by Nancy Adams
“Well, I got something pretty hefty.”
“And what may that be?”
“Back in 1985, the male, Jules Lee, did fifteen years in prison for killing a farmer during a break in.”
“Anything else on him?”
“Nothing. Just that he pleaded guilty, never made no trouble in prison, served his time with honor and served his year’s parole without incident. Except for the killing—which he always upheld was a terrible accident—he’s a model citizen.”
“What about Juliette Lee?”
“The female was dragged in over a soliciting charge here in L.A. about fifteen years ago, but it was all dropped. Apart from that little circumstance, she’s clean.”
“Christ! A murderer and a hooker!” Ryan remarked out loud as he watched an old lady holding a small dog answer the door to the plump woman. “Look,” he added in another tone, noticing that the plump woman was gesticulating with the old one, “what was the name of that neighbor they’re staying with?”
“Mmm…here it is: Mrs. Beau Jefferson.”
“Okay. Look, I’ll call you back.”
He flipped his phone back down and into his pocket, before getting out of the car and making his way over to the pair. As he did, he began to hear their words of disagreement float into his ears.
“But they were supposed to have shown at the hearing yesterday,” the plump woman was saying.
“But I told you,” the old lady answered, “I don’t know where they are.”
“If you are harboring them, I do have the authority to call the police, madam.”
“Call who you want,” the old woman said with haughty determination. “They can’t find what ain’t here.”
Screwing her face up and attempting, with little success, to hide her frustration, the plump woman handed the old lady a document from her black leather folder and made her way back to her car. Once she’d tugged her seatbelt over her large frame, the social worker started her car and was on her way.
Watching her leave, Ryan made his way across the road.
“Mrs. Jefferson,” he called out as the old lady went to close the door of her trailer.
When she heard her name, she paused and looked in his direction, frowning slightly at the sight of a man in a suit.
“I told your partner everything I knew just now,” the old woman said with obvious irritation.
“That wasn’t my partner. I work for someone else. I’m interested in helping the family with their latest problems involving the social worker that just came by. I may be able to help in all of this.”
Of course he was lying on the spot, he didn’t give a hoot about the family, just wanted the boy’s whereabouts and was buying himself access to the old lady. You never know, they could be hid up in some back room, he’d thought. Or at least I could become a friend and find out where they are through the old gal. Mrs. Jefferson squinted at him slightly, weighing John Ryan up.
“I just wanna help,” he repeated with a benevolent expression. “I represent someone who has an interest in the family—but who wishes to stay anonymous at this current moment. With my employer’s help we could straighten out all of this.”
“Who’s this employer you’re talkin’ about?”
“Like I said, they wish to remain anonymous until direct contact with the Lees is possible. But they are a distant relation of the family and recently found out about the Lees’ problems through a third party.”
Everything he said to her sounded so official and so genuine that she didn’t even ask for identification or a card and invited him straight in. Soon they were seated at Mrs. Jefferson’s kitchen table, a mug of hot coffee in front of both of them.
“It’s nice that you keep the place in such good condition,” Ryan remarked as he glanced around the neat kitchen.
“How do you mean?” she asked in a friendly manner.
“Well—and I’m sure you’ll agree—many of the trailers I passed on the way here are…well…not in a good way.”
“Some folks allow their minds to fade into chaos, and their environment mirrors their minds. My husband worked forty-five long years to support myself and three boys who all went off to college and live happy lives; all on the back of his hard work and my proud home. Some folks just give up the moment someone presents them with a challenge I guess. Others—like myself—just get on with it and do what best we can from what little we have.”
“That’s a nice sentiment. Where is your husband?”
“Huh! He’s no longer around. He died not three years into his retirement, poor man. My George never was one for just sitting around, and they say that the sudden slow down wasn’t good for him.”
“I guess not.”
“So anyway, you say you can help Jules and Juliette.”
“Yeah, but I need to see them for that. I have their last address as here, but you claim they’re not.”
“And that’s the God’s honest. They took off the day before yesterday. They left a short note saying that they was going away and that they would be safe. That was all.”
“May I see the note?”
“Don’t see why not,” the old lady said as she eased her old frame up out of her seat and made her way to the front of the refrigerator.
Lifting a magnet, she removed a folded piece of paper, which she handed to John Ryan. He quickly unfolded it and read. It was exactly what the old woman had said—just a short note to put her mind at ease, but not tell her anything substantial.
“No forwarding address?” he inquired once he’d handed the note back to Mrs. Jefferson as she returned to her place opposite him.
“Nothing. Just that.”
John sighed and bit his lip for a moment, wondering what his next move should be. It was obvious that, fearing Juliette’s incarceration or the loss of David, the couple had split in order to keep the family together.
“You have any idea of where they’d go?” he asked.
“No, sir. Gwen was a neighbor of theirs, in no. 54, and he—that is Jules—often spoke with Mr. Jackson at 68, and a couple of the others as well. They was friendly folk, especially Juliette. But they had no family, or at least that’s what they always said. Juliette was originally an Italian, and she always said that she don’t know anyone there no more.”
“What about Mr. Lee? He have anybody else? Any family somewhere in the country?”
“Well, that’s an interesting story,” the old woman said with a smile, rocking in her chair as she did. “Jules Lee is a half Red Indian what was raised out in a camp of natives in Nevada. Apparently they saved up some money to send him to art school in Italy when he was young and that’s where he met Juliette. It’s a regular romance. They’s a real nice couple and their boy David is the true meaning of joy itself.”
“I’m sure they are. So there’s no one you can think of?”
“No. But I do hope you find them.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Juliette is real sick and she need not be taken into no state government place where they won’t treat her with no respect. A person’s place is beside their family, not in some facility. I hope you find them and do what you say, Mr…?”
“John Ryan.”
“Mr. Ryan, I hope you find them and sort this whole thing out so she don’t have to be taken from her love and her boy.”
“I hope so too, Mrs. Jefferson.”
Having no more questions for the old woman, John spent the rest of his time there casually chatting with Mrs. Jefferson until his coffee was finished and it was time to go. When he was outside, she saw him off with a smile and he got back in his car, choosing not to bother the other neighbors with any more questioning. He surmised that if the family hadn’t told the old woman, they wouldn’t have told anyone. And he trusted Mrs. Jefferson. John Ryan knew a liar when he saw one, and the old lady was one hundred percent genuine in her claims that she knew nothing of the family’s current whereabouts.
Inside his car, John made a call
to a contact of his at U.S. immigration, asking if the Lees’ passports had been scanned going through any terminals. Within five minutes his contact called him back and said that they’d been checked a day ago crossing the Mexican border. “Bingo!” John had exclaimed to himself once he’d put the phone down. “At least I got a lead.” He contacted someone at Techsoft to have them check if the Lees had used any of their bank cards in the last forty-eight hours and found that Mr. Lee had visited his bank two days ago and withdrawn all the money in his account and savings in cash, before leaving. So they wouldn’t be catching him that way. They could hack into the street cameras at the border and those in Mexico, but CCTV didn’t spread that far into Mexico and wouldn’t give them any true idea as to where the family were heading.
Then another thought sparked briefly in John Ryan’s mind. The name of Jules’s business partner, Jose Hernandez. It was more than likely that he was of Mexican origin and could, perhaps, have set the Lees up with somewhere to stay in the country. It was a long shot, but it was all he had at the moment. He decided that he would call Sam with an update and then make his way to the Hernandez household where he hoped to find answers, or at least a way in. He wouldn’t be going in headlong, though. He wanted to take a look at the place first and get some more data on Jose Hernandez before deciding which route he would take—whether he would go in with direct questioning, question Jose discreetly from some other angle, offer money for information, or simply tap the man’s house and see if he made contact with Jules. He would probably pick the last option and then choose which of the other techniques he would use after that.
He picked up his phone and dialed Sam.
CHAPTER TEN
Jenna held onto the side of the auto rickshaw with all her might as it hurtled through the dusty New Delhi streets on its way to Main Bazaar in the center of the city. She, of course, knew nothing of the place, or India as a whole, and was only heading to that destination because a fellow passenger on her flight over had told her that that was where most travelers stayed when they were in the city, there having been absolutely no planning in her trip. Since she’d switched her phone back on after the flight, she’d been unable to get a signal, but all of a sudden she noticed it was working once again. As she’d promised she would the moment it was possible, she called Donna up, doing the deed with one hand while the other clung onto the railing of the auto for dear life.
Donna immediately picked up.
“You get there safe?” she asked instantly.
“Obviously.”
“I mean you haven’t been mugged or raped yet?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“I just don’t understand: of all the places in the world you got to go find yourself, you pick India, rather than, say, a five-star beauty spa in the Bahamas? Where are you now? It’s an awful line, I can hear a lot of sound in the background.”
“I’m in one of those little vehicles they use as taxis.” Then, glancing around it, she added, “It’s like half-car, half-scooter or something.”
“My God! It’s one stage from being a horse and cart! I know I’ve been asking it since you told me that you were planning to go there; but why are you wandering off to Asia?”
“Trying to find myself or something. I don’t know; I need a vacation as far away from everything as I can get. Asia should do it.”
“Where are you gonna head to now?”
“I don’t know. I’ll chill in Delhi for a couple of days and then find somewhere.”
“But India, Jen!? Really!?”
“I wanted something different, to go somewhere where not everyone recognizes me.”
“But everyone back here is eventually gonna notice you’re not around Sam no more. The media are bound to start chatting idly away. And what’s he doing while you’re off around the world, huh? I mean, he sure proved Gary wrong—there hasn’t been a crumb of anything come out of their side. Is he with this girl or not?”
Jenna closed her eyes tight, the bumpy road kicking her in the ass as they went along a particularly potholed road.
“I don’t give a shit,” she finally said. “I’ll be living on some tea plantation by then. They’ll never find me. Let him deal with it all.”
“But, Jen, you’ve really got to—”
But Jenna heard no more. Her mobile telephone was suddenly snatched from her hand by a passing motorbike passenger and she watched as he triumphantly held it aloft in the air as the driver weaved the thieves through the street.
Having noticed it in his wing mirror, the driver wiggled his head in the Indian fashion and said, “Missus should be more careful. Many bad peoples in India.”
Having said this, he laughed loudly, as if the theft were the most regular occurrence in the world.
Eventually, they got to main bazaar and, having paid the driver five times the normal rate, she walked along an extremely busy road bordered by tall buildings with huge neon signs and covered in a sheet of dust like everything else. People thronged everywhere and, among them, vehicles tried to weave through the coagulated streets, slamming their horns every chance they got, as though they had the power to part whole oceans.
After ambling her way through a mass of people, countless of them approaching her with numerous and varied requests, she selected one guy who told her that he could immediately take her to rooms. Trusting him, she went down several alleyways and found her way into the lobby of a shabby, dust-covered hotel. In it she saw several people who were asleep on straw mats on the floors in and around the reception. When the boy who’d led her there came in with her bag, he shouted something out and one of the sleeping bodies roused, got up and went behind the desk.
The boy then went to leave with a smile and a request for a tip, which caused the recently woken man to shout and point at the boy. But before the man could shoo the boy away from Jenna, she had already handed over about fifteen dollars in the form of a crisp new 1000-rupee note.
“You shouldn’t have paid him,” the man behind the desk said grumpily, before remembering where he was and what he was doing.
Giving her a smile he added, “Now, would madam be liking a room?”
“Yes,” she said worriedly.
“With or without shower?”
“With.”
“Hot or cold?”
“Hot, I guess.”
“Okay,” he said, sliding a large ledger across the dusty desk toward her. “I will need you to fill this out first and then one of my colleagues will take you to your room.”
“How much will the room cost?”
“I’m afraid, madam, that this is high season and the hotel is very busy at this current period.”
She looked around the lobby and saw nothing but dust and sleeping bodies.
“So the rooms are two thousand rupees per night,” he continued with definition, having spotted her inexperience the moment she walked through the door.
Of course it wasn’t any season of note, and the room was almost five times what it should have been. But what was Jenna to know? So she agreed to the price.
“How long will you be staying?” the man asked.
“At least three days.”
“Will you require breakfast?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you do, it is served between six AM and ten AM in a room down that corridor behind me.”
After that, nothing much more was said and Jenna, once she’d given over all her details, was shown to her room. When she stepped inside and the door was shut behind her, she felt like a prisoner being shut in his cell on the first day of a long sentence. An aroma like stale urine attacked her nose and she saw that the linen of the bed was dusty and full of stains. The floor was bare stone, but still visibly very dirty, and when she peeked inside the bathroom, she saw a filthy tiled floor full of rust marks and other debris. Back in the room, the walls harbored marks in almost every spot, resembling patterns or decorations in themselves. A wardrobe that looked as if it had recently bee
n retrieved from the side of the road stood in one corner and a rusty fan stood above the bed.
And that was about it: barren filth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Okay, sis,” Beth said softly to her friend when she’d pulled her car up outside the Prior residence, “this is it. You really sure you wanna do this?”
“It has to come out now,” Claire replied with a knot in her stomach. “I can’t delay it another second. She’s all alone tonight; Kyle’s away at college and dad’s at some meeting. I should’ve told Sam when you said, and so I won’t risk another second on not telling Ma.”
“Alright, Sis, then all I can do is wish you good luck. You call me if you need me to pick you back up.”
“I’m probably gonna go for a walk afterward, so I’ll make my own way back to your place.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Beth said warmly. “But if you need me I’m only a call away.”
Once she’d said this, Beth leaned across the car and the two embraced for a moment, before Claire got out and stood in front of her parents’ home. While Beth drove away, Claire looked up at the house from the sidewalk and felt haunted by the sight of it. It haunted her just as it had when she was a kid, when she’d come home from one of her friends’ places knowing what awaited her inside. Knowing that he would…
With the feeling of a huge weight bearing down other, Claire made her way up the path to the front door where she rang the bell. It wasn’t long before her mother answered. Everything went a shade darker for Claire when the two women’s eyes met across the threshold, and June couldn’t help but frown a little at the sight of her daughter. Instead of June’s usual beaming ray of sunshine smile, all Claire received was a cold, one-handed hug and a peck on the cheek.
“I was sitting in the kitchen,” June said blankly as she led her daughter inside the house, toward said room.
When Claire was sat at the table, June asked her if she’d like a drink and Claire replied that she’d like tea. June then made tea in silence and neither of them talked, the knot in Claire’s stomach twisting up more and more with each second of terrible silence. Her mother was already deeply disappointed with her and soon she would surely be outraged.
