Crocus

by Amy Lane

  “Did you keep the greenhouse going?” Larx asked, thinking of poor Berto, pulling the tatters of his safety around him in the house that night.

  “Yeah,” Eamon said. “I went in after cleanup—Tane asked me to. That kid—he’s going to need a lot of help. He was sort of fragile to begin with, you know?”

  Larx sighed and tilted his head back. “I do now. I didn’t before. I… I hadn’t met Jaime before Monday. Without Aaron’s call, I wouldn’t have known him. Wouldn’t have known Candace either. Just luck.” God. “If I’d been their teacher—”

  “You wouldn’t have been Isaiah and Kellan’s when they needed you. Don’t go second-guessing yourself, Mr. Larkin. I can tell you the one thing I know for sure about your place in all this.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wouldn’t have had Nobili in my car looking for a missing teenager if I told him there was money under the seat.” Nobili—Larx’s predecessor—seemed remarkably unlamented, and not just by staff. “He wouldn’t have called that kid to his office in the first place—and he damned sure wouldn’t have been a friend to Jaime or Berto. You just keep on doing what you’re doing. Like I said—law enforcement isn’t what’s gonna unfuck the world.”

  It was all he had.

  Together they got out of the car, zipping up their coats and pulling on their gloves for the trip from the SUV, past the two cold troopers doing watch in the driveway, to the front door.

  The thin woman with hurriedly twisted dyed pink hair and dead eyes did not look happy to see them.

  “Did you people kill my husband now?”

  “I don’t know,” Larx snapped. “Has he molested any more fourteen-year-old girls?”

  Candace Furman’s mother gaped at him. “What in the hell—?”

  Larx scowled at her but spoke to Eamon. “You didn’t tell her? Nobody told her what this was about?”

  Eamon shook his head. “No, sir. We were waiting for CPS—and they’re on their way—but, well, officers in the hospital, dead racists with guns, and snow.”

  Larx took a deep breath and tried some compassion. “Do you care about your daughter, ma’am? Even a little? Because we’re trying to find her, and at this point, knowing whether she had enough money for a bus ticket or a train ticket could mean all the difference in the world.”

  “My husband will find her,” Mrs. Furman replied, and Larx tried hard to remember what her name was from the file he’d read.

  “That’s our biggest fear, frankly,” Larx said, dropping his voice. “May we come in?”

  The woman regarded them both with unfriendly eyes. “That thug killed my stepson,” she snarled. “Why is he even still working?”

  “Because he’s an elected official, ma’am. Unless there’s an investigation by the US Marshals, he’s not obligated to turn in his gun or any of the things you see on television. Now, your stepson shot an officer—and damned near shot me, since I was sitting outside in the police unit. The officer made it because he was wearing a vest, but your stepson opened fire on two peace officers in close quarters. There was no good way out of that situation the minute he pulled the gun. We are sorry for your loss, but your daughter is out there—aren’t you the least bit afraid for her?”

  Marie. That was it. Marie Furman dropped her eyes to the brown-haired blue-eyed girl standing a little behind her. The girl was small-boned, like her mother, and sported the same narrowed eyes and tightened lips. Larx remembered his and Eamon’s conversation about one daughter getting the good grades and the other acting out.

  Larx could see rebellion in the young one—he thought they could work with that.

  “God will help us find my baby if she’s meant to be found,” Marie Furman muttered.

  “But maybe God wants you to help!” Larx protested. “Lady—your daughter is afraid and in pain—”

  “Then she shouldn’t have run away!”

  Larx shook his head. “Sometimes there are bigger things out there than we know of. Sometimes we think we’re looking at our kid, and it’s really like looking at a seal in the ocean. The seal is cute, and it’s familiar, and underneath there’s frickin’ Jaws ready to come up and eat it. Your kid’s shark was….” This was going to be rough. “Ma’am, she had all the behaviors of a victim of sexual assault—”

  “Are you calling my daughter a slut? My baby does not get nasty like that!”

  “We don’t think it’s her idea, Mrs. Furman. We think she was forced. She had all the behaviors—in fact, if last night hadn’t happened, we would be having a very different conversation today. Your daughter was planning to run away. Do you understand that? The only way she could have survived last night’s storm is that she was prepared. She was wearing all-weather gear, flannel long johns, and knew how to build a snow shelter—”

  “She was just a little girl—”

  “She taught me how,” Shelley blurted.

  Larx smiled at her. Thank God. “Yeah? Was it warm?”

  “It was weird. She insulated it—like, an old sleeping bag on the bottom and a small fire—like those fires in a can? She used a cat food can and grease. Wanted me to play in the shelter like a fort.”

  Larx and Eamon exchanged a hopeful glance. “Warmer than you expected, wasn’t it?” Larx suggested.

  “Yeah.” Shelley moved closer, looking at him earnestly. “She didn’t like Braun. Said his breath smelled like the cat box.”

  “What about your stepdad?” Larx asked. Above them, in grown-up land, Mrs. Furman made a sound of protest, but Eamon cleared his throat.

  “He spanks us.” Shelley’s voice dripped resentment. “Sometimes with sticks. But Braun—he’s who she didn’t like the most. Told me to stay away from him. She’d find a way to hide us.” Shelley sent her mother a fierce look. “I told her I’d stay safe until she came back.”

  Marie Furman backhanded her, rattlesnake quick, and Shelley went flying backward. Larx went to pick her up, and Eamon snapped cuffs on Marie before the little girl could even stand.

  “She’s lying,” Marie Furman snarled, struggling against the restraints. “Her stepbrother was a good man, like his father!”

  Larx grunted. “I’m done with you,” he said, high on hope and fury. “Eamon, can we hand her off to the patrol car and get CPS here if we have to teleport them? I’ll stay here with Shelley—I have some more questions I want to ask.”

  “Where are we going?” Shelley asked, wiping the blood off her split lip with more poise than Larx would have had.

  “Well, that’s going to depend on Child Protective Services when they get here,” Larx told her frankly.

  “So we don’t have to live here anymore?” Hope and fury—Larx recognized the sound.

  “No. But we still need to find your sister.” They could find her, he thought, able to breathe for just that moment. She’d prepared—even better than Larx had hoped for. “Shelley, while Sheriff Mills gets your mother to the nice police officers waiting outside, do you think you could show me your sister’s room?”

  “Wait until I get back inside,” Eamon cautioned. “You need to stay in this room—understand me, Larx?”

  Larx nodded. “How about we sit at the table. Shelley, go fetch me some crayons and some paper, okay?”

  Shelley ran off even as her mother protested.

  “You can’t stay in here with her! Aren’t you that gay teacher? You’re not allowed near little kids!”

  “I’m a principal, Mrs. Furman. Being near kids is my job. And you just—” He shook his head. “How could you just do that?” he asked, baffled. “That’s your daughter—how does she even respect you if you just haul off and hit her like that?”

  Mrs. Furman’s gaze was flat and unfriendly, and Eamon tugged her toward the door. “Don’t ask,” Eamon said softly. “You can’t fix this, Larx. Work on getting information from the little girl.”

  Shelley came running back in, paper and crayons in hand, and Eamon took Mrs. Furman out to the chilly police car.

  Lar
x realized his hands were shaking. Maybe they’d never stopped since that morning outside Aaron’s room.

  He sank into a solidly built chair at what looked to be a new kitchen table and stared at the new tile floor. One of those slate floors—he sort of dreamed about them sometimes, because his floor had a hole in the tile that grew a little wider every day. He hid it meticulously with a rug—Aaron and Kirby had been moving Kirby’s bedroom set in before they kicked the rug aside and saw it. Aaron had cheerfully put “tile floor” on his list of spring things to do, and when Larx had rolled his eyes and said, “Hello, kids in college!” Aaron had reminded him that they were splitting expenses now.

  And then he’d kissed Larx while the kids had finished moving Kirby in.

  For this quiet moment, in a stranger’s cold kitchen, a yawning pit opened up at Larx’s feet, and he fought to stay on the edge before it.

  “Are you really dirty?”

  Larx pulled his attention to Shelley, who stood uncertainly at the entrance to the kitchen.

  “I sort of need a shower,” he confessed. “But I spent last night in the hospital because someone I cared for got hurt. Why? Can you smell me from there?”

  Shelley giggled. “No—because my mom said you were dirty. Nasty dirty. Like what Braun did in Candace’s room.”

  Larx swallowed. “I’d never do those things to a child,” he said, meaning it with all his heart. “Somebody should have protected Candace. That wasn’t right.”

  Shelley looked away. “Mom said she was lying. All women lied, and Candace was wicked like all women.”

  “That’s not true,” Larx said reflexively. Part of him was thinking about his daughters, about Aaron’s daughters—about how even when they weren’t perfect, they were as honest as they could be—but only part. Part of him was remembering his sister, when she’d gone into remission, telling him that there were no guarantees. Most of him was appalled because he knew this doctrine, had heard a variation of it from students in his classes—and he was one person, one man, and he was helpless to combat it.

  “Mom says so,” Shelley said, eyes narrowed. Oh yes. The rebel. The only thing that had ever worked with Larx himself had been pure reason.

  “Is that the same mother who just backhanded you?” Larx asked bluntly. “Because she’s the one in a police car, not you.”

  Shelley’s lower lip wobbled. “She… she said we had to do anything to keep Roy. Roy bought this house, he had a job, he bought us food. So we couldn’t lie to make him mad, and… and she said Candace lied.”

  Crap. “Do you think Candace lied?”

  Shelley shook her head, eyes closed. “Braun came into our room a lot. Candace told me to pretend I was asleep. He… he made her cry.”

  She looked ready to break—and Larx didn’t blame her. “Here,” he said gently. “You brought crayons. Come sit with me. Let’s color and talk. You sit across the table there, and I’ll sit here, okay?”

  He wasn’t a big man—five foot nine, maybe. But Shelley wasn’t a big girl either, and he was pretty sure all men would be threatening at this point. She set the crayons in the middle of the table and handed him a piece of paper. He took it and waited for her to pick the first crayon before picking turquoise blue.

  The color of Aaron’s eyes.

  He started coloring the sea.

  “Is that other man going to come back in?” she asked. “The darkie?”

  Larx bit his tongue. Literally. So hard he saw stars. “That’s, uh, not polite. Eamon is black or African American. You can say that.”

  Shelley grunted. “I get afraid I’ll say the wrong one. But you’re right. That’s a word Braun and Roy used.”

  “Well, if you heard them use it, maybe think about words that nice people use. But you may get it wrong. It’ll be hard. Just keep trying.”

  Shelley bit her lip and kept coloring. “So, if I think girls lie just because they’re girls, I should think about Roy saying that when he hit Candace last night?”

  “Yeah,” Larx said. He was using all the blue. He reached out blindly and grabbed the gray and the black. “So it was someone you didn’t like, doing a thing you didn’t like. Maybe his words were bad too.”

  “Huh.” Well, hopefully she would have social workers, foster parents, teachers, someone, who would make her see the world in less awful terms. “So, you’re not dirty, and the cop guy is black, and my sister wasn’t lying.” She looked at her picture—stick figures, doing what, Larx couldn’t see.

  Welp. “That about sums it up,” Larx agreed. “And we’re worried about your sister. Did Roy know Braun was hurt before he left the house?”

  Shelley grabbed a red crayon and started to scribble all over her stick figures. “Yeah. He got mad, said he was going to fix the bitch who lied and got him dead.”

  “‘Bitch’ is another word you might not want to use,” Larx told her, trying not to bang his head against the table.

  Shelley wrinkled her nose and grabbed another crayon. “I really hate coloring,” she said. “I do—and I usually use pens. I’ve got nice pens in my room. But… but I don’t want to go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “The whole house is empty,” she said, sounding like a child for the first time since Larx and Eamon came in. “These were on top. Is Candace okay?”

  Big breath. “I hope so. I got really excited when you told me about how she lit a fire with grease in a can. Is her snow fort in the backyard still?”

  He heard a soft noise at the door and looked up. Eamon walked in quietly and nodded, standing in the hallway and pulling off his stocking cap and gloves while Larx talked.

  “Yeah—it’s out by the big split tree. Do you want to go see it?”

  Larx looked up at Eamon, who sighed and started pulling his gear on again.

  “My friend Sheriff Mills is going to go see it. We don’t need to go out into the yard again. Let’s just sit here and color for a little while, okay?”

  She sighed and put her scribbled-on picture to the side and then pulled a clean piece of paper and started to color again. This time she grabbed a green crayon from Larx’s pile, and he let her. The red and black had been disconcerting, and he was hoping the color choice had been one of convenience, not psychosis.

  “Fine,” she muttered. “Are we going to talk about Candace some more?”

  “Just one more question, then we can talk about anything you want.”

  “I want to talk about my birthday,” she said mutinously. “Mom said we weren’t celebrating our birthdays anymore because Roy said it was too expensive, but I was supposed to get a doll on my birthday, and Candace said she’d try to do that.”

  “She did?” Larx saw his opening. “Dolls cost money. Where would she get money for that?”

  “Her friend,” Shelley said casually. “Mom said we needed to keep to ourselves so we could come home and study the Bible. Do you study the Bible?” She eyed him with suspicion.

  “Not so much.” Honesty. It had worked for him so far.

  “Good. Some of the stories are fun, but most of the time it’s all about how women lie, and I’m bored with that.” And then, maddeningly, she just kept coloring.

  “So, which friend did she have who was going to give you money for your doll?”

  “A girl in her class. I forget her name. But—” Shelley lowered her voice. “Do you know what she’ll do if she doesn’t get enough?”

  “Not a clue,” Larx whispered back. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “She got a card from Braun’s wallet on Saturday—when he came into her room. She told him she’d scream if he didn’t give it to her, so he did. She told him she needed a… to do a thing. She just kept saying ‘it.’ And he needed to pay for it. So he did. When I asked her what for, she said it was to get me a doll.”

  Shelley smiled benignly. “I would really like a birthday party too, but a doll would sure be nice. One of those firefighter dolls? With the big thing to play on with the elevator and the policema
n friend and the soldier friend—Mom would never let me get one of those.”

  Larx pulled out his phone. “That’s a shame,” he said, thinking fast as he pulled up a website. “I think every little girl deserves the doll of her choice.” He knew those action figures—and this little girl had just given him and Eamon a ginormous clue. Screw new tile, he was getting this kid a doll for her birthday.

  Eamon came in a few minutes later and gave him a look. “CPS is here—should I let them in? Two women.”

  Larx nodded.

  “Shelley? There’s some nice people here who want to take you somewhere safe. They’re women, so we’re going to let them help you pack so you can take your best things and your good clothes with you. Do you want to go start getting your stuff?”

  Shelley looked up at him and smiled and yawned. “Sure. Are they going to feed me? Mom gave me oatmeal for breakfast, but it was a long time ago.”

  “Sure,” he answered, smiling faintly. “It was really nice talking to you, sweetheart. You told me so much good stuff.”

  She shrugged. “You were nice for someone who was supposed to be dirty. I’ll try to not use those words they used anymore. Only people who are nice to me get to give me words.”

  She strode off to her room then, and Larx rubbed his temple with his fingertips.

  “That kid is going to rule the world someday—we need to be really really careful what we teach her in the meantime.”

  Eamon stared after her. “Word. Now tell me what you got.”

  Larx pressed the final key on his phone for PayPal and took a deep breath. “She’s not going to Dogpatch—she’s got her stepbrother’s credit card, and I’m going to take a big leap here, so bear with me.”

  “Shoot,” Eamon said soberly.

  “Braun was abusing her for months—the little girl confirmed that. I have no idea when her mom got married, but it was probably this summer, judging by the girls’ grades and their complete lack of anything of note on their school records. So Mom marries fundamentalist scumbag Roy Furman, and his son moves in on his fourteen-year-old stepsister.”