The Second Girl

by David Swinson

  “Is it someplace in the room there?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, fear in her voice now. “Please take me home.” She breaks down and sobs.

  I’m kicked back to reality. Her fucking reality.

  “Are you hurt anywhere? I mean, can you move?”

  “I can move.”

  I maneuver myself calmly toward her and offer my hand.

  She accepts.

  “Let’s get outta here,” I say.

  I help her up, but her knees buckle after she stands.

  “Button up the jacket. I’ll have to carry you.”

  She does.

  I grab around her with my left arm, over my jacket where it falls below her rear. I lift her, and it’s like lifting nothing at all. She wraps her frail arms around my neck. I slip the crowbar into my backpack with my free hand on the way out and shoulder the backpack. She doesn’t say a word.

  I pull the living room curtain and peek out before I exit. It looks clear, so I kick away the shoe that props the door. Once outside, I try to pull it shut the best I can. With my luck, some crackhead burglar’s going to roll up on the spot and find the stash, along with who knows what else. Damn, I can’t even think about it. Here I am, cradling this little girl, who’s been through hell, and this is what I think about.

  I got just enough of my own to get me through tonight at least, but I don’t like the prospect of what tomorrow might bring if I don’t get the job finished today. I got a few necessities to help me through in the event of a total crash—Valium, Klonopin, Oxy, a good amount of weed, and a lot of liquor. But I like my life on the ups, not the downs.

  I walk quickly to my car and around to the rear passenger’s side. I set my backpack on the sidewalk and push the button on the key fob, unlocking the door. I gently put her in, sit her on the seat. I buckle the seat belt for her.

  “This is a funny-looking car for a policeman,” she says.

  “It’s a specialized car, for cops who don’t want to be made as cops,” I return with a smile.

  I close the door and walk around to the driver’s side, open the door and set the backpack on the front seat, peel off my latex gloves, and shove them in my pants pocket. I start the car.

  Before I pull out I look at her through the rearview mirror and I realize I can’t go to the cops. It doesn’t matter that I’m a former cop turned PI and still have a couple of friends I can trust. And seriously, there’s only two.

  Yeah, I can make up a good story. I’m not worried about that. Hell, I rescued a little girl. Exigent circumstances. Those words alone allowed me to kick in plenty of doors back in the day. But the fact is, if I take her somewhere like the Third District, which is the closest station, I’ll be there most of the day answering questions and making up stories. I don’t have the time for that shit.

  And I can’t just take her home. Cops would still get involved, and Fairfax County PD would be slow-cooking my ass for even more hours than DC. Whatever choice I make, cops are going to get involved. I just have to do it in a way that minimizes my exposure and allows me to get back out here and do what I gotta do before they move on it first.

  Then it comes to me.

  Costello.

  I’ll take her to Costello’s office downtown. She’ll know how to handle it. She retains me as an investigator for some of her bigger defense cases. All this other shit I do, well, that’s just sustaining a lifestyle I couldn’t afford otherwise.

  I look at my wristwatch. If I hurry, I might have enough time after I drop off the kid to come back and make a quick run through before those Salvadoran mopes return. I’ll just have to give Costello the condensed version of a story I haven’t thought of yet.

  Four

  I take Georgia Avenue south until it turns into 7th. Howard Hospital is behind me. I think about turning around to take her there. I look at the rearview again, notice her wrapped in my suit jacket, unexpressive and gazing out the window.

  My mind’s been racing, but like I said, taking her to Costello’s might buy me the time I need to finish up what I spent days planning so I stay the course.

  “How old are you, Amanda?”

  I see her break away from the window as if something jarred her.

  “Sixteen.”

  “You look a little young for sixteen. When’s your birthday?”

  She doesn’t answer. It’s like she forgot.

  “Amanda, can you tell me your birthday?”

  “October eleventh.”

  “That was like a couple days ago, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Damn, what a way to spend your birthday.

  “Did they kidnap you, Amanda?” I ask directly.

  She disappears again, somewhere in her head or out the window.

  “Did they kidnap you?”

  “No,” she says, just as directly.

  “Tell me what happened. I need you to focus now because I’ll need to explain it later.”

  She is looking at me watching her through the rearview mirror.

  It takes a moment, but she says, “There’s a boy,” then pauses, thinks. “He goes to my school, Edgar. He took me there once. He said they were his brothers and I should meet them because he wanted me to be his girl.”

  “So you dated Edgar before that?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He has a car, and we’d drive around sometimes, maybe go to the mall.”

  “The first time you were there, is that when they kidnapped you?”

  “No. They took me to a mall and bought me stuff.”

  “Your parents ever say anything about that?”

  “They never knew. Don’t tell my parents,” she adds desperately.

  “I won’t tell them.”

  I can guess the rest. Shit like this has been going on for a while. It even hit the news recently, how some of the gangs are moving to the suburbs to recruit impressionable high school kids, especially teenage girls. Cute young gangbangers wooing them, buying them shit, taking them places, and giving them the kind of attention they crave at that age. Next thing they know, they got them smoking weed and moving up the chain, to harder drugs. The bigger gangs around here are notorious for this shit. After that they either put them to work at a brothel or on the streets.

  “What school you go to?”

  “Lake Braddock.”

  “This is important, Amanda, so I need you to listen carefully, okay?”

  “Okay?”

  “What I do is very sensitive, so I can’t just drive you up to a police district and drop you off.”

  “So you’re going to take me straight home?”

  “Someone else is going to take care of that.”

  “What, why? Why can’t you just take me home now?”

  “It’s not that simple. There’s a lady I know. She’s a lawyer—”

  “I don’t want to go there. I just want you to take me home.”

  “You are going home. This lady works with the police all the time, not just me. She’s a very nice lady, and I gotta take you to her office. She’ll take care of you and call your parents.”

  I’m telling her all of this assuming Costello’s going to do it. For all I know she’s going to tell me to go to hell and take her to headquarters, which is not even a block from her office. I’m hoping if that happens I can convince her otherwise.

  “It’s how things like this work, Amanda,” I lie.

  “I can go home today?”

  “Yes. You’ll see your parents very soon, and either they’ll take you home or the police will.”

  “Okay.” She looks out the window again.

  “The police will ask you a bunch of questions, like how long you’ve been held there against your will, what they did to you, how they made you do drugs. They’ll have some tough questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “They’ll even ask about me and how I got you outta there. You just tell them what you know, and if and when there comes a time they have to talk to me, I’ll fill in the rest, all right
?”

  “Okay.”

  I can tell she’s in shock, so I leave it at that. I pull out my cell phone to call Leslie’s office. It kicks into her voicemail. I let her know I’m on my way and that it’s extremely important.

  Traffic is heavy once I hit downtown DC. I look at my watch again. I still have time, but I gotta make my way through all of this. I hate this city, hate this damn traffic. I usually avoid having to come downtown as much as possible. The only time I’m down this way is when I have to meet up with Costello for a job she has for me, or sometimes for a sandwich at Jack’s Deli with my old partners Luna and McGuire.

  I hang a left onto F Street. Traffic eases up a bit.

  At 5th, I swing right and try to find parking, which is usually next to impossible, but it’s better than 6th. You got the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the mayor’s building, police headquarters, the Office of the Corporation Counsel, Superior Court, and District Court all located within a short walking distance of one another. And this city doesn’t have one public parking structure to ease the pain. There are a couple of private underground ones if you want to pay up the ass, but that’s it. I manage to hit a curb spot just as someone is pulling out. It’s only half a block from Costello’s building on Indiana Avenue, near 6th. A moment of grace.

  After I take off my seat belt, I untuck my shirt so that it’ll conceal my holstered weapon. I pick up my backpack from the front seat and place it on the floor behind my seat. I exit the car and walk around to open the door for Amanda.

  “Do you think you can walk now?” I ask, but then look at her bare feet. “Maybe I should carry you.”

  “I can walk.”

  I take her hand as she steps out of the car and close the door behind her, then let go of her hand to lock the doors.

  She grabs my other hand and holds tight.

  We walk toward Costello’s office, and I think about how tight her grip is, as if she’s afraid that if she lets go I’ll lose her. I feel uncomfortable and sad, two feelings I don’t usually surrender to.

  “Watch where you’re walking,” I tell her.

  Costello’s office is located in one of the older buildings on the south side of Indiana Avenue. It’s connected to another large redbrick building that takes up half the block. Most of the offices in the buildings on either side of the street are occupied by attorneys who work in private practice. Some of them have big names and even bigger clients. And many of them, like Costello, used to work for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but chose the dark side after they realized the hours they were working for the government didn’t justify the paychecks they were getting.

  Costello’s an unusual breed, though. She began her career in law as a police officer. That’s how we met. We were in the academy together. Developing a friendship with someone while going through the academy strengthens the bond, makes the relationship more like family. She already had an undergrad degree from George Washington University. She worked hard for seven years to obtain her graduate degree, and after that she resigned from the department, passed the bar, and worked for one of the larger corporate attorneys here in DC for a couple of years. Now she has her own practice. She is like a Swiss Army knife. Now she does a lot of pro bono work, takes on cases for the “less fortunate.”

  Amanda’s still squeezing my hand when we step out of the elevator and walk down the hall to a corner office. There’s a plaque affixed to the wall to the left of the door; it reads “Law Office of Leslie Costello.”

  The receptionist shoots me a sweet smile when I open the door, then furrows her brow when she notices Amanda, wearing my large suit jacket like a dress, walk in after me.

  “Morning, Leah.” I smile.

  “Good morning, Mr. Marr.” She smiles again and looks down toward Amanda.

  “This is Amanda. I need to see Leslie right away.”

  Five

  Costello shoots me the same kind of look Leah did when I walked into her office holding the girl’s hand. Must be an effect little girls have on people, or maybe it’s the effect I have, being seen holding the hand of a little girl with nothing but a suit jacket on.

  Costello lifts herself out of the expensive ergonomic chair behind her desk, walks to the front of the desk, and leans her butt on the edge. She’s wearing a solid gray pencil skirt and a matching two-button blazer with a red button-down shirt. The skirt shows off her long legs, and if I weren’t on the verge of a mental crash, and holding this poor girl’s hand, I might feel my blood pumping itself in the right direction. The shirt she wears is one of her “go to” power shirts, usually reserved for an important court appearance. That’s probably why she didn’t answer the phone when I called. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping it was a matter she already took care of and not something she’s on standby for.

  “You can let go of my hand now, Amanda.”

  She does, but reluctantly. I can see her studying Costello, maybe feeling a bit more comfortable because of the comfortable office setting and Costello’s pleasant demeanor.

  “Hi, Amanda,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  Costello gives me that same look, obviously waiting for an explanation.

  I look at my wristwatch again. It’ll have to be the seriously condensed version.

  I nod my head sideways and downward toward Amanda, a signal that it might be best to talk in private. We’ve worked together long enough that she gets it immediately.

  “Amanda, do you like orange soda?”

  She nods.

  “I have another room here that I use for meetings. It has a television with cable. I’d like to take you there to wait with Miss Leah if that’s all right. I think we can find something good for you to watch on TV while Mr. Marr and I talk.”

  She stands from her leaning position on the desk and offers Amanda her hand.

  Amanda takes it.

  Amanda looks at me, then turns to Costello. “Can Frankie come, too?”

  “Yes, Frankie can, but he’ll have to leave you with Miss Leah while we talk in private.”

  Amanda nods.

  We walk out of her office and down a little hallway to the conference room.

  A large rectangular mahogany table is in the center of the room. A conference phone sits at the left end. Three chairs are tucked under the table on each side, and one at each end. Other than a nineteen-inch flat screen affixed to a bracket in the right corner of the room and a large whiteboard with nothing written on it centered on the opposite wall to the left of the door, the room is devoid of anything that might be overly distracting.

  “You can sit anywhere you want,” Costello tells her.

  She doesn’t decide, so I walk in and pull out the chair at the end of the table closest to the TV.

  “This one has the best view,” I say.

  She walks toward me slowly and sits down.

  Costello pushes a button on the phone.

  “Yes, Miss Costello,” says Leah over the speaker.

  “Would you come to the conference room, please? Oh, and bring an orange soda and whatever snacks you can find.”

  “Be right there.”

  I find the controller for the TV and push the power button. CNN pops on, with a panel discussion about the latest terrorist threat. I hit the channel button and stop on the Discovery Channel.

  I hand the controller to Amanda.

  “Here. You can watch what you want.”

  She takes it and tucks it in both hands on her lap.

  Leah arrives shortly thereafter carrying a medium-size wicker basket that contains assorted snacks—Snickers bars, granola bars, small bags of pretzels, potato chips, and Wheat Thins. Amanda grabs a bag of potato chips. I tell her I’ll be right back, then exit and walk to Costello’s office.

  “What the hell’s with the little girl, Frankie, and who is she? And why does it look like your suit coat is the only item of clothing she’s wearing?”

  “I’ve been working on this case I picked up couple of weeks ago. I was conducting a bi
t of surveillance on this house and there were exigent circumstances, so I had to go in. That’s when I found her.”

  “Exigent circumstances? Don’t try to con me with that ‘exigent circumstances’ shit, Frankie. You know me better. What the hell is this about?”

  “Damn, Leslie, I got in because it was necessary, and now there’s a little girl who’s been through all kinds of shit and has to get back to her family.”

  “Okay, okay, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I found her in this house on Kenyon Street. She was being held against her will, handcuffed to a chain in a bathroom. They shot her up with heroin, some other shit, raped her, I’m sure, although she won’t talk about that right now. I’m certain it’s some sort of gang-related thing, but she’s not a part of the gang. They were just trying to make her a part of it and probably would have had their way if I hadn’t gotten there. She’s scared to death. Didn’t even want to leave at first because they convinced her they’d kill her family if she ever escaped.”

  “That poor girl. So why didn’t you call 911 and take her to a hospital? I don’t get why you’d bring her here.”

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. This case has got me running circles in my head.”

  “This is not good, Frankie. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is not how it’s done and you know that.”

  She’s right, I’m whacked out right now ’cause I’m starting to crash. I got to get myself back up so I can think straight. I’m starting to feel like the room’s shrinking, the air thick. Next, I’ll be spinning.

  “I’ve got to use your bathroom,” I say.

  “What? What the hell’s wrong with you? Have you gone mad?”

  “I really have to use your bathroom,” I say, and turn and walk quickly toward the bathroom down the hall.

  “I’m calling the police, Frankie,” she advises as I open the door to the bathroom and walk in.

  I lock the door. I pull a prescription pill container out of my front pants pocket and twist it open.

  I don’t have any more than a couple of grams in the container. My heart pounds, mostly because the thought of soon being without anything is terrifying. I turn on the water. I pull out two capsules and set the container on a shelf above the sink. I twist one of the capsules open and carefully squeeze the powder out of each half and onto the back of my hand. I close one nostril with my finger and snort it up through the other. I do the same with the other one. I straighten up, lick the residue from the back of my hand, then wipe the residue from my nose and upper lip, and rub it on my gums. I pinch my left nostril shut again and sniff quietly one more time.