A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (8 page)

     
He moved quietly, skirting the side of the house. He passed a bedroom. The curtains on these windows were drawn, but through a one-inch margin the carpet and bedspread of the master bedroom were visible. Lamplight illuminated a wedding picture. Renzo had seen no sign of the woman's husband.

     
The next window revealed the kitchen, where the woman was cooking an early dinner. Steam rolled off a large aluminum pot. She held dried pasta in one fist and shook it into the pot, recoiling slightly when she was spattered with hot water.

     
She called out—there was no one else in the kitchen—probably to one of the children. Renzo eased himself quickly around the corner, past the back door, to the other side of the compact home. Three final windows lined the wall ahead, single-framed, simple hinges, break a pane and you're in. He sidled up to the first window. As his eyes adjusted to the dim interior light, he discovered he'd found her. A child's night-light illuminated a small room furnished with two bunk beds and a single twin bed. She was a soft shape asleep and hidden beneath a flannel blanket.

     
Renzo didn't need to break the glass—the window was unlatched.

N
ELLIE
T
RUJILLO RAN
a wooden spoon through roiling spaghetti. She thought she should probably have added two packages of noodles to feed four children and two adults. She checked the clock on the kitchen wall and sighed; her husband repaired appliances from seven
A.M
. to four-thirty
P.M
. He was late as usual. For the third time, she called out to her oldest son. "Rudy,
jito
, wake Serena to eat!"

     
When there was still no response, Nellie murmured, "That boy." She wiped her hands on her apron and started toward the door just as her twelve-year-old appeared. His eyes were glazed from staring too long at the television.

     
"Did you hear me,
jito?
" Nellie snapped. "Check on Serena."

     
He shrugged, eyes on the stove, on food. "She's not my sister."

     
"Don't make me tell your father—"

     
"I'm going." He swung around and stomped down the hallway.

     
Nellie clucked her tongue as she lured a strand of spaghetti onto her spoon. She sampled it, then retrieved a colander from a high cabinet. She was about to call her second son when she heard something that gave her goose bumps. A child's piercing scream.

     
Nellie dropped the colander and dashed into the hall. She cried out when she saw something on the floor. Her eyes caught motion—then she realized what she was staring at. Her two boys were wrestling, the older had the younger in a headlock.

     
Both boys ignored her until she grabbed Rudy by the scruff of his neck.

     
"Ouch!" Rudy finally released his choke hold on his brother.

     
"Didn't I ask you to check on Serena?"

     
Rudy moaned when his brother kicked him in the shin. Then he shrugged and said, "I did."

     
Nellie frowned at the odd expression on her older son's face. "And?" His silence alarmed her. "What?"

     
"She ran away, Mom. She's not there."

A
T HOME IN
La Cieneguilla, Sylvia slipped out of running shoes, stripped off shorts and T-shirt, and showered. She was energized from a three-mile run. Her favorite route led up the ridge behind her adobe house, but she had acres of relatively open country to choose from. That was one advantage of living fifteen miles south of Santa Fe. Another was the quiet seclusion, and the incredible star-studded night skies.

     
She found a cigarette in a kitchen drawer, lit it, took three long hits, then stubbed it out in the sink. She'd cut her smoking down to almost nothing. She tried her best to sit and meditate each morning—always with less-than-perfect concentration. And she was drinking vodka only on special occasions. It was all part of the year's reorganization. Her new priority: less bullshit, more peace of mind, a lot more sex. She squeezed half a lemon into a glass of iced tea, mugged a smile, then caught sight of her reflection in the kitchen window; the shiner lent her a rakish air.

     
It was early yet; just past four-thirty. She found the newspaper on the counter where she'd left it on a stack of mail. She began sifting through the pile. A large manila envelope contained a series of her prison-inmate interviews, just transcribed. The new issue of
Corrections Alert!
had a piece on female inmates' mental health issues; she set it aside to read later. There was a letter from her mother, letters from colleagues. She stacked those with the others. She knew she was stalling, not ready to tackle the book.

     
She refilled her glass with iced tea. Resting her elbows on the counter, she perused the newspaper; the front page had stories on the governor and new prison construction; she clipped a recipe for fruit salsa; she pulled out the movie schedule from the entertainment section. There were three films she wanted to see.

     
A story caught her eye: an upcoming gala fund-raiser for the Children's Rescue Fund was being held at the Frank Lloyd Wright Pottery House. Sylvia had always wanted to see the inside of the east-side landmark. She scanned the story—
music by Los Mariachis Nachitos . . . dignitaries expected to attend include the governors of New Mexico and Texas . . . hostess Noelle Harding . . . $500 to $5,000 per person
. She sighed and stopped reading. Harding was Texas "Big Rich," and five hundred dollars was a tad rich for Sylvia's blood. She'd catch a garden tour one of these days.

     
She gave the dogs water, then carried the tea to her study and sat down at her desk to rework a section of her book. This particular chapter centered around an inmate whose mother had been a prostitute, father unknown but probably one of her johns.

     
Light bedtime reading.

     
When Sylvia's first book,
Attached to Violence
, was published a few years earlier, it had drawn professional criticism and praise. Her publishers hoped a second book would increase her visibility. Sylvia just prayed she wouldn't end up on some talk show with a hyperactive confrontational host. She knew her publishers prayed she would. And they kept threatening to trash her subtitles.

     
It was no mystery to Sylvia why she wrote about attachment or bonding disorders. Most children who experienced the loss of a parent spent some portion of their life trying to fill the void. It was one of those wounds that never quite healed. Sylvia turned thirteen the year Daniel Strange walked out of her life. Bonnie, Sylvia's mother, had always insisted her husband was dead: "Why else would he stay silent, hurt us this way?" Sylvia felt in her heart he was still alive . . . somewhere in the world. Even as a young child, she had sensed a fundamental change in her father after his return from military duty in Southeast Asia. Years before his physical disappearance, he had abandoned his family emotionally.

     
She tried to focus on the revision, but she lacked concentration. Emotionally drained from the day's events, she found herself at half-mast in her swivel chair. Serena's file and the accident report were on a shelf next to her desk; she scanned the few pages again. And when she picked up the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-IV
to verify a term, the pages of the tome just happened to fall open to the categories of disorders usually diagnosed in childhood: mental retardation, autistic disorder, learning disorders, expressive language disorder.

     
Sylvia scrawled notes on scratch paper:
cognitive disorders? definite vocal capacity! lack of language skills? stuttering? selective mutism? silence intermittent? for days, weeks, months? years?

     
"God, let's hope not years."

     
Rocko, who was stretched out on the floor of the office near Sylvia's feet, opened one eye at the sound of a human voice and yawned. His mistress absentmindedly scratched the terrier's tummy with her bare toe.

     
Since, at the moment, Serena was minus almost all history, there was no way to know if her family dynamics matched the selective-mutism profile. On one hand, she wasn't a "frozen child," completely withdrawn from all social contacts. On the other hand, she wasn't your average kid. The image remained in Sylvia's mind—the child's luminous features raised skyward.

     
Sylvia poked Rocko's belly. "Whaddaya think, big guy? Is Serena a wee bit tetched?"

     
The terrier raised his head attentively as if he were about to answer the question. Sylvia was reaching forward to pat the animal when someone grabbed her from behind.

     
She let out a short yell and thrust her elbow backward.

     
"Hey! It's
me
."

     
She recognized the voice, turned, and saw a familiar face gazing at her from under the brim of a baseball cap. His skin was weathered and tanned, his gray-green eyes fringed by dark lashes, his nose had encountered obstacles, and his mouth was wide and expressive. Tall and solid at forty-three, Matt England had a cop's seen-the-world face.

     
"It's
you
," she said, breathless.

     
"Who'd you think it was? You almost injured my manhood." He gave her a speculative glance before he disappeared from the study. She followed him to the living room—he wasn't there—and stepped out the open sliding glass door onto the deck. When Matt reappeared through the backyard gate, his arms were weighed down by something black and heavy and wrapped in plastic. He let the load fall to the wooden deck.

     
Sylvia bent close to read the label. "Pond liner?"

     
"Ummmm." Matt grazed one hand along Sylvia's bare arm. He pushed his cap off his forehead and smiled. "This one's going to be big."

     
Sylvia set her hands on her hips. "Bigger than the two ponds you've already made?"

     
"This'll be the best. We can stock it with spadefoot tadpoles next July. And it's going over by the moss rock and the blue spruce." He glanced off toward the rear of the house and the ridge beyond. Sylvia knew the spot he was talking about. It was on the other side of the fence, maybe thirty feet from the house. A place where she'd seen rabbits, foxes, and very recently a corn snake. Matt moved toward the sliding glass door. "What are you drinking?"

     
"Iced tea." Sylvia followed. "But there's still some beer in the refrigerator." In the kitchen, she watched him line up bread, mayonnaise, sweet pickles, and a plastic bag of sliced ham on the counter. She pulled a cold bottle of Rio Grande Lager from a six-pack, popped the top, and took a long drink. She wiped the bottle's rim with the base of her palm and handed the beer to Matt, who was busily creating a massive sandwich.

     
She perched herself on the kitchen counter like a kid, bare heels gently slapping a cupboard door. She'd been working questions in her mind like worry beads, and she was impatient to get Matt's feedback. They each had a distinctly different reasoning process; when they worked a problem through to its logical end, they reached two very different conclusions.

     
At the moment, to drive her crazy, he took his time returning various bottles to the refrigerator. When he was finally seated at the small table, eating, she asked, "If you've got plates and an I.D. number on a vehicle, how long will it take to trace it?"

     
Matt shrugged, then swallowed a mouthful. "The VIN will tell you origin of manufacture. Are the plates stolen? Is the vehicle stolen?"

     
Sylvia pursed her lips. "Maybe."

     
Matt closed one eye and looked skeptical. "What are we talking about here?"

     
"My new client." She frowned. "Remember the child I saw at the hospital?"

     
"You said you were going to work on the book." Rocko had taken up position at Matt's feet.

     
Sylvia thought about the unrevised pages stacked on her desk. She ducked her head as if she could physically dodge her own deadline. "I worked this afternoon—"

     
"Can you get me another beer?" Matt gazed at her over his sandwich.

     
"You've still got some."

     
"I'll need another one." Matt set the last quarter of the sandwich on his plate. He pulled crust from the bread and tossed it to Rocko. The terrier caught it, then let it drop to the floor, where he nosed it unenthusiastically, all carnivore.

     
Matt said, "The reason I mentioned your book is because you made such a point about finishing the chapter before the party."

     
"Uh-huh. I'd like to do that." She was puzzled by his reaction. She knew he'd been relieved when she'd taken a break from prison and court evaluations to concentrate on writing and research. He didn't have to worry about a stay-at-home writer the way he had to worry about a woman who worked with sociopaths and psychotics on a daily basis. Even her trips to California to gather data with her friend and colleague Leo Carreras had found Matt's support.

     
He said, "The party's tomorrow. Can you get me that beer?"

     
"Get your own beer." Sylvia stood. Her dark gold-brown eyes flashed, displaying temper. "If I don't get the pages done, it's not the end of the world. I'm trying to tell you about this child."

     
"Fine. Tell me." Matt shrugged as he rose from the table and carried his plate to the sink.

     
"Never mind."