I spoke into the car: “Wallace, we need a plan.”
“Yeah, here’s a plan,” he said. “We call my office and the cops. By the book.”
“I can’t stand the thought of leaving her in there another second,” I said.
I pulled my hair off my face and behind my head in one hand. The wind had picked up quite a bit in the last two hours.
“If she’s in there,” Wallace said.
“And if she’s not, we look like idiots for running off to the police and accusing this guy half-cocked,” I said.
“There is that.”
I made a decision. “I’m going in,” I said.
“You’re going to get me arrested,” Wallace replied.
“Nah, it will be fine.”
“I hope this means you thought of something.”
It didn’t. I refrained from saying so.
He climbed out and locked his car. “Fine,” he said. “But I have 911 punched into my phone, and I’m dialing if we see any sign of her.”
I ran to the front garage and peeked in through one of the dirty windows. No vehicles, but a tire sat in the middle of the floor beside a large oil stain. A rake and shovel hung on the wall.
“Come on.” I motioned for Wallace to follow me around back.
“Don’t you want to start with the doorbell?” he asked in a hiss louder than his speaking voice.
I ignored him. Moving quickly, I opened the side gate to the back yard and slipped through. The first window we came to had battered shades covering it from the inside. The next window was high, small, and opaque. I moved on and peered in the last side window. No lights. No people. A mattress on the floor. A bedroom?
I ran into the deserted, treeless back yard. It made the front look pampered. Someone had burned a pile of garbage on the concrete patio, leaving behind a can of Wolf Brand Chili with a half-burned label and a pile of ash. The wind sifted the ash and scattered some in our direction.
The window on the near side of the back door had a black trash bag over a missing pane with duct tape that was starting to lose its adhesive at the edges. This window looked in on the other side of the same empty bedroom I’d just seen.
On the opposite side of the back door, we found the window to the kitchen. Again, no people. A large cardboard box sat upturned in the tiny eating area. A rat was scavenging on a plate and fork sitting on the box. The sink below the window had another garbage bag in it, and roaches scurried in and out. The refrigerator door hung open.
I tried the back door and, to my surprise and horror, the handle turned. I pushed the door inward as softly as I could, and it swung open. I arrested its progress before it hit the cabinets inside and leaned in after it.
Wallace stumbled backward. “Oh no. No no no. No trespassing.”
“But it’s open,” I said.
“It’s still trespassing. I could get fired.”
Would Jack fire me if I got arrested for trespassing? Probably not. And if he did, wasn’t my job with him temporary anyway? I felt an odd pang in my chest at the thought, but I refused to consider what it meant. I didn’t have time to get sappy. I lifted my chin and stepped over the threshold.
“Oh shit, Emily. Come on now, don’t go in there.”
“I’ll be right back. You just keep a lookout.”
I tiptoed into the kitchen. If Valentina was in here, she was leaving with me.
***
The stench in the house hit me with the force of a one-ton bull. Rotting garbage. Urine and feces. The rat looked up at me from its perch on the box, its front paws to its face, its tiny jaws working on its prize. The roaches ignored me. I pulled out my phone and activated a low-beam flashlight app, forcing myself to walk through the kitchen and the dark doorway beyond it.
The kitchen emptied into a den that had access to the front door. There was a bedroll on the carpet—carpet that crunched under my feet. Beside the bedroll was a backpack in a bluish color, flat and empty. A pair of men’s tube socks partially inside out, bunched up in sweaty, dirt-caked folds hung from the backpack’s open zipper. No people in here, at least not now. Because there obviously was a person living here—a gross person who preferred life in the dark away from prying eyes.
Another doorway on the far side of the room beckoned, darker than the one from the kitchen. Sweat trickled down my back and I stood frozen in place. Someone had to do this. Someone had to care about this little girl enough to do this; the only someone here was me. I crept across the living room. My mouth and eyes watered, and something large pushed my heartbeat up into the base of my throat, nearly gagging me. I stopped, swallowing over and over until the nausea passed and I could slink forward again.
The doorway entered a short hall with a bathroom in the middle and doorways to my right and left. I knew there was a bedroom to the left—I’d seen it through the window. It had looked empty, but what about the closets? Or what if the person living here had fled to this bedroom after I’d peeked in earlier? I couldn’t skip it. I had to be thorough. So I stepped into the tiny room—it was empty, thank God—passed the mattress, and faced the closet. Its door was ajar. It was empty, too. I hadn’t known I was holding my breath until I realized I was lightheaded; I exhaled in a gush, trying desperately to quiet my breath.
A text chimed. I froze. If someone was in here, they now knew for sure that I was, too. It could be Wallace warning me of something, so I glanced at it.
Rich: When can we finish our talk?
Sheesh. Ex-husband. If I ended up dead because that text alerted the boogie man, it would be his fault. It figured that he’d continue to mess things up for me. But no boogie man jumped out. I stayed motionless for several seconds, then moved on.
The bathroom was next. I poked my head out the bedroom door. The hall was still empty. Belatedly, it occurred to me that a weapon would have been a smart idea. I’d left my handbag in the car, though, so if I came upon someone who wasn’t glad to see me, I’d get to practice my rusty self-defense skills. I rolled my neck, and it cracked. Thanks to years of goat tying and classes at the YMCA in Dallas, I’d learned that my strength was in getting an attacker flipped and on the ground. Then I could drive my palm up through the bridge of his nose or jab my fingers in his eyes. If I had to. I shuddered, swallowing down more nausea. For the first time since I’d entered the house, I remembered that I was pregnant. A pregnant woman had no business in here. But then, neither did Valentina.
I made my way silently into the bathroom. It was peppered with little spotlights from where the crushed blinds gapped. Dark stains streaked the sink and curtainless tub. The laminate had detached from the countertop and broken away in patches. But there was nothing and no one in the room.
Again, I leaned out slowly to check the hall before entering it. All clear. On to the last room. Its door was three-quarters of the way shut. I didn’t like that at all. I held my phone’s flashlight in my left hand and pushed the door back until it met the wall with a thud. No doorstop. No sound in the room. A sharp pain ripped through my abdomen and I dropped to my knees in shock, a strangled cry escaping my lips before I could hold it in. My phone bounced once helplessly on the carpet, landing flashlight down.
“Emily!” Wallace’s voice echoed through the silent house, and his footsteps followed it. In seconds he was on the ground behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I think . . . yeah, I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. A cramp or something.”
This baby seemed to want me to always know it was there. I didn’t think this cramp was normal, though. When we finished today, I’d make a “first available” obstetrician appointment. I’d vomited up my news in New Mexico yesterday and lived through it. I’d survive the onslaught of Amarillo gossip that my condition would unleash, too.
Wallace slipped his arm under my shoulder and around my back. He hefted me up, grunting at first until I helped him.
“I’m sorry to scare you,” I said. “Really, I’m fine. T
hank you.”
“I thought you’d been stabbed or something,” he said.
It had felt like it. “Yeah, I overreacted.” I took several deep breaths and waited for the pain. None came. “Just one more room and we’re done.”
Having Wallace with me gave me courage. I stepped into the room, avoiding another mattress and a pile of crap (literal crap, the origins of which I didn’t want to consider) and faced the closed closet door. I yanked it open, and screamed my fool head off.
I wasn’t the only one. The two teenagers huddled in the closet joined in with me. I backpedaled and fell onto the mattress. Wallace, who had remained in the doorway, leapt into the room, arms raised in a judo posture, knees flexed, on his toes.
The screaming stopped.
“Don’t hurt us,” one of the teenagers said in a high-pitched voice.
The other added in a slightly deeper one, “I know we’re not supposed to be here. We’ll move out, I swear.”
“What in hell? How old are you?” Wallace reached a hand out and pulled me to my feet. “Emily, give me some light.”
I pointed my phone at their torsos so as not to blind them. They were filthy. Two gangly waifs in blue jeans and sweatshirts, ridiculous, dark knit caps on their heads. Girls? I looked closer. One a girl, one a boy. The girl had one green eye and one brown eye, and the boy had a nasty scar on his neck—long since healed, but brutal looking.
The boy spoke. “Eighteen.”
Wallace put his hands on his hips. “Don’t try to bullshit me.”
They looked at each other, and the girl whimpered softly.
The boy repeated, “Eighteen. So you can’t call our parents.”
Wallace shook his head. “Show me some ID.”
The boy stood up and helped the girl stand, too. “We don’t have to show you nothing. You’re not the cops.”
Wallace pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to an ID, which he pointed at them. “Better. Child Protective Services.”
I put my hand on his arm. He looked at me, and I mouthed, “My turn, please?”
He swept his hand at me and gave a slight bow.
I turned to the kids. “We’re looking for a man named Harvey Dulles. This is his house. Have you seen him?”
Two head shakes. Still, it was the boy who answered. “The skinhead that lived here left last week.”
Last week? That was around the time Sofia killed Spike. “How do you know?”
The girl piped in. “Because we’ve been camping out in the cemetery for a while now, and we watch the neighborhood. He packed up his truck like he wasn’t coming back. We waited a few days, and when nobody came, we moved in.” She looked down. “It was starting to get cold at night.”
“Have you seen a little Hispanic girl, about six years old?”
They both shook their heads. I wrestled with the information. So Harvey had moved out. Why would he abandon a home he owned free and clear? That was suspicious behavior. Irrational and suspicious. I wanted to cry, to flail, to scream. I didn’t.
I turned to Wallace. “All yours.”
His voice softened. “Here’s the deal. I can’t pretend I don’t see two kids who are fifteen at the oldest standing in front of me without enough to eat, not going to school, and with no one to keep them safe. I promise I’m going to help you guys, but you’re going to have to come with us.”
The boy bristled. “Yeah, like CPS ever helped us before? That’s why we’re here. We got stuck in a house where we were raped and beaten. We made a run for it. Bet CPS doesn’t even know we’re gone and those foster assholes are still cashing the checks.”
Wallace swallowed hard; I heard his throat catch. “It’s not supposed to be like that. If I’d known that was happening, I’d have taken you away from them and turned them over to the cops. Which is what I’m going to do now.” He pointed at the door. “Let’s go.”
They stood there.
“When was the last time you two ate?” Wallace asked. “I’m buying you a quick lunch before we do anything else.”
The boy stepped forward, pulling the girl with him. They headed toward the door, and Wallace followed them out. I fell in behind them. When we reached the back door to the house, the boy suddenly pushed the girl through the door and pulled it shut behind him. The two teens sprinted across the yard, catapulting themselves up and over the fence around the cemetery. By the time Wallace wrestled the door open and the two of us were outside, they’d disappeared from sight, back into their secret world.
I thought back to the sign at the end of the block: Undead End. Well, yes, in a way it was undead. As in two real live kids living feral in a cemetery. It hurt to think about it.
“Dammit.” Wallace snapped his head forward and then back, punctuating his frustration. He pulled out his cell phone and typed rapidly, then put the phone to his ear. “Marsha, hi, this is Wallace. I’m at Twenty-seventh and Olive, by Llano Cemetery. I saw two youth, a boy and a girl about fifteen years old, who came out of an abandoned house. They were filthy and malnourished. When I tried to talk to them, they claimed to have escaped an abusive foster home and bolted into the cemetery. I didn’t get their names, but the boy had a big scar on his neck and the girl had different colored eyes. They were both white, I think.” He paused. “Yes, thank you.” He hung up and put his phone in his pocket.
I pressed my hand into my aching abdomen and said, “Wow.”
“Yeah. It breaks my heart to see kids like that, to hear what they’ve been through.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“Nothing we can do. The cops will try to pick them up for us, and we’ll move them. I’ll see if I can figure out who they are, what family they were placed with, and arrange for a little visit with the foster parents.”
We walked back around to the front of the house. My thoughts ricocheted between the two waifs we’d just seen and Valentina, whose situation was even more dire.
“Do you see stuff like this a lot?” I asked.
“Too much. There are so many good foster parents, but there are some who are in it to milk the system, or to take advantage of the helpless. Sometimes I hate people.”
I walked through the gate first, and he shut it behind us. I put my hand on his arm. “I had no idea it was so bad. I mean, you read about this stuff, but it’s never touched my life before. What you do, well, Wallace, you’re one of my heroes.”
He started to smile and then his face collapsed into trembling lips and blinking eyes. He pulled me to him in a long hug.
“Thank you.” He held me back out again. “What about you, Ms. Asskicker? Charging into that house alone with nothing but your good looks to protect you? You’re my hero.”
He slung an arm around my shoulder, and we walked back to the car together.
Chapter Eleven
It turned out that “quick” to Wallace did not mean eating in the car. But by now that didn’t surprise me. Because we were running behind, we skipped the GoldenLight Restaurant in favor of a counter order at Wienerschnitzel. Wallace: chili cheese dogs. Me: two orders of large fries.
I got a text from Jack: Back at office. Status?
Had it only been that morning that I’d talked to Jack and met Clyde? I tried to remember if I’d told him when I’d return. I knew how badly he wanted me to move on to other clients. I glanced at my phone. One-thirty p.m. Well, Wallace and I only had one more stop. I could be in my chair and working on Johnson by three p.m., at the latest. How mad could Jack be? Pretty mad, probably. That called for emergency measures.
Me: On the road to last witness. Stopping by office in 15.
I added on two chili cheese dogs and a large fry for Jack.
“Wanna meet the hot enigma that is my boss before our next stop?” I asked.
Wallace wiggled his eyebrows. “Do bears wear fur?”
We planted ourselves in a yellow and red laminate booth where I scarfed down my fries as my stomach did happy cartwheels.
Wallace gave me the s
tink eye. “You don’t do mystery meat?”
“I don’t do meat at all.”
He pulled his mouth into a moue. “Vegetarian?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. And I thought it was hard to be gay in Amarillo.”
I pulled a skinny, yellow highlighter from my handbag to mark the names of Sofia’s references for her work persona: Sofia Perez—using herself as a reference for her fictitious work identity, that made me snort—and Liliana Diaz. Both numbers looked familiar, and I rifled through the big Redrope file I’d brought with me from the office, an almost-red accordion file that was simply known in legal circles as a Redrope. The phone number for “Sofia” matched the number of the phone the police found on her at the time of her arrest. Well, she was certain to get a good reference there. More interesting, the phone number given for Liliana Diaz turned out to be the number I’d called to speak to the real Maria Delgado on Friday.
I lifted my eyes from the page and grinned. “Like hell Maria knows nothing.”
“Oh yeah.” He shimmied his shoulders and torso in a chair dance as he bobbed his head. “She can run, but she can’t hide.”
I recalled that Sofia had given one more name in her paperwork. I’d seen it in there somewhere, earlier. I flipped past the application to the new hire paperwork. Bingo.
“Emergency contact: Victoria. No last name given,” I said. “Wanna call it?”
“Sure.”
Wallace punched in the digits as I read them aloud. He held the phone to his ear, eyebrows raised at me while he waited.
“What do you want to bet it’s out of service?” He said. Then his expression changed. “Yes, hello, my name is Wallace Gray, and I’m calling about Maria Delgado—” His mouth dropped into an O. “Hello?” He shook his head at me as he lowered his phone. “A woman answered and then she hung up on me.”
“Let me try.” I dialed from my own phone. Three rings. Five. Ten. No answer, and no voice mail. “Well, that sucks.” I stuck my wadded up napkin into my empty, nested fry holders and drained the last of my iced tea. “I’m ready when you are.”
We threw away our trash and pushed the doors open into the bright midday sun. After we got back out to the Altima, Wallace handed me a Handi Wipe and we repeated our cleaning ritual like raccoons. We drove downtown with the bag of food for Jack after we had everything to Wallace’s satisfaction.
Heaven to Betsy (Emily #1) Page 13
