The Girl at the Deep End of the Lake

by Sam Lee Jackson

  “As much as I want to sometimes, I don’t beat people up.”

  “Tell me about Melinda.”

  “First time I saw her, she came in here, was pregnant and about to pop. She had been beaten badly, one eye swollen closed. Bruises up and down her arms. She was a mess, and she came here because she was desperate and feared for her life, and she wanted to have her baby.”

  “Did he try to stop her?”

  He shook his head, “No, she didn’t have the baby then, so he didn’t give a damn. According to her he was already with another girl.”

  “So he wants the baby now.”

  “And her to care for him. In the welfare system, the baby is valuable. And then there is the macho thing about Hayden being a boy.”

  “And the police can’t help her?”

  “It’s the rock and a hard place,” Father Correa said. “If she puts forth a complaint she eventually gets the snot beat out of her and she runs the risk of Child Protective Services getting involved and taking the baby.”

  He wasn’t looking as jovial as the last time I saw him.

  “That’s why I called you.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  He took off his glasses and started cleaning them, “Care, I guess.”

  I studied him for a long moment. “I’m just a civilian. Why would this Maupin guy, or anyone else for that matter, listen to me?”

  Father Correa leaned forward. “I’ve spent most of my adult life living with the garbage side of our society. Along the way I’ve learned many lessons and I’ve learned to be a pretty good judge of human character. I have a sense that you are just the kind of guy that would get Maupin to listen. That, and I just don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

  “Where can I find her?”

  “That I can help with,” he said, perching the glasses on his nose and putting the handkerchief in his back pocket. He took a piece of paper off the desk and handed it to me. It had been crumpled. Written in pencil in a childish scrawl was an address. “I found this in her room. I think she left it behind so I would know where she was.”

  I looked at the paper, “Is this on the west side?”

  “Yes, down close to McDowell and 59th Avenue.”

  “Is this where Maupin lives?”

  He shrugged, “It’s where somebody lives.”

  27

  “You are becoming a genuine royal pain in the ass!”

  I was sitting at Detective Boyce’s desk in the bustling and noisy squad room. I could see into Mendoza’s office, and the light was off, and it was empty.

  “I brought donuts,” I said, opening the box for her to see. She studied them intently, then selected one with multicolored sprinkles.

  “The one and only redeeming value that you have.”

  She held the donut with both hands and munched on it, looking at me over the top. “What do you want now?” she said with her mouth full. She had a sprinkle on the side of her mouth but didn’t seem to notice.

  I selected a cake donut with chocolate frosting. “You know Father Correa at Safehouse?”

  She just watched me, waiting.

  “When I was there looking for Gabriela,” I continued.

  “I thought you said her name was Lucinda,” she interrupted.

  “Yeah, I’ll get to that, but while I was there Father Correa introduced me to a young girl and her baby son. Today the asshole father of the baby came and took Melinda out of Safehouse against her will and Father Correa fears for her safety.

  “You sure her name is Melinda, not Wynona or Buffy?”

  I laughed, “No, I’m not sure. She was introduced to me by Father Correa as Melinda.”

  Boyce selected another donut. “What the fuck are you, Jackson? The patron saint of lost little girls?”

  “I don’t know why he called me, but he did.”

  “How old is the girl?”

  “Over eighteen.”

  She sucked the icing off of her thumb, “Eighteen? She’s an adult.”

  “Maybe, but her baby isn’t.”

  “Is the baby in danger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s a Child Protective Services problem. What do you want me to do?”

  “I was hoping that you and your big badge might scare this asshole into leaving Melinda alone.”

  She finished the second donut, and I watched her try to make up her mind about a third. She finally leaned back in her swivel chair. “And I get a harassment suit.”

  “There are no witnesses.”

  She cocked her head. “How do I do that?”

  I smiled. “I do it.”

  Her eyes looked amused, but she didn’t smile. “I’ll say this, Jackson, you are damn sure of yourself.”

  “This punk is using her and the baby for government handouts. I think if he is pushed he’ll figure the girl isn’t worth the hassle.”

  She brushed the crumbs from her hands and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “So you want me to drop all my extensive crime fighting duties to go with you and harass a civilian to get him to stop abusing a girl that you have no proof is being abused?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  She stood and took her jacket from the back of her chair. “Well, let’s get going then.”

  She had me go out the front and wait on the steps of the public building while she checked a car out of the motor pool. I waited about ten minutes before she pulled to the curb. I grabbed the passenger door handle but it was locked and she had to hit the automatic lock switch. I slid in, and she slid away from the curb.

  “You know where we are going?” she asked.

  I pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket and read her the address.

  “Brown town,” she said. She maneuvered the Crown Vic expertly through the traffic, judging the lights and the other drivers.

  “That a racist remark?”

  “Probably.” She turned her head slightly to look at me. “So what’s going on with the other girl you are looking for? You are still looking?”

  “Still looking,” I said. So for the second time this day, I told the story of Father Correa, Santiago Escalona, Lucinda aka Gabriela Vallentina Amado Revera and the Consul General of Columbia.

  “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed when I finished. “What the hell have you got yourself mixed up in?” She was silent a moment. “Christ, I’m going to have to tell Mendoza about this.” She looked across at me again. “Mendoza is going to shit a brick. You know he’ll have to bring the Feds in on this. This Revera guy is a diplomat. This is international bullshit. What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  “Trying to find a girl,” I said.

  “Jesus,” she said under her breath.

  She drove in silence for quite a while, then she said, “So this Melinda. I suppose she’s the Crown Princess of Taipei or something.”

  I laughed, “I don’t know. The way it’s going she could be.”

  “You’re funny as a crutch.” She caught the freeway at 7th Street and headed west. We drove in silence as she maneuvered through the westbound traffic. We turned on the 59th Avenue off ramp and turned north. A few minutes later we were at McDowell.

  Sometime in the last century, a guy that owned vast acres of empty land on the west side of Phoenix began building little 1200 square foot concrete block rectangles with a carport and sometimes a block archway to make it look less of a rectangular box. He sold them with creative financing for lower class families. He sold thousands of them. The address was one of these.

  Boyce pulled the unmarked car to the curb, boxing in a twenty year old brown and white Ford truck that was in the driveway. The truck was parked behind a rusted old Hyundai that was in the carport. The trash and cobwebs built up around the flat tires of the Hyundai attested to how long it had been sitting there.

  Boyce slid out of the driver’s seat and I watched as she adjusted her jacket, touching her weapon on her belt and then touching her badge
. She didn’t seem to be conscious of doing either. I followed her to the door. She rang the doorbell without hesitating. Without waiting, she rang it again. A moment later the door opened.

  “Can I help you?” Melinda said. She had Hayden on her hip. She squinted out into the bright light.

  “Are you Melinda?”

  Melinda shielded her eyes with her free hand.

  “I’m Melinda,” she said hesitantly.

  Boyce pulled her jacket back to show the badge on her belt.

  “May we come in?” She didn’t wait but moved forward, forcing Melinda to step back. I followed her in. It was gloomy dark inside and it took my eyes a second to adjust. The place was cluttered with boxes, dirty clothes and tabloid magazines. The television against the wall was on, tuned to a daytime talk show. The place smelled stale and sour: a combination of cigarette and marijuana smoke, spilled beer and dirty diapers. The garbage hadn’t been taken out in a while.

  “The place is a mess,” Melinda said.

  She started to pick up the clothes on the tattered couch when a tall, young white man with cropped hair and two arms filled with tattoos filled the doorway to the kitchen. He had that weightlifter look, with bunched muscles under his sleeveless tee shirt. His neck was thick and his thighs were like tree trunks.

  “Don’t be picking that shit up. They ain’t gonna be here long enough to sit down.”

  Melinda dropped the dirty clothes like they had burned her.

  “What the fuck do you want?” the man demanded.

  “I am here to talk with Melinda,” Boyce said.

  “She don’t want to talk to you.” He turned to Melinda, “You want to talk to her?”

  Boyce leaned forward, her eyes bright and intent, “Shut the fuck up. I’m here to talk to Melinda, not to you.”

  “Who the fuck are you? You think you can come in a man’s house and start telling him what to do just 'cause you have a badge.”

  Boyce pulled handcuffs from the back of her belt and held them up for him to see. “You shut up or these are on your wrists and you are downtown charged with obstruction.”

  The man said, “You got no right to pull that shit,” but he was beginning to deflate.

  “Go back to what you were doing and shut the fuck up,” Boyce said. She turned to Melinda, “This man been harming you? He beat you? Treat you rough?”

  Melinda was looking at the floor, the baby was beginning to fuss and she gently bounced him on her hip.

  “I’ve been told,” Boyce continued, “you don’t want to be here.”

  Melinda continued to stare at the floor.

  “Look at me!” Boyce demanded.

  Melinda reluctantly raised her eyes.

  “I’m here to see if you want to go back to Safehouse. If this man is holding you here against your will I will put him in jail. If you go back to Father Correa’s and this man continues to harass you or threaten you in any way I will put him in jail.” Boyce looked at the man. “I will do these things, and I can start right now.”

  The man was staring at Melinda. Melinda was looking at the floor again.

  “What are you waiting for?” the man said. “Tell her you are just fine. Tell her to get the hell out of my house. Tell her!”

  Melinda smoothed the fussing baby’s hair. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “I’m here to help you,” Boyce said.

  “I’m fine,” she said again, this time a little louder.

  “Now get the fuck out,” the man said triumphantly.

  Boyce looked at me and shrugged. She turned to Melinda, “This man mistreats you or the baby, you call 911 and they will notify me, and I will come and take this man out of your life, you understand?” Melinda wouldn’t look at her. “You understand me, Melinda?”

  Melinda nodded.

  Boyce looked at me, then turned and went out the door.

  I stood a moment.

  “Don’t I know you?” Melinda said, looking at me.

  “Who the fuck is he?” the man asked.

  I looked at him. “Darryl Maupin,” I said.

  “You know me? Who the fuck are you?”

  I stepped toward him, “You muss a hair on this girl’s head and I’m your worst nightmare.”

  He made a dismissive gesture, “Get the fuck out.”

  I stood a moment longer looking at him, then I turned and went out. He didn’t seem very intimidated.

  28

  Once we returned to the police station, Boyce had me come back up to her desk. Mendoza was in his office and she pointed at a chair next to her desk for me and went in. I sat down. I watched her talking to Mendoza and knew what she was telling him, but his expression didn’t change. Once he looked out and met my eyes, then looked back to Boyce. When she finished he said something and she turned and beckoned to me.

  I went in and he waved at a chair. Boyce remained standing, leaning against the wall.

  Mendoza lifted a pair of reading glasses from his desk and began to polish them with a tissue. He studied me for a long moment.

  “Detective Boyce has told me about the girl, but I want to hear it from you.”

  “Which girl?”

  Mendoza looked at Boyce. “How many girls are there?”

  “Father Correa called him to help another girl with a problem,” she explained. She looked at me.“Tell him about Lucinda aka Gabriela.”

  “Father Correa?” Mendoza said. “He called you? He called you, who the hell are you?”

  “He thinks he is the patron saint of little lost girls,” Boyce said.

  Mendoza looked from me to Boyce then back to me then back to Boyce.

  “Are we done playing games here?” he said, looking back to me.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “The girl I pulled out of the lake told me her name was Lucinda. You remember the pictures I had taken of her?”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “I found out about Father Correa and his shelter for street girls, so I showed him the picture. He didn’t recognize her so I thought it was a dead end. Then he calls me to say an attaché of the Colombian Consul came to see him looking for a missing girl. He showed him pictures of the granddaughter of the Consul General and it was the same girl. It was Lucinda, but her name really is Gabriela Revera. Gabriela Vallentina Amado Revera to be exact.”

  Mendoza leaned back in the chair, “So the girl you saved, the girl that is hanging out with the Playboy Diablos, the same Diablos of which four of them have been recently murdered, and this same girl is, you believe, back with Roland Gomez, a crackhead gangbanger, this same girl is the granddaughter of the Consul General of Colombia?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He shook his head and started cleaning his glasses again. “Jesus.”

  “And he came to see me.”

  He stopped rubbing the glasses, “Came to see you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “The Consul General of Columbia came to see you?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He set his glasses down on the desk top, “Well this is just better and better. Please expound upon this.”

  I shrugged, “He told me that his attaché had told him I was looking for the girl. I suggested that with his resources he would have a better chance to find her than I did. He suggested that he would leave no stone unturned. I was one of the stones.”

  “Or what was under it,” Boyce said.

  Mendoza swiveled in his chair and stared out the window. We sat in silence for a long time. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair as he thought. Finally he swiveled around.

  “The attaché? Who was he?”

  “His name is Santiago Escalona. He is in the Colombian office on Adams Street.”

  He looked at Boyce, “And we have no Missing Person filed on this girl?”

  She straightened up. “I just got here, just found this out. Didn’t have one under the Lucinda name.

  I haven’t checked the Gabriela name yet.”

  Mendoza cocked his head, “Well, why don�
�t you do that.”

  “Yes sir,” she said moving out the door.

  Mendoza turned his gaze to me. “You have anything else to tell me??

  “You find Roland yet?”

  He shook his head, “Not yet. He’ll show up. You can take the crack away from the crackhead, but you can’t take the crackhead away from the crack.”

  “Meaning he’ll have to feed the habit, so he’ll have to find a supply.”

  “Or go back to the warehouse. I don’t have enough resources to watch everyone out there selling crack, but we’ve got a sheet out on him and the girl. They’ll show up.”

  “I don’t think Boyce will find a missing person on Gabriela.”

  “Do tell?”

  “There would be diplomatic consequences if it was known the granddaughter of the Consul General had run away to hang with crackheads and gangbangers. Also, why would Ambassador Revera personally come out to the marina to see me if he had the entire Phoenix police department looking for the girl?”

  “That’s a good question. What’s the other one?”

  “The other one?” He just looked at me. I thought a moment. “The other one is, if he or the girl’s parents didn’t file a Missing Person, why didn’t they? This is no ordinary girl.”

  He smiled and nodded, “Very good. Not just another pretty face.” He stood, “Why don’t you go sit at Boyce’s desk? I need to talk to some people. Sorry, the coffee’s cold.”

  I did as I was told. He followed me out of his office and left the floor.

  I settled my mind and waited. After a while I began to name the other detectives in the room. First was Curly, Larry and Moe. Then there was Dino, Barney and Fred. After a long while, after I had gone through Gilligan’s Island, Scooby Doo and Seinfeld, Boyce came back and went into Mendoza’s office and made a phone call. She came back out, came over to me and said, “Hang on, we have people that want to talk to you.”

  “Feds?”

  She shrugged, turned and walked back out.

  It was almost an hour before Mendoza came back. The room had almost cleared out, leaving Fred and Kramer. Mendoza was accompanied by Boyce, a thick man in shirtsleeves and two young crew-cuts in suits whom I named Tweedledee and Tweedledum. He beckoned me into his office. Boyce rounded up chairs for everyone. I was the last one in and Boyce shut the door behind me. Mendoza gestured toward a chair and I sat. Boyce resumed her position, leaning against the wall, the men sat.