No Bad Deed

by Heather Chavez

  “We found it.”

  “Does it have my fingerprints on it?” Or Leo’s.

  “I’m guessing you wiped it down when you found it, but people rarely get everything.”

  I focused on the middle of that sentence: When you found it. I hoped that meant he believed me, at least a little.

  “What do you think of me, Detective?”

  “Are you asking if I think you killed your husband or Perla?” He paused, and my phone buzzed. I ignored it as I awaited his judgment. Finally, he said, “I don’t.”

  It may have been a reckless question, but still I asked, “Why?”

  “The evidence, the anonymous tips . . . it feels . . .”

  Had I imagined the odd intonation on the word evidence? “Manufactured?” I offered.

  “Vengeful,” he said. “But I’m still following the evidence.” No intonation this time. “Plus, while that helpful neighbor Helen apparently left town, we found some curious deposits in her account.”

  First Hannah, now Helen. It seemed there was a long line of people willing to screw over my family for cash.

  “Tell me the rest of it, Dr. Larkin.”

  His use of my title felt like a message: We’re both professionals. I’m here to protect and serve, but we aren’t friends.

  I summarized my actions of the past few hours, starting with the poisoned pills and working back to most of what Ernie told me.

  “He said Dee hired him to find you?”

  “Yes.” I chanced a quick look at my phone, at the text I’d missed a minute before, and my foot slipped from the gas pedal. The car coasted to a stop, aided by my bumper’s contact with a tree, and I stopped breathing. I might’ve said goodbye to Rico, but I probably didn’t, my world suddenly reduced to the five inches of my cell phone screen.

  Leo.

  38

  There are few places darker than a parent’s imagination. First, we worry our babies will not be born, but it is when they are finally living outside our bodies, outside our twenty-four-hour protection, that our imaginations turn especially twisted. We fear our children will suffocate in their cribs, disappear from the playground, or take drugs laced with fentanyl and die quietly in their best friend’s bedroom.

  While parents imagine such things happening, we don’t expect them. With Audrey, I may have imagined SIDS, but I had been blindsided by her diagnosis of biliary atresia. It had been the same the night before when Leo had been knocked unconscious on the football field.

  But just because parents don’t expect such things doesn’t mean we don’t plan for them. Sam and I had talked about online predators and stranger danger, spiked drinks, and fast cars until our kids were able to recite our lectures verbatim. We even had a family password: Xyz. Quick to type, easy to remember, never used in casual conversation. Our deal was if our kids got in trouble, they could call or text those three letters, and we would be there. No recriminations. No questions. If Audrey needed an excuse to leave a slumber party, we would provide one. If Leo’s ride home had been drinking, we would come get him. Xyz. Leo’s eyes had rolled nearly from their sockets when we had talked about that one.

  “Yeah, like you guys aren’t gonna ground me for, like, forever, if I get drunk,” he had said.

  I wanted to smile at the memory, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at the screen of my phone.

  Xyz.

  The first time either of my kids had used the code word. I called back but got no answer. Despite my promises when making the pact with my children all those years ago, when it mattered, I hadn’t been there to protect them.

  I hit the street, and then the highway, well above the posted limit. The ringing in my ears was as sharp and insistent as the wind.

  I tried Leo again, and then Daryl, but both calls went unanswered. Next, I called Rico back and gave him Daryl’s address.

  I was nearly at Daryl’s myself by then, approaching the turnoff to Highway 12, when the message came. I had propped my phone in the cup holder, the screen angled so I could see it. I slowed before risking a quick glance down to see if it was Leo.

  An image, too small to see clearly, had popped onto my screen.

  Before I could pull over, my phone chimed again. Despite the precious seconds it wasted, I maneuvered the car onto the shoulder and picked up my phone.

  A second photo was displayed beneath the first, both sent from a number I recognized: Helen’s. Just like with Sam’s texts, though, I didn’t know who had Helen’s phone, or if her number had been spoofed.

  The wind that whipped the trees outside seemed to cut through the windshield and into me. I turned up the heat to its maximum setting.

  I scanned both photos in only a second, but the details burned with great clarity.

  The first photo, the one that had at first been hard to see clearly, was taken in Daryl’s living room. Daryl was asleep on the couch, a blue-striped blanket pulled up to his chin. Leo and Audrey were prone on the floor beside him, a throw pillow tucked behind each of their heads. Lying on their stomachs, their faces were tilted just enough to afford them breath, and Audrey’s right arm and Leo’s left were extended, their fingertips touching.

  But of course, they weren’t really sleeping. They were drugged. Posed.

  I saw this immediately, in the stick-straight positioning of my children and, when I zoomed in for a closer look at Daryl’s face, in the white orbs visible behind half-open lids. Spittle glistened on Daryl’s cheek.

  Red wasn’t in the frame. Where was Red?

  The second photo was of Sam. This one was a close-up. Face ashen and bruised, his eyes were shuttered, his mouth agape.

  I didn’t think he was drugged as Audrey and Leo had been, but I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  The bruise on his forehead drew my interest. It had to have been inflicted while he was alive, while his heart was still pumping. The injury was a couple of days old, judging by its color—purple, not the red of a fresh bruise nor the green of an older one.

  Sam lay against what might have been burlap.

  In the photo, Sam’s lips still held a hint of pink, but I took little solace in that. Even if I found hints of life in the photo, I had no way to determine when it had been taken.

  I found it impossible to maintain my clinical detachment. This wasn’t one of my patients. This was Sam.

  I read the message: If no good deed goes unpunished, the consequences of the bad ones should be even worse, don’t you agree? So it’s time to make a choice.

  A string of texts followed.

  You can choose to save your children, or you can choose to save your husband.

  My heart shattered, each piece heavier than the whole.

  If you call the police again, all three will die.

  If you try to negotiate, all three will die.

  If you make any calls from this phone, all three will die.

  If you try to signal anyone, all three will die.

  The text-in-progress bubbles appeared on the screen. Another photo was delivered, this one of me in my car. I didn’t look around to see who had taken the photo. It had been taken from my own phone.

  The bubbles appeared again, then another text: Pick now.

  It became clear to me that it didn’t matter if Sam was alive, because, depending on my choice, he might not be much longer.

  Another text, a single number: 3.

  I couldn’t choose, even though the choice was clear.

  As a father, Sam had been puked on, lied to, yelled at. He had wounded his feet on misplaced toys and had weathered heartbreaks, sleepless nights, and illnesses, both terrifying and imagined. He had sacrificed time, money, and the entirety of his heart—he had never ceased loving Audrey and Leo with unfaltering abandon.

  2.

  No matter if he had been unfaithful, Sam was a man who would risk his life to save a stranger. So there was no question he would surrender his life to save his children. Without pause or regret.

  1.

&n
bsp; I had believed the greatest test in my life would be Audrey’s illness as a baby. Then Sam had disappeared, and my children had been threatened, and I thought, no, that would be my greatest challenge. But now, with a single word, I would be sentencing my husband to death.

  I made the only choice I could and typed: Children.

  39

  Once off the highway, there were no cars, only weeds that threatened to overtake the asphalt. Forgoing the main thoroughfare, I approached Daryl’s from a private road. The property owner might decide to take issue with my trespass, but that was the least of my concerns.

  When the road veered toward a white ranch house with red shutters, I turned right sharply. The cracked asphalt became concrete, which became gravel, which became dirt and dead grass. No longer on a true road, I carved my own way across the uneven field. I rattled at each bump, barking my knee on the steering wheel twice, but I drove as fast as I was able.

  Daryl’s house grew on the horizon, until I could clearly make out its features even in the approaching dusk. I looked for police cars, but none had yet arrived.

  A short wire fence separated the two properties. I slowed, intending to abandon the borrowed car and scale the fence. Daryl’s truck was parked just a short jog away on the opposite side, its door open, closer to the main road. I could reach it in minutes.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have minutes. An unfamiliar white sedan pulled out of the carport, which had earlier been occupied by the car I drove now. At first, the white sedan appeared to be heading toward the driveway, but it turned abruptly, approaching the road from the backside of the property.

  If I had driven in from the front, off the main road, I would have missed the white sedan. Had I not driven ninety on the highway to get there, I would have arrived too late.

  I braced myself and then stomped on the gas. I hit the wire fence with a jolt, again banging my knee, two of the three wire strands of the fence breaking on impact. I dragged the third strand behind me. The car screeched in protest as the metal became entangled in the wheel well.

  The white sedan disappeared into a stand of trees, a mix of oak and pine, but not before I saw a figure slumped against the front passenger window.

  Leo.

  If Leo was in the front seat, Audrey was likely in the back seat, still unconscious.

  Though I had chosen to save the kids, they were being taken anyway. I hadn’t really expected the bastard who threatened my family to play fair, but I had hoped, and I choked on the absence of that now.

  The wire wrapped itself around the drive shaft, too, and the car shuddered to a stop. Despite the pain in my knee—I could tell it had already started to swell—I sprinted the few feet separating me from Daryl’s truck. I prayed the key would be in the ignition.

  It wasn’t, and I almost dropped to my knees. But then the glint of green metal caught my eye. A keychain in the gravel, cut in the shape of a marijuana leaf and attached to the key to Daryl’s truck.

  I acted on instinct, clear thought a luxury that further endangered my children.

  I threw the truck in gear, pressing the accelerator so it surged toward the driveway. I hit the road a second later, just in time to see the white sedan vanish around a bend in the road.

  I reached for my phone to call 911 and realized my fatal mistake. I had left it behind in the disabled car.

  I followed the truck, beating the steering wheel with the palm of my hand.

  Faster. I needed to go faster.

  The truck swallowed half of the gap between the two vehicles, but then the white sedan accelerated. I glanced down at my speedometer and cringed. Eighty. The road was posted at half that.

  A crash at eighty would kill my children.

  I reduced my speed, praying the driver of the white sedan would too.

  After a moment, the car slowed, although it still outpaced mine. With the difference in speed and a well-timed turn or two, the white sedan would be able to evade me in minutes.

  I expected the other vehicle to turn toward the freeway, but then I realized what the other driver likely had—there were more police cruisers monitoring freeway traffic.

  I got a glimpse of a baseball cap as the car turned left, and the curve of a male jaw that seemed familiar, though in the fading light and with the growing distance between the two cars, it was impossible to see more.

  As I pursued, memories intruded.

  Audrey in her hospital gown on the day she had been transplanted with part of Sam’s liver. After, her newly pink skin had been perfect except for the scar.

  Leo as a toddler, at Salmon Creek Beach, studying a tiny crab he held on his palm. His nose had wrinkled as he held it up for my inspection.

  Audrey fidgeting at her preschool graduation, because she wasn’t meant for stillness, or for quiet. She had been meant to dance, to twirl, to laugh.

  Leo at his high school orientation, leaving me behind to join his friends. I hadn’t minded. My greatest happiness had always been in witnessing my children’s joy.

  Likewise, my greatest sadness had always been in seeing their heartbreak. I wouldn’t allow the possibility that I couldn’t save my children.

  I released the memories, though they weren’t distractions. Instead, they provided focus.

  My respiration and pulse slowed, the waning light intensifying as my eyes adjusted. My knee ceased to throb. I was no longer plagued by fear, or fatigue. The world had narrowed to the road ahead and the white sedan.

  The car turned suddenly, back toward civilization, and I recognized where we were. Though I came from another direction, I drove this road nearly every day. Nearly a mile ahead was my clinic.

  I wondered at the location. Certainly, the abductor wouldn’t want to continue this pursuit on these more populated streets.

  Suddenly, brake lights flashed, and the car slowed nearly to a stop. It drifted toward the shoulder, and the back door behind the driver jerked open. From the back seat, a figure tumbled onto the road. I fought the urge to slam on my brakes—I couldn’t risk losing control of the truck. Instead, I pumped the pedal, turning away from the sudden obstacle on the asphalt.

  Audrey.

  Having dumped half of his cargo, the driver of the white sedan pulled back onto the road. He drove with less urgency now. Without saying a word, he had given me another choice: I could pursue him, or I could save Audrey.

  The other driver’s leisurely retreat telegraphed how certain he was of my decision.

  I pulled my daughter from the road, my heart breaking as I watched the white sedan carrying my son disappear.

  40

  Audrey’s arm had abraded where it had scraped against the road, angry slashes embedded with asphalt bits. Her bones appeared unbroken, and her head free of injury, but I worried nonetheless. The same immunosuppressant drugs that kept my daughter from rejecting her transplanted liver also made her more vulnerable to infection.

  That was when I noticed the note, tucked in Audrey’s pants pocket: Talk to the police and Leo dies.

  The letters were hastily written, the scrawl just legible. Probably written while I had been in pursuit.

  I transferred the note to my own pocket. I secured Audrey in the back seat, taking care not to brush the raw flesh, and headed for my clinic a few blocks away. With Leo’s captor headed south and me headed north, each turn of the wheels closer to help for my daughter felt like a betrayal of my son. I drove a little faster than was safe.

  First, Audrey. Then Leo.

  Audrey awoke with a whimper, which, upon reaching full consciousness, became a wail.

  “Mommy, my arm hurts.”

  I kept my speed steady but chanced a quick glance to see if Audrey appeared disoriented. Though infection was my greater fear, even without a bump on her head, I couldn’t rule out concussion. “How’s your head feeling?”

  “It’s my arm, not my head.”

  I pulled in front of the veterinary clinic and turned off the truck. “Can you walk, or do you want me to carry
you?”

  “I can walk, but my arm hurts.” I scooped her up anyway, her body hot and impossibly small against my chest.

  “I’m not a baby,” she protested.

  “You’re a big girl,” I agreed. “But your arm hurts, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Fresh tears spilled. “It hurts, Mommy.”

  “I know.”

  At the door, I lowered Audrey to the ground.

  “Damn it.”

  “Mommy!”

  “Sorry.”

  The door was locked, and my keys were with my cell phone in the car I’d abandoned back at Daryl’s.

  Dusk was descending with alarming speed, a reminder that there weren’t many hours left in the day. Desperate, I looked around. A thousand rocks surrounded me in the landscaping, but all were rounded, none bigger than a half-dollar. Useless.

  Then on one of the pillars, I spotted a piece of stone that wasn’t aligned with the others. I went to it, tested it, and my heart soared to find it loose. I worked the rock free. Though small, it had a sharp edge. It would do.

  I positioned myself in front of the window closest to the door of my clinic, wrapped my hand in my sweatshirt, and swung the rock toward the window’s edge, the weakest part of the glass. A second swing, and the glass shattered. I knocked the biggest shards clear of the frame before reaching inside to unlock the door.

  Audrey stared at me, her eyes nearly as large as the moon.

  Once inside, I switched on the lights and glanced at the clock on the wall. How many miles had Leo’s abductor traveled in the past couple of minutes?

  I forced my eyes away from the clock and my attention back to my daughter. I gave her an ibuprofen.

  First, Audrey. Then Leo.

  As if she could sense my thinking, Audrey asked, “Where’s Leo?”

  I lowered her to the ground in one of the exam rooms and moved quickly to gather what I needed.

  “I’ll get Leo as soon as we take care of that arm.” Audrey, distracted by her own pain, didn’t seem to notice the catch in my voice, but I hoped she did notice the resolve.