"He was off the clock," Archer added.
The guy was holding a notebook, not an electronic tablet. There was no truck on the street and no evident delivery in the living room. The blood was too fresh for this to have happened during working hours. Archer looked at the notebook. There was a logo on the top, but he couldn't make it out. There were names written in it, and some of them were starred. Archer looked up to see Josie heading for the stairs.
"You wait for me, Jo," Archer cautioned.
Josie paused half way between the front door and the staircase. Before he could join her, something caught his attention and he veered off toward the kitchen.
"Got another one." Archer poked his head in for a better look at the woman spread-eagled face down on the linoleum.
"Is it her?" Josie asked as she worked her way back toward him.
"Nope. It's a guy. Took one in the back. The shot blew his wig off," Archer said as she joined him.
This man was at least six-four, his feet were huge, and his hands were the size of baseball mitts. Josie couldn't see his face, but she could see the tufts of black hair billowing around his back and shoulders in bizarre contrast to the orange and pink satin backless dress he wore. The skirt had bunched up around his ass. He was an old fashioned kind of guy, preferring a garter and stockings to panty hose. One of his pink pumps was still on, the other rested near the fridge. The kitchen was small, neat and clean. He had been making a dash for the back door, but he didn't have a chance. Not in those heels.
"Poor Billy. God only knows what went on in this place." Josie leaned into Archer. "Let's see if good old mom is still here."
"She's not," Archer said.
He was about to lecture her on disturbing a crime scene, but Josie was already on her way upstairs. He caught up with her and took her arm. He almost lost her a few months ago; he wasn't going to chance it again.
"Me first."
"I thought you were sure she was gone."
"There's sure and there's positive," he reminded her.
Josie fell back to make room for him. The stairs creaked under his weight. Josie tried to avoid the weak spots, but her efforts were futile. A spindle was missing and the railing was cracked. The carpet was threadbare and torn. Above them was a landing packed tight with boxes. The poster that had launched Farrah Fawcett's career hung on the wall above them. The blond bombshell smiled brilliantly, eagerly, innocently, as if she had no idea that the red maillot clinging to her small breast exposed her erect nipple. It was racy stuff for the time. Archer's first thought was that the poster was a collector's item. His second was that the poster was an antique. His third was that there was no room for anyone to hide on the landing, so he moved on, craning to see past the boxes. Josie stepped lightly and joined him.
Alert to the slightest movement, listening for any sound no matter how small, they swept the upstairs. Flanking the narrow hall were two bedrooms: one was dark, and the other was lit. Billy's mom had a thing for sixty-watt bulbs.
Archer motioned toward the closest bedroom, and Josie nodded. He approached the dark room, reached through the door, and found a switch. The light popped on. When he motioned again, Josie followed Archer into a woman's bedroom.
Pink, plastic-coated free weights were in one corner along with an ab exerciser. Clothes were everywhere: on the floor, the bed, on the little wicker table, spilling out of the tiny closet. There was a table that served as a desk. It was piled with magazines: Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and one in a foreign language that Josie didn't recognize. There was a flat screen television facing a waterbed. An unframed poster of a naked man and woman was thumbtacked into the wall like a headboard. The subjects were not professional models and the photo was grainy. The woman in the picture was very pretty and young; the man wasn't that good looking. Josie turned in a tight circle and then nudged the closet door open with her toe. It was packed with cheap clothes and shoes.
"Be back," Archer whispered.
Josie stepped back, squishing a stuffed toy underfoot. Josie picked it up, thinking it was an odd thing for a grown woman to have. She started to pitch it toward the bed, but changed her mind. She didn't want to disturb anything that might keep Billy's mom from getting what she deserved.
"There's not much in Billy's room," Archer was back, keeping the conversation going as if he never left. "His backpack is in there. Some surfing posters. The bed is made. At least his room is nice."
"Too bad he didn't get to use it much," Josie noted.
Archer shrugged as he took out his phone.
"I'll call it in."
Archer never dialed. Josie held up her hand and walked around the far side of the bed. He followed.
"Crap," she muttered.
Archer couldn't have said it better. Lying in an impressive pool of blood on the yellowed linoleum was a nearly naked woman. Long matted hair covered her face. One arm was thrown up and over her head as if she had been trying to crawl away, but the other was pulled behind her, the bone jutting through the skin where it had been broken. There was a wash of blood on the wall, rivulets of blood, pools of blood, streaks of blood. There was so much blood, so much violence, that Josie and Archer both reached the same conclusion at the same time.
"This one was personal." Josie turned away, touching Archer's hand as she did so. "Make the call. I'll go to the hospital to be with Billy. I want to know-"
Before Josie finished her thought, before Archer could remind her they had come in the same car, the woman on the floor moved.
CHAPTER 4
1987
Everyone danced at Teuta's wedding except her parents. It was not unusual for Yilli and his wife not to be at the wedding of their daughter. Tradition had it that the bride's family stayed home to weep for their lost daughter. They had followed tradition exactly. Yilli had even wrapped a bullet in a leaf, handing it to Teuta's husband as he stole her away. It was a symbol of his power over her. The bullet meant that Teuta's father had given her husband the right to kill her if she was not a dutiful wife. Of course, he wouldn't do that. He was a modern and handsome husband who delighted Teuta. The matchmaker had done an exceptional job. Now that there were elections and democracy, Teuta could only imagine what wonders the future held for them. Yet her father, Yilli, was distressed by the turn of fortune. He no longer seemed to care about anything: not his goats, not her mother, not their new world. Then again, he was old now and not much would change for those who lived so far from the towns and villages. Perhaps that was what ailed her father. She was married, and he was old. But Teuta did not think it was so simple.
Just as she was thinking all these things, Teuta's husband cried out with joy. She looked up to see him dancing: arms high in the air, feet moving, grinning as his friends clapped him on the back. He looked happy and when he caught her eye he looked happier still. Teuta left her chair and threw herself into the joyous crowd. Today, tonight, the next days, she would celebrate her marriage. Yilli could wait. They had all the time in the world.
2013
Archer raised the woman's head and held a towel to her throat while Josie went for the phone. It took seconds to give her urgent information to the dispatcher who simultaneously notified the cops and the paramedics. Josie wanted only one thing – to keep this woman alive long enough to find out what happened in this house. Archer was careful to note everything he touched, especially how he handled the woman. He spoke words she might hear but probably couldn't comprehend.
Wait. Hold on. Breathe.
He didn't take his eyes off her when the sirens sounded in the distance.
Here they come now. Here they are. Hold on. Hold on.
That was the last thing Josie heard because she was taking the stairs two at a time before running outside to flag down the responders. The first to arrive were Hermosa PD black and whites, then came an ambulance, and finally a sheriff's investigative unit. Josie advised them about the surviving victim and the dead men and then stood aside. Down
the street she heard a door open. There was probably more than one person along the way who wakened to watch the police cars barrel by.
Archer was with her a second later, sent outside as the sheriff's investigators and cops secured the scene. Those were things he used to do and things he didn't miss. Neither Archer nor Josie speculated about the woman's survival, what Billy knew, or who the victims were. It would be the height of stupidity for an investigator or lawyer to do that, but that didn't stop them from thinking about it.
It was five minutes before Billy's mom was rushed past them to the waiting ambulance, an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth, an IV started. Upstairs, Josie only had an impression of the woman. Cocooned under the sheet, strapped to the gurney, she looked to be the size of a child.
Archer and Josie were interviewed separately, gave their statements coherently, offered contact information, and were released before the bodies of the two men were removed. Archer took Josie home. They kissed one another. Josie grabbed her keys and headed for the hospital. Archer was off to the beach to wait for the town to wake-up, to watch for the man who had banged on Josie's door, to begin doing everything a cop would do but with more speed and greater latitude. Then he would try to piece together the mystery of Billy Zuni's close call with death in a raging ocean. It was eight in the morning when he and Josie parted and eight-thirty when she reached Torrance Memorial Hospital. She was thinking that it was ironic that it took a tragedy to get Billy and his mother under the same roof when she sidestepped an aid, passed the nurses' station, and found room 217.
***
The bed nearest the door was made up and empty; the one near the window was half-hidden behind a grey curtain strung on an elliptical rod. Josie assumed that the sheriff's investigator had arranged this. She couldn't remember his name, but she remembered him. The man had been efficient, unflappable and smart enough to cover his investigatory ass by isolating Billy until he could be interviewed. Thankfully, he hadn't isolated Billy completely. No one had stopped Josie from going in and no one had put Hannah out.
Hannah was curled up in the chair, knees to her chin, a thin blanket pulled up to her shoulders. Her head was turned and her riot of curls covered part of her face, fell over the back of the chair, and cascaded across her shoulders. Her shoes were tucked under the chair, and her bare feet peeked out from under the blanket. A gold toe-ring sparkled even in the flat, filtered light. Josie could just glimpse the black and red ink of the tattoo that snaked from one shoulder and tipped out on the curve of her neck. Of late Hannah had taken to wearing her gold nose ring again. She looked like a warrior woman, a Nubian princess, a fierce young fighter at rest.
Billy, on the other hand, was almost unrecognizable.
He lay still as death in the narrow bed, his face swollen, and his bruises spreading like the rainbow atop an oil slick. His skin was scraped and speckled with dried blood where the rough concrete of the pier pilings had flayed him. An IV dripped into his left arm and his right was in a cast. Machines monitored his heartbeat, his pulse, and his blood pressure. There was a bandage on one side of his head where his hair had been shaved and his head stitched.
Josie looked past the bed and out the window. A child hurt always hit her gut hard. A wounded child never truly healed, and she was living proof. Perhaps if she could see her mother once more, and ask why she had left her only child, Josie might stop hurting. Then again, she might not.
Her lips tipped. She almost laughed at the irony of this situation. All hurtful things began with a mother and all thoughts of mothers led back to her own. But this wasn't about Josie, so she hunkered down next to Hannah and touched her shoulder.
The girl's eyes opened: not lazily because her slumber had been disturbed, not gently because she was drawn out of a pleasant dream, but narrowly and warily. Josie could only imagine what Hannah saw in that millisecond before recognition: dark houses, Fritz Rayburn's sadistic face, her own mother's resentful one, Daniel Young's psychotic visage, a gun, a knife, the flame that would maim her, wound her, kill her. Then it didn't matter because in the next second she recognized a friend and those flint edged eyes softened.
"Hey," Josie whispered.
"Hi." Hannah pushed herself upright, pulling the blanket with her. It was always too cold in a hospital room. "You went home."
Josie looked down at her clothes. She forgot that the last time Hannah had seen her she was half-naked on the beach. So much had happened since then, clothes were the last things Josie noticed. Hannah, though, made noting change a high art. She knew a safe harbor when she saw it, and a corner when she was boxed into it. This room was neither.
Josie twisted a lock of the girl's hair, more to have something to do so she wouldn't stare at the blanket that was jumping rhythmically as Hannah fidgeted beneath it. The girl's eyes darted to the doorway.
"I'm alone," Josie assured her.
"I thought Archer would come at least."
"He had some things to take care of."
"You talked to Billy's mom, didn't you? Does she care at all?" Hannah's chin quivered. "He could have died out there."
"But he didn't." Josie wanted to choose the right time to tell her what they found in Billy's house, so she gestured toward the bed and dodged Hannah's question. "How's he doing?"
Hannah eyed Billy. "He seems okay. He stopped talking."
"What was he saying?"
"Nothing I could make out." Hannah took a deep breath, hesitated, and finally confessed: "I told them I was his sister. Otherwise they wouldn't let me in. Just so you know."
Josie bit her lip as she tried to decide whether to congratulate Hannah on her inventiveness or take her to task for lying. She decided congratulations were in order. Hannah's lie kept her close to Billy and a relationship wasn't that farfetched. There were markers for every other genetic helix in Hannah's DNA, so why not a little Viking or whatever Billy was.
"They can't wake him up, Josie."
"It's shock. It may be a few days before he comes to." Josie put her hand on Hannah's arm but her touch didn't stop the drumming of Hannah's fingers as her agitation grew.
One. . .two. . .three.
Obsessive. Compulsive. Poor Hannah. She had almost healed – until now.
"Please, say his mom is coming." The girl pleaded, keeping her eyes on the unconscious boy.
"No, she isn't."
Hannah unclasped her hands. One snaked from under the covers just long enough to flip her hair over her shoulder. Her jaw angled into a hard angry line and then relaxed. She was trying so hard to control her instincts.
"I knew she wouldn't, but we're here. So it's okay."
"It's not what you think, Hannah-"
Josie stopped talking. Her radar was up. They were not alone. Keeping her hand on the girl's shoulder, she stood and faced the person hovering in the doorway. He smiled. He said:
"I hope I'm not intruding."
CHAPTER 5
1991
Teuta smiled at her little girl who smiled back at her mother. Though she was but one year, she was old in her soul so it was nice to see her smile. She was a beautiful little thing with dark hair and full cheeks. But the man who was to take the picture of the little girl was not happy. No Shqiptare smiled for a picture, not even a little girl. This would be the first Teuta's parents had seen of their grandchild, so it must be perfect.
Teuta wagged a finger, and the little girl's lips closed, and her big serious eyes looked even more somber. Pleased, the photographer took the picture and the little girl raised her hands to her mother. Teuta swooped in to pick her up. She and her handsome young husband had made a good girl who would grow beautiful and she would marry well. She would have beautiful children to be Teuta's grandchildren. That is how life would go, Teuta was sure.
She paid the photographer but counted her lek carefully. Her husband had invested as everyone had and soon they would be rich. Until then, she must be cautious. That, the bankers and the gove
rnment told them all, was how things worked when there was freedom.
2013
The detective walked into the room like a visiting relative reluctant to disturb the family but having no intention of leaving after making the effort to get there. He nodded to Josie and asked how she was holding up. She had barely answered when he turned his attention to Hannah. She was a beautiful and interesting girl, and it hadn't escaped his notice that she had tracked him as if he was a hunter and she his prey.
"I'm Detective Montoya. I'm here to help Billy."
Mike's introduction was accompanied by a smile so genuine it usually disarmed victims and criminals alike. Hannah was neither, and she was cautious. She looked him square in the eye, considered the hand he offered, and decided to take it. Then Mike Montoya made a mistake. He put his other hand on top of hers. She snatched hers back and drew the blanket over her arms.
"I'm surprised you're here." Josie caught his attention before he could say anything more. He turned smoothly.
"My team is still working." He looked over his shoulder at Billy. "I understand he dodged a bullet. No major internal injuries. A concussion, but so far no swelling on the brain."
"Then you know more than we do." Josie's eyes flicked to Hannah. "This is Hannah Sheraton, my ward. She goes to school with Billy. She came with him in the ambulance."
"And I assume you just got here?" Mike asked.
Josie picked up on the prompt. "I did. Hannah and I haven't had a chance to talk about what happened."
Mike nodded. He would let Josie Bates break the news of what happened in Billy's house to Hannah. There were other things he wanted to know, but Hannah had her own agenda.
"Billy didn't do anything. What happened was an accident." She was spoiling for a fight. She snapped those big, green eyes of hers at Mike and then Josie. "I know how this goes. You think Billy did something wrong or else you wouldn't be here. But sometimes shit just happens and it isn't against the law. It happens because–"
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