Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “Lacy!” I yelled. “Lacy, can you hear me?”

  Nothing came back, not even an echo. The blackness inside seemed to swallow everything, including sound. I glanced at my feet. A small stream of blood trailed from the pool at the door back into the darkness, where it disappeared.

  “Lacy!” I yelled again.

  From down the street I could hear the gunning of an engine as Harrison and Chavez skidded around the corner. I took out a Maglite and shined the beam into the darkness, following the stream of blood across the wood floor to where it disappeared under another door.

  “Do not go inside,” Harrison said.

  Too late. I was already three steps in, moving toward the door that concealed the source of the blood. Ten feet into the room, a single tennis shoe lay upturned. I stopped, the tight beam of light illuminating the tennis shoe’s bright yellow laces. It was my daughter’s.

  “Lacy!” I yelled.

  I swung the beam around the room. There was some tattered furniture, a couch, an overstuffed chair, a coffee table, and a small television. The rest of the room was empty. I directed the beam back to the door where the blood disappeared. The darkness closed in around me as if I had been submerged in water. I had trouble finding enough air to take a breath. A voice in my head was saying, “No, no, no.” I looked at my daughter’s shoe, and my hand holding the flashlight began to tremble.

  The same voice began to say, “This is not happening, this is not happening.”

  A rage I had never known took hold of every cell in my body and I started for the door. It was as if I were standing outside myself watching a stranger’s actions, watching a mother grizzly. I seemed to enter into a tunnel that was taking me toward the door and the source of the blood.

  “Stop, Lieutenant.”

  I took two more steps and reached for the door handle.

  “Lieutenant, please!” Harrison yelled.

  I hesitated, thinking I had heard something, then continued the slide down the tunnel toward the door.

  “This won’t help her,” Harrison said quietly.

  I stopped. The pounding of my heart was the only sound in the room. The walls of the tunnel caved. I looked at my hand. It was inches from the door handle, though I had no recollection of how it got there. I turned and looked at Harrison, who was standing in the entrance.

  “That’s Lacy’s shoe,” I said.

  My hand moved toward the door handle as if acting on its own.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “That’s my daughter’s shoe!” I yelled.

  “This is not the way to do this.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I turned back to the door, then took hold of the handle and flung the door open. Air rushed past me as if wanting to escape whatever was inside the room. I raised my weapon and the flashlight and followed the trail of blood deeper into the darkness toward the center of the room and the source of the blood.

  Harrison stepped up beside me, his hand tightly wrapped around his weapon and flashlight.

  The body was facedown, its hands taped behind its back. I didn’t notice what it was wearing; I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It had the limp, lifeless look of a rag doll. I couldn’t bear to think that it was my daughter.

  “Are there shoes on both feet?” I asked.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for the answer, dreading it. Only a second or two passed but it had the emotional currency of hours.

  “Yes,” Harrison said.

  “Is the rest of the room clear?”

  He swung his light across the room.

  “There’s a mattress, some magazines, but nothing else.”

  I nodded, then reached out and placed my hand on his arm and took a deep breath. “Can you clear the rest of the house?”

  The flashing dome of squad cars outside the front door began to fill the room with red light.

  “I need to just stand here for a second,” I said.

  Harrison nodded, then moved past me and through the door to what I assumed was the kitchen. I looked down at my hand and realized I was still clutching my weapon, though I had no sense of holding it. I slipped it back into its holster, then looked at my daughter’s shoe on the floor. Its yellow laces were untied and trailed out toward the stream of blood that passed by just inches away.

  I turned and walked into the room where the victim lay. In death, a body surrenders to gravity. All definition is often lost. If the hands hadn’t been taped behind the back, I would hardly know if the victim was face-up or -down. It was dressed in jeans and a loose gray sweater. I pointed my light on the back of the head. The hair was shiny and jet black, except for around a small entrance wound, where it was wet and matted with blood. I shined the light onto the side of the face that was visible. There was a short stubble of beard. An open, unfocused eye stared lifelessly into whatever hell his last moments had been. He was young, mid-twenties at the outside. Probably of Japanese descent.

  My head felt light, and I moved back toward the doorway. God, he was just a child who looked into the wrong face. How could he possibly have understood what was happening to him? He was going to save the planet. And then this. I imagined him chaining himself to a redwood to keep it from being cut down. I turned away and looked back toward Lacy’s shoe on the floor.

  I walked over and picked it up. It was her left shoe. In my hand it felt almost weightless. She had a thing about keeping them as white as the day they came out of the box. I looked for any traces of blood but found none. There was a dark scuff mark on the left side as if it had been stepped on.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered as I began to reconstruct what had transpired in these rooms.

  She would probably have seen what happened, or if she was in another room, she would have heard it all. Either was unimaginable. Did she try to kick the killer? Did she try to run? He probably stepped on her foot as she tried to get away, which would explain the scuff mark. I closed my eyes, trying to shake the images in my head, but they persisted. I felt helpless. Gabriel had taken more than my daughter from me. Regardless of the cruelties I had witnessed as a cop, there was always that fundamental faith that in the end, good, no matter how bruised and battered, will survive. Now, that was gone.

  I wrapped both hands around the shoe and clutched it to my chest. Dawn was gathering speed and light was beginning to filter through all the windows. The color of the blood on the floor was changing from dark chocolate to a deep red rose. I looked up and saw Chavez standing in the doorway.

  “There’s one dead in the other room. My guess is that it was a small caliber to the back of the head, just like Finley,” I said.

  He took a deep breath that was a confused mix of relief and concern.

  “Lacy was here,” I said. “But we missed her.”

  He glanced at the tennis shoe in my hands, and it was clear no other explanation was necessary. He put his hand over his mouth and stared at the floor for a moment, gently shaking his head back and forth in disbelief.

  “Son of a bitch” then slipped out like a monk’s evening vespers.

  Harrison stepped out from the other room.

  “Rest of the house is clear—no explosives.”

  I heard Harrison’s words, but they were unimportant. My fingers were wrapped tightly around the laces of my daughter’s shoe, as if I were trying to keep it from slipping from my hand—to keep her from slipping further away.

  “I don’t know what to do next,” I said helplessly.

  Harrison glanced at Chavez. I could see the concern in both of their eyes. A grieving mother wasn’t going to do anyone any good right now. The badge I wore was little more than an absurd prop. I should be home, like a good mother, helping my daughter get ready for school, fixing her breakfast. Telling her how pretty she looks. I glanced down at Lacy’s shoe and let my fingers slip out of the laces.

  Okay, I said to myself. Work it, think it out. I turned to Harrison and tried to find my way back to the present. “Did you see a computer anywhe
re?”

  “No.”

  I took a breath. Small steps, one at a time.

  “So he either took it, or he wasn’t here when we e-mailed him.”

  “I think he was already gone,” Harrison said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Which means he sent us here.”

  “Jesus,” Chavez said. “Jesus Chri—” The good Catholic in him kept him from finishing. “Why?”

  I glanced at Harrison and could see he was thinking exactly what I was.

  “He’s letting us know who’s in charge,” I said.

  “We’re like goddamn puppets,” Chavez said angrily.

  Loss of control was something Chavez was unaccustomed to. His eyes had the appearance of a bewildered monarch toppled from power.

  I walked over and gripped his powerful forearm.

  “We’ll need a time of death as soon as possible,” I said. “And I want to know if it was the same gun that killed Finley.”

  His eyes refocused and he nodded. “I’ll get crime scene and the ME rolling.”

  I looked down at the shoe in my hand, then tentatively held it out toward him.

  “Can you bag this? Maybe we can get something useful from the scuff mark, or . . . maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  He nodded and took the shoe gently from my hand.

  I had to get out of the house. The walls were closing in like soil filling a grave. I brushed past Chavez and stepped out into the open air. A dozen squads were now parked on the street. Most of the cops were staring in my direction like drivers passing the scene of an accident. Raindrops hit my face and slid down into the corners of my mouth. They had the strong saline taste of tears. I had been crying but hadn’t realized it. I wiped them away with the back of my hand and glanced down the street. The crow that had been picking at the soggy McDonald’s bag now stood several feet away from it, indifferent to the remains.

  From somewhere among the jumble of squad cars and the sound of radios, I heard the high-pitched ping of a cell phone. A uniformed officer walked up.

  “A phone’s been ringing in your car for a couple of minutes, Lieutenant.”

  I turned to him, not hearing what he had said. “I’m sorry?”

  “Your phone’s been ringing for a couple of—”

  I was already moving before he finished. Call it a mother’s intuition, or a woman’s, or a cop’s, but a phone ringing continuously at six A.M. at a murder scene sounded like a desperate plea. There was no such thing as coincidence anymore. Every moment, every second now had an urgency. I ran to the car, flung open the door, and reached across the seat to the phone on the center console.

  “Delillo.”

  I heard the click of the caller hanging up.

  “Shit,” I said, tossing the phone back onto the seat. It could have been anything, it could have been nothing, but I had missed it, and I couldn’t afford to miss anything.

  Back at the house, Chavez was walking out, carrying Lacy’s shoe in an evidence bag. He handed it to another officer, exchanged a few words, then looked my way.

  The ping of the phone ringing again jolted me like the report of a gunshot. I stared at it, reluctant to answer. Terrified of what it might be or what it might not. On the fifth ring I did.

  “Delillo.”

  I heard over the line what sounded like the distant siren of a fire truck.

  “This is Delillo.”

  The voice that came back was quivering with fear and disorientation. “Mom,” Lacy said. “Mommy.”

  I clutched the phone to my cheek. “Lacy, where are you?”

  Only silence.

  “Lacy . . . Lacy, can you hear me?” I said, desperation spreading through me. “Lacy, can you hear me? Are you hurt? Do you know where you are?”

  “No . . . she doesn’t.”

  The voice sounded distorted, deep, with slightly slurred pronunciation, like it was coming from a surrealist painting in which reality is stretched and curved. I knew immediately it was Gabriel’s voice.

  “You bastard,” I said involuntarily.

  “And you are nothing.”

  The words reached through the phone like a hand grabbing my heart and squeezing it. He had all the power in the world at that moment. He could wield it with the touch of a finger or a single word like a mythological god. He was right. I felt like nothing.

  “You’re my partner now, Lieutenant. You’re going to do exactly what I tell you to do. If you don’t, your daughter will die.”

  “I won’t make deals with you.”

  “Maybe not yet. But what will you do when I give you the choice of saving the life of a stranger, or your daughter?”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “If you don’t do everything I tell you, hell will fall on you.”

  “Please don’t do this. Don’t hurt my daughter.”

  I felt weak for saying the words, but there was no sense hiding it. I was weak. He had seen to that. I would do anything.

  “Take me, not her, please.”

  Only silence came back.

  “Take me, damnit! Take me!”

  “Mommy,” said Lacy.

  The tears in her voice seemed to slip from the phone into my hand.

  “I’m here, Lacy.”

  The line went dead as abruptly as if she had just been yanked out of my arms. In the brief moment that my mind stayed clear, I tried to retrieve the number but it was blocked. I slumped against the car, then all the strength in my legs vanished and I sank to the wet pavement. I buried my face in my hands as the rain began to soak my hair.

  Think, find something, replay Gabriel’s words, the sounds in the background, anything, there must be something.

  I opened my eyes and Chavez was kneeling in front of me.

  “What is it, Alex?”

  “I heard her voice.”

  He glanced at the phone lying next to me on the pavement.

  “Lacy? You talked to Lacy?”

  I nodded. “She was afraid . . . Oh, God, she was so frightened.”

  He put his hands on my knees and gently squeezed them, trying to pull me back.

  “Talk to me, Alex.”

  I stared past him as if looking into the dark corner of a nondescript room at a teenage girl huddled in terror. There was the whoosh of wings as the black shape of a crow flew low overhead, as if guiding me back to the moment. I looked into Chavez’s soft, dark eyes, then reached out and gripped his hand.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  I looked up and let the rain fall on my face.

  “She . . .” I lost the words.

  “Alex, what happened?”

  I closed my eyes and let the rain fall over me for another moment, hoping against hope that it would all be swept away like a terrible dream. If I told Chavez everything, would he be able to trust me? Could you trust any parent faced with the life of their child like this? Was that asking too much of anyone? And if I didn’t tell him, could I trust myself to do the right thing? Was I strong enough? A cold, icy shiver went through my body. And I wondered if I had just become a partner in Gabriel’s madness. I looked at Chavez.

  “Talk to me, Alex.”

  “Hell is falling down on me.”

  14

  FOR AN HOUR I sat in the car listening to the rain dance across the squad as crime-scene technicians and the coroner went over the house on Monte. Was there a miracle waiting to be found in a strand of hair or a fiber of fabric in the empty house? Was there a map in the contours of a fingerprint leading to Gabriel’s hiding place and my daughter? The beating of my heart played out the answer like a primal drum message. No . . . no . . . no.

  Chavez had told me to give it a rest for a few minutes, but whenever I tried closing my eyes for refuge and edged toward sleep, the sound of Lacy’s voice on the phone brought me back to the cold, wet reality of the gathering dawn. “Mom, Mommy.”

  Jesus. No parent should ever hear that. Ever.

  I looked out through the water strea
king down the windshield. The scene being played out in front of me was as distorted as a fun-house mirror. Squad’s flashing lights twisted and curved. Officers working the scene seemed to appear and disappear as if stepping through holes in space. And through it all, one thought remained constant and threatened to overwhelm me: How could I have failed so terribly at protecting my daughter? How could I, a Homicide cop, not have known what was hiding in the shadows? I wasn’t a clueless suburban parent who only knew crime through the looking glass of television. I had lived with it for twenty years. I had held its bleeding, bewildered victims in my hands. I had seen it shatter families. I had watched it destroy hope and smother dreams. And still it happened in my house, to my child, shattering my illusion of safety. How could I have been so blind? How?

  Harrison tapped on the window and waited for me to open the door, which I had apparently locked. I reached across and opened the driver’s side and sat back as he slid in out of the rain. The scent of wet eucalyptus followed him in and filled the interior of the car.

  “We may have caught a break,” he said flatly. The tone in his voice left no room for false hopes. “A motel clerk on Colorado thinks Sweeny may be a guest.”

  “Sweeny?” I said.

  The events had taken on the quality of a raging river that I was watching pass from the riverbank. Somewhere in the torrent, my daughter had vanished and I now stood helpless, watching her drift away.

  Harrison’s fingers hovered just above the car horn as he waited patiently for me to catch up to the meaning of the words.

  “Sweeny,” I said again.

  I could feel the tug of events pulling me back toward the investigation. The fog I had been left in after the phone conversation with Gabriel began to lift. I remembered Traver opening the door to the bungalow, the flash of explosion, the feel of glass hitting my face. Sweeny. Breem and Finley’s employee.

  “Okay,” I whispered, as if to steady myself in the flow of events. “We located Sweeny in a motel on Colorado?”

  “Yeah,” Harrison said.

  “Do we have surveillance?”

  He nodded as he started the car. “An unmarked squad is watching it and won’t move until you give the word.” He hesitated. “That’s at least something.”