by Jenna Rae
“So I came home. I wanted to take a shower, I was all dusty from the garage.”
Del nodded, not wanting to stop the flow of the haltingly told story.
“I’d opened the blinds partway before I left this morning. For the plants.” Donette hunched over again, hugging herself. “When I come home from work I always close them. But it’s Saturday, and I didn’t do that. Which was stupid. I know this guy is out there, you can’t miss it on the news. But it’s not part of my Saturday routine I guess.”
“And—” Del stopped herself.
“And I shouldn’t have to lock myself in a vault to feel safe.” Donette nodded. “I was in my room, threw my grubby clothes in the hamper. I was just standing there, should I take a bath or a shower? Maybe a shower first and then a bath.”
Del waited, staying very still, while Donette took a moment to collect herself.
“I saw something moving through the blinds. I told you, it’s a slider, the blinds are the long vertical kind, and I saw something move outside, then there was a little noise. I thought it might be a bird. I put these stickers on the sliding glass doors so the birds won’t fly into the glass, but it’s the southern exposure side so they’re faded. I need to replace them but I keep forgetting. I didn’t think, with the fog there’s no way a bird would be flinging itself—I didn’t even think, I just went over there, and he was standing there, this man—” Donette stopped and swallowed, her eyes wide and dark. “White man. He was standing there, he backed up when I walked over. I screamed. Stupid, but I did, and he ran off. I put on my robe and turned on all the outside lights, but he was gone by then. I wasn’t sure what to do, I took a shower and came here. I almost didn’t, you know. Because I didn’t want to get treated like—so I asked for a woman and they called you.” She shrugged. “I dressed like I was going to work, I didn’t realize until just now. Like if I was dressed professionally you might treat me better. I didn’t even realize I was doing that. Maybe this was a waste of time.”
Del shook her head. “I’m glad you came in. What was he wearing?”
“Just regular weekend clothes.” She made a face. “Jeans. A Giants cap, black. His shirt was, I don’t know, dark. Black or gray, maybe. I didn’t notice his shirt that much. I don’t know about his shoes. I just didn’t—you know, I can’t believe how hard it is to remember the details!”
“It’s perfectly normal,” Del assured her. “You know, when our heart rate goes up a certain amount, like when we’re scared or too surprised or whatever, we just don’t take anything in. Can’t see clearly or hear too much or whatever.”
“Like our brain is trying to protect us from whatever’s freaking us out.”
“Exactly!” Del nodded, guessing Donette would regain her equanimity enough to give a physical description if she had a chance to intellectualize her experience, albeit briefly. “A freakout filter to keep you from going into shock. Then sometimes the details come back to you later when you’re less frazzled.”
“White guy, I told you that.” Donette straightened her spine. “Brown eyes, light. My age or a little younger. My height, about, five-eight or nine.” Donette’s eyes roved back and forth as she combed her memory. “Light hair, what I could see under the cap. Weak chin, weak mouth. Soft looking, like he lived in a—Boo Radley!”
Del looked a question.
“Like from that book, To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“Oh!” Del sat back, adjusting her mental picture of the peeper.
“Maybe not that weird. Not that nice or innocent, obviously. But looking at him? He was just totally unlike most of the men I know, my brother and my boyfriend, our friends. He looked like a wimp, I guess. That sounds silly maybe.”
“Invisible?”
“Right!” Donette grinned self-consciously. “Casper the Pervy Ghost.”
They shared a quiet laugh, and Del wrapped up the interview, promising to follow up with Donette in the following days. She took extensive notes, comparing this interview with the others. She was struck by how destructive peeping was. She’d started to think of it as a relatively minor violation, a precursor to actual personal crimes, but was increasingly aware of how affected the victims were by the violation of their privacy.
Phan tapped his desk to get Del’s attention. “Ready to switch gears?”
“And then some.”
She and Phan spent a few minutes again going over the files on Mikey’s death. Again they came to the same assessment: Mikey was the invisible kid. He had kept his head down and his mouth shut in juvie. He’d completed two years of high school before his release and part of a third before his disappearance from the group home to which he’d been released. His grades were mediocre, his behavior unworthy of documented censure or praise.
“What happened in that group home?”
“What do you mean?” Phan eyed Del over the expanse of files spread over their butted-together desks. “What’s on your mind?”
“Okay.” Del pointed at the three files spread in front of her. “I know we’ve been over this before, but it bears repeating: no one knew this kid. The new social worker doesn’t even remember him. I get it, she’s got a lot of files on a lot of kids. But there’s nothing, just his name and case number and placement. The old social worker hasn’t returned a single call or email. The supervising case worker at the group home says Mikey was a nice kid, no trouble, ate his veggies and kept his bed made. That’s it in the notes. Nothing about school, how he interacted with the staff or the other kids, just little notes about how easy he was before he just disappeared one day.”
“They followed procedure,” Phan pointed out. “Called in that he was missing an hour after the other kids came home from school—so he must have been attending, right? He must have normally come home right after school. Sometimes these group homes are a little hairy and at this one the kids were mostly post-juvie, so the staff was dealing with a lot. They might’ve been too busy to take a lot of notes.”
“True.” Del made a face. “I don’t know. I just get the feeling something’s missing. Maybe not. Maybe it’s perfectly legit and I’m looking at shadows because I want to find something.”
“Maybe.” Phan looked at his watch. “Listen, I gotta go. Alana’s coming over for a late supper, and I owe her. Seems like every time we make plans, I have to come here. You know how that is.”
“When we got the call about Donette, Lola was saying, you know, maybe you should make sure you can keep your promises to me.”
“Sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“But it isn’t that easy.”
“No,” Phan agreed with false cheer. “It’s not.”
Del went in to the station on Sunday to make yet another attempt to ferret out some usable information from the files on Mikey’s death. After several hours, she was no closer to clarity on his last year of life or his death. She considered stopping by Lola’s house on the way home, but things were weird between them and she wasn’t sure how to change that. Maybe it was time to accept that she and Lola just couldn’t work as a couple. How many times should she throw herself at the woman, knowing all she could expect was halfhearted acceptance that only presaged inevitable rejection? And hadn’t she earned that rejection by letting Lola down, time after time?
Del listened to Lola’s thin voice in a message left that morning.
“Hey. I guess you’re busy. Hope you’re having a good day.” There was a pause. “I feel like I’m always chasing after you.”
Del grimaced. Funny, she thought, I feel like I’m always chasing you. She played the next message, left an hour after the first.
“Me again. You’re still busy. I guess I’ll wait for you to call me.”
A few hours later she’d left a third message, and Del hesitated before playing that one, half knowing what she’d hear.
“It doesn’t really seem like you’re too interested in talking to me, and I don’t want to keep bothering you. If you decide you want to see me or talk to me or go to that
dinner we talked about, please call me or come by. I miss you. But I don’t want to keep treading water like this. Please call me. I love you. Bye.”
There was a text too: I don’t want to sit home and not hear from you. Heading out for the evening unless I hear from you by 5.
Del wondered if maybe she was too hasty, giving up on their relationship. Maybe, if she called Lola back, she could say she wanted to talk. Maybe she should just show up and take Lola in her arms and kiss her passionately. Maybe in twenty years they would look back on this rough patch and shake their heads at how foolish they’d been, thinking things were over between them.
Del tried to put her feelings in a little locker in her mind. They were useless, a distraction. She had Mikey Ocampo’s killer to find and a peeper to stop. She tried to remove her emotions from her perceptions of the case. Of course, she’d never managed to be objective where the kid was concerned. She’d made a connection with the boy, telling herself it was for the sake of opening him up and getting him to tell his story. It was the same thing she did with any victim, any witness, but it had been more than that with Mikey. She’d seen herself in the kid and had failed to draw back and analyze his statement and his responses objectively. When Leister had warned her not to get too invested emotionally, she’d dismissed his concerns as sexist nonsense. Had she been too hasty? She’d seen Mikey as an innocent, and she’d taken his word as gospel. Had that been a mistake? What if there was something she missed?
She had seen his mom, Mariposa Ocampo, her face adorned with bruises and abrasions that told a tale of violence. She hadn’t seen any recent marks of abuse on Mikey’s arms or face back then, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Had there been a medical exam as part of his intake? There must have been, but there was nothing about that in his paperwork from the Department of Juvenile Justice facility in Stockton. Del made a note to follow up on this and decided she needed to get home before it was too late—she’d spent half of Saturday and most of Sunday at the station and was feeling burned out.
Del stopped for a crowd of pedestrians as she was about to turn onto 18th Street. She watched the group of flashy young men jostle and tease and flirt with each other and smiled at their youth and exuberance. The road was clear but she hesitated, trying to decide whether she should pass by home and make a detour for a rare junk food fix. Then as she let off the brakes she saw Lola and dropped her foot harder than necessary on the brake pedal. Luckily she had no one behind her. She pulled over and inched into a tight gap that almost qualified as a parking spot. She tried to talk herself out of spying.
It was creepy, she knew that. It was definitely creepy and inappropriate and not okay to surreptitiously follow Lola on foot. We’re not together, not really, Del reminded herself. Single and free, Lola had every right to look pretty and excited and happy, to be lovely with her pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. She looked like she was heading somewhere she couldn’t wait to get to, maybe to meet someone she couldn’t wait to see. Lola called and texted and didn’t hear back from me, Del reminded herself, and then she made other plans. She told me she was making other plans if I didn’t get hold of her, and I still didn’t bother to call her.
I’m not stalking her. I’m looking out for her. She’s a very vulnerable, trusting woman, and she could be putting herself in danger.
Del rolled her eyes. It wasn’t even fully dark yet. Lola was two blocks from home and perfectly safe. Del slowed her pace even more. The neighborhood bubbled with people, with voices, with color and sound, and Lola blended perfectly into the liveliness of Castro Street. Even from half a block away, Lola’s posture was unmistakably different. She stood tall, her face alight with anticipation and pleasure. She smiled at the same posse of young guys Del had just watched cross the street in front of her. She could have been a movie star in Hollywood or a model in Milan, the way she took in the brightness and energy around her and reflected it back. She looked beautiful and strong and confident. Del couldn’t help but compare this Lola to the woman she met at Marco and Phil’s house nearly two years back. Today’s Lola was a whole new woman, and that new woman didn’t seem to need Del.
Del watched Lola wait obediently for the Walk signal at the corner. She’d felt guilty for not returning Lola’s calls and texts, an omission she couldn’t quite explain to herself. Obviously, Del needn’t have castigated herself. The sad little messages had been one big lie. Del had been feeling guilty over forgetting their tentative dinner plans, when Lola had had a backup plan all along. Well, she could stop feeling guilty. Lola was obviously fine.
Del felt a pang in her midsection and took a deep breath to push it away. She left the truck squeezed into its tight little space and walked back the way she’d seen Lola go, toward Castro Street. The sidewalk was crowded, and it was easy to blend in with the dawdlers and follow Lola until she joined the long movie theater line. A pretty young woman with vividly red hair greeted Lola with a squeal and a warm hug, and their faces were immediately animated in conversation. They didn’t notice Del or anyone else. Then the woman seemed to be telling a story. She gestured and made faces, and Lola nodded and smiled at the storyteller. Del eased closer and closer, forgetting to stay out of sight. It didn’t matter. Lola’s eyes were fixed on her companion’s expressive face.
Suddenly, Lola laughed out loud and Del found herself smiling. The redhead laughed, too, and the pair went into the theater together. They looked comfortable and relaxed and happy. They looked like old friends, maybe more. Only Lola didn’t have any old friends, did she? Beckett wouldn’t let her have contact with anyone for all those years. Lola’s friends were Del’s friends. She knew Marco and Phil, Tess and Lin, the other women from their book club, and that was about it. The one time Lola tried to go out to meet new people was at the Meetup where she met Sterling. Del’s smile fell. A part of her still fought against the knowledge that Janet had set Lola up to be murdered by a madwoman. Del had loved Janet. Some part of her always would. She still couldn’t reconcile Janet’s nefarious deeds with the lover who’d curled up against her and wept over the injustices of the world. Del swallowed hard. She felt a spasm in her belly.
Del’s cramping middle propelled her away from the movie theater. Her breath was hot and sour in her mouth, and she stalked back to the truck. In the minutes since she’d gotten out and started following Lola, the clear evening had started yielding to November’s creeping fog. The sunlit crowds had started the exodus that damp weather inspired. Pedestrians scurried past Del’s vehicle and pulled their coats tighter around them. Del felt the chill hit her through the sweater and chinos and boots that had become her uniform. She escaped to home, cold and blind to the world around her. She was numb with hurt and anger. All that garbage about wanting to talk, about Lola not wanting to chase her—it had all been bull. She heard Daddy’s voice in her head and got sucked back to Fresno and fourth grade again.
“Everybody lies.”
That’s what her daddy told Del when he couldn’t find his cigarettes and accused her of stealing them.
“I don’t even smoke,” Del told him. “I’m nine.”
“So what?” He went to slap her but she ducked out of the way. He reached again and managed to smack her mouth.
She gritted her blood-smeared teeth and insisted, “I’m not lying. I’m not a liar.”
“Everybody lies,” Daddy said. He feinted another slap, punched her in the gut. It was a good move, one Del noted for future reference. He’d shifted his weight, though, and forecast the punch. If she’d been more alert, she’d have been able to avoid his fist handily. This too she noted and put into practice within a few days. Sure enough, watching more closely, she was easily able to shift her own weight nearly in tandem and steer clear of his strike. His being drunk and her being both sober and agile with youth helped, of course.
Maybe, Del thought now, Daddy was right. For all his faults, he was a smart guy before he pickled himself.
Maybe it’s not just the bad guys. I lie, everybod
y lies. Why not Lola too? I wanted to believe she was special. I wanted to think she loved me. But she’s just like everybody else, a selfish, manipulative liar who only cares about herself.
Del knew this was unfair. Had she put Lola on a pedestal, one that required her to be absolutely perfect or be disdained? That was obviously unreasonable. Del looked at the mug of vodka in front of her and at the clock. She’d fled her spontaneous Lola surveillance and started drinking, what, two hours earlier? She couldn’t really remember deciding to do that. She dumped out the mug and stood at the sink, then shoved her fingers down her throat until she vomited.
“I’m not turning into a drunk over her, I’m not,” she told herself. “I’m not turning into Momma and Daddy.” She rinsed out her mouth and staggered away from the sink. “I’m better than that.”
She looked at the clock, watching the minutes tick away until midnight. It had been six days since Mikey’s murder. She’d studied his pictures in the file and wondered if she’d have recognized the little boy in the teenager. She wondered if she’d passed Mikey on the street before his death. His broken nose and some little scars on his ear—these details had stayed with her. But between the first time she saw him at the age of eleven and the time she saw his body when he was sixteen, Mikey had grown nearly a foot and gone from looking like a kid to looking like a young man. She could have walked by him a hundred times and not recognized him. What had he been like, really? She would never know.
* * *
Del hated that she wasn’t surprised when a woman was attacked on Dolores Street that Sunday night. Someone grabbed the victim from behind, drugged her with chloroform, and left her naked on the sidewalk not far from the lush green lawns and clustered palm trees of Mission Dolores Park, where an early morning jogger came across the victim and called for help. There appeared to be no vaginal penetration, but she had some minor bruising on her breasts, arms, thighs. Her clothes were gone. The reports read sexual battery. There was nothing much, forensically. No hair, no semen, no fibers, no trace of other drugs in the victim’s blood. No witnesses. The last thing the victim could recall was walking to her car after work Sunday evening.
