Just Fire

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Just Fire Page 10

by Dawn Mattox


  There were people at the DA’s office who thought that living apart from one’s spouse would be the perfect living arrangement. On the bright side—and it wasn’t all that bright—having Chance gone meant half the usual laundry. I slept on one side of the bed and then switched to the other instead of changing sheets. A little blessing I would surrender in a heartbeat, I thought, as I dragged my pillow, blanket, and dog out to the sofa. Sometimes, no matter where I slept, the bed still felt dirty.

  I tried to sleep, but sleep didn’t come. I wanted to cry, but my tear tank was past empty. Soft purple shades of evening spilled through the sliding glass door and found me still on the sofa, staring at the phone.

  I had options.

  Temptation wrapped its arms around me and whispered in my ear, as satisfying as chicken and dumplings to a fat man. As needy as a drink at an AA meeting. And as alluring as a shiny apple dangling in front of Eve.

  Travis would always be my temptation, and now, after months of not speaking with him, I actually had a justifiable reason to call. He had been my friend, my adversary, my coworker, and my lover—at least for one exquisite night of unforgettable passion.

  Talking couldn’t hurt. Reaching out with trembling fingers, I pushed the buttons and held my breath, each ring lasting an eternity.

  “Hello?” A soft, lilting voice answered. Female.

  I hung up, disconnecting from my heart, feeling stupid and embarrassed, with an irrational stab of jealousy.

  Within minutes the phone rang, rang again, and again before I picked up.

  “Sunny, it’s me.” I thought I might pass out for a second. “Babe.” Travis’s rich voice was filled with concern. “Talk to me.”

  And I did. Discarding all pleasantries, along with curiosity and resentment that surged from the pit of my stomach—or hell—or maybe both, I determined to turn defeat into victory. I demanded answers. I wanted to know the names of people feeding him information about me, and why the hell he was talking to Chance.

  One hundred channels to choose from and all I could play were reruns. Even I was tired of hearing myself.

  Travis took my questions in his usual restrained, self-disciplined, self-controlled manner. There wasn’t much that ruffled Travis, including me. His words were careful, draped in a tone as smooth and tailored as a set of karate silks.

  “You don’t think an animal sacrifice on your doorstep is serious?” he asked.

  “Why should you care?” That one made him pause.

  “I care,” he said. “Besides, the investigation isn’t closed. The cartel will be after you as long as they think you can lead them to the guns Logan owes them.”

  “Why did you have to tell Chance about a stupid chicken?”

  “You’re right. You’re the one who should have told your husband.” Travis let that hang for a minute. “He’s looking out for you. He loves you.”

  “Right.” I laughed—a short, derisive laugh. “You know nothing. If Chance really cared about me, he would be home instead of running off on some missionary trip. I don’t need him. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know. I know.” We both knew it was a lie.

  “And now you’re being followed?”

  Chance had already called him.

  “Just forget it,” I said.

  “No problem. If you want to kill yourself—go ahead and do it. Grab that Glock of yours, stick it in your mouth, and pull the trigger! Just stop forcing people who love to you to do nothing while you die of pride!”

  I was still staring at the phone in my hand when the dial tone reminded me to hang up.

  Travis was right. Chance was right. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, I cradled my head in my hands and massaged my forehead. Life was so damned confusing.

  I had always taken care of myself. Damn Starla anyhow . . . I probably had to change my own diapers. The day I failed to take care of myself would have been the day my parents got rid of me for good. So I worked hard, taking care of the house and nursing my mother. I showed my father that I could feed myself, make a fire, and not be afraid of anything. And he had loved me for it.

  I’d had to take care of myself or die. My mother had repeatedly left me. And even Logan had spent most of his time in Oakland and San Bernardino. Independence was synonymous with approval. Weakness would result in abandonment.

  The days were cold and the nights colder still. I got up and added a log to the soapstone heater, then returned to the sofa. Tucked under a fleece throw, cuddling with Kissme, I watched the flames entwine behind the glass, dancing like an orgy of drunken spirits.

  Taylor hunched over, balled up like a pill bug, her hands over her face, her long hair threaded through her fingers. As fast as she coiled, she rebounded. With startling swiftness Taylor grabbed her hair in her fists and jackknifed up, her nose touching mine—except it wasn’t Taylor’s face, it was Logan’s—dark and sinister, painted like Batman’s adversary, the Joker. Menacing words slithered through his lascivious grin. “Hello, Sunshine.”

  I woke thinking, if Logan died tonight, he would still haunt me all the days of my life. It's not that he's immortal, but the evil that inhabits him has been around forever. Always was, always will be, until the Lord comes again. Daylight memories and nightmare fantasies. I wonder if I there is freedom this side of heaven.

  CHAPTER 12

  A slice of moon hung in the sky, peeking through the corner of the sliding glass door. Shadowy shapes of furniture looked threatening in the dim light. Kissme whined, and I held her tight to soothe the thumping in my chest and calm my ragged breath. The dog kissed me, and I kissed her back as her love chased the nightmare that was Logan away. Swallowing hard, I breathed a one-word prayer: “God.”

  There was comfort in God, the dog, and the moon. Somewhere in the jumble of my tangled thoughts, I found myself wondering about Nina and Taylor. What evil invaded their dreams? Where did they turn for comfort in the night? To whom did they pray? As tired and haunted as I was, I gazed at the moon and prayed for them.

  Paige had left a stack of summaries on my desk. I flipped through the stack with interest. Numbers didn’t lie. No surprises on the NVAA stats, but I did a double-take on the results from the one-question survey I had sent around to some local agencies. The inquiry was comprised of a single question: How many claims Satanic or ritual abuse does your office receive annually? The results were unnerving.

  The sheriff’s office reported six to ten, Rape Crisis kicked back six, the local domestic violence program noted three to five, Victim Witness, one to two, and Dano responded with the ominous number thirteen from Mental Health. There was no denying that a problem existed. Shrouded in dark thoughts and growing paranoia, I headed for the intake office and reached up into my box.

  “Ahhhhhh!!” I screamed like a girl. No big surprise there—I sounded like someone had stuffed a snowball down my shirt. Heads jerked up like a dog pack catching the scent of blood, followed by an explosion of hilarity—as a coal-black red-eyed white-fanged king-sized OMG hideous rat tumbled from the inbox and landed on my face. The stack of police reports I had been getting went flying; spinning and flitting across the floor like confetti at Macy’s parade.

  It took a couple of seconds and a few hundred heartbeats to realize that the rat was a fake. Nevertheless, I bent down and cautiously picked it up by the tip of the tail.

  Breathing fire, I flipped my hair out of my face and scanned the room. My gaze alone could have torched the place. One hand on my hip and the other dangling the rat by the tail, I demanded, “Alright, who’s the clown?”

  The secretaries met my glare with wide-eyed innocence, dismissive shrugs, chuckles, and smirks.

  “Funny. Real funny!”

  My coworkers had clearly thought so.

  Duncan walked in and glanced at the rat, scrunched his face, and bent to gather the scattered papers. “What’s that?” he asked, nodding toward the rat.

  “Office humor, Duncan. This place is a joke.” My eyes narrowed with s
uspicion. “Did you do this?”

  His baby face looked startled. Hurt. “Me? Heck, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

  Stalking back to my office, I passed Bonita. “Was this your idea?” I demanded, thrusting the rat in her face.

  Bonita inspected the rubber rodent.

  “Made in China.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “Ouch—someone have a bad night?” Bonita looked pained.

  As a matter of fact, I had. “Did you put the rat in my inbox?”

  Bonita seemed to chew the question like a chunk of tripe in a bowl of Menudo. “Yo no. But—”

  “But what?”

  “You know Sunny, you’re going to get some heat for doing these ritual abuse cases. Right?” Bonita’s words were a lot like the Kevlar on her bulletproof vest—tough and yet protective. “Laughter is how some people deal with fear. You should know that, Chica.”

  I did know it. I had just forgotten. Maybe that’s why I was so darn angry. Pain and laughter were neither opposites nor twins. They were ugly stepsisters. When it hurts too much to cry, you laugh. The degree of horror inflicted on victims of ritual abuse is typically so bizarre, so egregious, so outside the norm of social boundaries that pain and laughter become both crime and shield.

  Between TV and responding to crime scenes, there isn’t much that frightens anyone working in criminal division. Perhaps investigators need to believe that no atrocity exists outside of their control, so they joke about witchy-poos, goblins, and things that go bump in the night.

  Bonita tipped her head thoughtfully. “Maybe the rat is connected to the . . . joke . . . in Feather Falls. Have you thought of that? Chickens nailed to your door. Rats in your inbox.”

  “Yeah, and hemorrhoids might be connected to too many donuts, but I’d rather not think about it.”

  Paige rolled past clutching her belly as if it were a life saver hanging on the side of a cruise ship. I thrust the rat in her face and the resulting screams got her off the hook. Paige only associated with two-legged rats.

  Bonita laughed and moved on.

  There was only one outreach program planned for this week, an odd one, with a foster-child agency. Ducking into my office, I grabbed the laptop as Bonita’s words fired through my brain with the force of my 9mm. If the rat wasn’t the insufferable prank of a coworker, then who . . . ?

  No time for meditation or contemplation. I was late.

  Briefcase in one hand, laptop in the other, I hurried downstairs and was startled to see Bonita in the parking lot hugging a rough-looking woman who was straddling a really sweet motorcycle.

  Each to their own. I shrugged, congratulating myself for hiring a woman who would never pose a threat to my love life—if I had a love life.

  The people at the foster-care agency were kind and forgiving. They graciously took a break without any remarks or raised eyebrows when the overhead lights were dimmed and the screen remained blank. The computer ran, but the projector wouldn’t project. Lights back on, I spent fifteen minutes rechecking everything—cords, connections, links, everything—twice, before panicking.

  Duncan dropped everything and rushed across town to rescue me. Jittery, suspicious, and completely clueless, I apologized again to the attendees, who smiled politely and went back to talking with their friends.

  Duncan found the problem in less than a minute. “The lens cap is still on the projector.”

  Duh!

  “You’d be surprised at how often that happens.” Duncan kept his voice down and gave me a reassuring pat on the back, then stuck around to give me moral support.

  “Technical problem solved,” Duncan announced as the people filed back in to take their seats. The lights went down and the show began.

  “Come on, good buddy. I’m treating you to lunch,” I said to Duncan, with a warm rush of gratitude. Duncan was easy company and I considered him a friend.

  “You’ve had a rough day,” Duncan sympathized as we worked our way through a pair of hamburgers at Jake’s Burger’s that came with enough fries to end world hunger. “Sunny,” he said with a hard swallow while staring at his double-decker Jake-burger and dabbing at his mouth with the checkered napkin, “I was thinking, um . . .” he cleared his throat again and chased it with some soda before continuing. “About . . . what would you think . . . ?”

  “Go ahead, Duncan. Spit it out.” I munched another fry. “Anything for my favorite guy.” He was teddy-bear cute.

  “Would you go out with me?”

  “Out?” I didn’t understand. “Out where?”

  Big eyes flashed with hope from behind a new pair of designer glasses. “Dinner? Dancing? Movie?”

  The fry stuck in my throat—and the fry, my throat, or both swelled. Unable to breathe, I gasped, sucking the fry deeper into my lungs. My eyes popped as I gagged, my hands flailing at my throat as if I could somehow shake it loose.

  The chair bounced off the floor as Duncan rushed behind me, half lifting me out of my seat. His tree-trunk arms wrapped around me and he locked his hands high under my breasts—too high—repeatedly thrusting against me until the fry dislodged and flew across the table, landing squarely in his lunch basket.

  Awkward. I didn’t want to live. I prayed for death—or at least an asteroid to hit me.

  Duncan looked ecstatic, rhapsodic, like he had hit all six numbers on a Mega Millions lottery ticket, or like we had just finished having gorilla sex. I could see his dreams unfolding in his expression: our wedding, Duncan Jr. and his five baby sisters, and Sunday picnic baskets full of KFC.

  Oh. My. Lord.

  “To tell you the truth, Duncan,” I said weakly, “you’re a sweetheart, but I don’t feel so good. Can we talk about this later?”

  Duncan offered to drive me back to the office. When I declined, he shepherded me to my car and I thanked him again for saving my life. I patted him on the cheek and he left with a fond farewell.

  The Chinese celebrate the year of the horse, the year of the dog, the year of the dragon, and so forth. If I could name the year ahead, it would probably be the year of the baby. It was worse than the Asian flu that everyone pretends isn’t from Asia to avoid offending Asians. Why can’t everyone pretend they aren’t pregnant and not offend me?

  I sighed, realizing that Ashley had tried to do just that. She had tried to spare my feelings, but I ended up hurt anyhow. Some people see flying monkeys, I was seeing flying babies.

  “District Attorney’s Office, this is the advocate speaking.”

  “Hello, my name is Vicki—Victory West.” That was her name, not her street.

  “Vicki, how are you?”

  I recalled that Vicki had been a victim of domestic violence during her pregnancy. It was an unusual case with some hazy allegations that her husband, Jackson, had tried to sell their newborn baby while he was out on bail. He had violated the restraining order and walked out of the hospital with the baby after making a suspicious phone call that Vicki overheard. She called Paradise Police who located her husband standing in the hospital parking lot with their newborn son. No one else was in sight. While his bail was revoked and he received three years in prison for violating a court order and domestic violence, no additional charges were filed regarding the baby.

  “I need to see you,” said Vicki. She sounded rational. No panic or fear in her voice.

  “Would you like to come into the office or . . . ?”

  “Can you come to my home? Please. Like you did last time? There’s something you need to see.”

  I slid out early and headed for Paradise on my way home.

  Vicki lived in a nice trailer park in an area called “The Pines.” Her modest home was neat and clean, completely incongruous with the mysterious stink that permeated the air.

  “Please. Sit down.” Vicki was a thirty-something redhead, trim and neatly dressed in designer jeans, wearing a Redheads Not Warheads sweat-shirt. She left the door open in spite of the chill wind that slipped in behind me.

  Vicki t
ook up her story after I declined her offer to make me something to drink. She politely briefed me on her son, Kyle—“three years old now”—and her career—“one more year of college”—then she got to the point. “I got rid of the old couch—the one Jack carved all the pentagrams on.”

  Pentagrams? I had forgotten about the pentagrams. What I remembered was Jackson West had poured charcoal lighter fluid in Vicki’s hair and then repeatedly flicked a barbecue lighter over her head while she cringed in the corner of their yard. Another time, he had held his electric shaver as she sat in the bathtub, threatening to drop it in and light her up. I had almost forgotten the allegations regarding their baby.

  Anxiety flashed through Vicki’s determined features, a chink in her tired armor. “Jackson is out of prison.” Vicki’s hands shook as she lit a cigarette. “I took Kyle to my mom’s house this morning. I’m scared to death that Jackson will sneak in and grab him when I’m not looking—like when I’m on the toilet, sleeping, cooking, anything. Christ only knows what Jackson will do.”

  Her freckles looked as if they’d been applied with a Sharpie against her pale skin. Her lips quivered. “I did some housework after I got home this morning and then lay down for a nap. I haven’t been able to sleep since Jack got out. I woke up coughing; the house was full of smoke. I thought it was on fire.” Vicki stood up and gestured. “I want you to check this out.”

  She led me outdoors, around the mobile home, past a plastic Big Wheel parked on the sidewalk. I paused to stare in wonder as we passed a play area. It held a treasure trove of timeless action figures with their trusty land, animal, and space vehicles, along with a pile of assorted armament, a plastic dump truck, a shovel, and a soccer ball.

  It was the toys that changed my reluctance to handle ritual abuse. Yes, toys. The wondrous magic of a child’s world that made my heart melt and throat swell. Toys that were as silent as a graveyard without children to give them life and purpose. I swallowed, and for a brief moment I was Vicki and Kyle was my little boy at risk of being kidnapped and sold. I felt for her—her anguish, terror, and guilt over picking a bad dad for Kyle. I blinked. Vicki was every mother, and Kyle every child.

 

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