Faint Trace

by M. P. Cooley

  “No!” I said. “No, stay home with her while I go to the hospital. Please.” Holly hung up and I turned abruptly and ran smack into Ernie, who grabbed both my arms, steadying me.

  “I have to go. Kevin . . .”

  “Of course, of course,” he nodded towards the car. “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t meet my eye. At first I thought it was pity, but as I looked past his shoulder to the parking lot I saw the empty handicapped space. Ouyang was gone. I had let him escape.

  “I THINK THE important lesson I learned today,” Kevin said, “is no more tooth brushing.”

  I smiled, appreciating Kevin’s efforts to make me feel better, but I couldn’t laugh.

  “C’mon, June, it was just a nosebleed. Nothing to worry about.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” I said. “It was nothing.”

  A nosebleed seemed like no big deal. According to Kevin he’d gotten up to brush his teeth and fainted, smashing his nose on the sink on his way down. There was a bump on the ridge of his nose and both of his eyes were blackening, but there were no stitches or fractures.

  But it wasn’t nothing.

  The doctors took a look at why there had been so much blood after the injury and discovered that something was wrong with Kevin’s clotting factor. They checked his red blood cell and white blood cell counts and made a decision: No more chemo. Tomorrow we would visit his oncologist, come up with a new plan, but for tonight, he would stay at the hospital. The doctor was worried that he might have another incident of bleeding.

  Holly had offered to stay at our house with Lucy overnight, but Kevin was having none of it.

  “C’mon June,” he said. “Luce needs normalcy.” His reached for my hand. “So do you.”

  I arrived home to find a subdued Lucy curled up on the couch watching TV, feet pulled tight against her body, hands pulled inside the arms of her T-­shirt. She ignored Holly’s good-­bye and I tried to unwind her limbs, releasing her arms and holding her close, but she was having none of it, struggling against me. She fell asleep at 7 p.m., a full hour before her bedtime, and I put her to bed in her clothes, skipping brushing her teeth. Kevin would have made a joke about our family boycotting tooth brushing, but I didn’t think it was funny.

  I dialed my father. It was a little after 10 p.m. on the East Coast, and while he went to bed early, he always answered the phone. After twenty-­five years as the police chief for Hopewell Falls, he took calls at all hours of the day and night.

  Instead of the half-­asleep “Wha?” I expected, I got a chipper hello.

  “June,” he said. “I almost called you earlier. Caught a ­couple of teenagers trying to unbolt a mailbox from the sidewalk. I explained to the two young gentlemen that stealing a mailbox was a federal offense and that I was going to call my daughter the FBI agent . . .”

  I listened to the rest of my father’s story of how he’d scared these kids straight. He described how freaked out they were when he found them, wrenches in hand and with no clear plan on what they would do with a thousand pound mailbox. I didn’t laugh.

  “June,” he said. “What happened?”

  I told him everything: losing the suspect, the trip to the hospital, and Lucy’s retreat into herself.

  “I’d do anything to keep her safe and happy, but I’m not sure how to protect her from this,” I said.

  “When you say ‘this,’ June . . . what are we talking? Illness . . . or—­”

  “Kevin is going to die.”

  Before, Kevin’s death had been a terrible possibility, one bleak outcome among several hopeful ones. Today the last of those bright options had vanished with just a nosebleed.

  “You want me to come out?” Dad said. “I’ve got about three years of vacation saved up, and this is what it’s for. I didn’t realize it had got so bad. I’ll be on the next plane out—­”

  “That’s one possibility,” I said, saying the words I’d practiced before I’d called, trying to keep my voice even. “But I was thinking . . . I have to talk it over with him . . . but what if we came back there?”

  “You gonna transfer to the Albany field office?” he asked. “I thought they said-­-­”

  “They said no.” I balled my hands into fists, anger taking me by the throat, calming myself with two deep breaths. “There’s a hiring freeze, so no new staff for the rest of the fiscal year. We’d probably have to stay with you for a while until I got a job—­”

  “Jeez, June. You’re an FBI agent. Seriously, you think you’re going to fail the Hopewell Falls civil servants exam?”

  My father assumed I would stay in law enforcement, and he was right—­I couldn’t envision myself doing anything else. He started talking specifics, including the dates of tests and the best way to get my stuff to the East Coast, but I lost the thread of the conversation. I begged off to call Kevin and head to bed, and my Dad let me go only after promising to talk tomorrow.

  I checked all the locks on the doors and windows and turned out the lights. I peeked in on Lucy once more before walking to my room, shutting the door, slipping into our bathroom, and shutting that door as well. Kevin’s toothbrush sat behind the faucet, and I knew Holly had placed it there instead of Kevin—­he always propped it in the cup. I felt suddenly tired and dizzy and lay down on the floor, the cool tile a relief against my cheek. It was then I saw the blood. Holly had cleaned, but in the far corner the tile streaked from pink to red, blood collecting where the floor met the wall. I pulled a sponge and bleach out from underneath the cabinet, splashed the chemicals directly on the floor, and scrubbed the stains until they were gone. I washed my hands, my fingers red and burning, and rubbed them with vanilla body balm, the lotion masking rather than removing the smell. I changed into my nightgown and returned to Kevin’s and my bed, where I found Lucy curled up, blankets pulled snug despite the heat. I slept through the night, waking only once when Lucy grabbed my hand in her sleep and held on tight.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Ernie and I were back in the attic on babysitting duty. Outside, the temperatures had started to fall, but Dr. Ginthner’s attic trapped all the heat between the bound volumes on Marxist theory and Spanish Civil War poetry.

  “How’s Kevin doing?” Ernie asked. “He home from the hospital?”

  I scanned the street, searching for approaching cars. “He’s home. It was nothing. Just a nosebleed.”

  “Still, that was pretty scary—­”

  “Silver Honda, a block to our south, Ernie,” I said. “Ouyang and Van have returned.”

  Three hours before, Ouyang had arrived at the house accompanied by two men. The first man, based on the description, was David Simmons, his linen shirt and pants giving him the look of someone who’d just stepped off a plane from the tropics. From this distance I could see the resemblance with Taylor, the two having the same black hair and angular jaws.

  Ernie pulled out a camera as the second man exited the car.

  “That guy! He’s Hu!” Ernie said, snapping pictures of the man, trying to catch him at every angle. I agreed with Ernie. Cloaked in a black trench coat, the man we’d identified as Hu had quiet authority, moving quickly despite his bulk, pointing Ouyang and Simmons inside as he talked on his phone. The three men emerged from the house fifteen minutes later carrying heavy blankets and bags, dropping them into the trunk. They drove in the direction of the highway, and I watched as an agent in a blue Chevy pulled out behind them as they passed, keeping close.

  There were four cars set up to tail the men, ready to catch them no matter which way the car turned, and I listened as the agents radioed in their location. An informant in the Saigon Death Squad had told us the gang was expecting Hu and company to boost another shipping container today, so we’d expected the three men to head in the direction of the port where their stolen counterfeit goods were waiting for pickup. Instead, the Honda wove its way down from the Oakland
hills into the flat landscape of downtown, pulling into the driveway of a small Victorian that shuddered under the shadow of Interstate 880.

  “Is that house lavender?” I heard one of the agents say. “What a way to bring down the property values in the neighborhood.”

  “It’s surrounded by empty lots,” a second said. “It is the neighborhood.”

  “Folks, the cargo container is being loaded onto a truck as we speak,” I heard. “Are you sure Hu and company aren’t coming to the port?”

  “Do we even have confirmation that Hu was the third guy?” another agent asked and I thought he made a good point. The body type matched, but who knows whether the man with Ouyang and Simmons was in fact our target. He certainly seemed in no hurry to get to the port.

  I let the radio chatter wash over me, listening for the moment when Ernie and I would take Taylor into protective custody. The teenager had proven he could take care of himself over the last month, but that didn’t mean he should. Child protective ser­vices and a social worker were on standby, ready to step in once arrests were made. From our attic vantage I could see Taylor’s bedroom, one of his projects on his computer screen—­an elaborate comic book character that Ernie swore was original.

  The sky had begun to dim in the early evening light, pink and gold streaking across the sky. The street was quiet, but suddenly Taylor was there, gliding down the driveway into the street on his skateboard, pushing off again to keep the momentum going.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ernie said. “The kid doesn’t so much as leave the house in a month, and tonight he decides to go out on the town?”

  We radioed in the information looking for backup but there was none to be had: The Saigon Death Squad had allowed the truck carrying the counterfeit goods to leave the docks, but were trailing close behind. We could anticipate where it was going—­the lavender house under the highway—­and our agents had started to box the gang members in as their cars got close, cutting off streets and making escape impossible. No one from our team could be spared.

  “Can the social worker back you up?” Stanzler asked, and I heard several radios go mute. They were laughing at us.

  “Car or walk?” I asked Ernie, and we took off on foot. In the distance I watched Taylor slow, joining a crowd of students and parents who were flooding the school. As we got closer I saw why: A big sign announced that it was class and club night. I wondered what Taylor’s talent might be.

  As we entered the lobby we were greeted by dozens of hellos in twenty different languages, the foreign language and culture club offering greetings and maps of the school, which Ernie and I studied closely. The classrooms surrounded a courtyard in a big loop, and different group activities were marked along the way.

  “Do you want to go left and look for him among the yearbook, school band, and drama clubs, or go right and check out the school newspaper, fine art display, and speech and debate team?” Ernie asked.

  “Shouldn’t we stick together?” I asked.

  “He’s not armed and dangerous, Lyons,” he said. “We miss him here, we can catch him when he’s eating his milk and cookies before bed.”

  I WENT RIGHT, passing through hallways lined with posters illustrating the Industrial Revolution and mitosis. During my classroom searches I heard snatches of conversation, parents using the opportunity to corner teachers about what their children needed in order to do better or the speech and debate club presenting a motion in favor of banning offshore fracking in California. As I made my way around the loop, the music got louder. The school band was doing a mash-­up of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” and Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” that wasn’t half bad.

  I listened to the radio hidden in my ear, following the updates from operation downtown even as I scanned the room for Taylor. I rounded a corner and ended up in an atrium, rows and rows of artwork lining pin boards propped in the hall. I walked slowly through the artwork, penciled studies of ferns and psychedelic self-­portraits in pastels hung with the student’s name and grade labeled underneath. Most kids had one picture on display but Taylor had three. With blue ribbons taped to the corner of two pictures, I’d bet that Taylor in was the area—­his talent was art.

  Taylor’s first picture looked like an architect’s draft, the precise renderings of a house drawn in pencil. Next to that was one of his comic book characters, done in Photoshop, all bright colors and metallic shading. The third was a drawing of a tree with ragged roots and a tilting trunk, oranges hanging from the branches. I stepped closer, studying it, and realized that the tree stood in Taylor’s backyard.

  “Excuse me.”

  A woman approached, her cheeks flushed with the heat. She looked more like a student than a teacher, despite what her name tag said. “Are you Taylor’s mom?”

  I shook my head no. “I’m a family friend.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, grinning. When I told her that his parents wouldn’t be making the event her smile dulled, but she still pointed out the details in Taylor’s work that made it exceptional.

  “Taylor’s parents haven’t had a chance to make it to our parent/teacher nights, but can you please pass on how much I’ve enjoyed having Taylor in my class?” I agreed, all the time keeping an eye out for Taylor. In the hall I saw Ernie scanning back and forth, nodding to me when our eyes met. Taylor would not get past us.

  “Taylor’s got genuine artistic talent,” the teacher continued, “and he’s so versatile. Rhode Island School of Design is the perfect fit for him, a great balance of fine art and practical design.” Her eager face brightened even more as she looked behind me. “There he is now.”

  Up close for the first time, I could see Taylor had straight teeth and brown skin unmarked by acne or scars, and wore his bangs long, black hair swept to the side to reveal hazel eyes. Ginthner was right that Taylor’s background was Asian, to some degree, and he didn’t stand out here: This school had kids from every different ethnicity, racial tensions smoothed over by the uniform affluence of the teenagers. Taylor’s polo shirt and khaki pants were pressed, a conservative choice when most of the students had on jeans and a T-­shirt. Loose skin was visible under the cuff of the shirt’s sleeve, and the prong on his belt pulled to his last hole. He’d recently lost a lot of weight.

  Taylor smiled and waved, standing out in a sea of kids trying to look worldly and blasé, his grin faltering briefly when he saw me. I watched as Ernie slipped into the end of the aisle, cutting off the exit. Taylor was unaware he was caught. Ernie didn’t realize who he’d trapped.

  I stepped forward, moving to intercept Taylor. He stopped suddenly and then began to retreat, almost tripping when he backed into Ernie. He spun, looking for an exit, before facing me. His smile was gone.

  “Hi Van,” I said.

  Ernie looked shocked but recovered quickly. “It’s good to see you, man. How ’bout you come with us quietly? Don’t want to scare all these nice kids.”

  Van stood straight, anger aging him until he looked his real age: twenty-­five.

  “You can’t get to them,” he said. “They’re safe.”

  “Who’s safe?” I asked, thinking of the gang members, or even Ouyang, Simmons, and the third man, who was definitely not Hu.

  “You know. Don’t act like you don’t.” The way he whined, he sounded like a teenager. “The women. They’re free.”

  AS WE WALKED Taylor several blocks back to the car we radioed the agents tailing the Saigon Death Squad, letting them know that the cargo wasn’t counterfeit Fendi bags, but instead live women, brought to the U.S. to be prostitutes. Over the radio I could hear how everything took on a new urgency, the agents securing Ouyang and his partners first, isolating the gang so that they couldn’t attack the truck. Off radio, Stanzler called my number.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” he demanded. “This changes the nature of the operation dramatically.” />
  I studied Van. He didn’t look anything like the stocky young man we saw in blurry photos, but held himself like someone who had been in a gang for over a decade, worn out and ready for attack. The Squad’s only requirement for initiation was willingness to do anything for the gang and having some Vietnamese ancestry. This man standing before me, young, but not as young as he pretended, was part of that gang.

  “It’s him,” I said.

  By the time we made it back to headquarters, Taylor had started to deal.

  “You know I work with documents, don’t you?” he said, leaning on the interview room table. We’d placed a pad in front of him so that he could write his confession but instead he doodled, covering the page with jagged lines and circles, but also a cartoon character version of Ernie.

  “We need the originals for evidence—­shipping manifests, correspondence arranging to transport those women from overseas, the names of pimps and clubs who planned to grab up the girls,” I said. “Not your counterfeits.”

  “Yeah, but in order to create convincing fakes you need originals to work from.” He raised one eyebrow. “I’ve got everything, and if you put me in witness protection and give me enough money to go to college? It will all be yours.”

  “Not sure if that’s going to happen,” Ernie said. “We have to do some interviews, but let’s just say if word gets out that some twenty-­five-­year-­old creep-­o was going on dates with fifteen-­year-­olds, well, that’s not a situation where we’ll offer a deal.”

  Van dropped his pen. “I didn’t touch anyone. I wouldn’t. You will not find a single girl—­”

  “Or boy?” Ernie asked.

  “Or boy,” Van said, “who can claim I so much as flirted with them. ­People who victimize women . . . or men . . . well, if I was willing to steal from the gang, fake my identity”—­he waved at the interview room—­“risk getting arrested . . . why would I turn around and do that to children?”