Damaged (15 page)

Monday, May 7, 3:00 p.m.

K
ate rounded the corner quickly, avoiding eye contact with any of the associates behind open office doors. She wasn’t in the mood to make small talk. What was the point trying to make friends, anyway? She was likely going to be kicked out on her butt. Between the Child Protection investigation, the missing notes and the appointment she was about to keep, things didn’t look promising.

She pushed the button to the elevator. The door opened. The elevator was empty. Except for one person.

Randall Barrett.

He smiled at her.

Her pulse jumped in her throat.

“Kate!” Was it her, or did his voice sound a little strained? She hesitated. She did not want to share an elevator for the next twenty floors with him.

“You going down?” he asked. His tone challenged her. Her eyes swept his face. Not a shred of guilt to be seen. Either he was a damned good actor or he didn’t steal the notes.

Or…

Things were going exactly as he wanted.

She straightened. “Yes.” She stepped into the elevator, careful to keep as much distance as possible between them. She pressed the P1 button. He’d already pressed the button for the pedway.

“How are you doing, Kate?”

She turned to face him. He was looking at her with concern.

She felt a slow flush building in her chest. With it rose her anger. She hated the fact that she responded to his solicitude.
Bastard
.

“Fine.” Her voice was curt.

“Has John Lyons called you in about the TransTissue file yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He rocked back on his heels. “It’s an excellent case, Kate. One every associate in the firm lusted after.”

“I know.” She knew what he was doing—confirming her loyalty despite his perfidy. Reminding her that he was the one who could make or break her.

She studied his eyes. They were so penetrating it was hard to look at them without feeling as if every inch of her soul was being carefully, thoroughly scrutinized. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a shadow of regret.

“The TransTissue case is groundbreaking. It will set legal precedent.”

“Yes. I’m very excited.” She hadn’t thought about it all weekend. And she should have. It might be the only thing that could save her now.

“It’s the chance you asked me for, Kate.” She couldn’t miss the warning in his voice. “Do a good job on it.”

The elevator button dinged. It was Randall’s stop. As the door slid open, Randall said softly, “Don’t worry about
Child Protection. I’ve dealt with it. They are satisfied you acted appropriately.”

He gave her a quick, strangely tender smile, and left.

The door closed behind him.

Kate leaned against the elevator wall. Her legs were shaking. She took a deep breath.

Had he taken her notes?

The glimpse of regret in his eyes suggested he had. But that he hadn’t wanted to. Then why would he do it?

Hope Carson
. He had said she had called him. Had she asked him to take the notes? And why would he risk his professional reputation to appease her?

The elevator rushed down to the parkade.

She had the sudden impression she was falling into the rabbit hole.

The knock on the door startled Shonda. It better not be the cops. She hurried to the window, hugging the wall as she craned her neck to peer through the glass.

Relief flooded through her. She ran down the stairs and opened the door.

A woman’s eyes searched hers. “Shonda?”

Shonda stepped back. “Who are you?”

“My name is Kate Lange.” The woman had a smooth, low voice. “I was told by Marian MacAdam that I could find someone by the name of Shonda here.” Marian MacAdam? What the fuck? She took a deep breath.

“Why’d she send you?” she asked brusquely.

Kate Lange smiled. It was warm and friendly. Not too many people looked at her like that. Not anymore.

“I’m a lawyer.” She handed Shonda a business card. It looked real fancy. Shonda stared at it. The words in the big blue letters were jumbled, but she guessed Kate Lange’s
name was underneath because the words started with
K
and
L
. Kate Lange added, “Marian MacAdam thought I might be able to help.”

She looked at Kate Lange. This woman was offering to
help
her. No one, not since her first grade teacher, had ever offered to help her.

What should she do? Darrell would go ballistic if she let a lawyer in. But he blew her off when she told him about all her friends. He thought the pills were fucking with her head. The police weren’t listening, neither. The only person who had listened to her was that old bitch in the black suit. Lisa’s grandma. She was the only person Lisa’d ever said anything nice about. Everyone else was just “them.”

Shonda felt a pang of grief. Something she hadn’t felt since the night she pushed Vangie into that car.

“You can come in,” she said to Kate.

The lawyer flashed her a reassuring smile, stepping into the dim hallway. Shonda chained the door behind her and led her upstairs. Since she’d started dealing, she’d had enough money to get her own little studio above Darrell’s place. She liked not being in with all the girls. They bitched and fought and took her shit without asking.

She glanced around, suddenly aware of the unmade mattress on the floor in the corner, the dish of pills sitting on the table next to a box of baggies. She’d been in the middle of counting when the lawyer arrived.

She sat on one of the vinyl chairs she’d snatched on garbage day. It had a big gash down the middle of the seat, but it beat having nothing to sit on. The lawyer sat on the other chair. It wobbled when she crossed her legs. The woman planted her narrow feet on the floor and fixed her gaze on Shonda.

“You knew Lisa MacAdam?” she asked. No bullshit from this woman, Shonda thought.

“Yeah.”

“Did you see her the night she was killed?”

Shonda forced herself to meet the lawyer’s gaze. “Yeah.”

The lawyer leaned forward. “When?”

Shonda crossed her arms. “Look, I already gave my story to the cops.”

“I’m not a cop, Shonda,” Kate Lange said, with a weird twist to her lips. “I’m just trying to get the facts.”

“I sold Lisa some pills and then she got killed.” She shrugged. “Just like the others.”

“We’ll get to the others in a minute. What time did you sell Lisa the pills?”

“Around ten o’clock.” Shonda shrugged again. “Shit, I don’t know for sure.”

“Let’s assume it was ten o’clock. What happened then?”

“Lisa took the pills. She went off with some friends. They were goin’ to someone’s place.”

“And?” Kate Lange prompted gently.

She hadn’t freaked out about her selling Lisa the pills, Shonda realized. She slumped back against the chair and began to play with the hole in her T-shirt. “She got high. I saw her later. She was by herself.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was walking home.” She had watched Lisa skip down the street. Lisa’d stopped and given her twenty bucks for one last hit, then headed south.

“Was that the last time you saw her?”

Jesus, how many fucking questions did this woman have? She wasn’t used to talking this long. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about the others.”

The lawyer’s eyes rested on her face. Kate Lange’s eyes
were like clear, bright pools. Like a kid’s. The other girls always looked at her with eyes that were hard and dull like old marbles. “There were two other girls who went missing.”

“Since when?”

She thought about it. Since when? She never thought about time in months anymore. It was all about the day she was in. When she’d have to get out of bed, when she’d eat, when she’d deal, when she’d get high. That was it.

“Was it just recently?” Kate Lange asked. “Like in the past few months?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. Vangie disappeared when I was fifteen.”

“How old are you now?”

“Seventeen.” Was that surprise on the woman’s face? She hunched her shoulders.

“So this girl named Vangie went missing several years ago?”

“Yeah. She got in a car with some guy and no one saw her again.”

She still remembered that night. Vangie’d been holed up in her room. If she’d known how strung out Vangie had been, she’d never have gone to the apartment. But it’d been a freezing September night, the mist soaking her through and it hadn’t even started to rain. She didn’t want to spend another night huddled under the overpass. The damp, the cold, the darkness. It never changed. Never got better.

She’d thought Vangie would help her. But Vangie’d had too many rocks and Darrell was pissed that she was huddled over her dirty sheets, her wig all hangin’ over her face.

The look in his eyes when he saw her made her stomach turn over. She’d stood in the dim living room, not sure whether she should just leave but the warmth had glued her to the spot. Then Darrell uttered the words she’d sensed
had been growing like maggots in his small brain for a while. “If Vangie don’t work, you’re gonna.”

Shonda didn’t waste any time. She strode into Vangie’s bedroom. Vangie was kneeling on the floor, her head on the mattress. A glass tube with a tiny piece of rock in it was lying between her fingers.

“C’mon, Vange. Get your ass off the bed,” Shonda said. She’d slid her hands under Vangie’s pits and pulled her up. A smell wafted off Vangie: stale, bitter, used.

Shonda’d seen Vangie wasted before, but not like this. Vangie swayed on her feet against Shonda. Then her whole body spasmed. But she said nothing. Nothing. Just stared past Shonda’s shoulder. Usually when Vangie was high she’d be all excited and loud, shouting and singing and partying. It was the only time she’d smile, because she’d forget to hide her broken teeth.

Darrell’s cell phone had rung and he strode out of the room. Over his shoulder he yelled, “Get the bitch outside.” He threw a ten-dollar bill at Shonda.

“Sure thing,” Shonda’d said. Vangie leaned against her. Pity and revulsion flooded through her. Vangie smelled like something else. But she was so thin. And small. Shonda hadn’t realized how tiny Vangie was. Like a little broken bird on her shoulder.

Shit. She couldn’t be feeling all sorry for her. She was a crackhead. She smoked rocks instead of eating.

Shonda’d pulled Vangie more roughly than she intended across the room. Vangie muttered, “I’m a bird.”

“You crazy bitch,” Shonda’d said, and picked up the ten-dollar bill Darrell had left for her. She stuffed it into her pocket, guiding Vangie past the old sofa with the stains bigger than the faded flowers. They reached the door. Vangie looked around her, as if trying to figure out something.

They went outside. It was so quiet, Shonda’d heard her stomach gurgle. She could almost taste that burger. And she hadn’t tasted much in the past two days. Drizzle fell. Damp coated the north end street in a greasy sheen. The smell of the container pier, of oil and rancid seaweed, filled Shonda’s nose. Her stomach roiled.

She’d led Vangie to her corner. No one else was there. All the other girls had already gone with johns. Shit. It better not be a quiet night. Vangie needed to make some money for Darrell. Shonda didn’t want him asking for no money back.

A car cruised slowly down the hill, toward them. Relief made Shonda’s head buzz. Looked like Vangie had a customer. And that meant she’d make some dough for dickhead.

That meant Shonda had done her job and could buy her burger, her fries, her milk shake.

She’d propped Vangie against the telephone pole. Mist shivered on the coarse strands of Vangie’s wig, silvery and damp. It shrouded her head in a spider’s web.

Goose bumps had prickled Shonda’s skin. Vangie’s lips looked sunken and shriveled in the unforgiving streetlight. Like a death’s-head. Shonda’d groped in her pocket for her lip gloss. The car had stopped at the lights thirty feet away. She had just enough time to smooth the gloss over Vangie’s cracked lips. She tilted Vangie’s chin in her hand. Her heart unexpectedly contracted with concern. Vangie’s skin was friggin’ cold.

“You okay, Vange?” she’d asked.

Vangie swallowed.

The lights changed. The drizzle turned to rain as the car drew nearer, like the headlights were performing a magic trick. Damp crawled over Shonda’s bare arms, up under her skirt. The car slowed down in front of them.

It stopped.

She’d waited for Vangie to make her move. To sashay over in her heels and show her scrawny leg, maybe flash her red thong.

She did nothing. The man in the car waited.

“C’mon, Vange,” she’d said.

Vangie’d muttered to herself.

The passenger’s window slid down. “You workin’?” the man had asked from the dark recesses of his seat.

Shonda couldn’t see his face but she sensed his impatience. “Yeah,” she said quickly. She’d grabbed Vangie’s hand before the man could say anything more. He opened the door, and Shonda propelled Vangie forward on her heels, pushing her into the car. She shut the door before Vangie could say anything. The car drove off.

The queasy feeling had churned Shonda’s stomach again. The whole deal seemed off, different from the other times, wrong somehow. Maybe it was because Vangie’d been doing too much crack. It was changing her. Maybe she shouldn’t have put Vangie in the car.

“Did you report this to the police?” Kate Lange asked.

Shonda focused back on the lawyer’s face. She bet Kate Lange had probably never had a run-in with a cop in her life. To a lawyer, cops were friends, looking after the rich folks. But to Shonda, they were a threat. Runaways don’t go to no cops. “No.”

Kate Lange showed no surprise at this answer. She shifted slightly on her chair. “What did she look like?”

Shonda tried to picture Vangie in her mind. “She was real small. Old.”