Trace Evidence

by Elizabeth Becka

  “The council will support Jurgens Limited.” Rupert carefully maintained his political correctness. Jurgens happened to be the largest minority-owned contractor.

  “Their costs are out of control,” Pierson said. “Reuters Limited has the best price but the worst reputation, and North Coast can’t handle a project that size. That leaves Ashworth. Mobster or no, his buildings are energy efficient and free of problems.”

  Riley lit another cigarette. Evelyn could see the muscles in his neck tighten to ripcords at every mention of Ashworth’s name. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m no more thrilled about the concept than you are, Detective,” Pierson told him. “But it’s not just up to me, and besides, this isn’t the time to discuss it. I can see you are all busy and you’re going to be even busier once the press gets hold of this story.”

  “They already have.” Riley nodded toward the parkway intersection.

  “I know.” Mayor Pierson waited until Rupert had rushed to the cameras and boom mikes like an ant to sugar, then turned back to Evelyn. “How’s Angel?”

  “Great.” She felt Milaski fidget, probably from boredom. Or else he was getting the lay of the land and sensing a minefield. Despite a touch of guilt, she continued, letting the murder investigation languish while she played catch-up with an old friend. “Destiny must be growing up.”

  “Seventeen going on thirty-five, yes. She lives at Tower City mall and covers me with cell phone bills. She won’t even let her mother kiss her good night anymore. In fact she broke her finger yesterday playing ball with her brothers and we’re relishing the opportunity to baby her again.” He shook his head ruefully. “Say, are you and Riley coming to the fund-raiser tonight? I’m sorry, you’re—”

  “Milaski. David Milaski. I’m in Homicide,” he added, his voice respectful but not interested. He glanced at the riverbank as if he just wanted to get back to the investigation. Evelyn felt the same way, though not exactly for the same reason.

  “I need the support of the law enforcement community if we’re going to scare up some funding from the feds. Evelyn? Plenty of champagne and the best food in the city.”

  “You know I’d love to see you and Danielle.” Had she really managed to keep the irony out of her tone? “But I’ll be busy here for quite some time. It was nice to see you again.” Over the silent snowfall, reporters’ cameras clicked away as the prosecutor droned on. The jackhammer had stopped. The valley fell quiet, as if cocooned by snow. “I’m sure the ME will be in touch with you as soon as we have an ID.”

  “Thanks.”

  Pierson remained behind the tape as she fled down the slope to the body, seeking refuge in the company of a dead girl. There, that hadn’t been so bad. They had only dated for two years in college, anyway. Get over it, girl.

  When she looked back, he was gone.

  With relief she squatted next to the body, pulled on a new pair of gloves, and touched the woman’s ice-cold forearm, turning the palm upward. Her inner arms showed no signs of drug use. A peek under her outer clothing revealed a bra and panties. Tiny diamond earrings winked at them. She had a thin gold chain around her neck and a star sapphire on her right hand; no wedding band.

  Milaski joined her, their knees practically touching. “Question.”

  She glared at him through the fading light, inwardly daring him to say one word about Darryl Pierson.

  “You said she had a family and a job. How do you know that?”

  She put Pierson out of her mind. “Okay, it’s more of an assumption. She doesn’t look homeless, undernourished, or riddled with needle tracks. Her hair has been trimmed, her unbroken nails are even, and her clothes aren’t stained or full of holes. She isn’t poor. She either has a decent job or a family to notice she’s gone, and most young, healthy people have both. That’s why it shouldn’t take too long for an identification—someone, somewhere, will wonder where she is.”

  “That’s all it takes, to be young and healthy? What happens when you’re old and you drink too much?”

  She gave him a look, half mocking, half compassionate. “Then you might be unfairly unmissed.”

  “Story of my life,” he grumbled.

  Several hours later Evelyn finally felt warm. In jersey pajamas and thick socks, she watered the limp plants in her living room and thought about Darryl Pierson as the cat swatted at her ankles. Did any woman ever make peace with how she felt about an old boyfriend? A sort of apprehension permeated the memory, a sense that you either avoided a narrow escape or missed an alternate future that might perhaps have worked out better. The past didn’t make her anxious, only the future she didn’t choose.

  They had met in her second year at Cleveland State. She had introduced herself by spilling coffee on his Honors English notebook. He said he liked her because she never pretended to understand what it was like to be black. She liked him because he could talk to her without staring at her chest. The courtship had been intense, the breakup swift and unexpected.

  Darryl’s background differed a hundred and eighty degrees from hers—not your standard poor-kid-from-the-hood-makes-good kind of background, but a really hard background about which he told her only bits and pieces. In the years after the breakup, she privately celebrated his success. He had gotten what he wanted by working almost fanatically for it, and he deserved the brass ring. It had worked out for the best, right? If she hadn’t married Rick, she wouldn’t have that special combination of DNA and cellular organelles that had become Angel. As if in response to the thought, her daughter breezed into the house.

  Evelyn often asked herself what kind of a fantasy world she had been living in when she named the girl Angel. It had never fit her. Instead of a sweet-tempered ethereal blonde, she had inherited Rick’s raven hair and penchant for mischief. Now she mumbled a greeting and pushed aside the mail on the kitchen table in order to reorganize her purse, a scrap of fabric only slightly larger than an envelope.

  Rick, dark and stout, walked in as if he still owned the place, with Terrie at his elbow. She took in Evelyn’s pajamas with a complete lack of expression. “We were at Rio Bravo. Rick wanted to go to the Flats, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. No sense showing a sixteen-year-old everyone hanging out at the bars.”

  “Of course,” Evelyn agreed as she avoided Nefertiti, whose claws made clear her desire for Evelyn’s undivided attention. “We had a victim stabbed there last week.”

  Terrie blinked. “How awful. It must be so hard to see things like that.”

  No, Evelyn thought, it isn’t hard at all, because I’m a coldhearted bitch. Isn’t that what Rick and Angel tell you? That I stole the house from him and how I make Angel abide by a—gasp—ten o’clock curfew?

  Rick made leaving motions. “Okay”—Terrie laughed—“we’re going. Take care, Angel. Don’t watch too much TV.”

  As the door closed, Evelyn turned to her pale and sullen daughter, watching her place each makeup item in its preordained pocket. At least she’s not into Goth, Evelyn thought, thanking her lucky stars. Angel dressed neatly, in collared shirts and khakis so perfectly pressed that it never failed to amaze her mother how a disaster area of a bedroom could produce such an example of precision.

  “How was school today?” Evelyn tried. “Did you have your math quiz?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what did you get?”

  “Eighty-three.”

  “Mmm.” Evelyn wanted to say, I saw a dead girl today. Just about your age. Life is short, so very short. Maybe you should be nicer to your mother. Maybe your mother should be nicer to you. But that was the easy way out, using her job to control her daughter.

  “It was hard,” Angel said defensively. “Can’t we turn up the heat in here? What good is saving on electricity if we freeze to death before we get to spend what we’ve saved?”

  A spontaneous statement. Encouraged, Evelyn opened her mouth to respond, but Angel flounced up the stairs, her light frame making thuds heavier than should have be
en physically possible.

  Evelyn stared at the bottle of nail polish in among the letters on the heavy kitchen table. Too much TV. And how many children have you had? Let’s see, that would be none, wouldn’t it?

  How easy was it to be the perfect mother if you had to do it only every other weekend? Terrie hadn’t had to give birth. She hadn’t had to sit through ten years of band concerts or held a bucket next to the bed when Angel had the flu. She hadn’t paced the floor when Angel was out way past curfew or had nightmares about the SATs. Just go out to dinner every other weekend, and maybe a museum now and then.

  Evelyn shook her head in disgust. Why did she resent Terrie more for liking her daughter than for sleeping with her husband? She sighed, patted the cat, turned out the lights, and threw on a coat to walk to her mother’s house next door and say good night. At least she’d be warm there.

  Chapter 3

  THE GIRL SWAM UPWARD through the currents of her subconscious without concern or haste. She didn’t particularly want to wake up; comfortable where she sat, she dreamed of a boy in her English class. But her stomach ached, she felt nauseated, and the peculiar heaviness on her feet pricked her curiosity.

  She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt too heavy to raise. Instead she wiggled the toes on her left foot. The wet, sticky sensation felt almost erotic, but at the same time it was just a few degrees too warm and she thought she really ought to deal with this, so she opened her eyes.

  What she saw made no sense. She shut her eyes again and let the images mill about in her brain for a while. Maybe then they would form some kind of order.

  She sat in a basement, or at least a neat room with gray concrete walls and floor. The view included a tool-scattered workbench and homemade wooden shelves, which held a myriad of items from cardboard boxes to a beach ball. It smelled . . . not pleasant, along the lines of a stale, animal sweat. She knew her scents. She could tell Opium from Tommy Girl from any kind of Chanel on her friends even when they’d showered after drill team practice, and she was never wrong. She was never wrong period.

  Her legs, from midcalf to toes, were immersed in a five-gallon plastic bucket filled with heavy cool gray stuff. Her new Italian pumps were in the bucket with her feet and almost certainly ruined, which irritated her. Her hands were pulled way to the back of the cheap folding chair and this made her shoulders hurt. She tried to pull them forward but something wouldn’t let them move. Now that was ridiculous. No one told her when she could or could not move her arms.

  She opened her eyes again.

  Same scene. For the first time it occurred to her to be afraid, and the sensation nauseated her further.

  Shit.

  She was in trouble. She was in big trouble.

  Her muddled brain tried to regain some sense, some control. She had been at a party . . . Crosscut images of people and drinks and music came back to her, but she could not be sure if that had been tonight, last night, or some night forever ago.

  Screw that, it didn’t matter. She was here now, immobile, with one hand tied to the other by something hard and cold and rattling—like chains.

  She wasn’t only tied but chained? Somebody was going to get their ass whupped big-time when she got out of there.

  If she got out of there.

  Worry grew to panic. She began to wriggle like a worm on a hook, searching for a weakness in the links, a gap that would allow her to slip her bonds. The chains snaked up and over her, lying on her shoulders, but only the ones around her wrists were tight and her fingers were tingly and going numb. The rest of the chains were not as tight, but still prevented her from moving in any significant way.

  Her attention swung to her feet. She tried to pull them out of the cement—for that’s what it had to be, she wasn’t so sheltered that she had never been exposed to wet cement—but one chain kept her knees primly glued to the chair seat. She kept her toes active while she thought, flexing the Italian leather up and down, and moved her knees as if she were doing a sort of aerobic exercise. Hey, everybody, want to lose weight and look great? Try cementecize! Works off those extra inches in no time! A chuckle that came too close to hysteria escaped her throat and she tried to call it back.

  Too late.

  Above her, she heard an abrupt thunk and a series of thuds, exactly as if someone upstairs had dropped a chair onto all four feet and was now crossing the floor. Toward the basement door. Toward her.

  She tried to remember exactly what position she had been in when she regained consciousness, couldn’t, and decided it didn’t matter because her options were few. She couldn’t move anything but her head, which she now let loll forward like a forgotten rag doll. It hurt her neck, but she willed herself to be absolutely still. She really did want to throw up, but she refused to think about it. She left her eyelids slightly ajar, just enough for a hazy view of the floor.

  Whoever it was came from the steps and paused right in front of her, but still she couldn’t see his—its—feet. Then he moved two shuddering steps closer.

  Blue workpants stained with traces of light gray ended above scuffed brown shoes. They weren’t Timberlands or Rockports. Some loser in generic shoes—now what?

  Maybe playing dead wasn’t the way to go. Maybe she should try to talk to him, ask what the hell he thought he was doing and by the way, would you let me go? I promise I won’t tell anyone if you just let me go. Yeah, right.

  On the other hand, maybe he was just waiting for her to wake up before he started in with the torture, standard serial killer stuff like Drano under the skin or cutting off her fingers. In which case it would behoove her to be a heavy sleeper. She tried to keep her breathing steady and found it impossible to breathe normally while her heart pounded furiously.

  Maybe he wasn’t a serial killer. Please, please let this whole thing be the revenge of some bimbo who didn’t make Homecoming Court, just trying to scare her.

  Maybe she’d just keep quiet until she knew for sure.

  In the two seconds it took for these thoughts to flit in a panicked rush across her brain, he moved again, walking around behind her. The sight of his shoes frightened her enough, but not to see them felt infinitely worse. What if he didn’t care if she woke up or not? What if he intended to kill her right now?

  There was a clinking sound, which had to mean a chain was about to be lowered around her neck and tightened until—

  He grabbed her arm. She couldn’t help an involuntary jerk at his touch, as clammy cold as the cement itself, but kept her head down. He simply wiggled her arm a bit, not to hurt her but to check the chains and fasteners, pulling on each one. Her eyelids were squeezed together like a little child’s, something she would be embarrassed about later but not right now.

  The steps went away.

  She heard him clumping up the stairs and waited for the door to shut before she drew a normal breath, and even that she did with the utmost caution, scared that one link of her chains might bang against another and alert him again.

  Him? Who was he? Where was she? And what did he intend to do with her?

  Then she saw the mark. The grainy surface of the cement in the bucket had been marred. He must have stuck a finger in it to test the hardness.

  Again, she willed her heart to calm. When the pressure is on, her father always said, focus on the priorities. Forget about the problems you can’t solve for the moment and concentrate on those you can. What do you need to do right now?

  Get the hell out of here.

  She started moving her legs again, wiggling her toes, moving her knees, trying to straighten her foot to a Barbie-like point. She did this for several minutes without knowing why, and then figured out what her body had known automatically: If she created a hole in the cement larger than her legs, then her legs would slip out of it.

  Except that at least two of the chains ended in the cement. He had not only encased her legs but had literally chained her to this anchor.

  And then she knew.

  There was onl
y one reason to put someone’s feet in cement. She had seen Billy Bathgate. She had heard the slang. They drowned people with cement shoes.

  It was ridiculous, too fantastic to contemplate. If you wanted to kill someone you blew them away from the window of a moving car, you didn’t mess with stupid shit like this. No, they were going to leave her naked in Public Square or handcuffed to the men’s room at Jacob’s Field. She wiggled for all she was worth.

  While she did that, she checked out the rest of the basement. She could see two glass block windows, no door. No way out except for the stairs.

  The cement thickened, getting harder and harder to stir. It was like a nightmare where she was trying to run away from something awful but couldn’t make her legs move. If she got through this, no lame-ass nightmare would ever bother her again.

  Why only one guy? If this was a revenge deal, there should be a couple of people. Teenagers did everything in groups. There should be two or three girls giggling upstairs about how she was going to “get hers.” A boy or man alone made no sense. Boys never got mad at her—frustrated maybe, but not mad.

  The thought of her acquaintances calmed her; she felt comfortable in their world of intrigue and betrayal. This temporary composure evaporated when the upstairs door opened and the man returned.

  She strained her neck again, letting her head hang until her long dark hair obscured her face. He moved past her to the workbench, where she heard a series of small movements. This is unbearable, she thought. I’d rather be jumped in an alley, beaten up, anything so long as I could see my attacker and know what he wanted. What the hell did he want?

  Abruptly he grabbed the back of her hair and she struggled, twisting her head and trying to jerk away, but with his other hand he clamped something plastic over her nose and mouth and she was trapped. Still she struggled, her entire body writhing at his touch.

  “I thought so,” she heard him say. His voice was low, calm, utterly ordinary, and vaguely familiar.