Blue Tears

by Ninie Hammon

  “That’s … that’s what she told me.”

  “If the woman in the car with the man I shot was not his wife, who was she?”

  “I don’t know. They left Bethany with me and drove away together. Alone. I … I never saw Bailey again.”

  “So you are saying that sometime after they dropped off their daughter, they picked up this woman, the one I thought was his wife?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know.”

  “The grand jury issued sealed indictments, but Ivan and I went home before we could be arrested. So your sister went into hiding, stayed in hiding all this time, pretending to be dead. Just waiting.”

  He made the word sound sinister, like what Jessie had done was somehow a dishonorable thing, cheating, not fair.

  “I didn’t know she, I thought she was—”

  “Speak when you are spoken to!” His soft voice had become the roar of an angry lion. He took two hurried steps toward her, his hand raised to hit her, his face a pinched rictus of rage. She cringed away, put her hands in front of her face to ward off the blow. But he didn’t hit her and when she opened the eyes she’d squeezed shut, his face was inches from hers.

  He cocked his head to the right, then the left, his eyes traveling over her face. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “That thing with your face, the way it changes.”

  She had no idea what he could possibly be talking about, so she merely looked at him, almost as mystified as she was terrified.

  “Stop doing it. If you refuse, I will cut off your ears and make you eat …”

  Something like approval spread over his face.

  “Never do it again. Do you understand me? I know about your kind.”

  Was the right answer “No, I’ll never do it again”? Or “Yes, I understand you”? She didn’t know which so she said neither.

  He stood and resumed pacing, limping badly now but totally calm.

  “We spoke to the young man, Jason. He told us what happened yesterday when your sister appeared at your door. Then she left … and did not take her daughter with her. This Jason said you left early this morning in a cab — you and the little girl.” He held out a hand and one of the men handed him a piece of paper — the Amtrak eTicket she had stuffed in her pocket. “One way, two people, Penn Station in New York. But then you came back home without the little girl you took with you. Explain all this to me.”

  He stopped pacing, turned to face her and folded his gloved hands in front of him, waiting as patiently as a brood hen on a nest.

  She tried to respond, opened her mouth, but she was so sick and scared and in so much pain, she couldn’t get her mind to put together a coherent narrative.

  He was unperturbed, even encouraging.

  “Take your time.” Then an edge of menace crept into his calm. “Make me understand.”

  María knew she had only a few moments to gather her thoughts. In the back of the van, she had thought about trying to protect Bailey, even had considered refusing to say anything at all. Now, she realized how preposterously absurd that was. He would find out everything she knew, make her tell him no matter how badly she didn’t want to talk. He would hurt her and she would tell him everything. Gratefully, she didn’t know anything that would help him find Bailey. She couldn’t betray where the Witness Protection Program had hidden Bailey because she had no idea where it was. Now, she understood that her only hope of self-preservation was making him believe that she really didn’t know much of anything.

  “Bailey … told me why she had let me think … let everybody think she was dead. Told me that if … you … knew she was alive, you would kill her.”

  “And everyone else in her family, yes, that is true.”

  “She said the police had put her in the Witness Protection Program.” She searched her mind for details. “They took her to Albuquerque. But then they moved her somewhere else. I don’t know where.”

  “Why did she come out of hiding and contact you yesterday?”

  “She said Bethany and I were in danger, that we couldn’t stay here. She wanted us to … she wanted me to drop everything and go with her right then, pack a bag and get on a plane and just — run away.”

  “But you refused. Why would you do a thing like that?”

  “It was too much … I couldn’t … and Bethany was too upset …”

  “That is not reason enough to refuse to run for your lives. What is the part you’re not telling me?”

  He was as discerning as a card shark.

  “I didn’t want her to take my little girl away from me!” María spit the words out with such emotion it verified the truth of them — she could see it in his eyes. “Bethany was … I was … I am Bethany’s mommy. I couldn’t just hand her over …”

  “So your sister, Jessica is her name, yes? But you call her Bailey, why is that?”

  “It’s just something, when we were kids we … my name’s not really María. We just—”

  He’d heard all he cared to hear. “This Bailey just … what? Gave her daughter up and went away? You don’t expect me to believe that.”

  “No, that’s not how it happened. I told her to give me time. I said if she would come back in the morning, we would be ready to go. And then—”

  “Then you took the little girl and ran away with her, instead of waiting for your sister. Yet you are here, the train ticket unused in your pocket and the little girl is gone.”

  “I got to the station and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do that to Bailey. And then … she was there at the station.”

  “Bailey?”

  “And two men. The one …” The image of Brice flying backward into the hallway wall blew through her mind. “… your men shot. His name was Brice something. I don’t remember his last name. And another man, an old man named T.J. I don’t remember his last name either.”

  “How did she find out you had gone to the station?”

  María felt her gut yank into a knot. He wasn’t going to believe this.

  “I don’t know.” She hurried ahead before he could protest. “Really, please believe me, I don’t know how she found out. But she was there and we left, but we needed a car seat, that’s why we came back, to get Bethany’s car seat out of my car.” She knew she was babbling but couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words once they began to tumble out. “We had to drive because Bethany has an ear infection and she can’t fly, and then I thought of the picture albums, and I knew Bailey—”

  “Stop!”

  She had to put her hand over her mouth to shut herself up.

  “Where were you going, driving to because the little girl couldn’t fly?”

  “I don’t know. She never … there was no time.”

  He looked so skeptical, she blurted out, “She said she lived in a big house with a big yard and there was a lake nearby.” He said nothing. “And she has a puppy.”

  “You and the man, Brice, came back to get, what did you say?”

  “Albums. Pictures. Bailey hadn’t seen Bethany in almost two years. She missed her birthday and Christmas.”

  “The little girl and the old man, where were—”

  “They waited in the car with Bailey.”

  She didn’t see the explosion coming. It was as unexpected and as ferocious as a volcanic eruption. He turned on the man with the pockmarked face and began screaming at him in Russian, then aimed his tirade at the other man who had been in her apartment. She put it together that he was furious at them because they had missed the real prize, that Bailey had been there, waiting on the street, and they had let her get away.

  He roared in fury and then she watched him grab hold of his emotions, climb back into the calm facade. He had been screaming so savagely that he had spit into the men’s faces, and now he had spit in his beard, drips of it. María tried desperately to keep her eyes off it, to keep from staring.

  When he began speaking again, he was totally in control. Except that his limp was so pronounc
ed he stopped pacing and merely stood in front of her.

  “Why now? After all this time, why did she come to you today?”

  “Because the police knew you were back and she wanted us to get away before—”

  “How did the police know I was back?”

  “Bailey told them.”

  He grew very still, very intense.

  “How could Bailey possibly know this thing?”

  “She saw you in the background of a picture. You were with some other people but she recognized you.”

  “What picture? Where was it taken?”

  “In a restaurant. But I don’t know where. She didn’t say.”

  “Just … some random restaurant. Somewhere.”

  Disbelief again. She could hear it in his voice. If he didn’t believe her, he would use whatever force he thought it would take to convince her to tell him “the truth.” He would hurt her. She scrambled to think of anything—

  “It was in a casino, a restaurant in a casino.”

  “What casino?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. She didn’t mention where she was gambling—?”

  “She wasn’t gambling. She went to the restaurant in the casino to eat. Her friends took her out to celebrate. It was her birthday.”

  He took a step toward her, spoke softly.

  “And what is your sister’s birthday?”

  “Halloween. October thirty-first.”

  He stared into the distance for a moment, then said a word that made no sense to María.

  “The Nautilus.”

  Chapter Thirty

  It was mid-afternoon before T.J., Brice, Bailey and Bethany left María’s apartment in the rental car headed for the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 90. T.J. took the first shift behind the wheel. Bailey rode in the back beside Bethany’s car seat.

  T.J. felt so sorry for the poor little girl. The child had to be totally exhausted. Disoriented and confused, in the company of people she didn’t know — and María’d said she was afraid of strangers! Bethany had alternated between tantrums, meltdowns, sucking-her-thumb withdrawal and crying, makin’ a sound like a baby rabbit.

  He figured Bailey felt like doin’ the same things as the three-year-old, strugglin’ to wrap her mind around the reality that her precious little sister was now in the hands of a homicidal monster.

  There’d only been one time since María’d hopped out of the car to go get picture albums for Bailey that T.J.’d seen anything but desolation in Bailey’s eyes. Before they left María’s apartment, Bailey’d taken a framed piece of little-kid art off the wall in the bathroom and tucked it under her arm.

  “He didn’t get Bethany,” she’d told T.J. fiercely, her green eyes blazing, givin’ off sparks like she’d seen in that vision. “If we hadn’t come to Boston yesterday, Mikhailov would have her now, too.”

  “This ain’t somethin’ we can talk about in front of your marshal friend,” he’d said, quietly, “and ain’t a thing that’s easy to think about. But you do realize, doncha, that this Mikhailov fellow done what we’s tryin’ to do. María sure as Jackson ain’t gonna be gettin’ all gussied up in a formal gown for opening night at the Boston Ballet tomorrow night.”

  It’d be ironic on steroids if the monster had saved María’s life. Course, if he had, it was out of the frying pan, into the fire. He’d kept her from dying one way so he could kill her some other way.

  They’d decided to drive straight through. It was a twelve-hour drive, but they didn’t want to cut it up by stopping halfway, unloading Bethany and all that that entailed, and staying the night in some anonymous motel room.

  Bailey wanted to take her little girl home, and Brice and T.J. were charged with getting her there.

  The little girl had refused to eat, which meant that unless she’d had breakfast, she hadn’t eaten a bite all day.

  Exhausted, coupled with lack of food and a missed nap, they hadn’t gotten a mile from María’s apartment before she crashed out in the car seat. After only a little whimpering, she was sound asleep.

  Brice sat up front in a t-shirt and sweatshirt with holes in ‘em, trying to act like he wasn’t hurtin’ from where them bullets had almost come through his vest. He probably had a cracked rib, but he’d refused to let them paramedics take him to the hospital to find out. He was fine, thank you very much. Grim. Likely blaming himself for what happened, though wasn’t nothing he could have done to prevent it.

  Wasn’t no reason to suspect Mikhailov was that many steps ahead of ‘em.

  The two of ‘em didn’t even need to exchange looks to communicate what they both knew, and what Bailey might know, too, but wouldn’t look at right now: Mikhailov would do anything to keep Bailey from testifying.

  Soon’s it got quiet in the car, T.J. couldn’t chase them demons away no more and all the possible scenarios reared they ugly heads.

  Once that trial started, Bailey would have to come out of hiding. In this country, even a man like Mikhailov had a right to “face his accuser.” Which meant she’d be in the courtroom with Mikhailov.

  He and Brice’d see to it the monster didn’t get to her before then, but wasn’t nothing they could do once they’s all brought together before a judge and jury.

  If T.J. was to guess, he figured the madman would find a way to get a “piece” of her sister to Bailey. A finger. An ear. Make it clear that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, he’d send the rest of her a piece at a time.

  T.J. didn’t have no hope whatsoever that the feds or the Boston PD would find the girl. Rats like Mikhailov had too many hidey holes. All anybody could do now was what he and Brice was doin’ — take care of Bailey and Bethany. Keep them safe.

  When Mikhailov had finished interrogating her, his goons shoved María back into the van and drove her … somewhere. Maybe by the sea, the waterfront. She thought she detected a fish smell and could hear the squawk of gulls. But that could be her imagination. Right now, her senses had been so scraped raw by terror, every sensory input was suspect.

  She was of no more use to them since she’d told Mikhailov everything she knew, so they were obviously taking her somewhere to kill her. Somewhere they could dispose of the body, maybe. Toss her into the water, and let the gulls peck out her eyes.

  When the van stopped, the men hauled her out of it into yet another windowless garage, dragged her across it to a door on the back wall. The man with the pockmarked face opened the door, shoved her inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

  There was no light. All around was absolute black darkness, and she panicked, banged once on the door in terror before the pain of her fingers stole her breath. Then she merely stood with her back against the door, trembling.

  Sometime later — an hour, two minutes, a week — it occurred to her to feel along the wall by the door for a light switch. She found one, turned it on. Darkness was almost preferable once she made the connection, figured out that the room had been designed to hold prisoners.

  A table, straight-backed chair, army bunk with a dirty wool blanket she would rather freeze to death than touch, a smaller door that she opened and quickly slammed closed. Either the toilet in there was backed up or a sewer pipe was broken. Gratefully, she didn’t need to go, wouldn’t likely need to for some time since she’d had nothing to eat or drink.

  María stood in the center of the room, not wanting to touch anything, but her knees felt so weak, she knew if she did not sit down she was in danger of falling. The least offensive piece of furniture was the chair, so she eased herself down on it.

  And waited.

  Details about the room became clear even in the dull light. Details she had no desire to see but she had to look at something.

  Someone had written on the wall. Gratefully, it was in a language María couldn’t read. There were brown spots on the wall, too. Anyone who’d ever seen a television cop show knew what they were, that you could tell a lot about the nature of a wound and how it’d bee
n inflicted by studying the pattern of those. Blood spatter.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Static. White noise. Twinkling lights, like sparks leaping away from a welding torch.

  Through white gauze, Bailey sees a room. It’s small, lit by a single lightbulb dangling on a cord from the ceiling. No pull chain, though, so it must turn on with a switch.

  Buzzing static fills her head and the image almost fades away.

  A table and chair. A bed, a cot like in barracks.

  It stinks. The smell of sewage is almost overwhelming, crisp and clear, not muted to a pale nothing by the static and snow.

  There are spots on the wall.

  Bailey knows what they are because María knows what they are. Drips of blood. Spattered blood. Dried there into dirty brown stains that would probably show through even if you painted the wall.

  Spattered blood. A violent injury. Fear clutches at María’s throat and the image begins to fade. Bailey struggles to hold onto it because it is a connection to María, but it’s like trying to grab handfuls of smoke.

  Then the image was gone and Bailey was sitting in the back seat of a car as night began to fold black batwings around it.

  She started to tell T.J. and Brice about the connection … but didn’t. After Bethany fell asleep, the adults only spoke to each other in necessary whispers, determined not to wake the child.

  Besides, the connection told Bailey nothing useful, nothing that would help identify where María was, nothing that mattered.

  No, that wasn’t true. It had communicated something that mattered very much. María was still alive. A captive in some filthy room somewhere … but alive.

  Bailey clung to that with a fierce grip as she listened to the soothing, mournful song the tire sang on the highway … and stared at Bethany.

  Bailey remembered T.J. and Brice’s comments about her watch before they left for Boston, that she was looking at it so often she was likely to stare the numbers right off it. If such a thing were possible, Bethany would have no face by the time they got to Shadow Rock because Bailey would have stared it completely off her head.