by Kit Frazier
“A lot of us make that mistake work so hard on the destination we miss the journey,” I said. “Did she blame her children for that? For her life not working out the way she thought it would?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But that girl was withdrawn and quiet since she got here. Startled easy, even wet the bed for a while. Classic signs of sexual abuse.”
My stomach slid into a big, oily knot.
“Then we put her in the choir. She’s got a voice like spring rain.” A faint smile tipped the edges of her lips, like echoes of Faith’s voice still drifted in her head. “She really began to bloom.”
“What happened?”
Llina stared out the window. “I haven’t figured it out. The school was having some financial difficulties, the board of regents signed Brother Bob on board, and the Ainsworths made another large endowment.”
“In exchange for what?”
“That we keep Faith here until she was eighteen.” “Why eighteen?”
Llina shook her head. “I assumed it was so that she would go straight from here to college.”
“But Faith showed no interest?” “No.”
I frowned. “And she left six months early? Did the funding stop?” “We haven’t been asked to modify our budget,” she said.
“And you find that strange?”
“Very. But Tres did start asking for special favors.” “Special favors?”
“Odd things, like wanting the girls to start a voting drive. He had them folding flyers and licking envelopes.”
“Any candidate in particular?” I said, but I already knew.
“That idiot Junior Hollis.”
I thought about that. Tres provided an endowment to the school that housed Faith, controlled Kimmie Ray’s trust fund, owned Faith’s recording contract, and bought a half-interest in Boners the week Faith went to work there. Perhaps most frightening of all, he seemed to have bought himself a sheriff.
A cat-killing, woman-assaulting sociopath.
“Control,” I said aloud, and Llina looked at me intently. “He’s narrowing her circle of friends, controlling her finances, isolating her from friends and family.”
Llina nodded. “That would be a classic controlling pattern.”
“And she and her stepbrother were never alone?”
“No, Brother Bob was always with ” Her voice broke, her eyes went wide. “Do you think…?”
“I hope not,” I said. “But I’m afraid that’s exactly what I think.”
She shook her head and turned to look out the window, where the girls were cleaning their gardening tools. Her knitting needles lay still in her lap. “A lot of these girls get here in bad shape,” she said. “Some were abused, some strung out, some neglected. We’re like a warehouse for lost girls.”
“Were you one of those girls?”
She lowered her eyes to her knitting. “Yes,” she said. “I was.” I nodded.
“Would she come back here if she could?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Would you tell me if Faith did come back?” I said.
“I wouldn’t send the girls out on a search I knew to be fruitless,” she said. “No. I suspect if Faith has disappeared of her own volition, she doesn’t want to be found.”
Llina resumed her knitting.
“Where did she stay when she was here?” I said. “Dorm Two,” she said, frowning. “Why?”
“Mind if I have a look?”
Llina shrugged. “It’s long since been cleaned out. There’s another girl bunking there.”
“Did she leave anything behind when she left?”
“I have a box of things that belong to her. Would you like to see them?”
From a closet near the couch, she rummaged back behind an old badminton net and some theatrical stage props, where half a dozen similar boxes were neatly stacked.
Llina came out the door dragging a box marked For Faith.
She opened the box, and Marlowe trotted over to check for food.
I carefully looked past the cardboard flaps.
Beneath the musty-smelling cardboard top, I pulled out a dozen books of poetry—Yeats, Angelou, Pound, Stein, and Dickinson and some that were not on a seventh-grade reading list: Mary Karr, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, and Mary Oliver.
“Keates,” I said and smiled.
The books were slim volumes, but they felt heavy in my hand. “May I borrow these?” I said, and she looked at me, appraising. “Do you think they’ll help you find her?”
“It can’t hurt. I’m trying to get to know her better.”
Under the books lay a half-knitted sweater balled up and given up, an old hairbrush, and a very old music box that played a haunting tune. A dozen pairs of white cotton panties, some school uniform shirts, and a cigar box of treasures: a quarter, four marbles, an interesting-looking twig, two unusual stones, and a bird’s feather, probably from Keates.
At the very bottom of the box was a stack of magazines. I pulled them out and blinked.
“Veronica’s Angels?” I said, and Llina shrugged.
I picked up a pair of the cotton undies that were presumably Faith’s. Something didn’t make sense. The magazines were subscription, and they were addressed to Cullen Ainsworth III. Small yellow Post-its clung inside, always on a dark-haired angel dressed in the barely there.
I looked more closely. The model bore a striking resemblance to Faith.
Before she started yanking her hair out.
It wasn’t Faith; this woman was older, but not much. On each of the Post-its, “Angel Baby” was written in a masculine hand.
My insides went very still. I’d found my blinking yellow arrow.
Llina frowned, reading over my shoulder. “Angel Baby. That’s what Tres calls Faith.”
I realized some of the pages were stuck together and I let out a little yelp.
“Oh, gross!” Llina shrieked.
“I think ick is the correct clinical term,” I said, grimacing at my hands.
“That is disgusting. Need to wash your hands?”
I gratefully absented myself to her small bathroom, where I scrubbed my hands raw, wishing I had some anti-bacterial soap, some iodine, and a big can of Raid.
“What’s in the other boxes?” I said, afraid I already knew.
Llina saw it, too, and her cheeks went slightly green. “The same thing. Belongings of girls who left the school early.”
She shook her head, staring at the closet, eyes wide. “I always hoped they’d find their way back.”
“Have any of them? You know, found their way back?” Llina’s eyes met mine. “No,” she said. “They haven’t.”
Slowly and deliberately, like an abyss of dread lay in the back of the closet, she opened the door, and the two of us pulled out box after box, seven in all, labeled Asha and Bailey and Ginny. She kept extracting boxes as I slit the tape on the box marked Asha.
A dark, well-worn teddy bear tumbled out, followed by a macaroni necklace and a small pink photo album. I flipped open the pages and gasped. Asha looked very much like Tiffany. And very much like Faith.
Llina looked like she might lose her lunch.
“How long has Tres Ainsworth been giving endowments to the school?” I asked.
Llina shrugged. “His father began the endowments on Tres’s behalf about ten years ago, and Tres has always shown a great interest in the school and its progress.”
I stared down at the beautiful, innocent young face in the photograph. “I just bet,” I said.
Fury blazed in Llina’s eyes, and she began to rip open the second box.
“Don’t!” I said. “This could be evidence. We’ve got to call the police.”
Llina stared at me. “You’re going to call Sheriff Hollis?”
“Oh, hell no,” I said, reaching for my cell. “We’re calling in the cavalry.”
“In Austin?” she said, and I nodded. “But aren’t we out of their jurisdiction?”
“Yes,�
�� I said. “But the cop I’m calling isn’t a real stickler for rules.”
“What about a search warrant? Don’t they need a search warrant?”
“Not if you invite them here,” I said. “And not if you opened the box.
I wouldn’t drag me into this right now unless we absolutely have to.”
I got Cantu’s voice mail and left him a message about where I was and what I’d found.”
As much as I hate to say this, may I take the magazines with me, too?”
Llina said, “Shouldn’t the police take them?”
“Yes, they should, but they should have taken them when they started searching for her.”
“Hollis,” Llina growled, and I nodded.
She grabbed a paper bag out of a drawer, and with two big handfuls of tissues to keep our fingerprints off the magazines and Tres’s DNA off our fingers, we placed them carefully in the bag. “I’m going to take these to a cop I know in Austin. He’s a good guy, and he’ll know what to do.” Llina nodded, rubbing her shoulders and looking thoroughly repelled.
I blew out a big breath and fished a card out of my purse. “I appreciate your time. And please if you think of anything, give me a call.”
“What are you going to do now?”
I thought about the sticky magazines and grossed myself out again. “I’m going to go see a man about a girl.”
Llina shivered, clearly spooked. “You know, I just wanted to help the girls,” she shook her head. “Be a positive influence in their lives. And then something like this happens, and you just have to think, ‘Why do I even bother?’ It’s like trying to bail a sinking boat with a teaspoon.”
I looked around the room, which was swathed in pink, a grownup version of Faith’s former home, and thought of the unfinished, balled up pink sweater in the box. I smiled a little. “I think you had a lot more influence than you think.”
Chapter Thirty-one
In the Jeep, I left a text message for Cantu because I didn’t want to get yelled at or given the third degree, and then I called Olivia.
“Hey,” I said when she picked up. “Did y’all search Tres’s property?”
“No. Turned the Lambert kid’s ranch upside down, but we never made it to Tres’s,” Olivia said, her voice sounding like she had a sour taste in her mouth.
“No one even asked.”
“Cantu asked him to volunteer to have his ranch searched in case Faith was hiding or got lost out there in the hills but you should have seen Ainsworth’s face. Acted like we were wantin’ to do a cavity search with a pair of pliers.”
“And we can’t search without a warrant?” I said. “Don’t have evidence to ask for a warrant.”
Frustration bristled against my insides. “What about Junior Hollis? Anyone search his place?”
Olivia snorted.
“I’m going to go search Tres’s property,” I said as I left-turned back out on 183.
“How you gonna do that?”
“I plan to charm and beguile,” I said. Olivia snorted. “Cantu know about this?”
“Are you kidding? He’d have me locked up in the back cell at the Justice Complex.”
“It’d be for your own good.”
“Lots of things would be for my own good, but it doesn’t always work out that way. If you don’t hear from me in half an hour, will you call Cantu?”
“Honey, he’s on my speed dial.”
I disconnected and called Ethan. “What are you doing?” I said. “You get anything off that BlackBerry?”
“Of course. Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m still working on origin, but someone texted Tiffany, said it was an emergency and that she had to get to Faith’s house immediately. I’ve got Big Max doing a search right now for the IP. We’ll be able to track the user from there.”
“Who’s Big Max?” I said.
“My home network.”
“Oh,” I said, getting a mental picture of a basement set up like a mad scientist’s, only with hulking hard drives and blinking monitors. I thought about what Ethan said.
Someone texted Tiffany. So it was no coincidence she was at Faith’s the night of the explosion. Someone did this on purpose. But why?
“What are you doing now?” E wanted to know, and I told him what I’d discovered at the girls’ ranch.
His end of the conversation went very quiet, but I could practically feel his anger vibrating through my cell.
“Where are you heading?” he said, and I told him, “Ainsworth’s.”
“Wait at the gate,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I don’t like it,” E said.
The sun warmed the sky a deep orange as it set over Ainsworth’s large stone and iron security fence. I parked two blocks away behind a thicket of sage. Within moments, Ethan pulled in behind me.
I climbed out of the Jeep, careful not to totter off my fuck-me red heels so that Marlowe and I could go sit in E’s Volvo and assess the situation.
My short black skirt slid up my thigh, and Ethan gawked. “You’re wearing that to snoop around?”
I shot him a pitying look. “Trust me on this one,” I said, edging my skirt further down my thigh
“Can’t we call Cantu or something?” he said, flipping open his laptop.
I shrugged. “We could, but Olivia says we don’t have enough to get him a warrant, and I promise you he’s going to stop us if we tell him what we’re going to do.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’m going to go knock on the door.”
Ethan frowned. “That’s your big plan? Go knock on the door?” His fingers flew over his small keyboard, and as the computer made the wireless connection, it sounded off with a chime that sounded suspiciously like the theme to Star Trek.
“I’ve got some details that need working out. And you’ll snoop around figure out how to break into this place if we have to.”
“While you go in there by yourself?” E said, still tapping the keyboard.
“Yes.”
“I don’t like it.”
“The longer we stay down here bickering, the bigger chance we have at getting caught.”
“So if we’re supposed to be sneaking around, how is you knocking on the door going to help?” he said, nodding at my skirt.
“We’re not snooping tonight. We’re doing recon. Besides, this is my lucky black skirt.”
He frowned. “How is it lucky?”
I stared at him, and he said, “Oh.”
“I’m not dressed to go on an off-road search mission,” I explained. “See? This way Tres won’t be suspicious.”
“He will, however, be distracted,” Ethan said, and I hit him with my elbow.
He flipped open his cell and speed-dialed a number, setting the phone to speaker.
“Gandalf, you up?”
“Here. Whatta you got?”
As they spoke, a window popped up on Ethan’s screen showing a very large man with very small eyes and a prominent nose.
I stared at Ethan. “Who the hell is that?”
“Gandalf. Knows everything there is to know about security.”
“Whoa,” the computer guy said “Who’s the babe?” and I winced, realizing he could hear and see everything we were doing.
“That’s just Cauley,” Ethan said, and he climbed out of his car, Marlowe and I right behind him. Ethan looked up at the security cameras that swiveled slowly from their perches on the high wall.
“You see that?” he said to Gandalf.
“Yeah, I see it. What a bunch of amateurs,” Gandalf snorted. “Hook me up, E.”
“Come on,” Ethan said.
I looked at the cameras. “Won’t they see us?”
“We’re going in against the sweep. And see the way they’re angled? They won’t be able to pick us up if we’re pressed in close to the wall.”
“What about motion detectors?” I said, and Gandalf chimed in.
“The lights are set on motion detectors. See
the little lenses? Everything else is on pressure and vibration.”
Ethan and I, with the virtual presence of Gandalf, crept in behind the watchful gaze of the swiveling camera, then pressed ourselves against the hard, rocky wall, inching our way toward the main security console, which was comprised of a keypad, a camera, and a speaker.
“Hook me in, E, we’re ready for liftoff,” Gandalf’s voice crackled through the computer speaker. The screen went blank as E hooked him in.
“Do you have a bobby pin?” he said.
“Seriously?” I said. I rummaged in my purse. “Are you going to pick the lock?”
“No, I just always wanted to say that. Hey,” he was looking into my purse. “Is that a gun?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, that’s what I use to put on mascara.” “You never told me you had a gun.”
“There’s lots of things I’ve never told you.”
He frowned, but he was looking around the perimeter. “You said there were two guys at the gate?”
“During the search, yes.”
Ethan nodded, eyes flickering around the fence and the wires that snaked it. He took a closer look at the keypad, got out a little notebook, and scribbled down the make and model.
He looked up at me. “You think this guy’s really taken up with those El Patron guys?”
“Tres?” I said. “Every time I start digging, I hit him or Junior Hollis or El Patron. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
E blew out a breath, looking up at the huge log home looming eerily on the hill. It seemed like every light in the house was on. “We need a signal in case anything bad happens.”
“Like what? You’re not going to be able to see me.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Flick on and off some lights or something.”
“All right, Ethan. If they don’t tie me up and stuff a canary down my throat, I’ll flick the lights. Now go.”
Reluctantly, he climbed back into his car and slid down the driveway to go park on the road about a hundred feet back the way we’d come. He was outfitted for the occasion, with black jeans, a black tee shirt, and black Converse shoes. He gave me a thumbs-up and began to tiptoe back to the fence. I sighed. You gotta love geeks.
