by Leanne Leeds
“I didn’t know her that well. Actually, I didn’t really know her at all,” Melissa said. “But I can sure tell you how she got that way.”
“From everything I heard, before she met her father she wasn’t that bad,” Melissa told us as we sat around the light colored living room of the AOK house. “I mean, she was under ten, so I guess there’s not really that much you can do before your ten years old and all. There was a girl in my biology class that knew her when she was growing up, though. Carla said they used to be friends because Tiffany used to be nice.”
“And then she met her father?”
“Yeah, I’m not even really clear how that happened,” Melissa nodded. “I don’t know if her mom needed money for something. I heard something about her mom being, like, really poor and applying for services? Apparently in Texas when you apply for services you, like, have to go after the dad if he’s not paying child support.”
“If you need to apply for welfare or Medicaid in the state, the mother would’ve had to document that she had attempted to get child support for her child,” Aidan said. “The state essentially goes to get it for her to offset what they spend to help.”
“I bet that went over with Anthony Drake really well,” I told him.
“Yeah, the rumors are he didn’t know about her until the state showed up and started threatening him and stuff which, yeah, I guess he wasn’t too happy about,” Melissa said as she winced.
“Are you all right?” Gunther asked as he leaned forward.
“Yeah, I get these weird phantom pains in my legs,” she said as she exhaled. “I was in a car accident when I was really young, and I was paralyzed from the waist down. So, I technically shouldn’t feel anything. Heck, if you poke me with a pin, I won’t even notice it. But sometimes, for no reason, my legs hurt. It’s the weirdest thing.”
We nodded, unsure of what to say.
“Though not the weirdest thing, really. One of my sorority sisters actually has her leg amputated, and it hurts, too. Maybe that’s the weirdest thing. Anyway, so Tiffany’s Dad kinda swooped in? I don’t think her mom was really happy.”
“I thought her mother was hit by a car when she was ten years old?” I asked Melissa.
“Yeah, she was, but the way I heard it, that car hit her after Anthony Drake showed up, and after her and Anthony Drake got into lots of fights about Tiffany and him being in her life,” Melissa said. “The rumor was that mom wanted to keep Tiffany as far away from Anthony Drake as possible. Anthony Drake did not agree… if you get my drift.”
Aidan, Gunther, and I instantly looked at one another. I didn’t even have to use my power to know what they were thinking. It was the same thought I had.
“Carla used to go over to her house and play all the time, and then one day Tiffany’s mom died, and Tiffany just disappeared from the apartment they had been living in. Like, gone. Carla looked through the window, and all the furniture was still there, Tiffany’s toys on the floor. Even pictures on the wall. But she never came back to the neighborhood.”
“So Carla actually saw Anthony Drake around Tiffany while Tiffany’s mother was alive? You’re absolutely sure that’s what she said?”
“Yep,” she nodded. “She lives in the dorms right down the street. I can call her and ask her to come over if you want.”
I thought about it and then shook my head no. “This is really interesting, but I’m not sure that what happened to her when she was ten really has anything to do with her being murdered a few months short of turning twenty.”
“Maybe,” Melissa said sounding unconvinced. “What happened to her after her mom died, though, probably does. That’s when I started to know about her.”
“How so?”
“My brother works for Anthony Drake,” she shrugged. “He’s not particularly proud of it or anything. I mean, no one that works for Drake really is, you know? But there are only a few places you can work out here and make a lot of money, and working for Anthony Drake is one of those places.”
“Did your family have money issues?” Aidan asked. He held up his hand as if to apologize for asking the question. “I don’t mean to pry, but frankly, you seem like a nice girl, and I find it hard to believe that anyone would work for Anthony Drake if there weren’t some kind of pressure where they needed a good amount of cash.”
“Well, yeah, of course there was,” she laughed and waved her hands up and down her wheelchair-bound body. “My parents were killed in the car accident, and it was just me and my brother left. The drunk driver that hit the car didn’t have insurance, and he didn’t own anything, I parents hardly had any life insurance, so… I mean, yeah, things were kind of desperate. My brother was barely an adult, and suddenly he had to take care of his young, paraplegic sister.”
“That must’ve been terribly hard for him,” Aidan told her.
“Sure. My recovery was expensive, and then just buying things so I could live once I recovered… that was expensive, too. I don’t really blame Micah for going to work for that jerk. I don’t think he knew what else to do, and he didn’t want to move.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“We had lost so much,” she said with a catch in her throat. “We lost our parents, I lost the use of my legs. My parents didn’t talk to their families, so we didn’t really have anybody other than each other and our life here. He didn’t want us to lose our home or for me to lose all my friends. So he did what he had to do to maintain it.”
“Doesn’t the government take care of its people when they’re sick?” Gunther asked, confused.
Aidan, Melissa, and I stared at Gunther unsure of what to say. I turned back to Melissa and smiled.
“He’s Canadian,” I told her. She made a sound of comprehension and smiled at him.
Our government does not take care of the sick, I thought quickly to Gunther. It’s a service, so to speak, that you must have the money to pay for.
But what if you don’t?
Then you don’t. If it’s an emergency, you can have your life saved, but ongoing care? You have to find a way to pay for it, or for someone to pay for it for you. Some people just go without treatment, medicine, healing because they can’t pay for it.
Gunther’s face froze in shock, then shifted to disgust.
Your world is not superior in all things, Charlotte.
No, I suppose nobody has it perfect, yet.
Gunther’s fingers moved almost imperceptibly in a pattern as his hand lay on his lap. I felt a small rush of magical energy blow through the room. Gunther smiled at me as I caught his eye.
What did you do?
He didn’t answer. He just winked.
Aidan cleared his throat.
“Sorry, I was just thinking,” I told Melissa. “So your brother, what was his name?”
“Micah.”
“So did you meet Tiffany through Micah?”
“No,” Melissa said as she shook her head. “He really tried to keep me away from that whole scene, you know? Like, even when I was a girl, Micah tried to hide all of it from me. I guess he didn’t want me to realize that he was working for a gangster. But he did say she would check in with me here and watch out for me,” Melissa said as she made a face. “Fat good that did. He’d tell me stories about Anthony Drake’s family that would make me wonder why he even mentioned me to her at all.”
“What kind of stories?” Gunther asked.
Before she could continue, there was a knock at the door. Melissa grabbed a remote control and wheeled herself toward the hallway. She asked who it was as she approached.
“Detective Kyle Roberts,” came the answer.
Uh oh.
“I could arrest all three of you right now!” Kyle snapped as he shook his finger at us while we stood on the front porch of the Alpha Omicron Kappa house. Though he was upset with all of us for coming here and talking to Melissa, the preponderance of his finger waving seemed flung in Aidan’s direction.
“No, you really couldn’t,” Aidan
responded calmly. “We didn’t tell anyone to do anything, we just came to ask questions because we were curious. I’m sure if you go back in and have a conversation with Melissa, she’ll be happy to let you know that we have not interfered with anything.”
“This case is complicated enough as it is without having the three of you poking around,” Kyle told Aidan as he crossed his arms. “I’ve got the chief breathing down my neck telling me to just drop it, and I’ve got you running around with someone I knew from high school and… who are you, exactly?”
“I’m Charlotte’s boyfriend,” Gunther said nodding in my direction.
“Are you in the habit of letting your girlfriend run around in the middle of murder investigations?” Detective Roberts asked him.
“Aren’t you dating Aidan? I suppose I could ask you the same question. At least, I would ask you the same question if it wasn’t so insulting to Aidan.”
“What are you talking about?” Kyle snapped again.
“Charlotte and I are in a relationship. She’s not some pet I keep on a leash,” Gunther snapped back at him. “The fact that you even implied otherwise is offensive.”
Wow. Go Gunther.
“I would suggest that we take this animated discussion further down the ramp,” Aidan said quietly. “We are beginning to attract eyes that we would probably prefer not to attract. No doubt ears will follow, and we're not making a terribly good impression of the local police department’s professionalism.”
“You care about that now, do you?” Detective Roberts said as he lowered his voice and quickly scanned the faces looking out of various windows around the cul-de-sac.
“Are you implying I can’t professionally ask questions, honey?” Aidan asked Kyle sarcastically. “I have a badge the same as you. I may not be a detective, but I am an investigator.”
“You’re an accountant,” Kyle argued.
“You’re insulting,” Aidan retorted with an edge even as he placed a hand on Kyle’s shoulder supportively. “I get that you’re having a bad day, but you don’t need to treat us like this. We’re all looking for the truth. And frankly, Kyle, you look like you could use the help. Is it just you here?”
Kyle glared angrily at Aiden. He turned on his heel, and walked down the ramp, glancing back once to ensure we were following him.
Once in the street, we stood in a circle beside his police SUV, using the vehicle to block us from the view of three of the sorority houses.
“You’re right,” Kyle told Aidan. “I’ve had my entire team gutted in a matter of hours. Captain Johansson made some crack about how some college girl being killed in an animal shelter wasn’t worth the number of man-hours we were paying, and he reassigned everyone. Everyone but me.”
“Everyone knows Johansson’s in Drake’s pocket,” Aidan pointed out. “You had to have expected that he would pull something like that as soon as he heard.”
“I never expect it,” Kyle told him. “I should, though. It keeps happening.” Detective Roberts rubbed his bristly face with his large hands and sighed again. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?”
“Frankly, I didn’t know if you were on the take,” I told him, making up a story on the fly. “I’m not going out of town and leaving my parents here if they are in any danger. I wanted to check for myself that they weren’t and that this really is about Anthony Drake.”
“I’m a cop!”
“So is your captain,” I pointed out. “That hasn’t stopped him from protecting Anthony Drake.”
“So even though we went to school together, you didn’t trust me?”
“It didn’t sound like you trusted me, either,” I said. “You just about flat out accuse me of doing… something. I don’t know what you thought I was hiding.”
And let’s face it, whatever Kyle thought? There’s no way he could have been right about what I was hiding.
“I’m a detective. I don’t trust anyone,” Kyle said with a half grin.
“Well, I’m a—”
Charlotte!
Oh, right. He’s human. He wouldn’t know what a lawgiver was.
“You’re a what?”
“I’m a-curious about what you found out,” I said. Gunther tried not to chuckle out loud. Kyle gave me an odd look.
“I found out that for whatever reason, Anthony Drake does not want his daughter's murder solved,” Kyle said. “In all the years I’ve been chasing this man, though, I can’t even conceive of what the reason would be behind his organization calling in favors to let his daughter’s murderer go free.”
“Maybe he wants to be the one to take revenge?” Gunther asked.
“Maybe,” Kyle said. He looked and sounded unconvinced.
“Could he have done it?” I asked him.
“I… I mean, the man is capable of some really shady stuff. I wouldn’t put it past him to kill anyone if it served his agenda. But his own daughter? I have a hard time believing that.”
“You didn’t hear him when he came to see where Tiffany died,” I shuddered. “I am so grateful that man wasn’t my father. He was just so mean, almost blaming her for being weak enough to be killed. Ugh, it was really horrible.”
“That sounds like him,” Kyle said.
“And when he showed up, the dogs were so afraid of him. For a second I wondered if he did kill Tiffany just because of how much fear all of the dogs showed. But a father killing a daughter? I just can’t see it.”
“Dogs can sense horrible, violent people,” Aidan said. “In this part of the state, Anthony Drake is the most horrible and violent of them all.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I agreed. Even though I agreed, there was something about that visit, something nagging at me. Something that I felt I was missing. “Can you… um… remember that visit really well, Aidan?”
“It’s a little hazy,” he told me as his eyes moved briefly over to Kyle, then back. “Why?”
“I just thought that if you could remember, then…”
If you can remember, Aidan, then I can look at it through your mind with the psychic power I can’t talk about in front of your quarterback boyfriend. Telepathy was only appreciated in its full awesomeness when it wasn’t available to you. I felt like I was limping with half a…
Okay, I’m not gonna make jokes about limping or not having legs anymore.
“Charlotte?”
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll talk later.”
Aidan nodded.
“Wow, you guys really do kind of talk in code,” Kyle said. “Aidan told me that you guys were so close, it was almost like you could finish each other’s sentences. I didn’t realize it meant the sentences would never get finished,” he laughed.
“So what now?” I asked Kyle, changing the subject.
“Well, it’s almost 5 o’clock,” Detective Roberts said looking at his phone. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty hungry. We could go grab dinner and talk about what we each know about the case. Maybe the captain doesn’t care if the case gets solved, but I do.”
“Hey,” Aidan broke into a mischievous smile. “I know just the place we should go.”
“Where?” Gunther asked.
“Anthony Drake’s restaurant.”
12
Aidan suggested that Gunther ride with Detective Roberts. His excuse was that I would be traveling soon and he wanted to spend as much time just the two of us as he could get. Gunther looked suspicious, but for all of Kyle’s claims he trusted no one, he just nodded.
“There are some things you need to know,” Aidan said as soon as the car doors slam shut. “Micah?”
“Yeah?”
“Is Michael Hayden,” Aidan said as he slowly pulled away from the curb and followed Detective Roberts SUV. “I saw the images of him in the threads of Melissa’s past while she told us the story.”
“Okay, that… I don’t know if that makes things clearer or even muddier,” I told Aidan as I bit my thumbnail. “So Tiffany played a joke on a rival sorority, and it just
so happens that the dog she kidnapped and winds up ‘accidentally’ killing is the dog of her father’s right-hand man’s disabled sister?”
“That does seem like an awfully convenient coincidence,” my friend said as we slowed to a stop for a traffic light. “I wish I’d had my full power when Hayden stopped by your parent's shelter with Drake. Just a slight sense I got from him seems completely at odds with how his sister sees him.”
“What do you mean?”
“She still sees him as caring, sweet Micah who sacrifices everything to take care of her. The snippets I got from him and that shelter? Well, serial killer vibe wouldn’t be overstating it.”
“I get what you mean,” I agreed. “He was cold as ice, and I sensed flashes of really negative, dark emotions and thoughts, but Hayden would stuff them down and hide them almost as soon as I sensed it.”
“That’s pretty disciplined, I would think,” Aidan observed.
“If psychopaths are disciplined, yeah, sure.”
“By the way,” Aidan said as the restaurant came into view. “Your boyfriend healed Melissa’s phantom pains. I knew immediately when I saw his hands moving what he was doing. Sometimes this power is useful in the most random of ways,” he smiled as he glanced at me. “I thought you should know. I suspect Gunther is a little alarmed at some of the inequalities of our human world.”
“I wish I had thought to do that,” I grumbled. “I’m glad Gunther did it. He’s just so much smarter than I am about magic, you know? Like, he probably could’ve completely healed her spinal cord so that she could walk again, but he realized that would be suspicious and unexplainable. So he did what he could. Maybe.”
“Oh, he did that, too,” Aidan confided. “She just won’t know for a couple of years, and the doctors will likely be able to track it and explain why. It’s a slower healing spell than the phantom pain one. I just wanted you to know because… I think the people getting sick and dying if they can’t pay for treatment? That bothered him.”
