Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

  “We do,” Pammy said. “We’re branching out here. I don’t think these women are ours.”

  She had said women even though Eagle was writing down men’s names too. Pammy hadn’t really thought of the men. She thought that men could take care of themselves.

  Eagle had learned otherwise. She had learned it the hard way, taking care of men—boys—who should never have been marching through insect-infested jungles carrying very large guns.

  Shot. Dying.

  Like students had been shot here.

  It was naïve to think the police would ever help. Not here, not now.

  “These people are ours,” Eagle said softly. “They just don’t know it yet.”

  She didn’t watch Pammy’s response. Instead, Eagle wrote down the last few names, then folded the piece of paper and put it in her back pocket.

  Then she met Pammy’s gaze. Pammy was watching her as if she could see inside Eagle.

  “This many names,” Eagle said, “it’ll take some time to check the hospitals. You’re going to admissions, right?”

  “Yeah,” Pammy said. She sounded almost unwilling. “But not today. In the morning.”

  Eagle nodded. No one else felt this same sense of urgency that she felt. No one else had seen the truck or the woman.

  No one else understood that time was running out.

  Just Eagle. And she didn’t have the skills to make the investigation move faster. She was groping in the dark, trying to figure out how to solve a problem she only dimly understood.

  She’d been in the dark below. In Pleiku, when the power had gone out, and the back-up generators had failed. Surgery by candlelight.

  Even then, she’d only been doing triage, saving men—boys—so they could head out again, or head home, lives ruined.

  She had never solved the overall problem.

  She wouldn’t be able to solve this one either.

  There were too many missing kids. They couldn’t all be missing for the same reason. So even if she found one or two or that poor woman, Eagle wouldn’t be able to find everyone on the list.

  She would have new names to add to her old one.

  Her lot in life, apparently.

  “I need to get on this,” Eagle said, feeling awkward. She didn’t know how to take her leave of Pammy. Eagle wanted to ask if they were good, if they were still getting along.

  But she wasn’t going to.

  Either they got along or they didn’t. A conversation wouldn’t help that.

  “I’ll call you if there’s news,” Pammy said.

  Normally, Pammy would have told her to come back or invited her to wait. But that fight with Strawberry changed something. What, exactly, Eagle didn’t know.

  “Thanks,” Eagle said, then pivoted, and headed out the front.

  She had to go home and change clothes. She had to start thinking like an investigator. She had to figure out how to ask the right questions.

  If only she knew what those questions were.

  21

  Val

  I had been wrong about the address. Darla’s apartment wasn’t that close to my place. In fact, it was a shorter walk from Pammy’s gym than it was from where I lived. Fortunately, I had gone toward campus, thinking I would avoid my street, so I wouldn’t be tempted to give up and go home.

  I walked the side streets, away from Telegraph, following instructions that Pammy had given me. The streets here were an odd mixture of old houses, new apartment complexes, and square business buildings. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for anything.

  When I reached Darla’s street, I was surprised to see relatively new apartment buildings on the one side of the street and an entrance into campus on the other.

  The apartment buildings were that boxy, modern construction that sort of mimicked some Frank Lloyd Wright buildings I had seen in Chicago. Only these buildings weren’t single-family dwellings. They were apartments, with exteriors made of gray concrete.

  Even the balconies were made of concrete. Each apartment had glass sliding doors, which I supposed was a selling feature. But to me, it looked like Soviet construction that so many magazine showed these days, the kind of rebuild that you’d find in East Germany instead of in the United States.

  Darla’s apartment building was in the very center of the block. A parking garage slanted downward under one side of the building, and the entrance took up the other side.

  I had to go up a flight of concrete stairs to get to the double glass doors. The doors wouldn’t have looked safe to me if they had been closed, which they weren’t. Open, they looked like the worst kind of unprotected entrance into a building.

  From my position outside, I could see a wide hallway, with metal mailboxes on one side of an artsy staircase that had wood steps, which looked like they floated between two metal frames. Toward the back of the entry, through those open stairs, was an elevator. On either side of the hall were doors, probably leading into the downstairs apartments.

  I would have hated living here, particularly on the lower floor. Anyone could get into your apartment. Hell, anyone could climb up the balconies on the outside, stand on the concrete railing and, if they were tall enough or smart enough to bring a climber’s rope, reach up to the railing one story up. They could use the railings like a ladder, going from balcony to balcony to get to the right apartment.

  I shuddered, and shook off the thought. I didn’t live here. I wasn’t going to live here either.

  I squared my shoulders and walked to the little hand-scrawled directory beside the door. There were buttons beside each name, probably so that a guest could be buzzed inside.

  Not that it was necessary today with the doors wide open.

  The address in the phone book hadn’t had the apartment number and of course, I hadn’t asked the roommate on the phone. I only hoped that Darla’s name was on the directory.

  I didn’t see any Newsome. But I did see a D.N. next to #11, along with three other sets of initials. From the layout of the directory, #11 was on the top floor of this four-story monstrosity.

  I slipped inside, feeling like I was breaking a rule.

  I didn’t see anyone as I walked to the staircase. The wood steps were slick beneath my brand-new sneakers, so I grabbed the steel railing to keep my balance. The entire staircase shuddered when I did so.

  If I hadn’t already decided that I hated this place, the staircase would have sealed the deal. As it were, the staircase was just one more thing to dislike in a building that had nothing to recommend it.

  The staircase ended on the same side of each floor, with a narrow hallway heading to the left, and two doors facing each other off that hallway. The hallways differed only by carpet color. I hadn’t noticed the carpet on the first floor, if, indeed, there had been any. But the second floor had an industrial blue, the third a dirty red, and the fourth a bright kelly green.

  Apartment 11 was on the left side of the hallway, which probably gave the apartment a view of the back of nearby buildings. Apartment 12 was on the right, and clearly had a view of the campus. I wondered if the placement had any impact on the rent, and decided that it probably did.

  The door was made of the same polished blond wood as the stairs. I knocked, and the number 11 above my hand swung a little. The building couldn’t have been more than five years old, and yet it already looked tired and worn.

  To my surprise, the door yanked open. I had expected the sound of a deadbolt unlatching, the rattle of a security chain protecting the person inside from the person outside.

  Instead, I wasn’t even sure the door had been locked. And clearly, the young woman in front of me hadn’t looked through the peephole that was a little above my eye level.

  She was a slight redhead with explosive curls that haloed her face. The girl didn’t wear any makeup to hide the matching riot of freckles that dotted her skin. Her eyes, a green that put the carpet to shame, assessed me.

  “Am I supposed to know who you are?” She owned the voice
that I had heard earlier.

  I had to make sure she didn’t recognize my voice. I took a little of the education out, removed the Midwestern politeness, and spoke in a soft, nervous, breathy tone.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Darla?”

  “Christ, you and everyone else on the planet. What the hell?” the girl said. “Is this ‘find Darla’ day?”

  I swallowed. “You mean she’s not here?”

  The girl tugged on her sleeveless green top. She wore matching green shorts and her feet were bare. She looked like a student in an advertisement for the university, but she certainly didn’t talk like someone the university would want to represent them.

  “Ah, yeah, I’m saying she’s not here,” the girl said with annoyance. “I’m saying she hasn’t been here for a month. So toddle off and go bother someone else.”

  She started to close the door, but I blocked it with my right hand. She looked at my dark skin against the door’s blond wood, as if either my skin color, the presence of my hand, or my action offended her. Or maybe all three.

  “Look, sister,” she said, “I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you, but believe me when I tell you I have not seen Darla in, like, forever.”

  “I believe you,” I said in that soft little passive voice. I wished I had chosen a different way to speak to her, something tougher. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go back now. “But I’ve been trying to reach her for almost a month. She stopped coming to class.”

  “I know,” the girl said. “She stopped everything, including paying rent.”

  “Um, maybe I can help with that?” I said as timidly as I could.

  I had been thinking of my cover story for the entire walk over here. What would a student want with Darla, especially since Darla had been gone for weeks? I could only think of one thing.

  The girl was frowning at me.

  “I, um, I’d been talking to Darla about subletting?” I said, letting my inflection go up as if I was nervous. “She, um, she was interested? I’ve been trying to call her. Because I have to move on August first?”

  “Bitch isn’t supposed to sublet,” the girl said. “Not without everyone’s approval.”

  “Everyone?” I asked.

  “There are three more of us who get a say. Jeez.” The girl pulled the door back. “Darla was sure a waste of air. C’mon in.”

  I was surprised. I hadn’t expected the lie to gain me entrance.

  “I’m Lucy,” she said, extending her hand. “If you can believe that.”

  She indicated her hair, and it took me a moment to realize her sarcasm had more to do with her resemblance to the red-headed actress Lucille Ball than with anything to do with me.

  I decided not to comment on that, in case I was wrong. I almost said, My name is Elizabeth, and then remembered I had used that name not an hour before. I had no idea why I was stuck on the name, but I clearly was.

  “Paulette,” I said, giving the name of my cousin because I had to come up with something quickly.

  “That’s a mouthful,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah,” I said and shook her extended hand. Her palm was warm and moist. I broke contact quickly and resisted the urge to wipe my hand on my shorts.

  I stepped inside the apartment. It smelled like unwashed sheets and dirty dishes, but the main room was clean enough for a student apartment. It had regular walls—not concrete—which I knew only because Lucy—or someone—had decorated with political posters. Regular thumbtacks held the posters in place, although the older ones, announcing last fall’s book sales, movie nights, and political rallies, were curling at the edges.

  A saggy sofa sat beneath them, along with a scarred coffee table. Two mismatched stuffed chairs framed the sofa, and a console television—clearly the most expensive thing in the living room—covered the other wall. The television was off, but I could hear music coming from somewhere. The Who, maybe, or Jefferson Airplane. I wasn’t that up on current groups. Not anymore.

  I had been right about each apartment having a balcony. The one for this apartment stretched the length of the back wall. The sliding glass doors were in the middle of a series of floor-to-ceiling windows, letting a lot of light into the room.

  I had to revise my sense of the building. The interior of this apartment was surprisingly spacious and surprisingly pleasant. The main room branched off into an L, which probably formed the dining area.

  “You serious about subletting?” Lucy said. “Because I doubt I can get Darla’s dad to pay for another month if she’s gone for good.”

  I looked at her as if I didn’t understand her. “What do you mean, she’s gone for good?”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t know. She didn’t come home one day. It was between sessions. Her dad thinks she’s missing, but I’ve had roommates book on me before—not,” she added quickly, “that I’m hard to live with. I’m pretty straightforward, really.”

  I cringed inwardly. If Lucy had to deny bad behavior, she probably exhibited a lot of it. She probably was hard to live with.

  “But it’s hard to keep roommates these days. No one goes to classes anymore.” She shrugged. “I’ve lived here for two years. To afford it, I need three other girls. The other two are home for the summer, but they’re still paying rent. It was supposed to be me and Darla for the summer session, but she split, and so it’s just me.”

  “This is a four-bedroom?” I asked.

  “Three,” Lucy said, “but one room is big enough that we divided it into two spaces. You’d get that. The new girl always does.”

  “Darla made it sound like I’d get her room?” I said, with as much uncertainty as I could muster.

  “If you want to take over this week, maybe yeah, you could,” Lucy said. “Since no one else is going to be here until the end of September, and I don’t want to move everyone’s stuff around. They’ll come back, and if they complain, I’ll just say it’s already a done deal. So you won’t have to worry about it.”

  She sounded like she wanted me—or fake me—to have the apartment, without doing any vetting at all. All my legal training made me shudder. That, and my experiences this past year.

  She would have no idea what she was getting into. There was no way she could. And she was comfortable and trusting.

  For all she knew, I wanted to steal from her or case the apartment for someone else.

  Because I clearly wasn’t a physical threat.

  “Do you mind if I see the whole apartment?” I asked. “I mean, Darla was supposed to show me, and then she vanished?”

  “Yeah, that was annoying,” Lucy said. “I’ll show you the apartment.”

  We stepped farther inside, and she pushed the door closed. She swept a hand toward the living room.

  “The apartment’s pretty cool,” she said. “We lucked into it. My dad knew the guy who built the place, and he gave my dad a deal on the whole place. We have to rent, though. Initially, my dad rented the apartment for my brother. But he transferred to UCLA after two years, and I convinced Daddy to let me have the apartment. It took a bit to get the other guys out, but we managed, and I brought in some girls. So, my family has been here since this place was built. First, though, it was my brother, and now me.”

  “And your other roommates,” I said just loud enough so that she could hear me.

  “Oh, hell no,” she said. “Some people have no idea when they get a good deal. I had different roomies last year. Then I met Darla last summer, and she and I decided to rent. She found the other two girls, which was good, because I was buried. I’m an econ-poli sci double-major and I was working on election crap for my honors Presidential Politics seminar, and I had no time to, like, find anyone to live here. So Darla did.”

  “She’s nice,” I said wistfully, as if I wasn’t sure I could live here without her.

  “I thought so,” Lucy said. “Until she freakin’ booked on me.”

  She led me through the living room to the balcony.

  “This is the best part,
really,” she said, sliding the doors open.

  There was a grill on one side of the balcony, and some aluminum lawn chairs with the kind of nylon weave seats that clung to the skin in humid weather. I couldn’t tell what color the weave had been, only that the nylon had faded with time and exposure to the elements. The nylon looked as saggy as the couch.

  “I sit out here and study all the time,” she said. “It’s, like, perfect. A little brewski, a book, and you’re good to go.”

  I walked to the railing. It was more of a barrier, which provided privacy. It went all the way up to my ribcage.

  Unfortunately, the view from here was of the other buildings. I could see directly into an apartment about ten yards away.

  Still, I could feel the sunlight on my shoulders. Lucy was right. A beverage, a book, and a comfortable chair (not those lawn chairs), and this would be a perfect place to study.

  It had to cost a fortune. It was certainly nicer than anything I had ever lived in when I was in school—at least, until I married Truman and moved into his small house.

  “So how much is this place?” I asked, still looking at the apartment across the way. I could see into the kitchen. The table had a giant candle in the center, made of melted wax. The tenants must have put a new candle in the old wax and kept it there, letting it melt into that amorphous ball.

  “The apartment is two hundred dollars a month,” Lucy said.

  I inhaled sharply. My furnished one-bedroom cost me ninety-five dollars per month.

  “But,” Lucy said, “it includes laundry in the basement and three parking spaces. Plus, you’d only be paying fifty dollars per month.”

  I turned, remembering my pose. “I’m paying less than that right now. Darla made it sound like I’d be paying thirty-five dollars per month.”

  “Darla was high, then,” Lucy said dismissively. “Because she paid fifty dollars.”

  Which was an amazing rate for a scholarship student. At least, I thought she was a scholarship student. Pammy had said that Darla’s father had no money.

  Where had Darla gotten hers?