Nobody's Damsel

by E. M. Tippetts

  “That is really, really not good.”

  “How you figure?”

  “I wanted to believe it was a crime of love. That someone wanted to have her with them so badly that they were willing to grab her and run and just hole up somewhere and take care of her and tell her that they loved her… that’s how I came up with the whole idea of the press conference, by picturing her dad as loving.”

  “And you got that right, but he’s not the kind who’d shoot his child’s mother or try to run off with her. He knows he couldn’t take care of her.”

  “Which means we’re left with a stranger abduction.”

  “Someone desperate for a kid of their own mighta seen her and grabbed her. She is a cutie.”

  “Do you really think that’s where she is? Somewhere being fed milk and cookies because someone thought she was just so cute?”

  He looked me in the eye for a moment, like Jason did when he wanted to give me the answer that would make me happy and the truth was stuck in his throat. After a long moment, he took another swig of coffee. “We finish this, and how it ends is how it ends. We just work on what we can control.”

  “Right.”

  “Listen… I’m sorry I dragged you in this far.”

  “No, it’s good to see the big picture.”

  “I should be able to deal with this after over a decade on the force, but it never gets easier.”

  “Noted.”

  “Well, that’s not true. Some days you get called out to help a girl with slashed tires and see Chloe Winters standing there, plain as day. Alive. Just promise me- or not me, promise yourself that you stick it out until you get a case like that. Where the good guys win. Think you can do that?”

  “What’s the ratio?”

  “Varies. Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s terrible, and sometimes it’s so bad you feel it’ll break you.”

  “Noted.”

  “Right, so I’m gonna go through all the leads that the father gave me, and then I hope to get you crims out to check over some suspects’ houses, once I get the warrants. Usually we keep the same crims who’ve worked the case before. You okay with that?”

  “Absolutely. And Wilson over there grew up near Esperanza’s house. He can’t work on the case, but maybe he’s got a personal connection or access to some gossip or something.”

  “All right. Worth a few questions.” He got up to go.

  I downed the rest of my coffee, then went over to the window and called Steve from my cellphone.

  “Yep?”

  “What grade does Shannon teach?”

  “First.”

  “Oh. So was Esperanza a student at her school, do you know?”

  “No. I know for a fact that she’s not. We’ve talked about it. How’s the case coming?”

  “Do I sound like I’ve lost my mind yet?”

  “You’re married to Jason. You clearly lost it long ago.”

  “Oh, what? Now I get the same rough treatment that he does?”

  “Welcome to the fam.”

  “Listen, any gossip you hear or anything about Esperanza from your church or anything, pass it along?”

  “Yep.”

  “Thank you.” Now I was really grasping at straws, but it’d been six days, and it felt like it’d been five months. Every hour was a small eternity.

  “Hey, Vanderholt,” said Miguel. “DNA results come in tomorrow. Fingers crossed, right?”

  I nodded, held up two crossed fingers, and we exchanged a look that was a mix of mutual support and despair. The DNA results had taken too long. We’d lost days in the turnaround.

  Dale Tanner punched the table in the interrogation room so hard that it jumped and scooted an inch across the floor.

  “Are you in withdrawal?” said Clayborn.

  “Yeah. Look, I’m not a perfect person, but I love my little girl. Judge sees an unemployed guy and assumes that he’s a bad parent. Gave my little girl to her alcoholic mother.” He punched the table again hard enough that Clayborn jumped back.

  “You’re going to break your hand if you keep doing that.”

  “You got any other leads? Anything?”

  “We’re all working-”

  “Don’t give me that. We all know what that means.”

  “Do you have any leads for us?”

  “No. I’d’ve told you if I did.”

  “What about your dealer? You owe him any money?”

  “No, but now that you say that… ‘Kay, I’ll give you all their names.”

  “You’ve got multiple dealers?”

  “I know a lot of the scum of the Earth. Look at me. I’ll give you names. I’ll give you everything.”

  “Why don’t we start with one name? You tell me one name, where to find the person, and what to expect when I find them. I’m not going racing all over the city in a wild goose chase spawned by some user who’s sitting here in withdrawal from whatever it is that’s leaving your system, all right?”

  “Just move fast. Promise-”

  “We’re the police. We’ve got the flashing lights, sirens, all that good stuff. What’s the name?”

  When the phone rang half an hour later and I was called out to a crime scene in the War Zone during work hours, I could not get out the door fast enough. It was me and Miguel, to investigate the home of Luis Dominguez’s dealer, or one of them at least. This could be it, I thought.

  The two of us piled into the CSI van and tore out of the parking lot. Hollywood would’ve been impressed, I think, though the little white sedan following us detracted from the whole effect.

  “That photographer really going to keep after us?” Miguel said. “There anything we can do to get him to give it up?”

  “At least it’s only him.”

  “Why is it anybody? No offense, Vanderholt, but you just aren’t that interesting.”

  “None taken.”

  “A good crim, I’ll grant you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The samples you took were great. Clean. Meticulous.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I hate crime scene stuff. I’m a lab guy. I like control.”

  “I’ll take the five million pictures and you can herd everyone off the crime scene?”

  “Deal. There better not be a crowd.”

  When we arrived at the property, one guy was being cuffed and loaded into an APD patrol car. Detective Baca waved at us and, as soon as we’d parked, came to Miguel’s window and said, “Waiting on the DA to get us a search warrant.”

  “What’ve you got so far?”

  “The guy came to the door reeking of marijuana, so we patted him down and found some of it in his pocket, but we couldn’t see inside the house. No evidence that anyone else is in there so we’re just sealing the place off and waiting for our search warrant before we go in.”

  This neighborhood was called the War Zone because that’s what it looked like. Graffiti marked everything, even streetlights, trash was piled in front yards, dumpsters stood dented and battered on the side of the road. The house we’d been called to looked just as run down and ramshackle as the rest on the street. There were bars on the windows, of course, and the lawn was more brown than green and had tire marks in it. It all stood in stark contrast to the cheery, bright sunshine beating down.

  Miguel and I got out, unspooled the crime scene tape, and got to work cordoning off the house. Detective Baca peered in the windows. “The DA knows the lead that got us here,” he said, “he’ll hurry this along, I think.”

  Still, each second felt interminable. I stared at that house and imagined a scared little girl curled up in one of the rooms, held ransom for a drug debt. Had she had food? Was she dehydrated? I half wished I’d brought her sock monkey. That wasn’t really appropriate while it was in evidence, but I imagined her smile at the sight of it again.

  The detective’s cellphone rang. “All right, we’ve got a warrant. They’ll bring it over, but let’s get in there now.”

  Everyone sp
rang into action. The two uniformed cops opened the front door and went in, guns drawn. Detective Baca, Miguel, and I were right behind them as they peered first into the living room, which was empty. There wasn’t even furniture. The kitchen was a mess with cockroaches climbing the walls and a sticky brown liquid that I would definitely be testing splattered on the wall. The first bedroom had a mattress on the floor and garbage piled around it. The closet was empty.

  “Hello?” Detective Baca called out. “Anyone here?”

  The second bedroom had a bed and a wreck of a chair, but nothing else, not even much garbage. Under the bed was clear. The bathroom toilet had been clogged for weeks at least. It was disgusting, and the shower had fetid water sitting in it. Under the sink, the built in cabinets were empty, save for more roaches. The third and final bedroom had been used for cooking meth. Other than that, the house was empty. No one was here.

  “Well,” said Detective Baca, “at least we know the father is reliable as an informant as far as this goes.”

  “How many leads can he give us?” I asked.

  “Too many. He didn’t keep good company. All kinds of lowlifes might be after his little girl.”

  “Great.”

  “If people knew the percentage of the population who were pedophiles, they wouldn’t sleep at night.”

  I nodded. He wasn’t coddling me anymore. Now we were being honest about what we were looking for.

  “All right, what do you want us to get, evidence-wise?” said Miguel.

  “Start in this back bedroom and we’ll keep searching for more of the drugs. And firearms. Maybe we can find the gun that shot Teresa.”

  “You got it.” Now was not the time to panic about what could have been and Esperanza. This was still a crime scene.

  I uncased the camera and got to work.

  “All right,” said Clayborn, in the same outfit as before. Tanner looked a little worse for wear as he sat on his stool, staring dully at the table. “First tip was accurate. What else have you got?”

  “You want them all?”

  “Yep. List ‘em all.”

  “Did you find Hope?”

  “Your daughter, no. The emotion, yeah. I got a guy with leads. That’d be you. Start talking.”

  While we worked the scene in the War Zone, Detective Baca sent two beat cops over to another residence. “All right,” he announced to us. “Miguel, you got the narc guy on the way from the lab?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I want to move on to another location. Got the warrant lined up.”

  I was relieved. Working an unrelated crime scene while Esperanza remained missing made my stress levels edge up with each passing moment. We had found two firearms, but that was the only potential connection to Esperanza’s case we’d unearthed.

  Miguel and I followed the detective’s sedan across town, to the Northeast Heights, which was about as opposite to the War Zone in feel as it was possible to get. This was where the higher value properties were, where Jason had grown up, where the best public high schools were located.

  The house we pulled up to was a two story stucco meant to look like adobe with a flat roof and vigas jutting out along the roofline. A neat, manicured lawn, winding brick path, and flowerbed gave the front yard a homey and welcoming look.

  “Huh,” said Miguel.

  “My brother grew up in a house like this,” I said.

  “Sure. Wouldn’t be the first- hey.” He pointed at a carport around the side of the house. Just visible through its gate was a white pickup truck.

  We exchanged a hopeful look. His dark eyes almost conveyed excitement.

  “You have a daughter?” I asked.

  “I’ve got three.”

  “That’s got to make a case like this hard.”

  He shrugged. “They’re all hard.”

  Detective Baca motioned for us to get out of the van.

  “So, this is the house of a male pediatric nurse who always took a special interest in Esperanza,” he said. “When the two beat cops knocked on the door and explained why they were here, the guy went for them. They cuffed him for assaulting an officer and that got them in the downstairs for a protective sweep.”

  He took off his sunglasses, then, and folded them carefully. “In one of the rooms, they found images that appeared to be child porn.”

  I inhaled, held it for a moment, then let my breath out. “Okay.”

  “They extended the sweep upstairs, no one else appears to be in the house, but this was enough to get us our search warrant.”

  My heart sank. No one else in the house?

  “I want to wait until we have the warrant in hand,” he said. “DA sent someone over a few minutes ago.”

  “You saw the white truck, right?” said Miguel.

  “Oh yeah. Might have to haul that thing into your garage.” The crime lab had a garage that we used to investigate cars involved in crimes.

  A black Jetta pulled over on the far side of the street, parked, and out stepped Beth, a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Well now…” Detective Baca looked at her, then at me. “We’ve got two Winters working for us?” he said.

  “Yeah, all the ones who aren’t in jail,” said Beth. “I’m Beth.” She held out her hand for him to shake. Then came to give me a hug.

  “This is my sister,” I explained to Miguel. “And she will be traumatized if this case doesn’t turn out well, okay?” I winced. Sarcasm didn’t always go over well with other people, and I’d managed to avoid using it on the job until now.

  “Oh, right, we’d better really try then.” Miguel’s face was deadpan.

  Beth chuckled. “No more just hanging out on crime scenes for the fun of it.”

  “Gallows humor is a sign of a sick mind,” said Detective Baca. “No wonder I like you people. All right, you two,” he said to me and Miguel, “let’s do this. You focus on getting evidence from the pictures, while I search. I’ve called for some help looking this property over.”

  As we headed across the street, towards the house, Miguel got in front of me and said, “I’m handling the images. I’ll dust ‘em for prints-”

  “I’m the comparison-”

  “Vanderholt, don’t argue. I was an abused kid. I’ve seen a lot of what’s out there. Just let me handle it.”

  “Okay.” I looked back over my shoulder at Beth, who stood by her car. I waved and she smiled back before getting in and heading off. I really hoped she wasn’t doing any actual work on this case. My assumption was that the DA’s office didn’t usually send attorneys out to deliver a warrant. Odds were that Beth had known I’d be here and done the errand for a chance to say hi, which was kind of her. It was nice to be reminded again that I wasn’t alone.

  Inside the house, everything was neat, but not so neat that it looked suspicious. There were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, congealing cat food in a saucer by the back door, and a plant that looked to be about finished with its mortal existence on the kitchen counter.

  Officer Baca went to the entertainment center and began to look through the DVDs as Miguel and I went to the office where the images were supposed to be on a computer desk.

  While Miguel found the photos and put himself physically between me and them as he dusted, I eyed the computer. It’d be up to the detective to search it for more images, and if he found any, we’d have to take it in for Wilson to check out in the lab.

  “Huh…” said Miguel. “I dunno.” He backed away and let me see the photographs, which were of a toddler in a bathtub, grinning at the camera. “Not sure that’s porn.”

  I looked, then shrugged. “This is when we’re glad it’s not our call, right?”

  “True.” We got to work documenting, lifting prints, and packaging up the photographs, then went to find the detective who was looking over the pickup truck.

  “All right,” he said, when we approached. “I don’t see anything suspicious here.”

  “Does this suspect have priors?” asked Miguel. />
  “No.”

  Miguel and I exchanged another uneasy look.

  “I searched a crawlspace under the house while you were working in the office. I’m going to look over the office and the rest of the house. There’s a flower bed in the back yard that’s recently dug up. I’d like you two to take a look at it. Some guys from homicide are on their way.”

  “Sure,” said Miguel. He and I went around the side of the carport and into the backyard through a little gate. The flowerbed in question stretched along the entire back of the house, and a part of it had recently been dug up. The dirt was looser and darker, and the plants were noticeably different. None of them had flowers, which might have meant they were new. I was no horticulturist, so I couldn’t say for sure. They could have been non-flowering plants.

  Miguel cocked his head to one side. “There kind of is a mound there.”

  He was right, now that I looked. The dirt was noticeably higher along the back of the flower bed, and there was a slope down to the front. It was possible that some mass was buried there, right up against the back of the house.

  More voices out front soon led to two more men in plain clothes joining us in the back yard. I half listened as they introduced themselves as homicide detectives; each of them had graying hair and brown eyes. If Detective Baca had been able to entice them to come out, they must have felt there was a strong likelihood of a case. I could feel myself dissociating, cutting my mind loose from my perception and curling up inside. If something very, very bad was about to happen, I didn’t want to be entirely there to see it.