by Lisa Gardner
“Wow. Do I get a ring? A paperweight?”
“You get your two hours. Then, yes, we’ll be meeting again.”
“Sounds ominous. Fine. I’m in. But you tell me what you learn from Hector Alvalos. The price for my information is your information.”
“Then I’ll start with a down payment: While you were learning about Hispanic gangs in the public schools, I learned that Juanita Baez was investigating the time her children spent in foster care. Roxy and Lola were placed together. Juanita strongly suspected Lola had been sexually abused, though neither girl would talk about it. She’d contacted a lawyer on the subject. If she had proof or was on the verge of finding proof, we could be talking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, not to mention criminal charges.”
“Sounds like motive for murder to me.”
“Phil and I will interview Juanita’s lawyer. But I’m thinking it would be good to also talk to some of the kids placed in the same home as Lola and Roxy. Being foster kids—”
“They probably aren’t that forthcoming with adult authority figures. Whereas someone like me . . .”
“Maybe they’ll recognize you from the news.”
Flora rolled her eyes.
“Are you practicing with knives?” D.D. asked abruptly. She gestured to Flora’s left hand. “No way that injury’s from sparring.”
“I’m not playing with knives,” Flora said.
D.D. waited. Used her best detective’s stare. But Flora didn’t offer any more details. Sometimes, D.D. wished Jacob Ness had lived, if only so she could meet the monster who’d turned out such a hardened foe. He had to have been beyond awful for Flora to be so resilient now.
She wondered if Flora understood her own strength. Or if under the cover of night, the woman still felt like that helpless college student all over again.
Some nights, D.D. still dreamed of a voice crooning, “Rock-a-bye, baby,” right before she flew down the stairs.
As a detective, she couldn’t condone vigilantism. But as a woman who’d once been there, she understood.
D.D. held out her hand. Flora shook it. And just like that, D.D. thought, she made a deal with the devil herself.
Flora exited the office space. D.D. got on the phone with the crime scene techs.
Chapter 16
ACCORDING TO GRAPHIC NOVELS, EVERY hero has an origin story. I’d watched enough movies to know how it worked. Something terrible happened; the hero lost everything he or she loved and was left a wreck of a human being. At which point—cue the music—the hero rose from the ashes, a leaner, meaner model, and the quest for vengeance began. While the crowd cheered wildly.
Did this make Jacob my origin story? Did this mean, in some perverse way, I owed everything I was now to him? I didn’t like that idea. I liked the story I fed to Sergeant Warren. I would’ve survived the beach in Florida, returned to school in Boston, and somewhere along the way realized policing was a good fit for me. A job with purpose. That involved less sitting and more doing. Maybe I would’ve even returned to the wilds of Maine, a small-town deputy, where I could play with foxes.
Who knows? It’s possible that young, hopeful Flora wouldn’t have been a very good cop. She had a tendency to see the best in everyone. Probably not a great trait in an investigator.
So maybe Jacob was my origin story. The person I was now, filled with purpose, clever survival skills, and a keen sense of vengeance, was the person I could only become after spending four hundred and seventy-two days with him.
It wasn’t something I wanted to think about.
And yet we all have to come from something, right?
It takes a villain to make a hero.
And it took a monster to make me.
• • •
WHEN I WAS TWO BLOCKS from Roxy’s hideout, my cell buzzed again. Caller ID unknown, but I was guessing Mike Davis, Roxy’s friend, finally reaching out via the guidance counselor. He’d called for the first time while I’d been standing next to the hypervigilant Sergeant Warren. I’d done my best to send a discreet reply text: Cops around, will call back.
Upon leaving, I’d added: Let’s meet in person.
Timing would now be right for his return call. I answered crisply, “Flora Dane.”
The voice on the other end sounded breathless and spoke in muffled tones, as if the caller didn’t want to be overheard.
“Thirty minutes,” he said. “There’s a park.”
“I need your name.”
“You know who this is.”
“I’m trying to help Roxanna.”
“Come to the park.” He rattled off directions.
“I’m wearing a blue windbreaker and a Patriots cap,” I managed to get out.
“I know.”
Then he was gone.
• • •
THIRTY MINUTES. NOT MUCH TIME.
I called Sarah and we made our plans accordingly.
• • •
ON A SUNNY SATURDAY AFTERNOON, the park was crowded. Little kids in bright jackets shrieking as they raced across the grass. Joggers in crazy-patterned spandex tights running along the winding paths. Couples with dogs. Couples without dogs. The park was a rare patch of green in the midst of intense urban blight, and the locals were all taking advantage.
I’d never met Mike Davis and the guidance counselor hadn’t given me much to go on, but I still spied him immediately. Lone teenage boy standing off to the side, hunkered down self-consciously in a worse-for-the-wear gray hoodie. I didn’t approach him directly, but picked the path that would bring me closest to his line of sight.
He looked up sharply in my direction. I tapped the brim of my Patriots hat, feeling like I was in a spy movie. He nodded hesitantly, then moved forward, falling into step beside me. He had a curious gait, as much up and down as forward, like a pogo stick being forced into horizontal momentum. He didn’t speak right away, his fingers drumming the top of his thighs as we moved. I wondered if he was on something. Crank, cocaine, Adderall. Kids abused anything and everything these days, including ADHD meds. Or maybe that was the issue: He needed ADHD meds.
I wasn’t sure. Jacob loved his drugs, but he rarely shared. I learned to recognize the signs that it was going to be a long night, but what he took, how much and how often, remained a mystery to me.
“Over here,” the kid said at last.
I followed him to a relatively quiet area of the park by a group of bushes. My mother could probably tell you what the plants were. I’d never had the patience.
“You’re looking for Roxanna,” he said, no preamble. He jiggled when he stood. I tried to see his eyes, understand what I was dealing with, but he kept his gaze down, his face averted.
“I’m a friend,” I said at last. “Part of a group of friends. She reached out to us a few weeks ago, looking for help.”
He nodded. This didn’t seem to be news to him, which was encouraging.
“Have you heard from her?” I asked evenly.
Hard shake.
“Do you know that her family is dead? Shot. All of them. Even Lola and Manny.”
“She didn’t do it!” Blinking now. Angry, I thought, and maybe something else. Tears? Grief? “Blaze and Rosie?” he asked at last.
“They’re okay. I think your guidance counselor, Ms. Lobdell Cass, has them now.”
He nodded.
“Ms. Lobdell Cass said you were friends with Roxanna. You hung out together sometimes at school?”
Another nod.
“I understand she was having some issues with a group of girls. They wanted her to join their gang. They were pressuring her.”
“‘Gang’?” He snorted derisively. “Bunch of hos. Roxy was too good for them and they knew it.”
“Doesn’t mean they were happy about it.”
“It wasn’t like that. This is Roxy! S
he wasn’t joining some gang. She was trying to get help for her sister. For Lola.”
I waited, wanting him to do the talking. He was drumming his fingers against his jeans again, a relentless tap, tap, tap.
“Lola had started hanging out with some of the girls, like, the middle school gangsters.” Shrug. “Not a surprise.” Another shrug. “She was always getting in trouble. Roxy’s job was to get her back out. But this was bigger. Schools, prisons, neighborhoods. Gangs rule them all. Gotta join. Gotta belong. Everyone wants to be part of a family.” The boy hummed notes I didn’t understand. “Except for Roxy and me. We’re loners. Always have been, always will be. Tougher life, but if you’re a big enough loser, they leave you alone.”
“You and Roxy are outsiders?”
“Sure. You gonna hang out with me, be my friend?”
He looked up then. Big brown eyes framed in thick lashes. He had puppy-dog eyes, I thought, but there was something different about his gaze. He was trying to meet mine, but remained just off. Not drugs. Asperger’s, maybe. Some kind of syndrome, high functioning, but enough to keep him forever separate. He was right—a tougher life in high school.
“Was Lola into drugs?”
“She joined the gang for them.”
“She was using?”
“She told Roxy she needed them. But no needle tracks. Roxy checked. She thought maybe Lola was dealing.”
“Lola was dealing drugs? What kind of drugs?”
More humming. “She wanted to be part of the scene. Belonging. Better than being alone. She learned that the hard way. Plus, you know, money, power. Rise up the food chain. She was pretty. Might as well use it.”
“What do you mean?” The kid’s jangling was contagious. I found myself bobbing along, as if to keep up.
“Mother Del’s. I warned them day one. Never get caught alone.”
“Who is Mother Del?”
“Foster mom.” Grimace. “Don’t get sent there.”
“Wait, you were in the same foster care as Lola and Roxanna?” D.D. had mentioned that Juanita Baez believed something had happened to Lola and Roxy during their time in foster placement. I hadn’t realized, however, that Mike Davis had been part of that time, as well.
“Yep. Mother Del’s. Farmer and the dell, farmer and the dell.” The kid hummed again, then stopped just as abruptly. “But they got out. Real mom cleaned up her act, took them away. Who knew it could happen?” He shrugged. “They left. Didn’t see them again for years.”
“They left? But you stayed at Mother Del’s? Are you still living there?”
“Since I was five.”
“And the foster home is here in Brighton?”
“Farmer in the dell, farmer in the dell, farmer in the dell,” he droned.
“I’m confused. If the foster home is here in Brighton, and Juanita lives in Brighton, where did the girls go after they returned to their mom? Wouldn’t you have still been in school together? Seen each other there?”
“Roxy’s mom works at St. Elizabeth’s. That is Brighton. Foster home is Brighton. But Brighton is expensive, so Mother Del has many kids, especially babies. Lots of money in babies. But Roxy’s mom is a real mom, not foster care. State doesn’t pay for her kids. So she moved out to the burbs. Cheaper rent.” Mike nodded sagely, rocked back on his heels. “Stable housing being one of the conditions for a child’s return.”
I thought I was getting it. Brighton was too expensive for a single mom with three kids, so while Juanita had worked in Brighton, she’d moved outside the city, most likely commuting to keep her costs down. As Mike had said, the family court would’ve attached a number of conditions to her regaining custody of her children, and stable living conditions would’ve been one of them. “So when Juanita got Roxy and Lola back, they moved . . .”
The boy shrugged. “Out.”
“Okay, but they ended up returning to Brighton,” I filled in. “How come?”
“Charlie the contractor. He has a house in Brighton, fixing it up. He met Roxy’s mom in the ER. Cut himself on the job. She stitched him up. Then moved in with him. His house is closer to her job. Free stable housing. Conditions met.”
I nodded. “So Lola and Roxy had left the area, then returned. But not you,” I added quietly. “You had to stay at Mother Del’s.”
He blinked his eyes rapidly, didn’t say a word.
“When did you meet again?”
“Last year.”
“Roxanna showed up at the high school?”
“Right before Christmas.”
“She remember you?”
Mike stopped bouncing, stared at me. “She will never forget me.”
“What about the other kids from the foster home?” I asked slowly, starting to get some ideas. “She encounter them, too?”
“Anya, Roberto,” he said promptly, resuming his jangle. “Never get caught alone at Mother Del’s.”
“What did Roberto and Anya do, Michael?”
“Anything they could get away with.”
“Did they hurt you? Roxy? Lola?”
“We put Ex-lax in their food,” he said. “Ipecac syrup. Anything we could get away with.”
“You incapacitated them? To keep yourselves safe?”
Less talking, more jangling.
“Did you ever tell Mother Del about the things they were doing? Tell anyone?”
Mike’s eyes widened. Vigorous head shake.
“Okay. So when Roxy returned to Brighton, she saw you again, but also this Anya and Roberto.”
“Yes.”
“Did she recognize them? Did they recognize her?”
“Yes. Never get caught alone.”
“They tried to pick up where they left off? What—bullying and torturing Roxanna?”
“Never get caught alone,” he intoned again.
I thought I understood. And I wished Sarah had met Roxanna sooner. Because Sarah’s first instincts had been correct: Roxy had been terrified and she’d needed help. Her mother’s happily-ever-after with the contractor guy had apparently returned her and her sister to a slice of living hell. Which, being kids, they’d told no one about. I got that. Sometimes, adults didn’t speak up either.
“What about Lola?” I asked now. “She’s three years younger, meaning she was at a different school. Were there kids from Mother Del’s at middle school, as well?”
“Everyone has friends, especially mean kids who have mean friends. Roxanna is my friend. We’re outsider friends. But for Lola, family and friends, it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She wanted to feel safe everywhere.”
“Is that why she joined the gang? She thought belonging with a group like that would protect her from kids like Anya and Roberto?”
“She didn’t understand,” Mike said.
“Didn’t understand what?”
“Roxy told her she would protect her. That was Roxy’s job. Lola got into trouble. Roxanna kept her safe.”
“Roxy didn’t like the gang. Was she afraid for her sister?”
“She was afraid for all of us.”
“Because of being back in Brighton? Seeing kids from the foster home again?”
“Never get caught alone.”
“What about you, Mike? When Roxy and Lola left, you were all alone.”
“I kept Roxy safe. I tried to keep Roxy safe.”
“Ex-lax, ipecac syrup,” I filled in quietly. “What about a gun, Mike? Did you give Roxanna a gun? Or help her buy one?”
He didn’t speak, but at his side, his fingers slowed their drumming. A tell, I thought. A sign he was lying, or about to lie. But he didn’t speak. Just stared around me.
Such a bright, sunny day. So many giggling little kids, such a happy park.
I wished I could tell this boy I knew how he felt, about his outsider friend, about his outsider lif
e. That he wasn’t the only one who felt the sun on his face but not in his heart.
“Do you know where Roxanna is now?” I asked him.
He shook his head, but I wasn’t convinced.
“Do you still live at Mother Del’s?”
“Two more years,” he said. Which meant while he might know where Roxy was, no way was she staying with him back at the scene of evil foster care. So where, then?
“Roberto and Anya?” I asked. “Are they still at Mother Del’s?”
“Roberto liked to make kids cry. Just because he could. Roxy taught me how to take care of the babies. After she and Lola left, I stayed with the babies. They’re better than Roberto.”
“Did Roberto pay special attention to Lola?” Even as I said it, I did some quick math in my head. Juanita had lost custody of the kids four or five years ago. Meaning Roxanna would’ve been eleven, Lola eight? Eight sounded very young and helpless. Which, according to what Mike was saying, would make her the perfect target for Roberto.
“Everyone paid special attention to Lola,” Mike said. “She’s very pretty. Too pretty, Roxy said.”
“I bet that was hard,” I said. “Roxy must have worried about Lola very much, especially around Roberto.”
“Roberto is dead,” Mike stated.
“What?”
“June. Shot himself. Mother Del was mad. Anya cried. The rest of us, no.”
“Evil Roberto? The one who tortured everyone, picked on Lola, he’s dead?” Of all the things, I wasn’t expecting this.
“Beginning of June. Right before school got out. Suicide. Single shot to the forehead. Boom.”
“What did Roxy say?”
Mike shrugged. “Not much.”
“Why? You made it sound like he was a bully, first at the foster home, now at the high school you both attend. Wasn’t she happy he was dead?”
Mike shrugged. “Roxanna didn’t say much.”
“And you?”
“I didn’t say much either.”
I was very confused now. “What about Lola?”
Another shrug. More bouncing.
“Mike, Roxy came to me and my friend, looking for help. She was very scared. This was just a few weeks ago, so apparently after Roberto died. Do you know what Roxanna was still so afraid of?”