A Glimpse of Evil

by Laurie, Victoria

  It took almost twice as long to finally get to south Dallas, and for some reason the navigational system in the Porsche wasn’t working. “I have to take the car back to the dealership tomorrow so they can fix it,” she remarked. I could tell she was irritated. And I didn’t blame her; if you’re going to plunk down a huge chunk of change for a shiny new Porsche—it’d better work.

  Candice had to rely on the turn-by-turn directions from her iPhone, which got us lost. Twice.

  “Stupid app!” Candice snapped after she pulled over in front of a mall, which the iPhone swore was the right address. “I knew I should have purchased the other one.”

  I knew not to talk to her when electronic gizmos failed. Candice could handle a big beefy bad guy holding a gun with cool aplomb, but have her cell phone or computer freeze up, and she’d lose it for sure. “Maybe I should ask for directions?” I offered after several minutes of listening to her mumble expletives.

  “Gimme a minute,” she growled.

  I gave her five.

  “Okay, I think I got it working now.” Candice turned the face of her phone toward me and I smiled big and gave her two thumbs up. She looked at me and grinned. “Sorry for being so grouchy.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, taking the phone from her so that I could hold it while she drove.

  We finally made it to Antoine’s and I was surprised that we were starting with him again. “I thought we were going to Patrice’s house.”

  “She’s next,” Candice assured me. “Right after we check in with Antoine to see if he’s home.”

  I grabbed my umbrella off the floor of the car, and braced myself to get wet. The rain was still coming down really hard, and I wondered if the umbrella would make a lot of difference, as the wind was blowing in big wet gusts. Candice and I did our best to dodge puddles and hurry up the steps to the front door, which opened just as Candice raised her fist to knock.

  I let out a tiny gasp when I caught a glimpse of the man framed in the doorway, mostly because he was so tall and imposing.

  Antoine LaSalle was easily six five and he was built like a brick sheep house. I think he had muscles on top of muscles, but my radar suggested he wasn’t all brawn. There was a fearsome intelligence to his eyes, which flashed back and forth between me and Candice, and I knew he had our number right away. “Yeah?”

  “Antoine LaSalle?” Candice asked.

  Our host crossed his massive arms and set his feet shoulder width apart. “Who wants to know?”

  Candice broke out her badge with one easy flick of her wrist. “I’m Candice Fusco and this is my associate, Abigail Cooper, with the Cold Case Squad of the FBI.”

  One eyebrow lifted on Antoine’s face. “Cold Case Squad?” he repeated. “This about Keisha?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re looking into her disappearance.”

  Antoine fixed his intimidating stare on me, and as he did so, I found it very hard not to turn around and dash back to the car. There was something about him that genuinely frightened me, and it wasn’t just his size and imposing manner.

  “You two are about two years too late, don’t you think?”

  “We’ve recently come across some information, Mr. LaSalle, that we believe might lead us to a description of a suspect.”

  Antoine’s features showed interest. “Suspect? You guys found a suspect?”

  I thought it pretty clever of him to simply repeat the general facts we were giving him and wait for us to expand on them. I think Candice caught on to the tactic too, because she sidestepped that by turning slightly to look out at the rain. “Might we be invited in to discuss the details with you?”

  LaSalle appeared to mull that over for a minute, and I guess he decided we were on the up- and-up because he stepped to the side and casually said, “Come in, ladies.”

  Now, I’ll be honest here: The last place in the world I wanted to go was into the den of this particular lion, but as Candice walked right on in without a care in the world, I decided I couldn’t very well let her go it alone.

  Once we were out of the rain, I looked around curiously. Okay, so I took in the location of the closest exits just in case things got dicey, but I made a show of eyeing the decor and nodding in approval.

  Actually, the house kind of surprised me, because Antoine had gorgeous taste. His house was a mixture of light-colored wood, soft linens, and cool angular furniture. It was also extremely neat and organized. Hardly an item out of place, save for a large duffel and some military boots poking out of the hallway.

  Antoine seemed conscious of these items, because he pushed them back with his foot. “Just got back from a tour in Afghanistan,” he remarked as we walked past.

  He then motioned us to the sofa on the far side of the room, while he took a chair directly across from us. I couldn’t help but notice that his back was to the only available exit and he’d probably purposely positioned us up against the back wall.

  The subliminal message was clear: We might think we were there to interview him, but he was going to control the conversation.

  Candice sat gracefully on the couch and pulled out her notepad from her leather shoulder bag. Flipping to a clean white sheet, she said, “Can you tell us about the day Keisha disappeared?”

  Antoine didn’t move a muscle from his relaxed position in the chair across from us, and yet I swore he’d stiffened. “What can I tell you that you haven’t already read in her case file?”

  “Sometimes things are lost in translation, Lieutenant. I’ve read the agent’s account of what happened to your sister on the day she disappeared, but I’m interested to hear it directly from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there might be a relevant clue that got left out of the notes.”

  Antoine was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. “I saw her off to school that morning, same as I always did. I went to work. I came home. She wasn’t here. I called around to all of her friends, searched the neighborhood, and alerted police, and we never saw her again.”

  I was watching Antoine closely, using my radar to detect anything of importance out of the ether, but I couldn’t get past this image of him as a crouching tiger, ready to pounce the moment our guard was down.

  “What time did you arrive home that day?”

  “Sixteen thirty.”

  Candice scribbled on the notepad, and I had to do a little mental math to figure out he was talking about four thirty p.m. My partner then flipped back a few pages and said, “We know from the original investigation that Keisha was in school that day and that several students saw her walking home by herself around three fifteen in the afternoon. No one noticed anyone strange following her. Are you sure that Keisha didn’t come home and then leave again to go somewhere else? Like, maybe to a friend’s house?”

  “Positive.”

  Candice looked up. “How can you be so sure?”

  “She had homework to do.”

  “Can you elaborate on that, please?”

  “The rule in this house was that Keisha was to come straight home from school and do her homework. My sister was a very bright girl, and she knew that in order to get ahead in life, she would have to study hard and get good grades. She wasn’t allowed to visit with friends until all her homework was finished.” Candice opened her mouth to ask a follow-up question, but Antoine beat her to it by saying, “I checked with her teacher. Keisha had been assigned both math and history homework. If she had made it home, she would still have been working on it when I arrived.”

  Candice toyed with her pen as she looked back at LaSalle. “And yet, you mentioned just a minute ago that when you arrived home and found Keisha missing, you immediately called around to her friends to see if she was with them.”

  “I didn’t know at that time that Keisha had assignments to complete.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, interrupting the conversation that was getting us nowhere. “Had you had any work done to your house in the weeks prior to Keisha’
s disappearance?”

  LaSalle’s dark eyes pivoted to me. “Work done?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “You know, construction, or home improvement. A new paint job perhaps?”

  Again I felt LaSalle’s energy stiffen, but he answered my question easily. “No.”

  I leaned forward. “How about anyone in the neighborhood? Did you notice any contractors at any of your neighbors’ houses?”

  “I don’t stick my nose into other people’s business, ma’am.”

  My radar dinged. LaSalle was lying. “Really?” I asked him. He stared at me with a blank expression. “Because I think that you’re someone who might notice everything.”

  LaSalle’s lips peeled away from brilliant white teeth. “You do, huh?”

  “Yes,” I said, using my radar to try to figure him out. But there wasn’t much I could pull out of the ether that wasn’t already obvious. He was a big guy. He was a soldier. He liked to intimidate people into giving up information. And he loved his sister—of that, I was positive.

  But why he wasn’t cooperating was a real mystery, and my attempt to goad him into revealing more failed. He simply nodded and turned his attention back to Candice, waiting for her next question.

  “Is there anything more you might be able to share with us that perhaps you didn’t have a chance to tell the original investigators?” she asked.

  “No.”

  From the corner of my eye I watched Candice inhale and exhale slowly. If LaSalle was holding on to information, we weren’t about to get it out of him. “Okay, then,” Candice said, tucking her notepad back into her purse. “We’d like to thank you for your—”

  LaSalle interrupted our attempt to end the discussion by asking, “What new lead have you discovered?”

  Candice hesitated before answering. “She was abducted and murdered on the same day she went missing by a predator, likely a pedophile, who knew this neighborhood well.”

  LaSalle’s lips pressed together. “That’s your big breakthrough?”

  “No,” she said. “Our big breakthrough is that we’ve talked with the grandmother of another missing little girl of the same age as Keisha. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are quite similar to your sister’s, in fact. After interviewing the girl’s grandmother, we discovered that she went missing within two weeks of their house being painted. We think the man who worked on the house might have some knowledge about what happened to the little girl. And perhaps he also has some information about what happened to your sister.”

  “Her house is within one mile of yours,” I added.

  “You’re talking about Fatina,” LaSalle said. “Yeah, I know about her.”

  “Did you also know about Patrice Walker?” I asked.

  LaSalle drummed his fingers softly on the arm of his chair. “No.”

  “She disappeared from a house halfway between here and Fatina’s.”

  “When?”

  “March two thousand eight.”

  “Have you identified a suspect?” LaSalle asked again.

  “No,” Candice admitted. “But we have the description of a person of interest.”

  “The painter.”

  “Yes.”

  LaSalle inhaled deeply. “I don’t know how I can help you. My sister’s been missing for almost two years. That’s a long time for the trail to go cold.”

  I frowned and looked at Candice. She mirrored my expression. LaSalle had given us nothing, and we’d pretty much told him all we knew. The guy was a smart son of a peach, I’d give him that.

  Candice stood and pulled out her card from her bag. “If you think of anything that might help us in our investigation, would you please call me?”

  LaSalle took the card, which he studied before saying, “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me in the loop, Ms. Fusco.”

  “Of course,” Candice assured him, but her tone was clipped and flinty. “We’ll be just as forthcoming as you’ve been with us.”

  LaSalle and Candice then had a little stare down, and for a long time no one spoke or moved. Finally LaSalle nodded and motioned us to the door, which he opened for us, and we ducked through and hurried to the car.

  The rain had not let up. “My God,” I said when I was buckled in again. “Does it always pour like this around here?”

  Just then there was a bright flash, followed by a loud clap of thunder. I jumped and Candice turned the engine over. “I’d like to call it a day, but we’re not far from Patrice’s place. I say we brave the elements and track down her mother.”

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Hopefully she’ll give us more than LaSalle.”

  We arrived at Patrice’s last known address just a few soggy minutes later. A young man who looked about fifteen or sixteen answered the bell. “Wha?” he asked.

  “Hello,” Candice said formally. “Is your mother or father home?”

  “We don’t want nothin’,” Obviously he thought we were saleswomen.

  Candice did her thing with that magic badge and the boy barely looked at it. “My name is Candice Fusco. I’m a private investigator looking into the disappearance of a little girl from this area two years ago. I understand your sister also went missing a few years back?”

  The boy looked confused. “You mean my cousin?”

  Candice blinked. “Your cousin was the little girl that was found in the pond near here?”

  The boy nodded. “Yeah. Her mom don’t live here no more.”

  Candice gave him a patient smile. “Can you possibly give me her phone number or address so that I can talk to her about what happened to your cousin?” The boy appeared to waver. “We just want to ask her about a person of interest in another little girl’s disappearance,” Candice pressed. “You’d really be helping by telling us where to find your aunt.”

  After another moment’s hesitation, the boy shrugged. “Wait here,” he told us befrore partially shutting the door and dashing off into the interior of the house. He came back some minutes later holding a black address book. After flipping through several pages, he read the phone number and the address out loud to Candice, who scribbled it down while I held the umbrella over her head.

  We then thanked Patrice’s cousin and rushed back through the downpour to the car. As we strapped in, my stomach gurgled. “Uh-oh,” Candice said with a smirk.

  “Sorry. I only had time for toast and coffee this morning.”

  Candice eyed the clock on the dash. “It is after twelve,” she said. Then she peered out at the rain. “Come on. Let’s get some lunch and call ahead to Patrice’s mother to tell her we want to talk.”

  “That is a great idea!” I said. (I was mostly talking about the lunch part.)

  We ate at a place called Papa’s Café, which served a lot of burgers, shakes, and fries—my kind of sustenance.

  Candice called Patrice’s mother, whose name was Loraine. It was a good thing we called ahead, because the woman needed lots of coaxing before she agreed to talk with us. And I could only imagine that her reluctance was due to the pain of losing a child and not wanting to revisit that awful day.

  Luckily, by the time we’d finished our meal, the rain had given way to a steady drizzle, which was definitely preferable to what we’d ridden through earlier.

  While Candice drove, I read her the instructions Loraine had given, which weren’t that great, and before long we were definitely lost. “What’s that sign say?” Candice asked as we approached another street sign.

  “Zephyr Road,” I said.

  “What street are we looking for?”

  “South Stewart Street.”

  “Are you sure we weren’t supposed to go west on I-Twenty?”

  “You wrote down east.”

  Candice grimaced. “I’m turning back,” she announced.

  “Why don’t you use your iPhone?”

  “Remember how it got us lost before?”

  “Good point. There’s always pulling over and asking for directions.”

  Candice
sighed. “Okay,” she agreed. “I think there was a gas station back the way we came.”

  Candice turned around and headed east. At the next intersection she turned right. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “This is the way we came.”

  “Uh, no, it’s not.” I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

  “Yes, it was,” Candice insisted.

  Because she sounded so certain, I began to doubt myself. Truth be told, the area we were in was pretty sparse, so much of it looked the same to me. “Okay,” I conceded. “If you say so.”

  Abruptly we came to a blinking red light and, just beyond that, a section of the road that was covered with water and a sign that read LOW WATER CROSSING.

  “Crap,” Candice snapped.

  I was now positive that we had not come this way, because I would have remembered the water. “I knew this wasn’t right,” I muttered to myself.

  I expected Candice to turn around, but she inched forward tentatively. “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “See that?” she said, pointing up the road. “That’s a gas station. We can ask them for directions.”

  Immediately I had a bad feeling. “Uh . . . Candice?”

  My partner edged closer to the water. “Hold on, Abs, I’m trying to see how deep it is.”

  “I don’t think we should cross it.”

  Candice sat up and smiled. “It’s only an inch or two,” she said confidently, and pressed the accelerator. We moved into the shallows with ease, water splashing around the wheel wells. “See?” she told me with a grin. “Easy peezy.”

  My heart was hammering in my chest, and my radar was sounding the alarm, but there was little I could do.

  Not even a moment later the car began to turn at an odd angle. “What’s happening?” I gasped, gripping the side of the car.

  Candice eased off the accelerator and tried to correct by turning the wheel. No sooner did she do that than the car turned even more sharply and slid along the path of the running water. “Damn it!” she exclaimed.

  “Ohmigod?!” I shouted, feeling something hard slam against the underside of the car. Water started leaking through the crack in the bottom of my door. “Candice! We’re taking on water!”