She looked around frantically—was anyone else seeing this? She wanted to yell and scream but she didn’t dare unless there was someone close by to help her. The guy in the parking lot was too far and his music was too loud. The rest of the complex felt abandoned, as if people had already evacuated.
Before she could unstick her brain, the guy loaded Jeremy into the passenger seat of this old green sedan parked two spots away from the Barracuda and buckled him in. Jeremy complied like a kindergartner, eyes open but unfocused. Then the man ducked around the front of the car and got in, fired up the engine and sedately backed out. No screeching tires. He was trying to be discreet, but if he wanted to blend in here, he should have at least revved the engine till it backfired a few times. Where was he taking Jeremy?
As the car backed out, she memorized his license plate, an Arizona one, and the letters ‘D O D G E’ spaced out along the hood of the car. Then they were gone, rolling around the corner of the building towards the front of the complex.
He had been of indiscriminate age, dark haired, blunt face, built very thick, and dressed in a well fitting white shirt that accented his powerful wedge of a torso, and black pants that cupped the big muscles of his butt nicely. She’d looked at his shoes next, trying to notice them. Why? What clicked? Why did he make her think of shoes? Expensive shoes. Comfortable, European, expensive, ugly-ass shoes.
She recognized him. Green beans and a coke. The guy in the restaurant, he’d been looking for Jeremy that day. The day after Mitch got killed—by mistake.
And with a thud, she remembered the car—the one they’d seen driving away that night on the rooftop.
Now what now what now what? Her heart was thrumming like a demented bird against a window. Should she run upstairs and see if Tanya or Crystal were there, if they were okay? Or were they the ones who sold him down the river?
She dialed 911, but several loud beeps came over the line. She ran upstairs to use the phone. The door was slightly ajar, and she pushed inside, calling out softly. “Crystal? Tanya?” No answer.
She peered out the mini-blinds into the parking lot. No sign of the green car. The living room was dark. She looked around for a phone but didn’t see one. Not in the kitchen either. There was a wedge of light on the hallway carpet. A bedroom door was half-open. Rebecca stepped forward enough to glimpse into the bedroom. She called out again, a little louder. “Crystal? Tanya? Oh god…” She gagged as Tanya’s queen bed came into view, along with Tanya herself. She was splayed out, arranged in her finest Victoria’s Secret peach satin dressing gown and robe. It was the bulging lifeless eyes, thickened tongue, and livid bruising on her neck that ruined the effect.
She forced herself to go to the body, to touch her wrist, even though she knew there would be no pulse.
She had to get out of here.
She stepped back, preparing to turn and run, but hit what felt like a rubber coated boulder and bounced off. As she spun around, a giant arm encircled her neck. Kicking and twisting, holding onto the arm, she was lifted into the air. Something sharp jabbed into her butt muscle, made it spasm, as she felt something warm and cold at the same time flowing into her, and a feeling like adrenaline and butterflies zapped through her muscles. The arm never stopped squeezing, squeezing her trachea in its deadly triangle, no air, nothing getting in or out, her feet flipping around trying to find the floor, but hitting nothing, nothing.
Then there was just…nothing.
Wednesday, October 24
“YOU THINK I DIDN’T see you creeping there, hiding in a corner like a little mouse?” The man laughed a deep resonant laugh. “I see everything.”
Rebecca came to on the floor of the backseat of his car. Her hands were tied behind her back, but that wasn’t necessary, as she found out when she tried to move and nothing happened.
“Who are you?” she asked. Her lips were dry, her mouth and throat were dry. Her voice sounded like sheets of paper rubbing together. What a stupid question.
Evidently besides seeing everything, he could hear everything too.
“Who am I? Ohhh…you don’t need to know that. Who am I working for, that’s the real question.” He seemed to be talking to himself now, almost counting on the fact that she wouldn’t remember any of this. Or—counting on the fact that she’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter what she knew.
“Or, who thinks I am working for him, to be more precise. Who thinks I am taking his orders, when in fact he is doing my bidding?” He whispered this, but her ears were on hyper-alert, so she heard every intonation. His voice creeped her out to the bone. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep again in case there was a chance he wouldn’t kill her.
Trying out her feet again, she was surprised to feel movement, followed by the jangly pain of pins and needles. So, she wasn’t paralyzed. Surreptitiously, she first wiggled her toes, then rotated her feet, then flexed her calves. Thighs were last. She couldn’t risk cramping up; she’d have to be super careful. It was imperative she get her legs working before Green Beans shut off the engine—wherever he was taking them. She couldn’t bring herself to use the term ‘final destination’.
Nausea crept over her, and she groaned. While her mouth was open, her body, of its own accord, spilled a puddle of bile onto the carpet in front of her. Gross. No hands, so she couldn’t wipe her face. The Dodge swept back and forth as it climbed a hill, engine roaring. The curves made the puddle ooze dangerously close, then away, then back towards her. Her lids drifted down, and the weight of her head felt like an anchor. Finally, it was too much. She laid her cheek down into the warm squishy carpet and drifted into a sweet, carefree oblivion.
* * *
DEIRDRE STARED OUT THE window while the coffee machine gurgled. The morning looked sickly. She couldn’t see anything beyond the roof of the stalls. She poured a cup before it was done brewing—she’d made an extra large pot so she and Rebecca could go over the evacuation plan just in case.
From the garage, the dogs scratched and whined. She let them in, through the family room, and out back. It was too smoky for them to sleep outside anymore.
Walking down the hallway, she pounded on the girls’ door to wake Rebecca. In the master bedroom, she closed the door and made another attempt to call Walt. He was stuck in Texas, trying to get a flight home. If she got through to him, she could have a nervous breakdown, just for a minute or two, and she didn’t want the kids to hear that.
The phone made an obnoxious noise at her. The landlines had been working intermittently. She tried her cell phone next, but no luck. It was looking more and more like she’d need Rebecca to drive a second vehicle if the fires snuck up on them. She headed back to the kitchen to let the dogs in and start breakfast.
“Morning Mama.” Clara stood in hallway.
“Morning sweetie. Tell Rebecca I’ve got coffee on.”
“She’s not here,” Clara said, rubbing her eyes.
Deirdre swung around the doorframe and looked in the bedroom. Sure enough, there was no Rebecca. But her bed was still made. “Where is she?” she asked. Clara shrugged.
A search of the house and property made it clear Rebecca hadn’t come home last night.
She called Mr. Fariz. After she was done yelling at him for making Rebecca come to work during a natural disaster, he told her that they had actually closed down the restaurant yesterday. Darius got on the phone, and seemed to think there was a chance she was with Jeremy White. She’d been getting rides home from him before he got fired. Mr. Fariz gave her Jeremy’s address and phone number. Wouldn’t you know, there was no answer when she called.
By this time, Justin was awake and was watching her with concern. “But Mom, the internet is down. How will you Google the address?”
“Before there was Google, Justin, there was something called a map.” She pulled the Thomas Guide out from under the Yellow Pages and flipped to the index, ran her finger down the street names to find Orfila Road, turned to the page, and dropped her finger on it with a solid th
ump. Justin looked at her with newfound respect.
It was in Fairy Glen, just east, close to Pleasant Hollow.
“Come on kids, get dressed. We’re going for a ride.”
As they drove, she wondered if it had been wise to bring them. They were both complaining of being hungry now, and besides, she had just blithely presumed that Jeremy was a teenager who lived with his parents. What if he was a grown man? Her imagined confrontation took on a new tenor. But as she turned left, then right, getting closer to the foot of the mountain and the homes getting progressively more posh, she knew this was his parent’s house. Nobody who gets fired from fast food could afford to live here.
When she saw the address on a white mailbox in front of a cedar shingle-sided house with white porthole windows, a thick bank of ivy rising to a small lawn, she was sure. She parked the wrong way in front of the house, left the kids in the car and scaled the ivy, rapping hard on the glossy navy blue door.
A woman opened, slender and pretty, about fifty-ish, with long walnut hair and bangs.
“I’m looking for Jeremy White,” she said.
The woman eyed her up and down. “What is this concerning?”
“Are you Jeremy’s mother? Can I come in?”
After introductions, Dr. Laura White, child psychologist, led her into the formal living room while Deirdre told her why she’d come. She introduced her husband, Joe, who advanced from the back of the house, and then receded again, pacing in front of the television in the family room.
Deirdre and the doctor sat across from each other on matching cream love seats afloat in a sea of green carpet. Dr. White looked polished and professional in a white boat neck sweater, chunky gold necklace, and dark linen trousers. She was also visibly stressed out. She let out a long whoosh of breath, and put a shaky hand across her forehead and massaged her temples. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where Jeremy is right now.”
Deirdre pushed on. “Rebecca’s not one to stay out all night. She’s never even a minute late on her curfew.”
Laura’s eyes flashed. “I’m really sorry I don’t know more. I know there’ve been girlfriends, but he doesn’t tell me anything.”
Deirdre could relate to that more than she wanted to admit. But she kept silent, got up and examined the framed pictures on the mantle, hoping that Laura would try to fill the silence. There were many pictures of a cheerful, smiling little boy. Older school portraits of Jeremy as a goofy, punkish preteen. Of recent pictures there were very few, and in them Jeremy looked haunted and hostile, with unkempt blond hair hiding his eyes.
Laura kept talking. “Joe and I pushed him to get the after school job, try to instill some responsibility in him. Try to counteract the influence of my ex-husband—Jeremy’s father.” Again, Deirdre could relate. Laura was by her side now. She touched one of the photos, Jeremy as a toddler.
She had to destroy Laura’s vision of a cute smiling three-year-old, replace it with the menacing man he’d become. She remembered Rebecca yelling at him the other night. What if he was violent? “Has Jeremy ever been in serious trouble?”
Laura didn’t answer, but her whole body started to tremble. Jeez, back off, she told herself. No reason to antagonize her like this. Rebecca had only been missing for what, 18 hours now? She was a secretive, rebellious teenager who got around just fine on her BMX bike. Would the police even take a report for that?
And yet she knew, this wasn’t like Rebecca at all.
“Can you try calling Jeremy right now?” Maybe it was that simple. He might answer if he saw his mom’s number.
Laura nodded and went to the phone on the hall table. Deirdre slipped a more recent photo of Jeremy, frame and all, into her purse. On the muted television in the rear family room, a helicopter dropped pink fire retardant into a steep canyon. Where? She squinted at the titles on the bottom of the screen, and walked into the family room to see.
The receiver clicked. “Phones are still down,” Laura said as she joined her.
The news switched back to the talking heads before she could see what neighborhood it was. Joe was now in the backyard spraying a garden hose on the outside walls. “Damn shake-shingle house,” Laura said under her breath. “Like a fucking tinderbox.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Jeremy’s father? Do you think he knows where Jeremy is?”
She shook her head. “We don’t speak. I have sole custody. As far as I know the last time they spoke was when he gave him the car on his 16th birthday. Against our wishes I might add.”
Deirdre shifted from foot to foot. The clock was ticking. “What kind of car?” This at least might be useful.
“It’s a Barracuda, from the sixties. Fire orange. Too much car for a teenage boy. I’m terrified he’ll smash himself to pieces in it. But for Brian, that’s how he shows he cares. Emphasis on the showing.”
Brian? Orange car? Deirdre’s heart skipped. Too much was falling into place, too fast. She couldn’t decide what question to ask, speechless for once.
Threads of information knitted together. The orange car, driven by Bartley’s ex. The orange car sitting in Vivian’s driveway. The orange car, nearly running her down. Sally’s passing comments: ‘the older kid’s involved with that quarry killing’, ‘a known meth dealer’, ‘hasn’t been seen in a week’. Cold drenched her from head to toe. But this wasn’t the time to lose it. Better to keep Laura talking. She could put the screws into her later.
“I take it your ex is a real egomaniac.” She said it in a chummy way, and it worked.
“Well technically, he’s a narcissist, in this humble psychologist’s opinion—and even though Jeremy has rejected him, his influence is still strong.” Any doubt about which Brian it was vanished.
“So your son kept your last name…” she said out loud, then wished she hadn’t when a quizzical look flashed over Laura’s face. Oh well, that could be easily explained, if she and Rebecca actually talked, were actually close like some mothers and daughters. She imagined an idyllic scene, sitting next to Rebecca on her bed, while Rebecca told her all about the boy she had a crush on, every single detail, especially who the hell his dad was.
She turned away from the television and sat down at the kitchen counter, uninvited, and rested her chin in her hand, like she had all the time in the world. Never mind the kids were waiting in the car, unfed. “Teenagers are so hard to crack, aren’t they?”
“Uh, would you like some coffee?” Laura asked.
“Yes, that would be great Laura, thank you.” She laughed knowingly. “Man, the stories I could tell about Rebecca’s dad. And yet, he still walks on water, according to her.”
Laura let out a bitter laugh as she poured water into the coffee maker. “Brian’s in a whole other league, let me tell you.”
By the time she set two mugs of coffee on the counter, Laura was telling her how she and Brian had split up. “He had started to use his corporations to launder money for the Mexican Mafia or something.” She waved her hand like something smelled foul. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with it and told him so. I was pregnant then. I lost the baby.”
Laura White was remarkably open, but Deirdre suspected that she was willing to talk endlessly about life events and analyze them, while never really letting anyone inside the real emotional core of herself. Just a guess, of course.
“But, by that time, he’d gotten Tanya pregnant. His old high school flame. Tanya was a party girl.” Deirdre remembered the photo of Tanya’s freeze-frame carefree laugh. “She introduced Brian to her dealers and the whole supply chain from the Mexican Mafia, which was trying to edge out the white trash meth dealers. Tanya’s lowlife friends were doing crystal too, so she was like the marketing side of the operation, the sales force. She even named her daughter Crystal for chrissakes. Poor girl, surprising she didn’t have developmental problems since Tanya was using the whole time she was pregnant. Thankfully, by the time she got pregnant with the youngest boy she’d quit. Brian was raking it in, legally and ille
gally. They started laundering money for the cartels. Compared to the Mexican Mafia, that’s like the big leagues. They bought the house in Rancho Alto with the money from that. But the marriage didn’t last long. Rumor has it she was still screwing her dealer ex-boyfriend and using again. Some people said that the boy might’ve been his, not Brian’s. Brian found out and went ballistic.”
A heavy spray of water hit the kitchen window, and they both jumped, then laughed.
“Of course I didn’t know any of this until later, otherwise I would never have let Jeremy near him. It all came to a head when Jeremy was eight years old, spending the weekend with his dad. I got a call from the police at 4 a.m. Brian was getting hauled off to jail. When I went to pick up Jeremy, the cops said he wouldn’t come out. He was in a closet, he had wrapped himself around Crystal, trying to protect her. When I opened the door and saw them, it scared me. She looked exactly like that poster for Les Miserables, I swear. Her eyes were huge. She was like some homeless orphan waif, living in this giant mansion with no furniture. Her face was dirty, her hair was all knotted. She had on this stretched-out holy t-shirt, her legs were covered with scabs, I don’t know what from. He, well…he looked like a feral animal, all teeth. He finally came out after some coaxing. I’m a child psychologist, I was trained to do this, but…” she shook her head. “I felt horrible leaving Crystal and little Brian there with Tanya, but the cops were there, and what could I do? I took Jeremy home.” She took a sip of her coffee.
“Jeremy wouldn’t tell me everything, so I put him in sessions with a colleague of mine for a while. Apparently Brian had turned into a raging beast. That was so unlike him—he was never violent with me. But, I’m not Tanya. I don’t stir up the passions that she does.” Laura White said this in a way that was at once scornful and reverent. “So that was the end of their marriage. His lawyers swooped in like vultures on roadkill. Made a deal with Tanya not to press charges for domestic violence. In exchange, he set her up with a house in San Amaro. But then a few months later, he got her busted by CPS and took their kids away from her.” She shook her head. “Just like him, the snake. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she is a terrible mother, but…that’s pretty much all she had, and he took it. It’s the way Brian operates. It’s just brutal.”
October's Fire (Fairy Glen Suspense Book 1) Page 31
