by Jana DeLeon
“She’s in the kitchen,” Eleonore said, both her tone and expression grim.
Maybe something happened to Pierce. He’d left this morning for China. What if his plane went down? Or maybe something was wrong with Corrine. What if the injuries she got when she was attacked were worse than they thought? What if it was cancer, like Cora LeDoux?
She took a deep breath and shoved all those thoughts from her mind as she entered the kitchen. There was no point in going through the options. She’d know what was wrong soon enough.
Corrine jumped up from her seat at the kitchen counter as soon as she entered the room. Her distress was apparent, and it was obvious she’d been crying. Shaye rushed to her mother and gave her a hug. “What’s wrong?” Shaye asked. “Has something happened to Grandfather?”
“No,” Corrine said as she released Shaye. “Your grandfather is fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing like that.”
Shaye looked back and forth between her mother and Eleonore. “Then what?”
“I think you better sit down,” Corrine said and waved at the breakfast table.
Shaye sat at the end of the table and Corrine pulled a chair around so that she was right in front of her. Eleonore took a seat on the other side of Corrine. They looked at each other, then at Shaye, then at each other again. Finally, Corrine took her hand.
“Police Chief Bernard called me down to the station today,” Corrine said. “They found a body a couple of days ago in the Lower Ninth. A woman.”
Shaye sucked in a breath, then processed what her mother had said.
Woman, not girl. It’s not Jinx.
Shaye struggled to get control of her emotions before they raced unnecessarily out of control. It wasn’t Jinx or her mother or Eleonore, but it could still be any number of clients or someone she’d met during her recovery or school.
“Who is it?” Shaye asked.
Corrine squeezed her hand so hard it hurt. “I don’t know how else to say this. Shaye, it was your mother.”
Shaye sucked in a breath and clutched the table with her free hand as the room began to spin. Her mother and Eleonore waved in front of her like the current in the ocean. Their faces were blurred and distorted. Their mouths were open, but she couldn’t hear anything except the incredibly loud ringing in her ears. Her stomach rolled and she swallowed, trying to fight off the nausea.
“Shaye?” Corrine’s face swam in front of her, closer and closer. “Can you hear me?”
Corrine looked at Eleonore. “She’s not responding.”
Eleonore rose and took Shaye’s face between her hands. “Breathe, Shaye. One deep, long breath, then let it out slowly. We’ve done this a million times.” Her voice sounded like an echo in Shaye’s mind, as if she were speaking from inside a deep well, but her words still clicked.
Shaye drew in a huge breath and focused on slowly releasing it. The room stopped moving, and her vision began to clear. Her racing pulse remained. She blinked and looked at Corrine as Eleonore removed her hands from Shaye’s face.
“Thank God,” Corrine said. “I thought we’d lost you there for a minute.”
Shaye nodded, still unable to speak.
“I can’t even imagine what a shock this is for you,” Corrine said.
“And you.”
“Yes, it’s horrible,” Corrine agreed, “but I’ll be fine. I’m worried about you.”
Shaye took another deep breath. “I’ll be fine,” she said, trying to reassure her distressed mother as well as herself. So many questions raced through her mind that she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Who was she?” Shaye asked.
Corrine looked at Eleonore, who nodded. “Her name was Lydia Johnson,” Corrine said. “Do you recognize that name?”
“Lydia Johnson,” Shaye repeated. She rolled it around silently several times, then shook her head. “How did she die?”
“She overdosed. The medical examiner said she’d been using a long time.”
A junkie.
Shaye had never harbored any childish dreams that she was a princess who had been abducted from her kingdom. She knew better than most what kind of people didn’t report a missing child. She’d never held out an expectation that if her parents were found they’d be upstanding citizens still desperately searching for their missing daughter. But to have her worst fear confirmed was still a blow.
“You’re sure she gave birth to me?” Shaye asked. She didn’t want to use the word “mother,” because that designation was reserved for Corrine.
“The medical examiner said the DNA match was conclusive. When the medical examiner realized everything the match implied, detectives were sent to search her house.” Corrine rose from the table and retrieved something from the table. She handed a picture to Shaye. “This is one of the things they found.”
Shaye looked at the smiling girl in pigtails. Her hair needed a good brushing and her shirt was threadbare, but she knew it was her. It was the face from her dreams.
“They also found this,” Corrine said, and handed her a piece of paper.
Shaye looked down at the document. “There’s no name.”
“I know,” Corrine said. “The police chief checked the birth records, but they didn’t find anything.”
“So that’s it,” Shaye said. “My entire childhood with this…this junkie was reduced to a single photo and a piece of paper from the hospital.”
Corrine bit her lower lip and glanced over at Eleonore. “We always suspected that the past wasn’t going to be pretty. I’m so sorry.”
Shaye looked at her one true mother. “Don’t ever apologize for her choices. And they were choices.”
“She was an addict,” Eleonore said. “You know what her limitations were.”
Shaye looked over at Eleonore. “And you know that she could have gotten clean. You make the choice every day not to drink, even when it’s completely legal and offered directly to you on a platter at every social event in New Orleans.”
“Not everyone is strong enough to do it,” Eleonore said.
Shaye shook her head. “Not everyone gives a shit about something other than themselves. Look, I appreciate what both of you are trying to do, but the most important thing that bonds us is the truth. I don’t want either of you to feel like you can’t tell me things.”
“You know we’d never lie to you,” Corrine said.
“I’m talking about saying what we really think,” Shaye said. “I’ll start. My birth mother was a junkie who clearly had no interest in her child and because of that, something horrible happened to me. That’s the bottom line. There’s nothing anyone can say that can dispute that.”
“Oh, Shaye!” Tears formed in Corrine’s eyes and spilled out over her cheeks. “Everything was her loss. Her loss and my gain.”
“Mine, too,” Eleonore said.
Corrine leaned over and hugged Shaye, clutching her as though she’d never let go. “I hate her for what happened to you. That’s my truth.”
Shaye wrapped her arms around her mother and held her tight. She knew how hard it was for Corrine to say what she did, and she’d always feel guilty for her harsh feelings. She simply wasn’t made to carry around hate, much less admit it out loud.
Shaye pulled back so that she could look Corrine directly in the eyes. “I was lucky. I got you out of the deal.”
Corrine began to weep and kissed Shaye’s cheek. “You will always be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Shaye’s heart swelled with both love and pain. Her relationship with Corrine was so special, so unique. The life Shaye had now would never have existed if her childhood had been different. But what had it been? When had her biological mother become a junkie? Shaye showed no medical signs of being born addicted, but it was a possibility. If Shaye could find out more about her life with Lydia, would she remember when that life came to an end and why?
Shaye looked over at Eleonore. “I need answers.”
Eleonore nodded. “And we’ll do everyth
ing we can to help you get them.”
Corrine squeezed her hand. “I’ll hire the best private investigators.”
Shaye gave her a small smile. “I thought I was the best private investigator.”
“You can’t do this. You’re too close to the situation.”
“Which is exactly why I should do it,” Shaye said. “Someone else walking through my childhood home or the park I played in isn’t going to remember for me. This is mine. It has to be me.”
Corrine glanced over at Eleonore and frowned. “There’s something else to consider.”
“There’s a lot of something elses to consider,” Shaye said.
“This is a biggie,” Corrine said. “The police chief put a gag order on the department, as did the medical examiner, but…”
“It’s going to get out,” Shaye finished, then cursed. It would be hard enough to dig up good information from her childhood given that the type of people her biological mother likely associated with were either the kind that didn’t remember anything or the kind that simply claimed they didn’t remember anything. But if a bunch of reporters started poking at people before she had a chance, they might ruin any ability she had to get information.
“So I’ll move fast,” Shaye said. “I’m working the Lower Ninth right now anyway. It won’t be hard to combine the two. Do you have an address for where she lived? Can I get access?”
Eleonore rose from her chair and grabbed a file folder from the counter. She handed it to Shaye. “I got everything I could from the police and made some calls myself. Lydia lived in Section 8 housing, and had been at the same address for twelve years. I spoke with the landlord and explained the situation. He is happy to meet with you any time over the next two days and let you into the apartment.”
“Why only two days?” Shaye asked.
“Because a new tenant is moving in there next week. His crew is scheduled to take everything out of the apartment in three days, so if you want anything, you have to get it now.”
Shaye blew out a breath. Two days.
Forty-eight hours to try to remember fifteen years.
* * *
Scratch stirred, his head aching so much it felt as if it would explode. A man’s voice sounded somewhere in the building. He’d heard the voice before, but he’d thought he was dreaming. Now he’d awakened in a strange room, chained to a bed, and knew that it wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality.
The voice grew louder and he realized the man was coming toward him. He could hear two distinct male voices now, one angry, the other defensive. He tugged on the handcuffs, but knew it was a waste of time. He’d never get loose that way. The footsteps stopped outside the door and he stopped moving altogether.
“Get rid of him tonight,” the angry man said.
“I think he’s going to come around,” the defensive man said. “He moved a little earlier.”
“It doesn’t matter. The client broke the agreement, so the boss told them we’re done. Conscious or unconscious, he’s a liability as long as he’s in this house. The boss’s orders are clear. He has to go now.”
“How am I supposed to get him out of here now? It’s still daylight.”
“The van is around back. I pulled it right up to the back door. The tarp and weights are in the back. Wrap him up, haul him out, and drive him deep into the swamp before you dump him.”
“Why’s it got to be now?”
“Because when we locate that kid, you gotta take care of him tonight.”
“Yeah, all right.”
The door rattled and Scratch went limp, figuring his best chance of escape was pretending to be unconscious, then overtaking his captor when it was just the two of them. He heard a dead bolt sliding back, then the door creaked open and he heard the man walking toward the bed.
The man poked him hard in the ribs and it was all he could do not to respond. He concentrated on keeping his body limp as the man poked him again. Apparently satisfied that he was still unconscious, the man unlocked the handcuffs from the metal headboard. Scratch let his arms drop as the cuffs came loose.
The man then cuffed his hands together across his body, grabbed his feet, and pulled him off the bed. Scratch’s body slammed into the floor and he clenched his jaw so hard it ached, forcing himself to remain silent. He could hear the man breathing above him and figured he was waiting to see if Scratch woke up. Finally, the man grabbed him by the feet and started dragging him down the hall.
After he’d gone on for what seemed like forever, he dropped Scratch’s feet and Scratch heard a door opening. He barely opened his eyes, trying to get a look at the man, but his back was turned and he was hunched over in a van. It was the opportunity Scratch had been waiting for.
He gathered all his strength and tried to roll over, planning to spring up from the ground, but when he tried to spin, his body barely moved. Pain shot through his limbs and he felt his legs, arms, and back start to tingle. The man whirled around and Scratch went limp again, clamping his eyes shut.
Shit!
Between the drugs and the amount of time he’d been restrained, his muscles were weak and had protested at the quick movement he’d tried to force upon them. He had to get some blood flow back into them or he’d never be able to overpower his kidnapper. Even from behind, he could tell the guy was big.
The man tossed something next to him and when Scratch heard the rustling of plastic, he began to panic. The man was going to wrap him up before he left. He didn’t have the strength to fight back now, so he had to come up with another plan. The man grabbed his shoulder and rolled his body onto a tarp, wrapping it around him. It was all Scratch could do to keep from ripping the tarp from his face. He forced himself to breathe naturally, trying not to let in the claustrophobia that threatened to take over.
Refusing to give up hope, he scrambled to come up with another plan. If he could work off the cuffs, then he might be able to break out of the tarp once the man dumped him in the swamp. That was assuming he could get his limbs to cooperate, and assuming he could get free of the handcuffs, and assuming a bunch of other things that he couldn’t process all at once.
One thing at a time.
That was the key. He needed to concentrate on one thing at a time. That would allow him to control the rising panic he felt. He had only one shot at getting out of this, and he was going to make it count.
The man tied the ends with rope and then Scratch’s legs went up and he was being dragged again, he assumed into the van. He heard the doors close and immediately went to work on trying to free one of his hands from the cuffs. When he heard the driver’s door open, he paused, waiting for the man to start the van. Once they were in motion, he worked on the cuffs again, while slowly flexing his feet and legs, careful not to make too much noise. A little bit of rustling was normal given the movement of the van, but too much would alert the man that he was awake.
The cuffs weren’t police issue. Scratch had a recent enough experience with those to know the difference. These were standard cuffs with links between them. If he had a paper clip, he could probably pick them, but he was going to have to settle for breaking them instead. If he got the cuffs twisted in just the right way, he was pretty sure he could exert enough pressure on them to break one of the links.
He moved his hands around, twisting the links in the position he wanted, and then waited. The van wasn’t the quietest vehicle on the road, but Scratch was afraid the engine noise wouldn’t be enough to hide the pop of the link when breaking. Sweat formed on his forehead and ran down the side of his face. The air grew warmer as he breathed, and he fought back the feeling that he was smothering.
Suddenly, the driver cursed and laid on his horn while slamming on the brakes. Scratch pulled as hard as he could, and the link broke. The man was still cursing as Scratch felt the links for the broken one. He slowly worked it off the chain and clutched in it his right hand. He had to be ready when the man dumped him into the swamp. He might be able to hold his breath for a minute, bu
t that was pushing it, especially given movement. He probably needed to plan on thirty seconds. And all this was assuming the man didn’t shoot him before dumping the body.
The man drove probably forty-five minutes before stopping, but Scratch had no clue what that meant as he didn’t know where he’d been. The angry man had ordered this man to go deep into the swamp, so Scratch had to assume they were far from civilization. That meant no possibility of help nearby.
The back of the van opened and Scratch felt the man pulling him out of the van. He braced himself for the inevitable pain when his body dropped out of the van and hit the ground, but it was even worse than he imagined. Pain shot down his back and legs and his head slammed into the turf so hard, it felt as if his eyeballs would pop out of their sockets. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath as he felt the desire to drop off into unconsciousness pass over him.
He opened his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, forcing himself to stay alert. If he lost consciousness now, it was all over. The man grabbed the tarp and began dragging him again, but this time, it was rougher going than on the tile in the building. Rocks and sticks dug into his back through the tarp, and he clamped his hand over his mouth to keep any sound from escaping.
The man stopped and Scratch stiffened, his panic increasing with every passing second of silence. Was he loading a gun?
“To hell with both of ’em,” the man said out loud. “I ain’t weighing this down. It ain’t going anywhere but the bottom.”
Weights! Scratch had completely forgotten the other man had mentioned weights. Lucky for him this guy wasn’t interested in following instructions. His body weight alone was enough to sink him straight to the bottom of any water source, and probably another several inches into the muddy bottom. Additional weight would be one more thing to worry about.
