And I wasn’t sure if we’d won that one yet or not.
I GOT HOME while Marcus Welby, M.D. was still on, not that anyone was watching it in my apartment, even though the TV blared. The window was open wide. We were heating the entire neighborhood and entertaining it as well.
No one was in the living room. I pushed the door closed, and locked it. I walked to the television, and started when I saw black faces. Apparently, unbelievably wise Marcus Welby was talking to a black neurosurgeon about a boy who’d been beaten in a riot. That hit too close to home. I turned the TV down, but I didn’t turn it off in case someone was watching. The apartment was actually cool. I closed the window. Now that I was inside, I realized I smelled faintly of marijuana. I pulled off my coat, and looked at the bloodstains running down the front.
It was ruined. So were my pants. My shoes had a white layer of salt and water along the edges. Ruined as well.
I kicked them off and tossed them under the coat tree. The remains of a pizza sat on top of the stove, along with some Coke. It looked like no one had eaten much.
I hadn’t been gone as long as I thought. I would have thought it was midnight, given how long this evening felt.
The light was on in Jimmy’s room. I walked down the hall. Marvella sat in a chair beside his bed, an open book on her lap. Jimmy was asleep, his arms on top of the thick blanket he preferred during the winter.
I walked inside the room, deliberately stepping on a creaky spot in the floor. Marvella started, then put a finger to her lips. She looked exhausted.
She put a bookmark in the book, closed it, and set the book on the end table. I reached around her and turned on a nightlight that we hadn’t used in months. I hated using it now, but the fact that Jimmy had fallen asleep with the lights on was a red flag for me: We might have troubled days ahead.
I didn’t know why that surprised me. Given all that had happened today, troubled days were the least of my worries.
Marvella’s gaze went over me, taking in the mess, and probably a lot more. She nodded toward the hallway.
We left the room. I shut off the overhead light, but peered in to make sure that didn’t wake Jimmy. It didn’t.
I pulled the door halfway closed.
“Why don’t you change?” Marvella said. “I’ll clean the kitchen and warm up the pizza.”
I didn’t want pizza. I didn’t want anything. But I knew I had to eat.
I thanked her, and went into my room, grabbed some comfortable clothes, and took them to the bathroom. I ran the
shower on scald and climbed in.
I would have to throw away my clothes, probably tonight. And my shoes. They were one of three pairs that I owned. I would need to replace them, my coat, my scarf, and my backup gun. Today had been extremely expensive.
If I hadn’t wanted to work before, I certainly had to now.
I stood under the water, wishing it could burn away the day.
The evening, really. That word. Us. I hated it.
I wasn’t done, and I knew it.
I dried off, got dressed, and put my clothes in the paper bag we had as a garbage can liner in the bathroom. I closed up the bag and carried it to the front door. There I added my shoes. I slipped my hand into the pocket of my coat, removed the $200 and my guitar pick, then grabbed the coat and tossed it in the bag as well.
“You’re getting rid of all of that?” Marvella asked.
I started even though I knew she was there. “Lacey bled all over it,” I said. “It’s just better this way.”
Marvella nodded, then pulled some glasses from the cupboard.
I grabbed my keys and went downstairs in my slippers. I stepped outside into the cold, feeling it leach away the shower’s warmth. I unlocked the van, and tucked the paper bag in the back. I was going throw all of that stuff away in a different part of town just as a precaution. I didn’t like leaving it in the van overnight, but I didn’t see much of a choice.
I hurried back to the apartment, shivering with cold.
“I didn’t know you were going out,” Marvella said. “I could have done that for you and taken out some of the kitchen garbage as well.”
I shook my head. “I needed to do it.”
She nodded, then came over to me, a highball glass in one hand. She had poured three fingers of Scotch. I resisted the urge to down it in one gulp.
“Long day,” she said.
You have no idea, I thought. But I said, “How’s Lacey?”
“She wasn’t awake when we left. I convinced Jimmy to come home. He was getting tired.” Marvella had poured herself a glass as well. She sipped it, and leaned against the couch. She had deep circles under her eyes.
“I take it Althea and Franklin stayed with her?”
“They were arguing with the hospital staff when I left,” Marvella said. “The staff wanted them gone at the end of visiting hours, but Althea wanted family near Lacey when she woke up. I think Althea probably won.”
“She’s handling this better than I thought she would,” I said.
Marvella nodded grimly. “Franklin’s the problem.”
I frowned at her.
She shrugged and turned her back on me. “Some pizza?”
Pizza and Scotch. The perfect capper to a horrible day.
“Why not?”
She set two slices on a plate in my usual spot at the table. I hadn’t realized she had visited enough to know where my usual spot was.
I sat down. My entire body ached, and if I hadn’t had such a rough day, I would have thought I was coming down with the flu.
I took a sip of the Scotch. It burned as it went down my throat. I knew the Scotch couldn’t actually warm me, but it sure felt like it did.
“What’s the problem with Franklin?” I asked, although I had a hunch I knew.
“He thinks it’s all Lacey’s fault. The way she dressed, the fact that she had gone boy-crazy. The makeup. He seemed to believe that if she had just followed his instructions, she would have been fine.”
“Would she?” I asked softly.
Marvella glared at me. I hadn’t seen her look that fierce in almost a year. “Do you think that?”
I let out a small sigh. “Something made that creep go after Lacey instead of the other thirteen-year-old girls in that school.”
“How do you know it was instead of?” Marvella asked.
The question made me freeze. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know it at all.
“Do you have information I don’t?” I asked.
She shook her head and sat across from me. She set her glass on the table with a thunk.
“I just think it’s no coincidence that this scum was working out of a hotel near the school.” She swirled the glass between her palms. “He’s done this before.”
He’s. Present tense. She had no idea what I did. She hadn’t asked either. Not that I would have told her.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “He knew what he was doing. It was easy for him. He had a system. People with systems perfect those systems over time. I don’t know if he worked the school before, but Lacey wasn’t his first victim.”
His voice echoed in my head: They just want the girls in the right shape.
They. Girls.
He added with a grin: Maybe I have a little fun.
“Bill?” Marvella put her hand on mine. I jumped. She frowned. “You okay?’
“Long day.” I slipped my hand away from hers. Then I took the tumbler of Scotch and downed it.
Marvella watched with concern. She hadn’t seen me drink like that before. I pushed the glass aside.
She got up and grabbed the bottle.
I welcomed it.
“What happens to Lacey?” I asked as I poured myself another.
Marvella made a sound that was both sad and sympathetic at the same time. “It’s up to her now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I’ve already talked to Althea. There’s a group of younger women I know, survivors. They’ll help her. If she lets them.”
I hadn’t had a drink from the new glass yet. My stomach clenched. “And if she doesn’t?”
Marvella shook her head. “It’s her first sexual experience, Bill. It could be—”
“It wasn’t sexual,” I said. “He attacked her.”
Marvella gave me a withering look. “According to Jimmy, she spent time with this creep. Lunches, him treating her like gold. Telling her she’s pretty, telling her she can be a model. In the end, she got hurt, but in the beginning, she thought he was her Prince Charming.”
“Some fucking prince,” I said, thinking of that smelly basement apartment.
“She’s thirteen,” Marvella said. “She has no experience with men. The first one she trusted, the first one she was probably attracted to, beat her, raped her, and might’ve done worse if her cousin and her brother hadn’t saved her. How do you think that’ll resonate?”
There was no answer to that, not one I wanted to think about anyway. I leaned my head to one side and ran my fingers over my forehead. I wasn’t tired, but I was weary. Bone weary.
“She’s going to need her family,” Marvella said. “The group I’m taking her to will help, but she’s going to need a lot of understanding. You’re going to have to talk with her father.”
“And say what?” I was out of my depth here.
“Tell him to use a lot of kindness. She’s going to need the men in her life as much if not more than the women. Judgmental angry men won’t help.”
Judgmental. Angry. Could’ve described me at that moment.
“What are we supposed to be, Marvella?” I asked, not looking at her.
“With Lacey? Kindness itself. I don’t care what you do to the animal who hurt her.”
Marvella probably did care. She probably expected me to hurt the bastard, to make him stop. I doubted she expected me to kill him.
Although she did know what I did to a man who had attacked her cousin Valentina. Or maybe Marvella just thought she knew.
“You need to eat something,” she said, nodding toward the pizza. “You can’t just sit here and drink.”
If I were alone, I could. If I didn’t have Jimmy to watch over, and a wealth of obligations. Back in Memphis, on my own, in my own house, I could have spent the next three days drinking.
I tilted my head back. I hadn’t let memories of Memphis slip in—not favorable memories anyway—for nearly two years.
I slid the plate toward me and grabbed a slice. The pizza was still warm. Marvella had probably heated it too much in the oven. I took a bite. Sure enough, the crust was hard and the tomato sauce had burned against it.
I didn’t care. I made myself finish.
Then I picked up the Scotch and poured it back into the bottle.
“Thank you for taking care of Jimmy,” I said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
She stood. She knew she was being dismissed. “He’s an amazing kid.”
“I know,” I said.
“He tried not to have a reaction tonight, but he didn’t want to go to sleep until you got home.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did. He was worried for me. He knew I had gone after the man who hurt Lacey, a man who had looked large and threatening to nearly twelve-year-old Jimmy.
“He’ll probably check on you if he wakes up during the night,” she said.
She had noticed my startled reactions. She clearly didn’t want me to overreact if Jimmy startled me as well.
“I know,” I said.
“It sounds like he had a hell of a childhood,” she said.
I frowned at her. “He told you about it?”
“He said his mother was a prostitute. Then he got all upset that he had mentioned it. What’s that about, Bill?”
I swallowed, decided half the truth was better than the whole truth. “I didn’t know about Jimmy for the first seven or eight years of his life.”
“Oh,” she said, and she looked vaguely disappointed. As if I had slept with a prostitute. Or worse, impregnated a woman and didn’t take care of her, so she had to become a prostitute.
I capped the bottle and returned it to the top shelf.
“There’s more to the story, isn’t there, Bill?” Marvella asked. I couldn’t tell with my back to her: Was there a bit of a pleading tone in her voice?
“There always is,” I said as I turned around. “You know that. There always is.”