by Sean Oliver
Everything O’Malley was learning about Trisha indicated she was damn near invisible, and that was conflicting with Deanna’s claims of rampant bullying. The girl worked, went home, and hung out with her friend. Why would an army of teachers align against her? But Deanna had seemed pretty credible—even gave up her lunch hour to tell him her friend had her computer stolen at school.
“You find the laptop?” O’Malley asked.
George didn’t answer. He looked puzzled.
“Didn’t your security guard take a report about a missing laptop?”
“I think I did get a report at some point, but to be honest I didn’t even look at the teacher’s name. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I probably signed it and filed it with ten other papers Mariana was shoving at me. Lot goes on in a day here.”
O’Malley nodded and flipped down the top sheet of the pad and slid his pen into his jacket pocket.
“So if I told you someone was bullying Trisha,” the detective began, “who would your mind go to first?” George looked down at his desk and took some time to think.
He shuddered, then rubbed at the back of his neck.
“Please, have a seat,” the detective said, gesturing to the last row in the auditorium.
“I’ll stand, thank you,” said Security Officer Arthur Moore, with more than a touch of attitude. He crossed his arms and stood tall.
“Okay then, we’ll both stand here. I wanted to ask about your interactions with Trisha McAllister before she disappeared.”
“I barely know her, barely know anyone here. This ain’t my building. I don’t like it, and I wanna get on back downtown.”
“You don’t like the people here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“How is it different here compared to a downtown school?”
“Ain’t as freaky down there. I been around the district. People in here just freaky.”
“What does freaky mean?”
“Weird.” He watched O’Malley, who wasn’t writing on his pad, though it was in his hands.
“For example?” He left it in Moore’s court. The guard sighed and shifted, arms still crossed. He looked at O’Malley and leaned in closer to him as voices from the hallways bled into the auditorium.
“There are people in this building that act like zombies. Like some Stepford shit.”
“Really? McAllister, too?” Moore leaned back and put a finger to his lips, pondering.
“Actually, no,” Moore said. “She was not.”
“So what was her problem?”
“Didn’t say she had one.”
“You didn’t?”
“I did not.”
“But you had one?”
“A what?”
“A problem.”
“With that missing girl? What are you trying to say?” He’d gotten loud. Moore’s voice was as big as his frame and it boomed off the walls of the empty auditorium. He took a moment to relax his posture, which had begun to lean into the detective during their exchange.
“Would you like a cup of water?” O’Malley asked.
“Absolutely not.” Moore looked around the room, beyond the detective. He wandered away from the conversation and from O’Malley, cutting him off. “Talking to me like I’m some perp,” he said as much to himself as to O’Malley.
“Mister Moore, as someone charged with the safety of others, you understand that this case is serious enough to look past personal offenses in the course of the investigation. We look at everything, talk to everyone. I thought you’d be the one person I’d interview that would stand beside me in that mission.”
Moore stopped pacing and turned to the detective.
“Then talk to me like I’m beside you.” He was firm, but not loud. O’Malley nodded.
“Can we start again?” the detective said. Moore took a long, hard look. “And you can tell me what happened at the Marion precinct thirty years ago.” O’Malley took a chance with that one. He knew that could potentially shut Moore down. He watched the security guard who stood frozen, then looked away.
Moore nodded to himself, then to O’Malley.
“Thought I’d do the twenty-five and then retire. It was the same city I grew up in. I’d serve it, then be done—not even fifty by that point. That was the plan.” Moore talked and O’Malley listened as the two strolled through the school courtyard, letting some sun temper the winter freeze. They were alone inside the fenced-in, concrete play area. A baseball diamond was spray painted on the ground, some room numbers around the perimeter, too. But the courtyard could have been used for outdoor recess or as a big parking lot. It was just cold, hard ground with some paint on it.
“I was fooling myself thinking I could do the job with so many roots out there,” he continued. “Pretty soon I was locking up boys I went to school with. Boys I knew came up in the worst way. Boys I seen abused and broken. My family began to look at me different. I thought I could make a difference, but all my people just seen me as different.”
The two stopped at the chain link gate at the end of the concrete enclosure. O’Malley turned and leaned against it, allowing the sunshine to land on his face and warm him. Moore stopped beside him and looked the other way, through the fence out to the street. Two- and three-story houses in varying conditions ran the length of the block. A corner bodega with faded stock images of foods in the window sat on the ground floor of a four-story apartment building. It was cold out; the streets were empty at midmorning.
“All was not well even before Rogelio Montgomery,” Moore said. He looked at O’Malley. “Suppose that’s who you meant when you asked me about Marion precinct.”
“I don’t know any details,” O’Malley said. “Just saw in the paperwork that you resigned. Figured there was a story if a kid quit the force after just five years. In this city, anyway.”
“Yeah, there is a story.” Moore turned and leaned next to the detective. He looked out across the courtyard, back toward the school. “That story’s name was Rogelio Montgomery. Bad dude. Pushed a lot of dope out of the Riverview Gardens projects, back then when those developments went vertical, not horizontal like today. Four brick buildings, each twenty stories of terror.”
“Pulled my fair share of bodies out of them,” O’Malley said.
“I’m sure you did. So did I, and one of ’em was my little cousin, Antwan. Young man had the misfortune to be living with his mama in those projects, and the greater misfortune to take the stairway down to play ball while Mr. Montgomery was sticking up a couple of dope-sick skells, taking their last twenty bucks off them.”
“Your cousin tried to interfere?”
“Not even, man. Boy was probably scared shitless—turned and ran back up the stairs. Montgomery put two in his back. Died facedown in a pool of his own blood on the landing to floor number five. Piece of shit even took his basketball.”
“That’s tough.”
“What was tougher was being on the arrest team when it came time to lock him up.”
“They shouldn’t have sent you, Arthur.”
“I didn’t tell them Antwan was related, for many reasons. Besides, how many relatives did local kids have in the city? We all had to work cases that involved family, if your family was big enough.”
“True. We did.”
Moore looked down at his shoes and shifted before the final stanza. He drew a deep breath, then looked back up and out.
“By the time Montgomery was cuffed and back at the precinct, I already had it with this gig. I loved where I grew up. Chill Town was in my blood. My family was all around me. Danced in the streets next to the big boys’ boom boxes when I was a little kid. Sugar Hill Gang, man.”
He looked to O’Malley, who smiled and gave a little nod but said nothing. He left the floor for Moore, who turned back to the big school and gestured toward it with his chin.
“Loved my schools. Played for them on the football fields. It was my entire world. And I went to work and seen another side of this place. Was like unwrapping some
thing tied to my heart and finding it rotten on the inside. Seeing Antwan like that did something to me. Seeing five Antwans a month clinched it. But I held out for this one, last collar. I wanted to be in on it. And when we finally got him back to the precinct, I walked up to my desk sergeant, tossed him my badge, slid my PR-24 out of my belt, and beat that Rogelio motherfucker senseless with the stick. My boys let me have a minute or so before they broke it up.”
O’Malley looked over at him. Moore’s voice had gone so low it was just a gravely whisper.
“That’s the day my life’s plans officially ended.”
“Any charges?” Moore shook his head.
“Nah, man. Brass found out Antwan was family. They held the door open. Let me walk out, never come back. That was the deal.” He looked over to O’Malley. “Hard for me not to clench my fists sometimes, Detective.”
O’Malley kept his eyes on Moore. He wasn’t getting emotional. This all seemed to be a pain long accepted. The security guard straightened up and nodded at O’Malley.
“Let’s find this girl,” Moore said.
THIRTY-TWO
DEANNA LEFT THE sports club a little after 7:30 p.m. She did as much as she could to stay busy after school that day and find the words to describe the situation surrounding Trisha’s laptop to Jared. Finding the words didn’t really go as planned, but she accomplished a big part of the mission, which was avoiding Jared. She’d given herself the day and evening, but she wasn’t coming up with much that didn’t sound accusatory. Maybe George was covering someone’s ass. Maybe he stashed the computer and hoped the issue of its theft would just go away. Or maybe he was going to turn it over to police.
But he didn’t. And the possibility of his hoping anything regarding Trisha would just ‘go away’ was chilling. Plus, she’d asked him point blank, and he’d said he didn’t know anything about the theft. Why was he lying? And, most disturbingly, why did he have that laptop? Deanna could still see it—shoved in that pile of folders, concealed.
The world was upside down and she didn’t know what to tell Jared. Speechless was not a position Deanna Anastas usually assumed, but for that day.
She got to her car and dropped her duffel bag in the trunk. She got in and pulled out of the lot and onto busy Columbus Parkway as she began rehearsing her delivery of this news to Jared. He texted that he was home with cartons of Pad Thai for both of them, but she would arrive in about five minutes with zero appetite. This night was going to be hard.
Lorenzo had the Smoke in him all day long. It was in and out most days, usually tied to thoughts of Mariana, but that day he’d been a machine from midmorning up into the evening. He sat at a red light in downtown Carson. He should be hungry, having spent the past few dinnertime hours following a car, then watching it in a parking lot. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t thinking about anything except what he set out to do that night.
He wasn’t sure he was even thinking. He was aware of the Smoke and the state he was thrust into when it came, even while he was in it. But it was a detached awareness, just commentary. It was as if he were paralyzed and forced to watch video of himself moving about the world, doing things.
Green light and her car rolled on, directly in front of his. He knew what to do, just not exactly where to do it.
She would just be honest and say she found the laptop and had no idea what to think. What could he say? Jared wouldn’t be irrational about it. Maybe he’d even have a perspective she hadn’t considered. He’d work it over with her, try to figure it all out. They’d eventually have to go approach her father about it. Unless they could first find a suitable explanation for this, and that was her great hope. That’s what she needed from Jared tonight—hope and perspective.
She was waiting to make the left across two lanes of traffic on Columbus Parkway, onto Marina Drive. The steady stream of headlights was giving her more anxiety than she seemed able to digest.
Three, four, five more cars. Then a break in the traffic.
Her rear, left-turn blinker was pulsating hypnotically and Lorenzo stared at it, not so long as to lose sight of the task though. He inched his car up to her rear bumper, not quite touching it, but just a hair away. His vehicle would not impact the target. It would be a push.
She took her foot off the brake and rolled slowly forward, anticipating the left turn as the final pair of oncoming headlights approached, when her car was jolted from behind and thrust across the double yellow line. In a second flat, Deanna’s car was on the other side of the road, its front end crunched into the driver’s side of the oncoming car. By the grace of something holy, the oncoming driver adeptly swerved as Deanna’s car crossed the line, just avoiding a head-on collision.
Deanna bounced side to side as her airbag deployed and popped her in the chest and the side of her head. Her car spun and came to a stop in the oncoming lane as all traffic slowed on that side, avoiding any impact with other cars.
She sat bracing herself, one hand on the door and the other on her center console. Her mouth was open in the middle of a scream that never materialized into sound. She breathed and opened her eyes for the first time since the impact. Everything was still.
In a flash, it was done.
In a flash, it was done. Lorenzo rolled straight up Columbus, heading west, as a handful of cars behind him stayed at the accident. Within an hour, Lorenzo’s mother’s car would be reported stolen and later that night a police cruiser on Carson’s west side would find it with some front-end damage, deposited in a supermarket parking lot.
THIRTY-THREE
DEANNA FOLLOWED JARED into their condo holding an ice pack to the side of her head. She went right for the couch as he dropped a long envelope with a Care First Hospital logo onto the credenza off the hallway. Her face throbbed from hitting the airbag.
She was fine. Soreness from the airbag was better than the alternative, which would have been a full head-on impact had the other driver not been as alert. But there was something bothering her more than an aching cheekbone. The accident was the final chapter in this twisted series of events. And it was time to air everything out.
“What are you doing on the couch?” Jared asked. “Bed. Let’s go.”
“Sit down.”
“It’s eleven-thirty. You have a lot to do tomorrow with the rental car and getting to that doctor. You should get to bed.”
“Sit down.” She would normally be protesting much more loudly than she was. But her voice was steady and low. She was still holding the ice pack to her cheek, but looking down at the floor. Jared moved toward her.
“What’s up?” he said as he sat beside her.
“This was because of Trisha.” It just spilled out of her mouth—no backstory, no preamble. It was just too heavy a fact not to lead off the conversation.
“Trisha? The hit-and-run?”
“It wasn’t a hit-and-anything. I got pushed into traffic. On purpose.”
“Why?”
“Because I have Trisha’s laptop in my bag.” She looked up at him. He couldn’t find words, so just stared at her and waited for more. “People in that school are protecting someone.”
“You have her laptop? I don’t understand.”
Deanna went through the timeline for Jared—Trisha reporting the theft to Moore, then her going missing. Deanna finding the laptop in her father’s office after his denying he knew about it, and now the car accident. And she knew it was no accident. The computer in George’s office was the one element in that timeline Jared couldn’t let fly by without much more exploration. He stopped her.
“Why did he have it? Did someone turn it in?”
“I didn’t ask him,” she said. She opened her mouth to say more, but stopped short. He saw it.
“He found the laptop—that’s a good thing,” Jared said. Deanna didn’t reply. “But you don’t think so.”
“Not if my gut is right. Something isn’t right at that school and my father is involved in it. I’m not saying anything until I find out more.”<
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“You think your father pushed you into traffic because you found the laptop? That’s insane. You have nothing to support this. I think you need to go lay down and rest.”
“I didn’t say he did or didn’t do anything. I said that he’s involved.”
She still couldn’t look at him. Jared ran his hand through his hair, then began rubbing his thighs.
“Involved in what?”
“I don’t know. But I will spend every day in that building trying to find out.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Jared said as he leaned back and waved his hands. “You are going to the doctor tomorrow and while you’re there I want you to tell him you need to take time off from that place. Call the police and tell them all your crazy theories. But you’re not going back to the school looking for shit.”
“The hell I’m not. Cops aren’t going to be able to do this because they’re not inside the skin of that building. You don’t know a school until you’ve become part of the school.” Deanna began to notice Jared was rubbing his shoulders and fading from the conversation. “What?”
“Nothing.” He waved it off but closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Deanna put down the ice pack.
“Two people I love were caught up in something horrible,” she said. “One of them is my best friend, and the other is becoming your father-in-law in July.” Jared seemed to finish shaking off whatever was paining him and returned his attention to Deanna. “And now someone you love is involved, whether you like it or not.”
“Dee,” Jared said, rubbing his brow. “We don’t have to stay at that school. We can start fresh somewhere. Can’t we just get away from this?”
Deanna shook her head. “Never. Not without answers.”
“Then let me stay and look for the answers. You go—take a leave of absence because of the accident.”
“It was no goddamn accident, and that’s why I’m not leaving.” She didn’t look injured or lethargic anymore. She was back—full-on Deanna. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, her hands flying as she spoke. “How do I know you’re not going to get hurt next? Or my father? He has a lot of explaining to do because he’s part of this. But I don’t know how.”