by Nina Laurin
My phone. It’s ringing.
I race back to the kitchen where the phone skitters across the counter as it buzzes and rings. Milt has a special tone, so does Cynthia. It’s neither of them. I trip over the recycling bag, curse, narrowly avoid clipping my forehead on the counter, and recover myself just in time for the phone to go silent again. I reach it in a final bound and pick it up—one missed call, unknown number. No voicemail—yet.
My skin prickles. The curtains are closed, and the only source of light in the entire open-concept space is the large spherical lamp over the kitchen counter, its orange glow soft and diffuse.
Figueroa’s words come back to me, and their full weight hits me. He followed me. He knows where I work and probably knows where I live.
My phone buzzes and elicits a piercing chime that makes me jump.
You have one new voicemail.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The trial had drawn national attention and was extensively covered by news outlets. What’s more, the case was among the first to become viral on social media. Speculation ran rampant on message boards and blogging platforms such as Blogger and LiveJournal, where several blogs devoted to Eli Warren sprang up overnight.
The fascinating and conflicting details of this case also captivated the attention of the masses, beyond the run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorists and true-crime junkies. And it’s hardly surprising. Like Columbine and other similar tragedies, it falls frighteningly within the realm of the possible.
How well do you know your own child? Could a charming demeanor and good-looking exterior be hiding something sinister? If this precious boy, the beautiful son, the golden child, could turn out to be a monster…who can be trusted?
—Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.
Fifteen years earlier: before the fire
Ever since she ran from the counselor’s office, Andrea’s been waiting for something vague and nefarious to happen, for someone to come drag her right out of class or for someone to show up knocking at the door on Sunday night when she’s eating dinner with Eli, their mom, and Sergio. But it’s been two weeks and nothing has happened. No one has come to see her.
And as for the bauble she grabbed from the bowl on the counselor’s desk, either he didn’t notice or he never knew it was her. Andrea knows she should hide it someplace safe—maybe their hiding place, the one that Mom and Sergio don’t know about. There’s a loose tile in the bathroom, right by the cabinet below the sink. That’s where they hide things no one else is supposed to see.
She found out the little bauble was a lighter by accident. It’s made so that the little hinges of the lid are hidden, and she only noticed that the lid could be opened when the edge of her fingernail caught underneath. She pried it apart, and the lid popped open, revealing the little wheel and button. She clicked it, and a smooth, neat flame shot out with a hiss. She marveled at it for a few seconds before shutting the lid again, pressing down extra hard to make sure it closed properly. She could have the lighter with her at all times, at school, at dinner, out on the playground, and no one would ever see anything but a cute keychain or pendant. It could be her secret, finally something she had only to herself.
She can’t stand the thought of someone taking it away.
She knows she should wait until she’s alone, until her mom is at the other end of the house so she can’t overhear the clattering of the tiles by accident. But she’s impatient. The lighter is heavy in her pocket, tugging it down like it’s made of lead.
So while her mom makes dinner, Andrea sneaks off to the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Just to be on the safe side, she turns on the tap, both the hot water and the cold, on full blast. Still, she keeps checking the door, looking over her shoulder as she eases the tile out and reaches into the hiding place beneath.
Confusion paralyzes her. She slowly pulls her hand out and puts the lighter back in her pocket. Then she reaches back in, palm empty this time, grasping, fingertips feeling around the edges of something smooth and angular and finally—sharp. With a gasp, she pulls out her hand and examines the paper cut on the knuckle of her index finger. As microscopic droplets of blood form along the edges, she peers into the hiding place and the realization hits her: There’s money in there. Not just a few dollar bills, crumpled and used up and soft as suede. A handful of crisp, new twenties, their edges so sharp they’d sliced her skin open like a razor blade.
She inspects them with a kind of reverent awe just as her mother knocks on the door.
“Addie? Are you all right in there? Dinner’s ready.”
“Coming!” she yells out, but her voice comes out wrong, so wrong, brimming with falseness. She’s a bad liar, always has been, not at all like her brother, who could make anyone believe anything.
“Is everything okay?” her mother asks through the door. And then the unthinkable happens. The doorknob rattles as she turns it, and the latch comes loose. The door opens, startling them both.
She only sees her mother’s eyes, round like coins, dark, and her firmly set lips.
“Andrea,” she says, tilting her head in that way she does when you’re about to be in trouble.
Andrea’s face scrunches up in spite of herself. And everything unravels.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I can’t grab for the phone fast enough, my heart hammering in the back of my throat. My hands become so damp that the touch screen won’t work, and I have to wipe the screen on my shirt before I can unlock the phone. I press it to my ear.
You have one new message, the recorded voice informs me with canned warmth. The message clicks on without being prompted, some static, some noise, and then a sharp intake of breath.
“Hey,” says a young female voice, and my knees buckle with sheer relief. “Ms. Boudreaux…I mean, Andrea.” I finally exhale and close my eyes. Sunny. If the girl were here, I’d hug her. “I’m sorry to bug you, but you said to call if things got bad.”
I said to call 911, not my personal cell. But she did have the number. I know it’s because she doesn’t want to get the authorities involved. And that, in turn, is because she’s on the run, for the umpteenth time, from the umpteenth foster home, and her next brush with the system might involve juvenile detention. Not trusting the police isn’t exactly uncommon among the people I work with—and our shelter is supposed to be a safe zone.
“Well, I think Shawn found me again. I saw one of his…one of his girls, and I know she saw me, and now she’s going to tell him where I am. I’m in the bathroom in a McDonald’s by the highway, and I don’t know where to—”
I don’t have time to finish listening to her rambling, shaky-voiced message when the phone beeps, announcing that I have another call. Sure enough, it’s the same unknown number. I curse under my breath, and for a moment, I consider just waiting it out. Maybe even turning off the phone. But what conscience I have left squeezes my rib cage like a vise, and, already cursing myself out for my own stupidity, I answer.
She sounds like she’s crying, and I grimace, glad she can’t see me through the phone. At the same time, my mind is racing, working out connections, untangling the threads. I see an opportunity, and as heartless as it makes me, I can’t let it go so easily.
“Ms. Boudreaux,” she says in a loud, hoarse whisper, forgetting to call me Andrea again. Then again, she’s sixteen, give or take a couple of years, and to her, I might as well be a dinosaur at twenty-seven.
“Sunny,” I say. We require ID at the shelter, and if hers is fake, it’s a really good one. That, or her parents were hippies, although judging by her age, it’s the wrong generation. “What’s going on? Where are you?”
Whimpering, she tells me she’s still at the McDonald’s but she can’t stay much longer, and Shawn might already be waiting for her outside.
I debate calling 911 myself and letting Sunny Jones, if that is her real name, become someone else’s problem. The thought only lingers for half
a second.
I sigh and grit my teeth. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll come get you.”
She bursts into expressions of gratitude amid sniffles and sobs. I hang up and get the key to Cynthia’s car, trying not to think of what will happen if any journalists decide to follow me.
In the garage, it’s so much colder than in the house that I huddle in my light jacket as I make a beeline for the car. The street looks empty, no journalists—or anyone else. I pull out of the driveway while cranking up the heater to full capacity; the fans roar as hot air whirs through the car. But the cold seems to penetrate to my core, and it lies in wait there, curled up around my heart.
Pretty soon the sleepy residential streets give way to a well-lit commercial artery where life bustles on, in spite of the chill. The postapocalyptic hideousness of Denver in the early spring has been patched up and decorated with pretty streetlamps, garlands, and brightly lit store and restaurant windows. There are even a few hipster types lining up in front of some trendy eatery, hands shoved into pockets and feet stomping to work up heat. To wait in line in front of a place when the street is teeming with half-empty restaurants to suit any taste—I’ll never understand it. When I was a kid, a fancy meal was Red Lobster.
Sweat breaks out along my spine when it occurs to me. Hesitant, I reach for the knob of the radio but pull my hand away. I hit an infuriating string of one red light after another, and it feels like an eternity until I’m finally out on the highway, without all these traffic signs and cars and people to pay attention to. Alone with my thoughts.
Taking a deep breath, I finally turn on the radio, searching until I find a newscast. But they’re blabbing on about something unrelated, and after a couple of minutes, I zone out.
I struggle to remember what date it is, until I glance at the dashboard. Cynthia always keeps her car clock up to date. April 10.
In two weeks’ time, to the day, my brother set fire to our house. I always made a conscious effort not to mark the date in any way. At first, Cynthia insisted that we honor my mother’s memory, and she’d make us all go to visit her grave. I don’t know who paid for the tombstone—maybe Cynthia’s husband did, like he paid for my hospital bills and my laser treatments. Somebody always pays for everything, as he used to say.
What’s left of Cassandra Warren Bianchi is in a discreet grave tucked into the corner of a cemetery on the outskirts of town. A flat tombstone reads Cassandra Bianchi, with her birth and death dates underneath. When we’d come to visit her, I’d stand over it, clutching an overwrought bouquet of roses in my hands while Cynthia led a “minute of silent prayer.” Although nobody was actually praying, I’m sure. The very first year, a couple of photographers came with us to shoot pictures for an upcoming short piece in a local paper. My burns itched beneath the black wool dress Cynthia made me wear, which covered me from neck to midcalf. I squeezed the roses’ prickly stems through the crinkly plastic and wondered where they buried Sergio.
Maybe his family took care of it. Or maybe there wasn’t enough left to bury.
Then I left Cynthia’s house, and that put an end to the visits. The day Eli murdered my life became just another day in late April.
“…announced a press conference later tonight about the ongoing manhunt for Eli Michael Warren, wanted for the gruesome murder of a young woman in northeast Denver that occurred sometime last night. Authorities continue to warn the public to be careful and not engage with the suspect, who is considered highly dangerous and possibly armed. Warren first came to notoriety in 2002 when he was convicted of arson and the first-degree murder of—”
I can’t listen for another second. I thumb the button and flip through one station after another—commercial, classical, hip-hop, techno. The upbeat new hit of the latest pop wonder of the week fills the car with its generic electronic beats, her auto-tuned voice caterwauling in the speakers. It’s as catchy as it is forgettable, and for a moment or two, it succeeds at knocking all the thoughts out of my head. I crank up the volume and turn onto the exit ramp, toward the cluster of fast-food restaurants around the gas station.
This particular spot is well-known in my line of work. The neighborhood is a small tangle of crooked streets, locked in from all sides by the multilane highway, which makes it unappealing for condo builders and other attempts at gentrification. It remains a mix of boxlike houses from the 1920s and square, squat apartment blocks from which satellite dishes spring up like mushrooms, where you can rent a roach-infested one- or two-bedroom for a couple hundred dollars cheaper than anywhere else. If you don’t mind the incessant roaring of cars right outside your window or constantly inhaling pollution. Or if you don’t have anywhere else to go.
I avoid looking at the buildings looming to my right as I pull up to the McDonald’s. Never mind that I told Sunny to avoid the area where Shawn, her former boyfriend/pimp, runs his business. I didn’t think she’d listen to me anyway. Where else can she go in a cold, unwelcoming city, except the one place she knows—the place she calls home, as close to a home as she’s ever had?
Inside the McDonald’s, I make a beeline for the bathrooms. Sunny is sitting near the sink, feet in ridiculous high-heeled fur boots, and she’s tapping happily away at her phone like she forgot she called me at all and that her life is supposedly in danger.
She looks up, and the goofy grin slides from her face. “Hi, Ms. Boudreaux,” she chirps, forgetting—again—to call me Andrea. Sunny refuses to see the shelter’s visiting psychiatrist so I can only guess at the nature of the disorder that makes Sunny act the way she does. Maybe it’s just aftereffects of extreme neglect. But her particular combination of childlike naïveté and fearlessness, bordering on stupidity, never fails to attract the wrong sort of people.
“Come on,” I say.
“Is he out there?”
He being Shawn, presumably. “No. I didn’t see him. Even if he is, you’re with me.” Truth is, I’m not so sure I can be much help against the six-foot-four Shawn with the scalp tattoo, but it seems to reassure her.
We go to the car, Sunny sauntering behind me. She oohs and aahs when she sees Cynthia’s Cadillac—only someone like Sunny can be impressed by this mastodon. She appreciatively bounces on the soft leather seat.
“I’ll drive you to the shelter,” I say, to bring her back to earth.
She stops bouncing as if on command. “No.” She gives a vigorous shake of her head, her ratty ponytail whipping her face.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” She’s already gotten thrown out once for smuggling in a bottle of bourbon, which is against our rules. But she’s been behaving since.
“Another one of his girls told him I go there. So I can’t stay there anymore.”
“You have nothing to worry about. We’ll never let him in.”
“But he’ll be waiting for me outside.” Her face, still pretty and somehow managing to retain its childlike charm, crumples in an instant. Her eyes become shiny, her eyelids red and puffy, forehead creased. “I can’t go. He can’t find me again, okay? He’ll beat my face in.”
Genuine tears stream down her cheeks. In the years I’ve worked at the shelter, I’ve seen so many Sunnys I’ve lost count; there are only so many ways this story can end. I picture this baby-faced girl, whose rough living hasn’t caught up with her looks or health yet. Picture her dead of an overdose in some crummy motel, left to convulse and choke on her vomit by some john only interested in saving his ass from a criminal charge. Picture her bleeding out in an alley after a Shawn or someone similar hits her too hard too many times. Picture her turned away at even the last, rock-bottom shelter because she’s high, drunk, strung out—left to go back into the icy night, straight to her death.
There’s a reason I went into social work. I wasn’t going to go to college at all—would have dropped out of school had Cynthia let me. But since I had to do something, I figured I might as well try to make a difference. To atone for my brother. For what I saw and hadn’t seen happening before my very eyes, for m
onths or years.
“Okay.” This is a bad idea, my rational mind screams at me. A terrible idea. I squeeze my temples. “We’re going to my place. And tomorrow I’ll find you another shelter. Out of town. I’ll call, make arrangements, get you a bus ticket.”
She looks doubtful but hides it with an eager smile. And I understand, in the back of my mind, that it will be a waste of time and money. That she’ll be back on the Denver streets within the week, make up with Shawn, and resume her march toward the end.
So be it, then. If I can delay it for a week only, that’s what I’ll do.
As I drive, she settles in, relaxing into her seat. She cranes her neck to look out the window and, disappointed, starts to play with the radio stations. Before I can tell her to knock it off, she lands on the news station.
“…have established the identity of the victim in the shocking northeast Denver murder. A press conference is scheduled for later tonight. Stay tuned.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The details of that night remain uncertain. The facts known to the investigation are that, around midnight on April 24, Warren doused the floor in the upstairs hallway with nail polish remover he had taken from the bathroom cabinet. Then he set it on fire—with a lighter that could never be found, despite a most thorough search of the scene.
Eli’s sister, Andrea, later told the police that Eli Warren repeatedly said he wanted their parents, especially their stepfather, Sergio, to die. I want them to burn, she quoted him saying. When she woke up and smelled the smoke, she noted that Eli wasn’t in his bed in the room they shared, down the hall from their parents. Nor did she see him when, panicked, she rushed to wake her mother and stepfather to get them out of the house.
