A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (5 page)

     
Renzo had selected his surveillance location after driving these streets several times. He could see the courthouse clearly. He wasn't too close. He wasn't too far. His vehicle was parked in a small crowded lot on a corner. A map lay open on the car seat next to him. He had a Santa Fe phone book, a government directory, and a cell phone. All he needed—all he didn't have—was time.

     
He blinked once. The social worker had just walked out of the courthouse with a man. Renzo guessed the man was a public defender because his suit was so plain, so ugly. The pair walked to the woman's car. They talked for a few minutes, then the social worker patted the man's arm and climbed behind the steering wheel. The car's engine coughed and sputtered, then caught.

     
Roused from his meditation, Renzo turned to glance at the office building into which the shrink had disappeared. To the side of the building, the
maricón
was tangled in the big yellow shepherd's leash. The animal had mean eyes; Renzo had to shake the eerie feeling that it was watching him. It was the same breed the D.E.A. and I.N.S. used to patrol the Mexican-U.S. border—animals he both feared and admired for their brutal nature.

     
Now the
maricón
was loading the dogs into the back of the shrink's truck. More accurately, he was trying to load them; the little mutt was racing around the lot, pissing on tires.

     
Across the street, the social worker slowly guided her beat-up compact car around the courthouse toward an exit.

     
Follow her, or stay with the shrink?

     
He wasn't sure if the girl had been placed in foster care yet. Court hearings on juveniles were closed to spectators, but Renzo had paid close attention to the participants. The girl had never shown up at the courthouse; that wasn't the normal procedure. But maybe she was hurt more seriously than they'd admitted. Maybe she was still hospitalized.

     
Sooner or later the social worker would lead him to his quarry.

     
Girl, girl, girl, girl, girl
. . .

     
Renzo turned the key in the ignition of the Suburban, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the parking lot. He knew where the shrink worked; it would be easy enough to find out where she lived. If necessary, he would follow up with her later.

     
He shifted the Suburban into drive and accelerated down the street.

     
Thirty seconds later, Nellie Trujillo, a licensed foster parent, led a small girl down the steps of the courthouse. The child moved stiffly, resisting the woman, resisting exposure. She had spent the last two hours hiding behind the couch in the children's waiting area in the recesses of the courthouse. The woman looked tired, perhaps overwhelmed. She spoke to the girl resolutely. "Honey, we've only got to cross the street. Hurry now—you're acting like you've seen a ghost."

T
HE CHILD ENTERED
Sylvia's office like prey making one last dash from predator. She was a blur of red and white and brown, a specter of frantic energy who only came to earth to hide. Cornered behind the green couch, she curled around herself. The pulse of her quick, shallow breath jarred the room to life.

     
Sylvia felt the child's fear and experienced a sudden rush of anger at whoever had instilled such terror in this small person. The child appeared even more disturbed than she had seemed at either the hospital or the courthouse. Sylvia took a long breath, pressed her spine against the wall, then let her butt slide down to the floor. She sat with her arms around her knees at kid level. Children demanded patience—and enormous energy. An expanse of gray carpet separated her from the child; all she could see were two small feet in pink plastic shoes. The strap of one shoe straggled over the carpet.

     
After allowing a few moments to pass in silence, Sylvia spoke in a tone that was intentionally soft and easygoing. "We've met before. Do you remember me from the hospital? I'm the one with the black eye. My name is Sylvia.
Me llamo
Sylvia. I meet and talk with children like you. Sometimes we play."

     
A faint shuddering noise drifted from behind the couch. The pink shoes scooted back an inch or so until only two plastic toes were visible.

     
Sylvia was reluctant to move, afraid to spook the child, so she waited, only changing position to ease a cramp in her legs. The pocket on her jacket was starting to come unstitched; the heel of one of her pumps looked like it was breaking loose. She and the child were both unraveling at the seams—thread and glue would work for Sylvia, but the child would not mend so easily. From the way things had gone so far, they weren't going to accomplish anything resembling a traditional evaluation in this session.

     
She spoke to the pink shoes. "This room is a place where children can play . . . or talk about what's going on . . . or just hang out." She cupped her hands together, then produced what she hoped were the corresponding verbs in Spanish: "
Jugar, hablar, relajar
."

     
There was no visible reaction.

     
Sylvia let the silence settle before she changed gears. She expelled air noisily from between her lips, then slipped off her shoes, exposing toenails polished to a gleaming fuchsia. She scooted on her butt toward a table covered with a tray of sand, toys, paper, and crayons. "Some kids like to use this tray of sand to make a world."

     
The first response was a whimper. But the pink shoes eventually began to move. Painfully slow baby steps, at first. Start and stop. It took those shoes a good two minutes to travel the length of the couch, finally emerging at one end.

     
She stood wide-eyed, her gaze darting around the room only to land repeatedly on Sylvia. The child appeared to be on the verge of bolting; Sylvia calculated the distance to the locked door. But instead of seeking escape, the girl took another tentative step forward with one hand clutching the arm of the couch. Her tongue flitted across her mouth before disappearing between trembling lips. She sighed, and her narrow chest rose and fell with a shudder. She hunched forward and reached out to touch one of Sylvia's polished toenails—then pulled her hand back abruptly.

     
Sylvia spoke softly. "Hello there." This was her first real view of the child outside the hospital setting.

     
She was wiry and tough, like a sunburnt weed. Fine bones and lack of weight made her look smaller than her actual size. In addition to the pink shoes, she wore a white cotton shirt trimmed in bright red. Her red pants were decorated with white racing stripes. The clothes were new, and Sylvia caught the faint but distinctive scent of fabric sizing. The knuckles of the child's right hand were scraped raw where scabs had been picked or torn away. Her skin was bronze, bruised and scraped above her left eye and on her chin—but the swelling had eased. Her lower lip was trapped between gapped white teeth. Dark hair reached midback, thick and tangled. She wasn't exactly pretty. Stray tendrils framed boyish features—nose a tad too big, mouth wide and supple, full brows dark as charcoal. But her dusky eyes held a hint of the woman's beauty that was to come. If she survived that long.

     
Now those expressive eyes spoke only of fear and exhaustion. The child's countenance was distorted by anxiety so intense it seemed to be a permanent feature. Her fear was contagious.

     
Sylvia had seen this level of terror in a few other children—like the six-year-old boy who witnessed his sister's decapitation. The killer had locked the boy in a closet with a warning that he would come back. The boy had been discovered four days after the murder, cowering silently in darkness, soiled and feverish with fright.

     
Sylvia felt a hollow dread work its way up her abdomen. What horrors had this child witnessed? She took several deep breaths before framing her next question: "Would you like to play with the toys?"

     
The child gave a shiver of a nod, barely perceptible. When at the same time her brown eyes cut to the sand tray, Sylvia knew her words were understood.

     
The child picked up a fabric doll from the lap of a wicker chair and moved warily toward the sand tray. The doll was pressed tight to her tummy like a baby trapped outside the womb; with her free hand the child fingered and discarded tiny plastic figurines, human and animal. Each movement was tightly contained; there was none of the easy exploration typical of children. Finally, she placed the doll in the far corner of the tray, where the plain cloth face gazed blankly out at the world—an eerie witness to the child's stifling distress.

     
Now she began a stilted sorting through the remaining toys. Plastic birds, horses, soldiers, and superheroes tumbled onto the floor. When the toy baskets were empty, the child picked up a piece of rough drawing paper from a stack on the table. She selected a box of crayons from a shelf. She pivoted suddenly toward Sylvia, her small arms held tightly at her sides. Then she walked away from the table, oddly stiff-gaited, disappearing again behind the couch.

     
From Sylvia's undergraduate classes she remembered the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of "linguistic relativity": the language a person uses not only expresses but controls the way he or she thinks about the world. What if that language is silence?

     
For the next few minutes, the child's furious scribbling was audible, along with her breathing—the huff and puff of concentration.

     
Sylvia let her work in solitude until the session was almost over. When she was about to try to engage her again, the pink shoes abruptly reemerged from their hiding place. Empty-handed, the child crossed the room. Her small fingers closed around Sylvia's palm; the touch sent electricity through the psychologist's body. A faint alarm went off in her mind—
this isn't a child you can keep at a therapeutic distance
.

     
Minutes later the child left the office with her foster mother, and Sylvia looked behind the couch. She saw tiny bits of paper wrapping and broken crayons scattered everywhere, but there was no sign of a drawing.

     
She got down on her hands and knees and squeezed into the space between wall and sofa. She ran her fingers along the floor. Nothing.

     
Just when she was sure the child had taken away the drawing and some of the crayons, she noticed a white paper sliver visible in a seam of the couch. It was there, neatly folded and waiting, like a secret message.

     
The child had colored a sprawling village against a mountain. The rigidly narrow walls of one particular house stood above the others; its roofline was flat, the three small windows set high—and they were darkened and covered with vertical bars like a prison. The house had no door—no access, no "mouth." The sky in the picture hung low and ominous, as if threatening to envelop the solitary building.

     
The drawing reminded Sylvia of the work of the Mexican muralists—strong, sensuous, disturbing. The vivid colors and rich shapes of the swirling clouds over jagged hills took her breath away. The child wasn't just artistic—she was gifted.

     
Sylvia concentrated on analyzing the work's psychological presentation. The dark enclosures were consistent with a child who was disturbed, who had experienced trauma. The clash of sophisticated perspective and primitive imaging indicated regression. The "contained" message was clear: the four walls of the house encased family secrets.

     
Three
X
's traversed the white space below the house—the letters were connected and seemed to represent a fence or barrier. On the crest of a jagged mountain peak rising up behind the house, a cruciform stabbed the sky.

     
At the bottom of the page, the child had drawn a tiny, dark crescent moon. Just below the moon, she'd signed her name.

     
S E r E n a.

CHAPTER FIVE

E
L
P
ASO
P
OLICE
Department narcotics cop William Robert Dowd punched in the last number on the pay telephone and waited for the short, high ring. His fingers trembled around the piece of dirty black plastic in his hand. Overhead, a neon taco flickered faintly—commas of yellow cheese spilling down a red-rimmed taco shell every few seconds. The lights gave off a steady hum that Dowd heard between rings in the sudden lull of traffic on Avenida Juárez. Exhaust fumes caught in his mouth and killed the taste of fast-food grease. From the alley next to the
taquería
Bobby Dowd scanned the street. Cars and trucks were backed up, headed for the bridge across the Río Bravo—a.k.a. the Rio Grande—into El Paso, Texas.

     
Impatiently Dowd counted six rings, seven. Then a deep voice said, "
¿Sí?
"

     
"I need to see you," Bobby Dowd said.

     
"If it ain't my old pal Wile E. Beep-beep,
'mano
."

     
From the husky sound of the other man's voice, Dowd knew Victor Vargas was smoking one of his funky cigarettes—his Negritos or Delicados. And Vargas sounded tired. He sounded like he believed Bobby Dowd might be coked up. Bobby swallowed. "It's got to be today."

     
"
No puedo
. Not today."

     
Bobby Dowd slapped his thigh nervously. Across the street, a hooker was promoting her stuff to a punk in a Mustang; she kept pace with the car, strutting toward the bridge in cheap stiletto heels and sequins. At the opposite end of the alley, three street kids were squabbling over trash. Dowd said, "Big Tuna is hunting coyote."

     
Vargas made no effort to mask the anger in his voice. "No shit? You're a little late,
pendejo
coyote. I got my own
problemas con el
fish."