tess joined him on the sidewalk. Pinky stayed with the van. To leave it unattended in a blighted neighbourhood like this would be inviting trouble.
Tess glanced up at the apartment. Hers was of a similar design back home in Portland, also set above a shop. But there the similarity ended. Tess’s building was well maintained, painted brightly, not a crumbling, faded husk like this one. Her access to her upper floor was via steps at the side of the building, but there was no immediately apparent way up to Emilia’s apartment from the front.
Po led the way along a track worn into the hard-packed dirt alongside the store and into a rear yard. Somebody had built a fire, and singed wood and cardboard had been strewn around by the wind, or kids with nothing better to do. The air stank. Other people had used the yard as a latrine, and not only to take a leak. Po growled a curse again.
The steps up were rickety. The only attempt at security was a linked chain strung between the handrails, padlocked in place, but anyone could step over, or bend under it. Po chose the former, then yanked up the chain so Tess could duck beneath.
As they approached the door, it looked shut, but the lock was busted and the handle hanging off by its screws. The imprint of a dirty boot sole was vivid against the faded blue paint.
They shared a glance.
‘You know what we found last time we walked uninvited through an unsecured door,’ said Po.
‘Don’t even suggest it,’ Tess said. Finding the corpse of Ron Bowen had been horrible enough, but discovering the body of someone related to Po would be terrible.
Po pressed the door inward with the back of a hand, but didn’t proceed. He was testing the air that seeped from within. Tess could almost taste the rancidity, but it was the stink of spoiled food and dirty ashtrays, not of decomposition. Nevertheless, it didn’t mean they weren’t in for a nasty surprise.
‘Emilia?’ Po called. ‘You in there?’
There was no answer. The place felt deserted, about which Tess had mixed feelings.
She followed Po inside. A search wouldn’t take long. The upper floor of the building was one original room, with drywall partitions forming a tiny bathroom in one corner. There was an equally small kitchenette taking up the opposite corner. Dirty dishes in the sink, pans on the hob, and an overflowing refuse sack that looked as if it had made an ill-fated break for freedom from the trashcan hinted at the source of the rank smell. Tess immediately recognized another tang in the room: a sweet smell that at once reminded her of some of the drug dens she’d raided when she was a cop. She again glanced at Po and noted that he’d recognized the aroma too.
He walked to the centre of the living space. Emilia apparently slept on the settee, testament of which was a tangle of bedding crumpled up at one end. He ignored his sister’s sleeping arrangements, and instead peered into an ashtray defying gravity as it teetered on the arm of the settee. It was stacked high with the filtered ends of cigarettes, but in among them were a number of hand-rolled reefers. His search swept wider, and Tess knew he was checking for paraphernalia that would hint at Emilia having a stronger drug habit. There was nothing evident.
‘Don’t judge her for smoking a little weed,’ Tess said. ‘Even I tried it when I was in college.’
‘I ain’t. I’m judging her on the state of this place: it was a damn shit hole before whoever kicked their way inside trashed the room. Has the girl got no goddamn standards?’ He made a grumble in his chest. ‘Then again, knowing who raised her, I’d be surprised if she wasn’t a complete skank.’
Tess clucked her tongue at him. ‘Take it easy, Po. Don’t forget that’s your sister you’re talking about.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ he said. ‘My mother never was the most truthful, always could twist things to suit her, or to cause trouble for others. I’ve known snakes that spit less venom than she does.’
‘You think she’s lying about Emilia’s parentage?’
Po shook his head. He was venting. He’d seen a photograph of Emilia, and already told her she had his father’s eyes and jawline. As had Po. Tess had imagined Emilia as looking like a younger Po in drag: the poor thing.
‘I just think she tugged on my heartstrings so’s I’d go look for Emilia for her. Don’t think it has anything to do with wanting to introduce us as siblings before she shuffles off. She’ll have her own selfish reasons.’
Tess didn’t reply. Po was bitter, but it was unsurprising. But she also knew her man, and try as he might to bury things behind an angry mask he was hurting. He wanted to find Emilia too, but not in these kinds of surroundings. Did he think he’d betrayed the young woman all these years, by not being there to support her? Not knowing about her before this didn’t help, but ignorance wasn’t always bliss.
‘None of this is down to you, Po,’ she reminded him, as she indicated their scruffy surroundings. ‘Let’s just put Emilia’s plight down to circumstances out of your hands, and concentrate on making things better in future.’
‘I only hope that’s a possibility.’ Po again cast his gaze over the room. Drawers had been emptied out, their contents scattered on the floor. The cushions on an easy chair were upended. Somebody had searched the place, and neither of them thought the invader was seeking Emilia’s secret stash of marijuana.
‘You see a tablet or laptop anywhere?’ Tess prompted.
‘Nope. Think she can afford one living in a dump like this?’
‘She’s a young woman, she’ll have one or the other.’
‘Don’t the young ones do everythin’ on their smart phones these days?’
His comment earned him a smile from Tess: he was such an analogue dinosaur.
‘Most of them have more than one of those new-fangled gadgets,’ she said, deliberately hokey. ‘If she left, she’d take them with her. But if you ask me, Emilia had no intention of running away when she last got out of bed. You see the food on the hob?’
Po nodded. It was food that Emilia had prepared for later: peeled, but raw potatoes in one pan had gone brown and a creamy sauce in another was scummy, and had separated – some of the foul smell came from it. An uncooked chicken could be seen in the oven. The dishes in her sink were probably from breakfast, but she’d intended returning home for dinner.
‘Any clue on how long she’s been gone?’ Po asked.
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‘Days only. I wouldn’t taste that food on the stove for a million bucks, but it doesn’t look as if it has started to rot yet.’ Tess waved away her estimate. ‘I’m only guessing. But look.’
Po glanced down at the trash on the floor. Tess poked at an opened envelope but Po couldn’t see what she was referring to. ‘The postmark’s only a week old. Now supposing it was Emilia who opened it, I’m guessing it was within the past six days.’
‘Unless it was opened by the a-hole who turned the room over.’
Tess let her silence speak for agreement. But she didn’t think it was the case. Whoever had searched Emilia’s apartment had done so with the finesse of the proverbial bull in a china shop. The envelope had been neatly peeled open, not torn apart.
‘So we go with a five-day window,’ said Po, and Tess nodded.
Knowing when she disappeared would help find Emilia: it would give them a starting point. Tess had hoped to find a computer she could interrogate. There would have been plenty of breadcrumbs to follow simply by checking the young woman’s social networks activity and other web-browsing history. It would be something she’d do in due course. For now she was seeking something more immediate and tangible. Often when people made plans they left clues in the form of hand-written notes or print-offs of travel and accommodation tickets or routes they’d planned online. If there had been anything as obvious as those, then whoever had beaten them to the apartment had already taken them.
‘You think one of her brothers did this?’
Po bristled slightly at mention of Emilia’s Chatard siblings, but he shook his head. ‘They surely wouldn’t show this level of disrespect to their own sister’s place.’
‘That was my thought too. This was someone else.’
‘F’sure; a junky looking for a fix or something portable to steal? Maybe there was a tablet or computer and he took it.’
Until they found Emilia they’d never know. But Tess believed otherwise. She thought that the one who’d kicked in the door and turned the place over had done so with the same reason in mind as them; they were searching for Emilia too. In itself it was a clue; it meant that Emilia knew she was being sought and had gone into hiding. She didn’t share her next thought with Po for fear that suggesting it would make the worst possible scenario come true. Had Emilia’s hunter already caught up with her, and her disappearance was now permanent because she was dead?
‘Look for anything with an address or name on it,’ she suggested.
‘You want to know who her friends and acquaintances are?’ said Po. ‘Then let’s go speak to somebody who’ll be able to tell us, not waste our time here.’
He meant Emilia’s family. It was the obvious thing to do, but Tess suspected it would only provoke a conflict she’d rather they avoid.
She eyed the teetering ashtray.
‘You smoke Marlboros, right?’ she said. ‘Usually stick to the one brand.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Now Po peered at the stumps ground into the thick mound of ashes. As well as the remnants of various hand-rolled cigarettes there were two branded cigarette types. ‘I see what you mean. Looks as if Emilia had company before she left.’
He glanced at the settee, and it didn’t take a detective to figure out why the cumbersome bedding had been kicked into an untidy pile at one end. A line deepened between his eyebrows.
‘Emilia has a beau,’ he said needlessly. ‘We find him, I bet we find her too.’
Tess nodded over at the prepared food. ‘She wasn’t cooking for one. Looks like she made enough food for when they got home with a serious case of the munchies. Whoever it is she’s seeing, he didn’t come back either.’
Po sniffed. The boyfriend was of no concern to him, other than that he might be the one responsible for Emilia’s disappearing act.
‘I need to get online,’ Tess said. ‘You seen all you want to see here, Po?’
‘About two seconds after we came in,’ he said. ‘Let’s get outta here.’
‘Just give me a moment.’ Tess trawled through the papers scattered on the floor and found some old credit-card statements. They probably wouldn’t hint at where Emilia was now, but Tess had another use for them. She also found an invoice for her cellphone usage. She placed the papers in her purse. Po secured the door behind them as best he could. Not that there was much to steal but he didn’t wish to leave an open invitation to any local sneak thief.
Pinky was standing on the sidewalk alongside his van as they came around the side of the building.
His usually jovial expression had tightened, and he held himself more rigid than normal. He had one hand strategically placed inside his jacket. ‘Was about to call you, me,’ he announced. ‘We got company.’
TWELVE
Two men stared at them from behind the bird-crap-dotted windshield of a Dodge pickup parked about twenty yards away. The driver gunned the engine a few times, as if in warning, but then laid off the gas and allowed the engine to grumble. Blue smoke puffed from the tailpipe. The late-afternoon sunlight made their faces indistinguishable behind the glass, but they stirred and the passenger hung a hairy elbow out the side window. His forearm was as thick as a ham.
‘How long have they just sat there like that?’ Po asked.
Pinky said, ‘Only minutes. Cruised past first, all eyes on Emilia’s place, but then they spotted me. They swung around, parked there, and been giving me the stink-eye since.’
‘You think it’s the Chatards?’ Tess asked. Po only shrugged. There was no way of telling. Even if he could get a good look at their faces, how could he be sure they were men he’d last seen almost a quarter of a century ago? Tess glanced again at the truck, but didn’t need to check the licence tag to know it wasn’t the one driven away by the stranger at the hospital. This one looked less like a work vehicle than a souped-up redneck toy, plus it bore the decal of a local scrap-metal dealership.
‘They’re as interested in us as we are in them,’ Po announced. ‘I’m gonna go ask them why.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Pinky, and again his hand crept under his jacket.
‘You’re inviting trouble,’ Tess warned.
‘Why? I’m going to ask them nicely,’ Po said.
Tess shook her head, but she fell into step behind him.
As they strode across the street towards the pickup, the driver backed it away. Halted again after a few seconds. He gunned the engine. The pickup jumped forward a few feet.
‘What’s his game?’ Pinky said out the corner of his mouth.
‘Playing at intimidation. Or he’s a clumsy driver.’ Po was unperturbed by the driver’s antics. He held up the flat of his palm: the universal sign for peace.
‘Be careful,’ Tess said to his back.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to start anything.’
Tess grimaced. She knew exactly what Po meant.
‘Hey, bra,’ Po called out as he approached the driver’s window. ‘There something you want from us?’
The driver returned Po’s question with a malicious grin. He was a slim-faced man with a wispy beard and a spray of acne scars across his nose and cheeks.
‘Wouldn’t mind a piece of that sweet ass you towing behind you,’ the man finally said, with a nod at Tess.
It came as a surprise to Tess when Po didn’t punch the guy’s face through the open window. Instead Po hung his head and laughed into his chest. Slowly his head rose and he moved alongside the door and rested his right arm on the roof. His left hand flicked at Tess. ‘You couldn’t handle her. That’s suggesting that I’d stand aside for you, of course. Which I won’t. You want to say that again, bra?’
The man was forced to look up at Po, and Tess spotted a gold incisor glinting as he again grinned. ‘You her pimp?’
Again Po surprised Tess. He turned and nodded up at Emilia’s apartment. ‘You seen another pimp around here?’
The driver shrugged, and glanced across at his buddy. The second man was huge, almost filling the cab with his
bulk. His beard was thicker, but then his entire body – or as much of it that wasn’t concealed behind plaid and denim – was heavily furred. Apart from the top of his dome of a skull, that was bald, blotched with strawberry-coloured pigmentation. ‘Whaddabout you, Rory? You seen any pimps aroun’ here, bra?’
Rory laughed, his voice deep and gravely. ‘Do I look like d’kinda guy has to pay for a piece of ass?’
Inadvertently they’d just answered Po’s unspoken question. He’d been wondering if his sister was turning tricks for rednecks up in her apartment, and if somebody else, perhaps in exchange for drugs, was pushing her into it. Evidently the answer was no, because the two guys in the truck were the type who’d have said so.
‘D’you know the girl who lives up there?’ Po continued.
‘Who are you, her social worker?’ answered the driver.
‘You know her, you don’t know her, doesn’t much matter to me.’
‘I don’t know her,’ said the driver, and his grin was even wider.
‘Then why are you watching her place?’
‘Why are you watching her place?’ the driver countered.
Po leaned down again. He stared at the younger man for a long beat. ‘Are you the one she’s avoiding?’
He got no reply, only a steady, fixed grin. The man wasn’t clever enough to formulate a convincing lie.
The driver’s right hand crept down the side of his thigh, but the surreptitious move wasn’t missed by Po, though he didn’t let on. He only winked at Pinky over the top of the cab, who edged around the hood. Tess watched the drama unfolding as if a timer ticked down to detonation. Suddenly her mouth was very dry. She took a slow step backwards, making room.
As the driver began to bring up a revolver from between the seats, Po grabbed him by his bottom lip, twisting and pinching it with such sudden ferocity that the gun fell from the driver’s fingers and clattered in the footwell. Po yanked the man out of his seat, got his other hand in the younger man’s hair and dragged him bodily through the open window. Rory, bear-like in appearance, roared, and grabbed at his friend’s legs, but only assisted in upending the driver who went down head first to the asphalt. Po never relinquished his grip on the man’s lip, twitching him into submission as if he was wrangling a recalcitrant horse. The driver screeched in agony, and flopped around.