by Lee Thompson
She reached over the front seat and squeezed his shoulder and then opened the back door and said, “Thanks for lunch and for the ride home. I’m glad you guys didn’t rape and murder me.”
Victor chuckled and waved at her over his shoulder and she slammed the door shut.
The windows were darkly tinted and she couldn’t see inside the Lincoln, and she wondered, as she stood there and they didn’t roll away, if Jacob was making Victor wait because he had some parting words to give her. She would have gladly welcomed them.
But the big man pulled the transmission into drive and the Lincoln pulled away and she waited, watched it disappear down the street and turn right onto the next road, before she sighed and shrugged, and forced her feet to carry her home. It was nearly five-thirty in the evening.
In a strange way she felt she knew them better than she knew Clint, and nearly as well as her stepfather Rick. She tried to envision a New York that didn’t have people like Jacob in it, one pre-nine-eleven, and a sharp pain sunk into her chest. She thought there were thousands of people, thousands of strangers, who had gone through exactly what Jacob had. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and lovers, all of them stuck with a new world, a frightening one that had grown so much paler, and so much emptier, with the loss of those they knew who had died on Ground Zero.
The world they walked in now was accompanied by ghosts: a loved one’s echo whispering to them in the quiet night hours; looking over their shoulders as they wept over old photographs; lying sleepless beside them as they tossed and turned in bed; walking with them as they stumbled their way to work and through their days.
She couldn’t imagine how long it’d take to adjust, or accept what had happened there; if anything, she doubted they could ever be the same.
Sometimes, like Jacob had said the first day she’d met him, there is no going back…
Nina walked across the park slowly, her limbs heavy, tears in her eyes. She was thinking too hard, which many people, including her friends, told her only served to make her moody and despondent, all of them unaware that it did just the opposite for her. Thinking so hard helped her find answers to questions she feared, and if she faced them she knew she could learn something and possibly be a better person because of it.
There were many times when she went to youth group when she would have an inkling, a tingle in her chest, a swelling around her heart, as missionaries visited the congregation. They told stories and brought photographs, and she thought what they did was good and pure: reaching out to the needy even as they lived among them, just as destitute but for the hope and faith they possessed.
Nina doubted she’d ever have that kind of faith in a god she couldn’t see, but she admired those who did, and she sometimes felt that desire to try and speak to Him, to ask what His plan was for her life. But she always stopped herself midway through. Whatever God wanted, she was afraid she’d fail Him. So she did what little she could in her own way, with other kids at church, with people who were suffering like Mrs. Stark, with broken strangers like Jacob.
She already missed Jacob and Victor, although he had frightened her at first because of his embracing violence so readily, almost eagerly. As she neared her home, ten feet from the road she had to cross, the door flew open and her mother stepped outside. Nina couldn’t think of anything to say, so she said, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Where were you?”
Nina shrugged and walked across the street.
“Answer me.”
She didn’t want to lie, not because it was wrong, but because she knew she’d be found out rather quickly. She guessed Clint or his father had already spoken to her mother, put Nina on the scene when Victor knocked Friendly silly again and spirited Jacob away. She couldn’t be positive they knew she’d climbed into the Lincoln with them; Clint had already taken off, and Clint’s father had seemed too rattled, still splayed on the hood like a wounded bird.
She swallowed hard and said, “I was out with friends?”
“Is that right?”
“Yes,” Nina said.
“Get in the house.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you when you’re like this.”
Her mother barreled across the yard, her small, hard arms pumping, her face twisted into a mask of fury. Nina cringed but it didn’t do her any good. Her mother grabbed her by the hair and smacked her face three times. Nina’s cheek stung and she felt blood trickling from her nose. Her eyes watered.
Her mother bent over, so that they were eye level and smacked her again. “You see me?” she said. “I’m here because you weren’t. Because you disappeared with some criminals. The police were looking for you and I was worried sick!”
“I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t cut it. Get in the house. You’re grounded.”
“They’re not criminals,” she said, wiping her tears and blood away with her wrist. “You shouldn’t judge people that you don’t know. If you only took a minute to get to know them—”
Her mother grabbed a handful of her hair and ripped her off her feet. Nina tried to find her footing but only kicked uselessly, her mom pulling her into the house, into the living room, twisting at the hips and throwing her onto the couch.
Nina cried, holding her head. Her mother looked at the strands of Nina’s hair trapped between her fingers and shook it loose. She said, “I’m calling the police and you’re going to tell them everything you heard those men say.”
Nina looked up at her, hurting but angry that her mother laid her hands on her. She was too shook up to understand why. Her mom said, “Don’t give me that look. You didn’t know those men and they could have hurt you. They could have taken you away, away from me, and, and—” she shook her head and wiped her eyes.
It took her a moment to find her voice again and when she did it came out with relief. “I’m glad you’re safe, Nina. But you can’t do things like you did today, not ever again. You understand that? Can you promise me?”
Nina nodded. She didn’t mean it though. She knew how hard promises were to keep and she knew if Jacob and Victor were sitting in the park together tomorrow she would approach them. Of course they wouldn’t be, so it was an easy promise to make.
Her mother told her to go into the bathroom and wash her face.
“Are you going to work?”
“No.” Her mother sat on the couch and looked at the flowers on top of the television. She said, “One of my roses is missing.”
Nina was half way to the hall and the bathroom. “I took one and gave it to Mrs. Stark.”
Her mother turned her head, frowning at first, but then her face softened. “That poor woman.”
“She’s tough,” Nina said. “But she’s worried, like you were.”
“Wash your face, will you?”
“Sure.”
She washed her face and blotted it dry with the towel on the rack. She looked very tired, and she trembled a little thinking about how her mother had humiliated her and she wondered if that was how Officer Friendly felt both times Victor smacked him around like a child.
She sighed and she felt fat from eating at Mrs. Stark’s and then with Jacob and Victor in Georgia. She pinched her stomach and whispered, “Nice, fat ass.”
When she walked back into the living room her mother was crying.
Nina sat by her and put her arm over her shoulder and squeezed.
Her mom’s head was as hard as a rock against her shoulder.
Her mother said, “I’m sorry I hit you.”
“I deserved it, I guess.”
“No, you don’t ever deserve getting struck. I’m sorry.”
“Does this mean I’m not grounded?”
Her mother leaned back and slapped Nina’s thigh lightly. “No, you’re not grounded, but you scared the hell out of me, honey. I can’t take that. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to do something?”
“Not re
ally,” her mom said, exasperated. “I’d just like to go to sleep but I know that if I do I’m going to have bad dreams about what could have happened to you even though nothing did.”
“They’re gone now. They won’t be back.”
She studied Nina’s face for a second, offering her a chance to share if either Jacob or Victor had hurt her while she was with them, and after she was satisfied her daughter was unsullied, she held her hand and squeezed it tightly. She said, “You’re growing up so fast.”
13
Caitlin Reno kept her finger on the pulse of any story she was chasing. Success motivated her to a small degree, but most of all she found the discovery, the connecting of what at first appeared disparate pieces, to be one of the most satisfying aspects of journalism. But there were limits, as with most jobs; hers at the paper had political leanings which sometimes tied her stomach in knots and caused her to see red. Hence, the book she was working on. Tackling that task afforded her more freedom to put in the details that would normally have to be cut, even in a feature piece, due to space constraints. But the book, ah, the book, it would free her and it would bring closure, she believed, to the families of the young girls who had been taken, abused, and butchered.
She sat at her desk in a small eight-by-ten office in the back room of her house. She lived near downtown, in an older home, brown with white trim, a place that constantly needed upkeep she had no time or know-how to supply.
Sunlight through the window above her desk lay bright upon the reams of paper, her open notebooks, and crime scene photos she’d accumulated over the years on her own and from police sources.
She sat there for hours, pouring over what had consumed her, until that evening when she listened to Officer Friendly recount with shame how easily he had been bested. She could tell it had not been easy for him. She knew, from working with him during past cases, that he was a competent man. Yet she thought it slightly ridiculous how much effort men like him put into building up their bodies instead of their intellect.
He sat on her sofa now, off-duty, drinking a Corona and staring at her modest furnishings. He made no comment about them and she didn’t care either way what he thought of her minimalist trappings. Well, that’s not true, she did care, because she knew that he would judge her based on what he saw or what he thought was lacking, and in turn he would either figure she was someone he could trust or someone he couldn’t.
It was rare for her to let a man into her house to begin with. But his being there was important for her book. It hadn’t been easy, she’d had to flirt more than she liked to with a married man, and she hadn’t let on that she was gay and saw no reason to tell him so unless he, or anyone else, asked her directly.
He finished his Corona and asked for another. She knew she’d get off easily if all she had to do was stroke his ego and offer him booze, but she couldn’t count on things going so simply, so she started to present her theory when she thought he was ready, when the alcohol shine was deep as a sea in his eyes.
It wouldn’t be hard to use him to rattle some cages, like the mystery man Victor’s. She grabbed him another beer and carried it to him. His hands were tanned and muscled like her father’s had been before he’d gotten carpal tunnel and found it too painful to continue woodworking. He’d had a small shop where he sold homemade dressers and curios, bookcases and writing desks. Now he lived on what he’d saved and he cursed his hands as if they’d betrayed him.
When she glanced up into Officer Friendly’s face she saw a darkness in his eyes that had never existed in her father’s, even at his worst, when WalMart and so many other large chain stores killed the business he had worked his whole life to build.
The policeman ran his left hand down his thigh and smiled at her. She tried to smile back but couldn’t pull it off. She said, “Have you heard anything about this Victor character?”
He nodded, sipped his beer, smiled wider.
“And?”
“Tell me more about that book you’re working on.”
“Is he a pedophile?”
“He might be,” he said. “Might be working in tandem with his friend who I ran out of the park by the Kunis house because the man was watching the kids play.”
Caitlin nodded, liking what she was hearing.
She said, “If it is these guys and we can work together—”
“Slow down. We don’t know much of anything yet and I can’t share certain parts of the case with you because I don’t know them yet. But if you’re asking what I feel in my gut, we’re onto something with these guys.”
His eyes glinted. He drank more, irritated, she thought because he was still a street cop instead of a detective, but it was those power plays he made, trying to throw his weight around, and the lines he crossed in the department, such as going above his superior’s head, which had earned him a lone wolf reputation.
His breath smelled rank, his clothes like dried sweat. She breathed through her mouth and waited for him to continue but he just sat there staring at her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted and it frustrated her because most men she knew were pretty straightforward about getting to it and she could fake an orgasm if she had to, and yet somehow she knew he wouldn’t buy it. She’d met other men like him, men who had strong animalistic instincts, and those types of vibes, from those types of men, had always frightened and repulsed her.
She wasn’t even sure he wanted anything sexual from her, to feel like the man who had won another notch on the bedpost for nothing more than traded information. She scooted closer to him on the sofa.
He said, “Don’t crowd me, girl.”
She cocked her head. Then she nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Just don’t demean yourself.”
Don’t demean myself? she thought. That’s a new one.
“How long have you and your wife been married?”
“None of your business,” he said. “Tell me what you got in this book you’re writing and I’ll see what I can do to fill in missing pieces.”
“And you don’t want anything?”
“No,” he said, “nothing more than justice. I hate people like these guys. You want to know a little secret?”
“About?”
“When Clint was seven, a man molested him.” He smiled again, coldly, his opaque eyes unreadable. “What do you think happened to that man?”
“I have no idea.”
“It’s not hard to figure out. But no matter if he’s out there somewhere in another town, or if he is buried in a shallow grave in the woods, Clint is always going to remember. He gets a strange light in his eyes, he grows distant. A man fails his family and he’s failed his greatest calling.”
“You’re a strange man, Mr. Friendly.”
“Derrick,” he said.
“Derrick.”
He nodded. “Well?”
So she told him about the nine girls and found that there was a well of immeasurable sorrow basking inside her that raised a question she didn’t have a definitive answer for. She wasn’t so certain she would feel so badly if the kidnapped children had been boys, but she told herself she probably would.
Friendly listened attentively as she told him about the children. That was one nice thing, she thought, about a good cop. They didn’t waste time jumping ahead of what you were telling them. They just listened and looked for links and discrepancies. To her surprise she found she liked how he listened. When she’d first discovered her sexuality she had quickly grown sick of boys and men who only pretended to listen, and she’d believed wholeheartedly that girls her own age and older women would offer that one thing few men ever could.
It figured that Friendly was married. That old saying about the good ones being taken summed it up well enough. But he also had an edge most of the good ones lacked. She wondered if he had been a bad boy when he was a teen, and if, looking at his son, he realized how foolish and selfish he’d been.
When she finished telling him about the girls,
he finished his beer and set it on the coffee table and rubbed his hands together. He smiled at her again. “You’re one smart woman. The world needs more of you.”
“Thank you. What do you think?”
“I think you’re right. They’re connected. All from two adjoined neighborhoods, all young black girls between five and eight. And I think you’re on to something with it being an out-of-towner. If the man, or men, who were doing this the past decade were living here they’d more than likely speed up their process, moving from once a year to twice a year, which would have led them to getting caught. I’m no profiler, but it seems they always have to up their game. And when we look at the evidence you’ve compiled it’s all there. They’re more brutal but not speeding up their pace. I want to find this girl and those who nabbed her.”
She nodded. Since every year the brutality visited upon the young grew worse, she wanted to believe they were not linked, had not wanted to believe a man who could rape a girl would also possess the evilness to dismember and butcher others later. But what Friendly said made sense. She’d dated a young woman five years ago, Rita, who had been an adrenaline junky. It started off small—car surfing, tempting trains—and then grown into more precarious ventures, the last of which had left her crippled. But Rita had still smiled about it the last time Caitlin had seen her, as if that one moment when she’d tempted fate, and become a victim of her own obsessiveness, had defined her.
She thought again of Robin Stark and how the killer, or killers, had upped the voltage for themselves and their victims each successive year, and she worried that even as they sat there, her and Friendly, atrocities that no normal person could fathom were being committed upon a six year old girl who only wanted to return home.
“So, what can we do to stop this guy, or these guys?” she said.
“You want to stop them? I thought you just wanted to write about them.”
“What? No.” She shook her head. Her face grew warm. “What you were thinking is wrong. I want the same thing you do. Justice. And for it to end.”