Birthdays of a Princess (12 page)

Chapter
29

 When Melissa arrived, Macintosh was already in the interview room. Harding
walked in behind her, bent down to him and whispered into his ear.

“A second mail just came in from Josh.”

“It’ll have to wait!”

Macintosh was too fired up. He could barely wait for Melissa to sit
down.

“You lied to me!” He slammed his fist down. It was meant to startle
Melissa, but she didn’t flinch and looked at him with a blank face.

“The address in Galveston you gave me, number 357 on Caroline Road,
doesn’t exist!”

“Oh, that. I realized later on I must have given you my old address,
the one where we briefly lived when I moved to Texas. That whole block was
destroyed by Katrina, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that house is gone.”

“So where did you live?”

Melissa actually scratched her head. “Hmm, let me think—”

“You forgot?”

“Yes.”

“You told me all sorts of crap. Like you worked for a living down
there.”

“Well, I did, for a brief while. Since when is that a crime?”

“With all the money Tiara’s father supposedly left you?”

“Children are expensive.”

“You told us your daughter worked for various modeling agencies. We
checked. None had a Tiara Brown registered.”

Melissa didn’t miss a beat. “She had an agent. He handled all the
bookings and everything. I wouldn’t know which agencies he worked with.”

“The agent’s name?”

“Oh, I can’t remember that.”

“How convenient! You seem to be very bad with addresses and names.
You gave me a cock’n bull story about Tiara calling herself Princess Tia. Why
didn’t you tell me that was her stage name?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“And why didn’t you tell us that her father’s name was Rodriguez?”

 “She’s never met her father, he wasn’t important to her. And
anyway, her name is Brown, not Rodriguez. That’s how it’s written in my passport,
I can show you. If you accuse me of lying, you have to prove me wrong first.”

“Lady, let me tell you something, I don’t have to prove anything to
you. Your daughter is accused of a serious crime. Your attitude is not giving
me the impression that you want to help her, which makes me wonder what else
you’re trying to hide from us.”

Melissa leaned back in her chair as much as her bulk would allow,
crossed her arms and smiled at him. “I’m not hiding anything.”

Macintosh smiled back. “Yeah? Nothing at all?” He pressed a button
and his computer screen lit up. He pressed another button. “How about that? You
know nothing about a Princess Tia?”

He watched her reaction closely. She did frown and moved a bit
closer to the screen, but that could have been because her eyesight wasn’t the
best.

“Of course I do. I told you she was a child model.”

“You were responsible for dressing her up like that?”

Melissa straightened up. Really proud.

“Of course. I did all that, and I coached her for every contest.
What a princess she was. So pretty. Everybody adored her. She was a natural
beauty.”

Harding joined the conversation. “I got to say, that doesn’t look
very natural to me. But I’m only a guy.” Macintosh shot him a look but let him
carry on. “I guess you’d know more about it.”

Melissa rewarded him with a big smile. “A lot of children enter
those contests and they’re all good looking. We needed to enhance Tiara’s
beauty so she’d stand out from the other contestants. And look at her, she sure
deserved this crown. I seem to remember it was the Miss Texas Princess, right?”
She moved closer again, squinting. “Yes, I’m sure it was. I remember that
dress. Adorable. She just blew them all away.”

“And after that, did you enter her into other contests?”

“Of course.” She listed a few of them, and Harding quickly wrote
them down. “But I don’t see what that’s got to do with what happened the other
day. In fact, I’m getting really annoyed with this questioning. If you don’t
give me an explanation, a good reason for this, I’ll get myself a lawyer. Don’t
think I wouldn’t because I can’t afford it. I’ve been told I’m entitled to
advice from a court-appointed legal counsel.”

Macintosh had a cat-ate-the-cream expression. “Oh, do threaten us, Melissa
Brown. I’ll be delighted to discuss a few things with your counsel. Like how
you withheld information from the police.”

Unfortunately Melissa could not jump up, as much as she wanted to.
She lifted herself out of her chair, supported by a heavy sigh.

“I did no such thing. Stop accusing me.”

Harding didn’t step aside when she tried to leave the room. “One
more thing, Mrs. Brown.”

She stopped right in front of him.

“Dressing your daughter up like this, were you never worried that
this attracts child molesters?”

“How dare you!” Melissa snorted in disgust and pushed him out of her
way. “Now I certainly will get myself a lawyer!”

She slammed the door close.

As soon as she was gone, Macintosh burst out: “Holy crap, wasn’t that
a bit heavy-handed?”

 “Open your mailbox.”

Macintosh did. Another picture of Princess Tia popped up. She seemed
to be a bit older than in the first picture, maybe six or seven, but she wore
the same sparkling crown. She was lying on her stomach on a white faux fur
blanket, propped up on her elbows, looking straight into the camera with innocent
eyes, not smiling. Aside from the crown, she didn’t wear anything. Her naked
little bottom stuck up in the air like a freshly baked bun. Somebody had taken
great care to highlight it.

 “Josh ran the Princess Tia picture through the face recognition system,”
Harding said. “That came up. It’s from one of the pedophile sites we closed
down some time ago.”

“Good grief,” Macintosh sighed. “How many more of those are out
there?”

“He found that one so far, but they are seriously looking into it.
He thinks there will be more.”

Macintosh slumped down, still staring at the picture. Finally, he
closed the screen with a determined grunt.

“I’m glad I didn’t see this earlier. It all starts to make sense. I
mean, why we got nowhere so far. Why we couldn’t find any records of her living
in Texas. Why she gave us a wrong address. Why her and her mother wanted to
hide things from us. They sold images of the little girl to pedophiles, that’s
why!” He got up and stood there like a God of vengeance.

“I want every sordid little detail of the Browns’ lives in Texas dug
up, examined, turned-over and recorded. I want to know everything! I’m
thoroughly pissed off with this bitch of a mother, trying to be clever. Talk to
Josh, ask him to send us all he can find out and assure him of our cooperation
from this end. And then, when we know more about her involvement in this, only
then, do we go back to her. Let her feel safe and secure. Let her talk to a
lawyer. From now on, we do our job and find out everything there is to know.”

“Even if it’s not a homicide?”

“I’ll show this picture to the Sergeant and get his approval to
involve the Sexual Offense Squad. Trust me, when he sees this, it’ll take less
than a second to get the ball rolling officially.”

Harding rushed off. Without the Sergeant’s explicit approval they
would be walking on thin ice.

There was a distinct advantage to being close to retirement,
Macintosh thought. He wasn’t going after a promotion anymore, and nobody would
demote him if he didn’t exactly stick to the book in this case. And what a
nightmare of a case it was. What he had seen on that computer screen made his
blood boil—and now he had no choice but to go and see Tiara at the Center again.

Chapter 30

Melissa sat on the narrow bench of the Boundary Road bus stop which
was the one closest to the police station. She had to wait twenty minutes for
her bus, enough time to calm down and collect herself. Why on earth had she
threatened the detectives with getting legal counsel? She couldn’t afford a
good lawyer, and a bad one would only mess things up even more. This thing began
to spiral out of control.

God, if Louise heard about that, she’d be livid. She would immediately
try to solve this mess, her way. Which meant, she’d barge in and take over. How
often had she been steamrolled by her mother and deeply regretted it later on.

Just like three years ago, when she had been desperate enough to
finally, finally call Louise.

“Mother, it’s me.”

Louise was never speechless, not even after twelve years. “Christ,
Melissa, I can’t believe this! What on earth…”

“I can’t talk long,” Melissa interrupted. “So you just have to
listen. I have a daughter. Her name is Tiara. She’s twelve now. You’re a
grandmother. We need your help.”

“What kind of help? I mean, sure, whatever, just say so.”

“We need to get away from here. She’s in trouble. It’s too dangerous
for her here.”

“What kind of trouble?” 

“You know, drugs and stuff. I need to get her away. There are some
bad people here.”

Louise had immediately taken control. “Give me three days,” she had
said. “I’ll come and get you.”

She had done whatever one needed to do to organize a rescue mission
thousands of kilometers away, then driven all the way down to Houston, where
they met at a pre-arranged spot in front of the NASA Space Center.

Melissa had taken the bus from Galveston that morning. She had sat
on the narrow bench that stretched over the back of the bus, next to two
voluptuous Mexican women who chatted incessantly. The three of them filled the
whole bench. She sat by the window and stared outside all the way from
Galveston main station to the bus change at the NASA Bypass, not paying
attention to the rather unattractive industrial landscape with its flat
stretches of concrete box buildings and parking lots, criss-crossed by countless
hydro-cables. She had arrived hours too early.

Suddenly, she was anxious. Bringing her mother into this mess might
be like calling the cavalry to a two-man bar fight. On the other hand, her
mother owed her. Big time.

When Louise finally arrived, at about 3 pm, Melissa was beyond
worrying. It was an unbearably hot afternoon, and even in the shade of the
ample oak trees on the Center’s eerily empty huge parking lot it must be over
30 degrees Celsius. Melissa was past sweating, she didn’t have a drop of fluid
left in her, even with the gallon of Coke she had been drinking while waiting.
It had evaporated right out of her, she hadn’t gone peeing once.

A silver Honda Civic drove slowly toward the locked main entrance. Melissa
stepped out of the shade and waved. The car changed direction and drove to the
treed area. Melissa walked to the car, a step at a time. She had to suppress
sudden hostility. Damn it, mother, where have you been the last twelve years?

Louise stepped out of the car, then leaned back, eyes wide.

 “Melissa! I hardly recognize you.”

“My weight is the least of my problems just now.”

Mother made one of her tsk-tsk faces, tsk-tsk meaning,
there is
absolutely NO excuse for letting yourself go like this
, but at least she
didn’t say it. “Where’s my granddaughter?”

“At home, in Galveston.”

“But—”

“She wouldn’t come. Tiara is a head-strong girl, and if she doesn’t
want to go, there is nothing I can do to change her mind.”

A fleeting smile lit Louise’s face. “Guess she got that from me.
They do say many character traits jump one generation.”

Melissa was jolted back into the present by the low screeching sound
of powerful brakes.

She looked up. A bus stopped next to her, still vibrating gently
while the front door opened. The driver looked at her, the only passenger waiting
at the bus stop.

She waved at him to continue on. She had changed her mind. As soon
as the bus moved forward again, she crossed the road and waited at the bus stop
opposite for transport to her mother’s home. She needed help again.

Chapter 31

The inner conflict tore him apart. His partner, his work ethics,
even his daughter, expected him to do his job right. But his heart locked like
a rusty old motor every time he thought of Tiara Brown. He hated to admit it to
himself, but he had a real problem connecting the image of the little girl on
the white rug with the suspect. He wanted to keep his distance.

But there was no way he could continue to classify and file her
under juvenile loser—or worse, under dangerous criminal—once he had seen that
picture. Every time he thought of her now, he wondered what kind of twisted
path, what type of adult manipulation had led her to self-destruct in such
spectacular fashion. Even knowing she must have suffered childhood abuse, he still
fought himself with every argument he could come up with. It scared him to go
all soft.

His liver was already acting up. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get
gallstones or pancreatitis or God knows what other internal disorder. And yet,
in the end, he had no choice. He had to do what was right, even if it killed
him.

After Melissa had left the station, he called it a day, got in his
car and drove down south. Before he knew it, he was turning into the Center’s
parking area. They made him wait for ten minutes.

When Tiara was brought in, he didn’t have a clue what he would say
to her. Should he ask her point blank about that disturbing image on his
computer screen? How to explain something like that? Did he even have the right
to confront a fifteen year old with the filth grown-ups had subjected her to?
Why was he here, if he didn’t?

She wasn’t as upbeat as last time; in fact, she seemed broody. Just
what he had come for.

“You look like shit,” she said.

“Thanks, that’s exactly what I needed after a rough day.”

“You want sympathy, go home to your wife.”

“She’s dead.”

“Shit. I mean, sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“Is that what hurt you so badly? Was she the one who got killed by
someone like me?”

Macintosh was taken aback. “Your social graces need some polishing.”

“Not a lot of opportunity for that in here.”

“Nobody ever taught you manners?”

She hesitated.

“I guess not. From what I remember, my childhood wasn’t exactly a high
class affair.”

He took out his notebook. “Do you mind telling me what you do remember?”

“You mean about my childhood?”

He nodded.

“That’s easy. Next to nothing. All I know is that I don’t know how
to behave. Proof given.”

“And you still don’t remember what led to the attack at Starbucks?”

“Honestly, I don’t.”

She held eye-contact, didn’t flinch. What if the steel inside her
had been hardened by the dictation of cruel circumstances?
Circumstances?
Kids
didn’t end up naked on fur rugs by accident. People put them there.

“Do you remember where you grew up?”

“Please. By now you know I’m from Texas. You know probably more about
me than I do, or you’re a lousy policeman. I’m sorry, but I wish I could tell
you more.” She took a deep breath. “It’s pretty tough not knowing what makes
you tick.”

He waited.

“Don’t you understand?” She forced the words out through gritted
teeth: “I…do…not…remember…anything!”

“If this is an act, you’re quite gifted.”

Finally, she opened up. Her lips, her whole expression, relaxed
again and she start to giggle. It came naturally, from deep inside, bright and
melodic, much different from the nervous giggle she had fallen into before. It
was a sound he hadn’t heard for so long, it turned a metal screw in that
locked-up heart of his and forced it to beat a bit stronger.

“If I could fool you, I’d be a contender for the Oscars.”

He was still fighting it. Fighting her. “Don’t think for a minute
you can fool me. Or your psychiatrist. Or the judge.”

“I don’t.” She frowned. “Can I ask you something?”

He shrugged.

“If it wasn’t your wife, then who got killed?”

“Tell me why this is important to you.”

For a long time, only the clock on the wall ticked away time. Then
Tiara got up, looked down on him.

“I guess I’ll never know then.”

 “Why’s that?” he asked, but could already see that he had lost her
again. All the innocent playfulness she had shown had dissipated, making room
for a more saturnine attitude.

“I have no idea why this is important to me.” She slowly walked to
the door, shoulders down, legs dragging, and knocked.

The guard opened the door to let her out.

“It was my daughter,” he said softly. “She got killed at a party by
a 16-year old drug addict.”

For a moment he wasn’t sure if she could still hear him, but then
she stopped in her tracks and slowly turned around. Her face mirrored the pain
he was feeling.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

He was taken aback by the raw sincerity in her words, and he
realized that she wasn’t lying. Not now, and not before.