by Sheena Kamal
This child was not supposed to be lost to the streets. She wasn’t supposed to be like me.
I’m tempted to go upstairs and confront Everett but over the years I’ve learned a bit about self-control, mostly that it pays off in the end. Besides, he would kick me out or call the police and, other than Brazuca, I don’t talk to cops.
On the main floor above me, I hear cursing as Everett frantically prepares for work. I feel absolutely no sympathy for him. A few minutes later, the back door upstairs slams shut, but I wait for an extra ten minutes anyway before I go up. In the laundry room, there’s a man’s shirt stuffed into the washing machine. I sniff it and find the faded scent of expensive cologne and something like jasmine.
Once I’m certain that Everett is too far away to return home for forgotten items, I go upstairs. I am angry, but not so much that I don’t take a moment to admire their good taste. The house is as nice on the inside as it is on the outside. Everything is done in tasteful creams and cerulean, with strategic splashes of red and yellow accent pieces. On the mantel are the family photos and, for the most part, they are happy reminders of a loving family. Even Lynn is smiling in them, which interests me because I hadn’t imagined her face contorting in such a pleasant way. The earlier the photograph was taken, the happier she seems. The oldest photograph on display is one where Lynn is holding baby Bonnie in her arms and grinning at the camera. In the photo, she’s looking like her wildest dreams have come true. She looks excited and nervous and staring down at the sleeping baby with dark tufts of hair like it is the greatest prize in the world.
I set the photograph down carefully and retreat. Most people put up pictures to preserve memories of happier times, to keep them afloat when they need reminding, but I prefer to keep my memories locked away so that only I can dust them off and look at them when I can’t help myself. And they are for me alone. Part of this is because Lorelei and I didn’t grow up in a home with smiling photos and there sure as hell weren’t any of us in foster care. The other part is that some of my memories are gone forever, gone because one night I sang at a bar and woke up in the hospital with hazy recollections of my blood on a sheet and what the earth in a forest smells like with my face pressed into the ground.
I move upstairs and enter the room above the garage. The bed is covered in a bright green comforter the color of a tennis ball. If there is any connection to be had with my progeny it can’t be found in this neon monstrosity. The walls are like a giant ad for a tanned, shirtless young man named Jacob. He looks somewhat familiar, but I can’t place him. I’ve never met anyone that attractive in real life. There’s one snapshot of Bonnie and another teenage girl tacked up on the mirror just above the dresser. They’re both sticking their tongues out at whoever is behind the camera, though Bonnie is doing it in laughter and the other girl seems fairly annoyed at the whole thing. Below it is a photo of Bonnie in sweatpants and a crop top striking a pose for the camera.
I go to the desk and pull out her school binders. Here I find some genetic similarities. The binders are heavy on doodles and light on actual notes. I stare at the drawings in the margins. There’s no talent to be found here, only the confused scribbling of a child with a fondness for a certain kind of expression. An angry face with one eyebrow raised. Some look demonic, but no real thought or effort was put into them. Though the face changes, the eyes are always the same. Almond shaped and turned slightly up at the corners. Her eyes, as inscrutable as mine. I put the binders back and search through the closet and chest of drawers for anything of interest. Everything is in order, which means that the girl is at least too smart to leave clues behind.
Everett and Lynn’s room is airy and bright, but there is a noticeable formality here. Everything is put in its place, even though they work full-time and have both rushed out of the house by seven this morning. No clothes left strewn on the floor or on the bed, no cosmetic jars open or tubes left uncapped. These are clearly people who are very careful with each other. I try to imagine them having sex on this bed but the thought, which usually makes me uncomfortable, in this case leaves me indifferent.
I move on.
I sniff all the scented toiletries in the room and in the master bath and find nothing that resembles the smell of jasmine. I’m standing just to the side of the bathroom window when out of the corner of my eye I see a hooded figure pause in the large backyard below. At first I think it’s the not-cop, but after a moment of watching the figure survey the yard and look up at the window to the room over the garage, I realize that it wouldn’t be him. The shape is too lumpy and too furtive. It is not the fluid stealth of a private security agent, but the darting sneakiness of a teenage girl.
Downstairs, I remove the screen from the back door and, being somewhat compact, squeeze through. It’s not an elegant escape, but it’s effective. I put the screen back, careful to align the edges, and sidle over a dip in the fence. The girl had come in and left the same way.
I cut across the park three streets down, following the girl. She walks quickly but I am quicker so I’m able to head her off before she reaches the school grounds. With a swift motion, I pull her into the trees. She opens her mouth to scream but I step back quickly and hold my hands up to show I’m not a threat. Her mouth hangs open as she relaxes somewhat to see that I’m a woman, even though that means nothing in regard to her safety.
“Who the fuck are you?” she says, blue eyes narrowed. It’s the other girl in Bonnie’s picture above the dresser. Straw-colored hair with platinum highlights frames her face, which is caked with foundation to cover the acne that dots her broad cheeks. She is wearing a skirt hiked up to her thighs and her hoodie is open so that I can see a tight white T-shirt underneath. Even though she’s dressed like a prostitute, her clothes look high-end so she must come from money. She would have to, to go to this school, in this area.
“I’m looking for Bonnie,” I say.
She snorts and eyes me. “What, she owe you money or something?”
“I’m her mother.” Saying this out loud is like a jolt to my system. I force myself to stay calm. To keep my panic to myself. “I hear she’s gone missing and I saw you in the yard back there. Were you getting her stuff for her?”
Her jaw hangs open again, but snaps shut as a fly buzzes nearby. She laughs at me and I resist the urge to smack her. I know this kind of girl. Even though she has affected an abrasive personality to get attention, underneath is an insecure little gremlin, just hurting for love and acceptance. I try to remember that as she continues. “So she found you, huh? She’s been looking online for a couple years.”
“No, I was contacted by her parents.”
“Mr. Cheerful and the Ice Queen?”
“You know them?”
“Sure as shit I do. Bonnie was my best friend for, like, eight years. I’m Mandy,” she tells me, matter-of-fact. She studies my face. “You don’t look anything like her. ’Cept for your eyes. But hers are, like, prettier.”
I ignore this last part. “The camping trip she was going to go on . . .”
Mandy spits out her gum on the ground and scuffs some dirt over it. “Was with my family, yeah. She was really sneaky about that. Didn’t even tell me she was gonna take off, even though she knows I totally would have covered for her. She just calls late the night before, crying, and says that she can’t go anymore, but don’t come over because everything is super fucked up and she’ll talk to me when I get back. Then I find out she told her parents that we’re gonna pick her up an hour later, after they’ve gone to work, but don’t worry, she’ll call from the road. And then I get in trouble because now everyone thinks I was, like, aiding and abetting or whatever. What a bitch.”
She has gone pale beneath the layers of foundation. That Bonnie has lied is not the issue. That she has lied to her is the problem. “And I wasn’t getting anything for her, since you asked. I was just checking to see if she was back yet. She borrowed some money from me and my dad cut me off this week because, well, just because, so
I need her to pay me back.”
“How much money?”
Mandy shrugs. “Like, two bills. Not a big deal, but I’m gonna be dry for the next couple weeks, so . . . whatever. She probably gave it to her asshole boyfriend. She’s been leeching ever since she met him ’cause everyone knows he doesn’t have any money. That’s probably who she’s with, by the way.”
Everett and Lynn didn’t mention a boyfriend, so he must have been one of Bonnie’s dirty little secrets. Her room didn’t show any evidence of a particular male presence in her life, except for the shirtless young Jacob. Somehow, I don’t think he’s involved. “Who’s the boyfriend?”
Mandy’s eyebrows knit together. Her distaste is obvious. “Tommy Jones. He was here for a semester living with his aunt but her husband hated him so she got rid of him quick. He’s like a quarter Inuit or something and all of a sudden he’s the key to Bonnie’s life. She really digs that native shit, you know? Apparently Mr. Cheerful told her that her real mom was part native and she couldn’t get over it.” The girl eyes me, hoping I’ll be offended. I’m not. When you spend as long in foster care as I have, these blatant attempts at baiting cease to have any effect, positive or negative. What does strike me is how little I thought about what her adoptive parents knew about me when they took her away. It never occurred to me to ask. It never occurred to me that she’d be interested in the woman who abandoned her.
“Did you tell anyone else about him?”
She shrugs. “Just the second cop that came by. The first one that showed up at my house was so clueless. How the fuck was I supposed to tell him about her boyfriend with my mom’s freaking knitting circle hanging around. I told the second cop, though, because he just showed up after school and had the decency to, like, pull me aside on the street where there were no parents around.”
“What did this second cop look like?”
Her eyes narrow. “What are you, writing her life story?”
I smile. She showed her cards just moments before and now it’s too late. Now I know that she’s hiding something. “No, but if you don’t help me find her, I might tell your parents about Tommy. You don’t want them to know about him for a reason, right?”
A flush creeps up her neck. “Fuck you, bitch.”
I reach her in a single step and manage to pin her arms to the tree behind her. She tries to knee me in the crotch but I turn my hips to the side. She pants, taking in frightened gasps as our eyes lock. Her breath smells of cigarettes drenched in mint. Even though she is a good five inches taller than me and outweighs me by twenty pounds, she is no match for my strength.
“They don’t know you and Bonnie are both sexually active, do they?” I whisper. “If you bring up Tommy and they find her, you’re scared that she’ll tell them who you’ve been sleeping with.”
Mandy coughs in my face and a blast of saccharine breath assaults my nostrils. “Please, maybe she went off her rocker but she would never spill about me. She’s my best friend.”
Suddenly, I sense her reluctance, at least enough to guess at the cause. “Ah, it’s Tommy then. You two aren’t as close. What does he know? That you got rid of the baby?” It’s just a hunch I have, but very suddenly her expression changes from defiance to fear. “You know they have records, right?” I say. “I could just call around.”
“They . . . they said I didn’t need my parents to sign anything. It’s confidential.”
“Nothing is completely confidential when you’re a minor. They keep the records and your parents can file for your medical history.” I especially hate lying to kids, but I’ve come too far now to let her get the upper hand.
Her face crumbles, perhaps at the thought of her allowance being cut off for good. “Bonnie made him . . . she made him pick me up after. He never would have done it if it wasn’t for her, but she doesn’t have her license so she made him take his uncle’s car. Tommy hates me. Now even more because he got kicked out when his uncle found out about the car and he couldn’t live with them anymore.” Tears form at the corners of her eyes. I had forgotten how fragile children are.
I step back, but am careful to keep eye contact as she collects herself. “What did the second cop look like?”
She thinks for a moment as she wipes the tears away, leaving black streaks of mascara behind. “Hot, but in a professional dude kind of way. White guy, maybe in his thirties or something. Short brown hair. Way nicer body than the first cop. He was eating one of those, you know, seaweed snacks while he was waiting for me, which was so, like, out there because you’d think they’d be eating donuts, right?”
“I see.” Mandy just described the not-cop in the sedan. So it’s gone beyond watching the house. A private security agent impersonating a police officer to get information out of a teenager sounds more than a little shady, even to me. “How long ago was this?”
“About three days ago. Look, I gotta get to school,” she says. “We done here?”
“One more thing. Do you have a photo of Tommy?”
She hesitates.
“I’m just looking for Bonnie, that’s all. Just the photo of her boyfriend and I’m out of here, okay?”
She wants nothing more than to end this conversation so she reaches into her bag for her phone and scrolls through it. Children these days are so quick to document their lives. She turns the phone toward me. There on the screen is a photo of Tommy and Bonnie, smoking a spliff and mugging for the camera. Another reason why Mandy wouldn’t want her parents knowing about Bonnie’s boyfriend. I look at the photo. He’s just a child, really. The camera is looking down at the two of them and all I get from him is a forehead, dark eyes, and hair so blue-black and shiny he could be in a shampoo commercial.
“Do you have another picture?”
“Here, you can see him better in this.” She snatches the phone away and opens a video log, pausing on one video. “They met at a dance thing. Bonnie, she’s a pretty good dancer and Tommy is, too. There was a group of kids at her studio that wanted to form a crew and do shows, but Tommy didn’t have the money to join so she paid for him.”
She hits play on the video. I see a group of break-dancers start in on a choreographed routine. I recognize Tommy right away, but Bonnie is harder to pinpoint. And then I see her. She’s somewhere in the back. A solid dancer, holding down the routine. The video zooms in on Bonnie for a moment and even though she’s buried in the back, she’s got the kind of attitude that makes you pull up short. Good. If she really is on the streets, it’s better that she’s not some kind of delicate flower.
Mandy smirks as the video comes to an end. She puts the phone back into her bag. “She shoulda known from then he was a loser. She isn’t supposed to be paying for him. It’s the other way around.”
She turns to go, but I step closer, blocking her exit. “Just one last thing.”
“Hey, you promised!”
“No, I said one more thing, and this is another. But it’s the last.”
“Whatever. What do you want?”
“Where can I find Tommy?”
“He went back to live with his mom. She’s in Ende-something, I forget the name but it’s near Kelowna. She works at some kind of mill. Just so you know, that’s probably where Bonnie’s at. If you find the bitch, tell her to call me. I want my effin’ money back!” Her chafing persona slides back into place. She turns on her heel and stomps away.
As I make my way back to Whisper, who waits patiently in the Corolla a few blocks away from the Walsh house, covering the back window frame with thin slivers of drool, I remember the sheer madness of trying to talk to a teenager. I haven’t had reason to attempt it in years. Teenagers are impulsive, emotional, reactionary. It is impossible for them to lie well, though they do it constantly. For example, to their parents. About their sex lives.
But it doesn’t matter how much I bend the scenario, the existence of a boyfriend doesn’t explain the private security guy sitting on the Walsh house, or why someone who isn’t a cop pretended to be one in
order to extract information from Bonnie’s best friend. Even if Everett and Lynn hired them to look for Bonnie, the one who went talking to Mandy would have no reason to lie about who he was. None of this adds up, but I now have a place to look for the girl. Trouble is, whoever is also looking has three days on me. The not-cop still maintains a presence, so I know that he has not gone to Kelowna to look for Bonnie. Whatever this assignment is, it truly is a team effort if they can afford to leave him here to monitor the house. So it’s more than just a throwaway case to WIN Security, more than just routine surveillance work.
The why of it gets me every time. Sometimes the why is immediately obvious but here, I can’t find any motive for a security firm to be this interested in an adopted girl from a good home.
Whisper greets me with accusing eyes. She smells the sweat and the adrenaline from my earlier chase and wants to know why I went running without her. “Not everything is about you,” I tell her in a brisk voice that is meant to reaffirm that I am the leader of this two-member pack. She refuses to drink the water I brought for her and continues to drool out the window to punish me. When I cruise past the house, I see another discreet sedan parked a few houses down.
The why isn’t becoming clearer, it’s full of too many loose threads, so I’ll have to try something different to figure out what the hell is going on here. When a girl goes missing, it’s usually a simple matter. A dark but simple matter. But this seems to get more complicated by the hour.
If the why is too muddled, then maybe I’ll have more luck with the who.
16
WIN Security is housed in an innocuous three-story brick building on West Broadway, just off the downtown core. I can walk to it from our east side offices and, for this trip, don’t think it wise to bring Whisper along. She doesn’t whine or make a sound of protest that I’m leaving her behind this time; she just glares at me and returns to her careful consideration of the threadbare rug on the floor. But from her posture, I know that she’s upset. You can’t live this long with a female and not recognize her moods.
