I grab the container, scan the directions on the back. Doesn’t seem too complicated.
I whisper to Star, “Stay here.”
I hurry into the kitchen with the bottle and container of formula. I wash and dry the bottle, set it aside, and then follow the directions to make the formula. Return to the living room to find Star is thankfully still on the blanket. I sit on the floor, cradle her in my arm, pluck the pacifier from her mouth, and replace it with the nipple.
At first I worry she won’t latch on, won’t start to feed, but then she starts sucking at the nipple.
I coo to her, “Good girl, good Star,” as she drinks the formula, and then I set the bottle aside, pick her up, and softly pat her on the back until she burps.
“All good for now, Star?”
She doesn’t answer, and I’m not sure if I should keep going. I take a chance and put the pacifier back in her mouth, set her on the blanket.
My hands once again free, I turn to check what else is in the duffel bag.
Two other items are buried at the bottom.
A bright yellow Velcro wallet, the kind a little girl would carry, and a pinkie finger.
Before I can reach inside to pull out either item, there’s a sudden knock at the door—two quick quiet raps—and a hushed voice says, “Police, open up.”
Four
I glance at Star and hesitate, not sure I want to leave her on the floor. She lies there on her back and stares up at me as she keeps sucking on the pacifier.
Another quiet rap at the door, and I stand and move toward the door, feeling the press of the SIG against the small of my back.
I don’t reach for the gun. Instead, I silently engage the security chain before opening the door the couple inches the chain allows.
Erik smiles back at me, holding up two bottles of Heineken.
“Wanna hang out?”
Hang out is code for fuck. It’s something Erik and I have been doing for the past several months. Erik works as a Colton County sheriff’s deputy. He lives in the apartment across the hall, was there when I first moved in, and for a couple months we would occasionally see each other, exchange smiles, but that was it. One time Erik struck up a conversation, asked me out for coffee, but I declined. Not that I wasn’t interested—Erik may be a couple years younger than me, but he’s hot, a tall muscular black man with a cute smile—but dating wasn’t something I wanted at the time. Plus, as practically the only Asian American in town, I figured going out on a date with one of the few black guys in the area didn’t seem like the best idea, not if I wanted to stay under the radar. Fact is, dating isn’t something I’m interested in even now, but one thing led to another, as things often do, and we started having causal sex. No commitments. No dating. No getting to know each other. Just pure fucking.
I look him right in the eye as I shake my head.
“Can’t.”
The smile fades, and for the first time he seems to notice the security chain.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine.”
He pauses a beat, takes a whiff, and I can tell by his expression that some of the sourness has seeped out into the hallway.
I quietly clear my throat.
“To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling well. Think it’s something I ate.”
Erik forces another smile, and there’s no judgment in his dark eyes, which is another reason why I like the guy.
“Do you have any Imodium?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I might have some in my apartment.”
Before I can respond, he turns and disappears through his door, comes back thirty seconds later without the beers. He shakes his head.
“Sorry, don’t have anything.”
“That’s okay.”
“If you want, I can go pick something up.”
Alden’s the kind of town where nothing is open twenty-four-seven, not even the gas station. Which means Erik would need to drive fifteen miles to the truck stop off the highway, or another seventy miles to the nearest Walmart. Which he would do if I asked him to—there’s no doubt about it in my mind—but I shake my head.
“You’re sweet, but I’ll be okay. It’s just been a long night, so I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
Erik nods, says, “Hope you feel better. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
I close the door and wait until I hear his door close across the hallway before returning to Star and the duffel bag.
I smile down at Star.
“That was Erik. He’s a good guy. We agreed at the start that neither of us would fall in love with the other, but I think he broke that rule a long time ago. What can I say—must be my charm.”
Star stares up at me, clearly not impressed.
I turn back to the duffel bag. Ignore the bright yellow Velcro wallet for now and focus on the pinkie finger. When the girl first approached me down the street—which was only now, what, an hour ago—I was too distracted by the blood covering her that I hadn’t noticed much else. Like whether or not she had all her digits.
“Don’t go anywhere, Star.”
I hurry into the kitchen and check the cleaning supplies under the sink. There’s a small bag of latex gloves, and I grab two of the gloves and slip them on as I return to the duffel bag.
I say to Star, “Good, you’re still here.”
She doesn’t appear to get the joke.
I extract the pinkie finger from the duffel bag to get a closer look. The cut doesn’t look clean, looks instead like it had been torn off the hand instead of sliced. Which means it was probably done by a pair of pliers. Which means the girl was probably tortured.
If the two men I saw earlier tonight had somehow caught the girl previously, used a pair of pliers to take off her pinkie finger, what was the end game? If they were looking for the duffel bag—and presumably Star—that means neither the duffel bag nor Star were with the girl at the time. So they had been elsewhere, and then … what, the girl somehow managed to escape? Okay, that’s maybe plausible. She managed to escape, ran away from the men, grabbed the duffel bag with the baby inside (or maybe Star was elsewhere beforehand and the girl put the baby inside later) and then ran through the dark streets. That part of town is usually deserted. Those buildings empty, a perfect place for bad men to do bad things to a helpless girl.
On the blanket, Star starts to fuss.
I set the pinkie finger aside, start to reach for Star, but remember the latex gloves. The small bag under the sink doesn’t contain many gloves, so I don’t want to waste any more than I need to.
I whisper to her.
“I know, Star, I know. I got somebody in mind to help us out, but we’re going to have to wait a few more hours. First I need to clean this stuff up, okay?”
Star just watches me. Not looking happy at all.
I check the pinkie finger again, and frown. Assuming it did belong to the girl, and assuming those men in the car had torn it from her hand, and assuming she’d managed to escape, why would she have grabbed the pinkie finger to take it with her? Assuming, of course, any of my speculation is remotely close to what happened. Maybe it isn’t even the girl’s pinkie finger. Maybe it belongs to somebody else.
Once I’m done here, I’ll put the finger in a sandwich baggie, the kind with a resealable zipper, though I’m not sure what I’ll eventually do with it. A sensible person would have called the police long ago and had them deal with this mess, and while I’d like to think of myself as a sensible person, I just can’t do that. Not after seeing the girl covered in blood. Not after the girl put the duffel bag—and the baby inside—in my arms. Like she was entrusting me to keep the baby safe. Then of course there’s the fact that the driver who may or may not be law enforcement killed the girl.
No, I can’t contact the police, at least not right now. I can’t even bring Erik into this, though I’m sure he’d want to help. As far as I can tell, he’s a good cop, which m
eans he’ll want to do everything by the book. Which means a moment or two after I tell him about what I witnessed, he’ll call it in. Which may or may not alert the two men who killed the girl who I’ve come to think of as Star’s mother.
I check the wallet next. The Velcro makes an irritating ripping noise. I crinkle my nose at the sound, afraid it will make Star fuss again, but Star doesn’t seem to care. In fact, it looks like she’s starting to fall asleep.
Inside the wallet are five one-hundred dollar bills. They’re so crisp and fresh they look like they came straight from the bank. Like the only other person who touched the bills before handing them out was the bank teller.
Also inside the wallet is a business card. The background is a generic stock photo of footprints on a beach. At the top the words LITTLE ANGELS ADOPTION AGENCY with the name Leila Simmons, LSW beneath. There’s an address on the card—San Angelo, about three hours away—along with a phone number and email address. On the back of the card, somebody has written out a phone number in blue ink.
LSW stands for Licensed Social Worker. Which means Leila will be my first call in the morning. Only after I do some research.
For now, though, I need to clean up this mess while Star sleeps. It’s already past four o’clock, which means I’ll need to wait at least another three hours before the next step.
I start to collect the pinkie finger and wallet—I plan to bag them, though again I’m not sure what will ultimately happen to them—but pause to glance back down at Star.
I pull off the latex gloves, toss them in the duffel bag, stand back up and slip the gun from the waistband of my jeans. I set the gun on the arm of the couch, and bend to gently pick up Star from the wool blanket.
Cradling her, I sit on the couch and stare down at her and do everything I possibly can not to fall asleep, too. Right now I’m running on twenty hours of no sleep, and something tells me it’s going to be a long time before I close my eyes again.
Five
Alden used to be a large town with a population of several thousand people, but since the factories went under over a decade ago, most of those people moved away. Now there aren’t many businesses in the area, and there certainly aren’t any gyms. I typically get my exercise in the late mornings when I wake, running three miles around town, so I’ve never had any need for a gym bag. Or any other bag large enough to inconspicuously conceal Star.
Alden being the small town that it is, everybody knows everybody else. It’s not like everybody is friends, but they see each other in passing, noting who is married and who is single and who is in a relationship. Noting who has children.
Everybody in town knows me as Jen Young. They know I’m single, and that I don’t have children, so openly carrying one through town probably isn’t the best idea.
In the end, I use a reusable cloth grocery bag. It’s not as big as I’d like, but it does the trick.
I stuff the bottom with two towels—my last two clean towels—and set Star on top.
I throw on a gray sweatshirt, so the bagginess of the sweatshirt will conceal the SIG at the small of my back.
I’ve already stuffed the duffel and its sour shit-stained contents in a garbage bag. My first impulse is to drop the garbage bag in one of the dumpsters when I leave the apartment building, but part of me wants to hold on to it for now. It’s evidence, after all, and maybe this will get to the point that the police will need to take over. In that case, I don’t want to screw up the chain of evidence more than I already have.
I have a car—an ’02 Honda Civic—but I don’t use it much, and besides, we’re only going five blocks. Not even a quarter mile.
It’s just past seven o’clock and the early Saturday morning is cool and crisp, the wide sky a pale blue.
I walk holding the grocery bag in my left hand, swinging it slightly to give Star that rocking sensation. I keep my right hand free in case I have to reach for the gun. I don’t expect I will, but last night I didn’t expect to encounter a girl covered in blood either, so better safe than sorry.
Alden is slowly waking. As it’s the weekend, most people are still home. Not much traffic is moving about. Two blocks ahead, I smell the smoker over at Benny’s BBQ. The place doesn’t open until noon but they’re already smoking the meat.
Meredith rents a two-bedroom ranch house on High Street. The place is a dump, but it’s all Meredith can afford on her salary as a waitress. She’s twenty-two years old, has two kids, and is studying to become a phlebotomist. Neither of the kids’ fathers are in the picture, and Meredith’s mom doesn’t help more than what’s required. There’s some resentment there for some reason, at least from what I’ve been able to gather. I’m not close to Meredith, but we get along fine at work. She seems like a good mother, which is the main reason I thought of her late last night while I knelt over the duffel bag. The other reason is that Meredith barely makes ends meet so she’s usually desperate for extra cash.
She stands in the doorway, holding her own baby in her arms. She wipes the sleep from her eyes before she frowns at the folded wad of twenties I’m holding out to her.
“I’m confused—how much did you say?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“For just a couple hours of my time?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
Before I can answer, the pacifier falls from Star’s mouth, and she starts to fuss.
Meredith’s eyes immediately dart down at the grocery bag.
“Is that—”
I cut her off.
“Can I come inside?”
Before she can answer, I push my way inside, sidestepping Meredith who stands there stunned.
She says, “Is that a baby? Where’d you get a baby?”
Before I can say anything, a patter of footsteps charges toward us, and Meredith’s other son—five-year-old Johnny—rushes up to his mom and grabs onto her leg.
“Pancakes!”
“Johnny, I told you not now.”
“Pancakes!”
“Johnny, I said not now!”
There’s more bite in her tone than she probably intended, and Johnny’s face closes up at once. He looks almost ashen, and his bottom lip starts to tremble, and Meredith, probably sensing an oncoming tantrum, issues a heavy sigh.
“Yes, fine, pancakes. Now go watch cartoons and leave us be.”
Johnny’s face lights up, and he gives me a sort of triumphant smile before tearing off toward the living room.
Meredith shakes her head at me.
“Whatever you do, don’t ever have kids.”
But then she pauses, looking down again at the grocery bag.
“Whose baby is that, anyway?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not sure. Look, Meredith, the less you know, the better.”
The absurdity of my statement nearly causes Meredith to bark out a laugh.
“You’re joking, right? You come here first thing in the morning and offer me three hundred dollars to … do what, exactly?”
“Watch Star for a couple hours.”
“Star?”
“That’s what I’m calling her.”
“You don’t know her real name?”
“Let’s just say I found her last night.”
“Found her where?”
“Again: the less you know, the better.”
Holding her younger son, she releases a heavy breath.
“I already have two kids of my own to deal with.”
“I know. And normally I wouldn’t bother you, but I’m in a bind.”
“What do you want me to do with her?”
“Feed her. Give her a bath. Put her in a diaper and clothes. Just keep an eye on her until I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“The less you know, Meredith.”
“Shit, Jen. I don’t know. This sounds shady as fuck.”
“It
is. But it’s also worth three hundred dollars of your time.”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“Yes.”
She stares down at the folded twenties in my hand.
“Okay. When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure exactly.”
“But it’ll just be a couple hours?”
“Yes.”
“Is it okay with you if I call my mom to come over and give me a hand?”
“I’d prefer you don’t. No offense, but your mom seems to be a gossip, and right now it’s best if not many people know about this.”
Meredith bites her lower lip, gazing down at the bag again.
“This isn’t, like, against the law, is it?”
“No.”
At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not. Not as far as Meredith is concerned, anyway. She’s just taking care of a baby. She doesn’t know the whole story. She doesn’t need to know.
Beyond the sound of Saturday morning cartoons from the living room, Johnny shouts, “Mommy, pancakes!”
Meredith’s face tenses, and for an instant I realize I’m losing her. The money sounds good, of course, but it’s another child to worry about on top of her other two children.
“Five hundred.”
Her eyes go wide after I say the words, and her mouth drops open.
“Five hundred?”
“Yes. Three hundred now, two hundred when I get back. All you need to do is feed her and bathe her and clothe her. That’s it. I’ll be back in a few hours, and then you’ll never see the baby again. And this whole thing will just be our little secret.”
She bites her bottom lip, still clearly conflicted, but the promise of five hundred dollars is too much to pass up.
Meredith takes the grocery bag from me with her free hand, and gives me the smile she uses on the drunks at the bar when she’s fishing for an extra tip.
“See ya in a few hours.”
Six
The Alden Public Library sits near the heart of town. A squat brick building with just one floor, it keeps minimal hours as not many people in town utilize the books and DVDs and free Internet.
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