Maureen stayed alone in the yard until the last of the sunlight faded and left her shivering in the shade, listening to the clack and rattle of the dried rosebushes shaking in the wind. Aches groaning in her back and knees, she was slow to get up when her mother called her in for dinner.
After two slices of pizza and half a glass of wine, Maureen was ready to fall facedown in her plate, exhaustion wrecking her again. She let her mom walk her to her room and help her off with her shoes. Curled up on the edge of the bed, fighting to keep her eyes open, Maureen watched for her mother’s reaction when she asked her to plug in the night-light. But Amber didn’t say a thing, betrayed no emotion. She grabbed the ladybug off the dresser and bent to plug it into the outlet. Once it was lit, she did stand over it for a moment, arms crossed, left hip cocked out, and stare into the rose-red glow. Maureen closed her eyes. As she drifted off, the neighbor’s dog barked. The scent of her mother—baby shampoo and Palmolive dish soap—settled over her. Amber’s warm lips on her cheek. Then nothing.
At half past two in the morning, wrapped in an old blanket, Maureen sat cross-legged on the living room couch, her arms folded over the back of it, her chin resting on her forearms. Her phone, set to vibrate, sat on the window ledge. She looked out the picture window and down to the street, watching the unmarked cop car parked under a streetlight. The shadows of two men darkened the front seat of the dark blue sedan. Maureen hadn’t even thought to check for them before passing out, but sometime after sundown, it seemed, the reinforcements had arrived as promised. Waters had been true to his word.
Maureen reached out and touched her fingers to the pane of cool glass between her and the night, thinking of the zoo, of the many trips there with her father. Had he really taken her as often as she remembered? Or had she instead strung one memory over a number of days simply to make more of them, like cashing in a tattered beer-soaked five-dollar bill for five crisp singles, the latter worth nothing more than the former, even though they felt better in your hands. Couldn’t be, she decided. She remembered too many distinguishing details: his peacoat rough on her cheek, his aftershave stinging in her nose as he carried her through the entrance in the fall, his thick bare arms covered in dark hair and hanging from his T-shirt in the summer as they held hands. They had gone, over and over again. Why? Had she asked that many times? Loved it that much? Or was Amber the reason? Had Maureen and her dad needed to get away from her badly enough to use the zoo as an excuse until both of them found a way to leave for good?
Maybe the woman he’d run away with, the anonymous waitress, had been there, hiding in the distance and waiting to steal a kiss while Maureen tossed popcorn to the monkeys. Was that the reason for the zoo, secret meetings in the guise of a father-daughter outing? No, the other woman hadn’t been there. Maureen couldn’t remember her father, at least at the zoo, ever leaving her side for a moment. How hard would it be, though, for two wily adults to fool a little girl? But no matter how she framed it, and she’d tried before, over the years, Maureen couldn’t buy into that scenario. She wished she could. Remembering him would hurt less if another woman had been lurking around. Because then Maureen wouldn’t have had to wrestle the contradiction of her father acting so often like he loved his daughter, only one day to vanish into thin air. If her father had used her for cover, she could straight-up hate him. Maybe living with that wouldn’t be easier, but it would be a lot less complicated.
Maureen let loose a sigh, fogging the window. She had told Waters that the peacocks had been her favorite part of the zoo, and that was true. Shimmering and strutting free over the grounds, their arrogant sapphire heads held high, the blue birds appeared like royalty to her. When her father had explained that only the boy peacocks wore fancy plumage and that the girl birds were the dull brown hens hiding in the trees, Maureen flat-out refused to believe him. Girls always dressed up, especially with boys around. Everyone knew that. Didn’t she have blue ribbons in her hair, right then, especially for him? Her father said the strangest things sometimes. He had never shared her interest in the birds anyway. He never stood on one leg with her in imitation of the flamingos, never chattered with her to the parakeets. He never once shared her awe at the golden-eyed owl, never ached like she did for just one glance from those huge, serious, burning eyes.
The reptile house. The snakes. That was what her father liked best.
He could stare forever, it seemed, his restless fingers jingling the change in his pockets, at the motionless snakes in their glass boxes. She hated the dark and smelly reptile house. The snakes didn’t scare her, they bored her silly. They never moved. Ever. You couldn’t tell if they were even alive. Unless you looked real close at their eyes, you couldn’t tell they were any different from the cheap imitations on sale in the gift shop. Whether wound in a tight coil or draped in lazy loops over a bare branch, those damn snakes never moved an inch. What the hell had her father been looking at? The same snakes in the same glass boxes, every time.
Now, eighteen years later, draped over the back of the couch, her legs coiled beneath her as she gazed out the window, Maureen knew what her father had seen in those glass boxes. He’d seen himself, and the similarity didn’t end with living in a box. She knew that, like her father, had one of those pythons or boas conjured the energy to make a break for it, he would’ve left his mate and offspring behind as he slithered away under the door. Maureen figured both she and her mother should’ve spent more time looking into her father’s eyes. Maybe one of them would’ve spotted him for the fake he was.
Glancing over her shoulder, watching and listening for her mother, Maureen yawned, wondering if she should go back to bed. It might be nice to fall asleep quietly for once, she thought, and enjoy a slow, soft descent, instead of passing out as if falling off a cliff. She settled her chin on her arms and resumed watching the cop car. No. No more sleep.
An hour earlier, she’d shot awake in her bed, gasping for breath, frightened awake by her phone buzzing like a wasp on her nightstand. It took her a full minute to remember where she was, and why. Catching her breath, phone clutched to her chest, she lay still for a while, listening to the dead silence of her mother’s house. Her own apartment was never quiet, a pipe, a door, a floorboard always pinging or groaning or creaking, as if the building were uncomfortable on its cramped square of land. The house on Bovanizer Street, however, had settled into its bones long ago.
When her senses had returned, she’d checked the call. Unknown number. Ghost digits on the screen. A simple text message waited, a command from Sebastian: don’t ignore me.
Maureen dressed in pajama bottoms and one of her mother’s old sweatshirts. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth hard, scrubbing away the taste of wine and cigarettes in her mouth. She avoided the mirror, focusing on the water rushing from the tap and swirling down the drain. Headed for the living room, she realized she felt more alert and rested than she had in days.
Now, after an hour of riding her spinning thoughts, she was weary again. She picked up her phone off the windowsill. Should she call Waters? And what good would calling him do? Waters was NYPD, not FBI or CIA. He wasn’t sitting at a computer running taps and accessing phone records. He wasn’t triangulating cell towers with satellite data or some shit like that. Maureen half hoped that Waters had given up on her, that instead of stalking the streets, he was home in bed. He certainly needed the rest. She watched her bodyguards. I’d make a good cop, she thought. I’m smart. I like long hours. I’m not afraid of the night shift. I can smell bullshit before it turns the corner. I have no life to come between me and my work.
She pulled up her sleeves and flexed her fingers into and out of fists, watching the muscles of her hands and wrists and forearms tense and release. Sure I only weigh a hundred pounds or so, she thought, but it’s a tough, hard hundred. The academy would add weight, put on more muscle. Her size might come in handy. The uniform wouldn’t stop men big and small alike from underestimating her, from making the mistake of letting their gua
rd down. She pulled her arms back into her sleeves and narrowed her eyes. Let his guard down one more time, that’s what we need Sebastian to do. Even if he is much bigger than I am, Maureen thought, he’s no better, no braver, and he’s got a lot more to lose. And he knows it. Waters was right; Sebastian feared her.
Even as a vice cop he had been a coward, preying on the frightened and the compromised. Despite his current status, despite his future prospects, Sebastian hadn’t changed since those days in Brooklyn. He’d only gotten better at using masks, at hiding his true nature.
Maureen tilted her head at her own reflection in the window, making fists again inside her sleeves. She thought of Dennis and Tanya, the break-in, Danielle Price. She thought of her mother asleep in her room, of John and Molly asleep in their bed. She thought of Molly’s gun. How much motivation did she need? She picked up the phone, called the unknown number. Sebastian answered on the first ring. He’d been waiting, the phone by his side. He wanted an end as badly as she did.
“Hello, Maureen,” he said. “You’re up late.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“That makes two of us,” Sebastian said. “You know what I’ve been thinking about? I’ve been wondering how many dead girls it’s gonna take before you get the fucking point. You got some kind of mental dyslexia? Everything I tell you, you do the opposite. A fucking ballbreaker, that’s what you are.”
And you are a fucking animal, Maureen thought. But she didn’t say it. She needed to keep him on the line, to learn what she could. “You’re talking about Tanya, aren’t you? You did that. You killed her.”
“Me? I’m the one who fed her pills all those years?” Sebastian asked. “I’m the one who tried talking her into betraying the people she trusted? That was me? Tanya always was half outta her mind, but if anyone pushed her the rest of the way, I’m guessing it was you, don’t you think?”
Maureen looked out at the cops. She should be out in the street, having this conversation on speakerphone. The cops outside, they’d be Waters’s handpicked guys. They would know who she was dealing with and why. They’d be on her side. She got up from the couch.
“Such a beautiful girl,” Sebastian said. “Such a waste. And Dennis. One of the nicest guys I ever met, if a touch naïve, and look what happened to him. You’re like a little redheaded angel of death. How do you live with yourself?”
Sebastian danced around killing Tanya and Dennis, but she could get him to give up something. She headed down the stairs. She had to keep him talking and get outside so the cops could listen as he did it. She reached for the doorknob.
“There are men outside your house in a car,” Sebastian said. “You think they’re cops.” Maureen froze, her hand halfway to the doorknob. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe they are.” Maureen pressed her hand, then her forehead, against the cold front door. “But maybe they work for me and I put them there. Or maybe they are real live cops and they work for me anyway. You just never know with me. It’s part of my charm.”
Maureen leaned her shoulder against the door. Motherfucker. In her ear, she could hear the scratching of Sebastian’s fingers working his goatee, the sound an insect inside her head.
“You can’t fight everyone and everything forever,” he said. “You just can’t.”
Maureen moved her hand back to the doorknob. Forget your fear and think. Don’t play his head games. She pulled the door open. She looked at the houses on her block. Not a single light. Everyone’s shades and curtains were drawn. Amber’s beat-up old K-car sat in the driveway not ten feet away. Should she make a run for it in the car? Would the guys across the street, whoever they worked for, chase her? If they did, where would she lead them? When she’d seen the car out front upon waking, she’d assumed they were Waters’s men but she didn’t know for sure. Her eyes flew again over her street, from car to car, house to house. Driveways, stoops, porches, garages, windows, rooftops. So many shadows, so many dark places, large and small, for someone to hide, for someone to drag her away, one hand over her mouth, the other around her throat.
“Stop looking,” Sebastian said. “Stop looking for that line I won’t cross. It doesn’t exist.”
Across the street, one of the men had noticed her at the door and was getting out of the car. Sebastian could be bluffing. He could be playing on her fear. She was so sick of being afraid. He had to know that. So was he trying to goad her into a mistake? To force her out the door, make her so angry that she walked right into his arms? Maureen stared at the man. He wore a long dark coat over a suit. He stood beside his car, his hand atop the open door. She tried to read his face. Blank. Expressionless. Cop or criminal or both? She couldn’t tell. She bit her front teeth into her tongue. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t take the gamble.
Maureen raised her hand and waved. She forced her mouth into her best thanks-for-the-dollar-tip smile. The man waved back and eased into his car, watching Maureen over his shoulder. She closed the front door.
“Go to a front window,” Sebastian said. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”
Maureen pounded back up the stairs. She crossed the living room, stepped up onto the couch. Was he watching her, watching the house? One way to find out. With her free hand, she pressed her middle finger to the window, hissing through her teeth. “Can you see this, motherfucker?”
Sebastian laughed. “I’m not even in the state, but I’m sure whatever you’re doing is very impressive. Now, pay attention to the street. I’m tied up tonight, but when I call in the morning, you better answer.” Before she could respond, he hung up.
Maureen dropped to her knees on the couch, her eyes scanning the windows, rooftops, and cars of her block, slower this time. Was he somewhere close? She stared down at the car. He could be right there in the backseat. Or he could be in another state like he’d said. She had no way of knowing. He talked like he was looking in the window, but he’d really said nothing specific, about her or about the house. Could’ve been coincidence that he’d caught her at the front door. And it was no great leap to figure that Maureen and Amber had been placed under protective custody, unless of course Sebastian knew the men outside because he had sent them. Here I am, right back, Maureen thought, to thinking exactly like he wants me to. How did I get so paranoid and so predictable?
God, I was easy. I barely even put up a fight.
All she’d wanted last Friday night was to make some extra cash to pay her bills. She was a good woman trying to do good things. Out in the street, the mystery man in the driver’s seat waved up at her. She lifted her hand in reply. What’s the sign language, she wondered, for we’re all totally fucked?
Then the headlights came on, followed by the siren lights in the dash and the rear window, and the car rolled away from the curb. Cops after all. Maureen’s jaw dropped. What the fuck? She ran down the stairs and through the front door, jogging out into the middle of the street. She stared in disbelief, the wind whipping through her thin cotton pajama bottoms, her hands and her bare feet stinging in the cold. The car sped up the street and made a hard right turn onto Amboy Road at the corner.
Maureen ran back inside and grabbed her phone, dialed Waters. Waiting out the rings, she could hear her mother stirring in the back bedroom. She reached Waters’s voice mail, hung up, and tried again. She wasn’t into waiting for a callback. The toilet flushed in her mother’s bathroom. Maureen hoped nature’s call was what had Amber awake and that she’d go back to bed. The detective’s phone kept ringing. Finally: “Detective Waters.”
“Where the fuck are my cops going?” Maureen said, just above a whisper. She needed to keep this from her mom. “My cops are gone. They were my cops, right? Where are you?”
“Maureen?”
She could hear traffic in the background, voices. Waters was on the street somewhere, out of his car. She hoped he was close. “I just got off the phone with Sebastian.”
“Wait, what? I can’t hear you.” A long pause. “Calm down. I’m sorry, hang on a minute.�
�� Muffled voices, the slam of a car door. He came back. “I’m at a crime scene. We had a shooting in your neighborhood, at the Gulf station. Your guys got called to it.” He let loose a long sigh. “It’s night watch, we’re short-handed.”
Maureen fought to stay calm. Panic was exactly what Sebastian wanted. No sign of her mom. She stared out the window at the empty parking space the cops had left.
“I’ll send a patrol car over,” Waters said. “Maybe I can scare up a second cruiser, take a look around the neighborhood. I’ll be over myself as soon as I can. Sit tight.”
“What’s going on? Who are you talking to?”
Maureen turned to see her mother, housecoat clutched in one hand over her chest, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. There was a sharp edge in Amber’s voice. Maureen couldn’t tell if it was fear or aggravation. The living room was too dark for her to see her mother’s face. Lock the doors and cross your fingers, Maureen thought. Fuck that. Let Waters babysit her mom. Maureen had to move.
“You sit tight,” Maureen told Waters. “And keep your cruiser. I’m coming to see you.”
She closed her phone without waiting for his answer, stashing it behind her back as if hiding it would make lying to her mother easier. “Mom, I need to go see Detective Waters. That was him on the phone. There’s been a break in the case.” Maureen winced at her own cop-speak cliché. She hoped her mom’s faith in TV crime dramas held true. “Can I borrow the car?”
Amber waited to answer, making Maureen squirm. There has to be one time, Maureen thought, a single time when I told her the truth about where I was going in the middle of the night. Forget those other times, Mom. Remember that one time I was honest. Think of me. Don’t think of Dad. “I’ll be back in no time. I swear.”
“The keys are by the door,” Amber said. She switched the kitchen lights on and turned her back to her daughter. Maureen walked to the kitchen. She watched as Amber disassembled the coffeemaker, getting it ready to brew a fresh pot. “I’ll be waiting up.”
The Devil She Knows Page 27