Don't Be Afraid (6 page)

“Okay,
Little Mermaid
.”

“And chocolate milk?” Emma smiled her super-sweet, manipulating-Mommy smile.

“And chocolate milk,” Amy capitulated.

Soon the sounds of “Under the Sea” were echoing through the house for the umpteenth time. Emma was happily singing along off-key between loud, slurping sips of chocolate milk.

Amy collapsed on the living room sofa and closed her eyes, just for a moment. A loud bang startled her awake.

Emma!

Amy sprang up and ran toward the kitchen, expecting to hear an answering wail, but there was no other sound. The kitchen was empty, the chair where Emma had been sitting still upright. The only thing left of her presence was the smudged glass with remnants of chocolate milk.

The back door was ajar. Amy stepped out on the back porch and looked around the yard. “Emma?”

The only answer was the wind rustling the leaves in the trees and the faint creaking from the playset where an empty swing rocked slowly back and forth. Amy turned to go back in the house when a scrap of bright pink caught her eye.

It was Emma’s stuffed bunny. Amy plucked it off the lawn and looked around again. What was it doing out here? This was a toy that rarely left Emma’s bed.

“Emma? Emma, come out this minute! This isn’t funny, Emma!”

Trees bordered the back of the property. Not enough to be considered a real forest, surely, but that’s how Amy thought of them, as their woods. She’d embraced the privacy at one point. Now the dark stretch of trunks seemed menacing. She blinked in the sun, shading her eyes to see any movement. Everything was in shadows. What if Emma had wandered off, or worse, been taken?

Amy ran back in the house clutching the stuffed bunny. “Emma!” she screamed as she barged through the back door. “Emma, where are you?”

She searched the house, bargaining with God.
If she’s all right, I’ll never fall asleep again. I’ll keep her safe. Please let her be all right.

She was turning away from her bedroom when she heard a faint giggle. Amy whirled around. “Emma?”

Silence. She slid back the closet door. Nothing. Then she saw the smallest movement of the embroidered bedskirt. Amy knelt down and lifted it. Emma’s small face grinned at her. “Boo!”

Relief mixed in equal parts with anger. Amy pulled her out from under the bed and crushed her against her chest.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said in her fiercest voice.

“It was hide-and-seek, Mommy.”

“I don’t like that game, Emma. That game scares Mommy.”

“Didn’t I pick a good place to hide?”

She sounded unsure and her fingers slipped into her mouth. Amy relented. “Yes, you picked a good place. That’s the problem—you’re too good at that game.”

“Sorry I scared you,” Emma said, but she smiled as she said it and her small fingers left her mouth to pluck at the bunny in Amy’s hand.

“What are you doing with Hoppy?”

“I found her outside. Were you outside playing when Mommy was asleep?” Amy said, holding her still so she could look into her daughter’s eyes.

“You said not to,” Emma said patiently, as if that explained it all.

“But did you anyway, Emma? Did you take Hoppy and go outside?”

Emma looked solemn. “No, Mommy.”

“Then how did your bunny end up outside? Did you leave it outside yesterday?” But even as she asked, Amy could remember tucking Emma in with it last night. Or had she? She’d been so distracted yesterday because of Sheila’s death, maybe she’d overlooked it.

Emma twisted in her grasp. “Let go, Mommy. You’re hurting me.”

Amy loosened her grip, but didn’t release her. “Mommy won’t be mad, Emma, but I need to know the truth. Did you go outside just now?”

“No! I already told you! No, no, no!” She stamped a small foot for emphasis and then her face lit up. “She must have hopped away herself, Mommy!”

She looked so excited that Amy couldn’t help smiling. She released her and Emma carried the bunny off down the hall, scolding her in a tone that was an obvious imitation of her mother.

Amy went back downstairs and carefully closed and locked the back door. She was sure it had been locked when she left that morning and she hadn’t touched it when they came home. Could Emma be lying? She seemed like she was telling the truth, but how else to explain the door standing ajar like that and the toy left on the lawn?

All at once, Amy was aware of just how isolated they were. In the city she could have knocked on the next apartment for help. Here her closest neighbors were farther away and elderly. Would they have even heard her if she’d shouted for help?

She checked all the windows on the first floor and carried on to the second, all the while telling herself that it was ridiculous to feel this afraid on a clear, sunny day. It was Sheila’s murder. That had made her anxious, maybe even paranoid.

“Nothing important,” she said when Emma asked what she was doing. “But it’s time for you to rest.” And against her daughter’s wishes, she put her down for a nap, listening to Emma’s breathing for a few minutes to be sure that she wasn’t about to have another attack.

Once she was asleep, Amy went into her own room and sank into the big armchair, allowing herself a few moments of grief. She felt more alone than she had at any other time in her life. She wanted Sheila’s company so badly that she ached with it, feeling the grief building like an enormous wave inside her. She needed to talk with another adult, to have an adult conversation about what had happened, to be held by another adult and comforted.

At that moment she realized that she wanted Chris. No matter what he’d done, what he’d said, he was still the man who’d held her for the six years they’d been together and she wanted his arms around her. Without stopping to think, afraid that if she thought about it for a moment more she’d lose her nerve, she grabbed a phone and rapidly dialed his cell.

The number was busy. Amy hit redial and this time it went straight to voice mail. She waited out his message and hesitated after the beep, unsure of what to say, but not wanting to disconnect. After a long moment of dead air, she came to her senses and hung up without leaving a message.

She dialed a New York exchange again, but it went straight to Perry’s machine. This time she left a message, asking her old friend to call when she got a chance, trying to instill a peppiness that matched Perry’s bright voice on the recording.

The doorbell rang as she hung up, startling her. The only thing she could think was that it was Chris, that somehow he’d heard about Sheila and knew that she needed him. She was so convinced that she forgot all about personal security and ran to the door, opening it without checking to see who was on the other side.

It wasn’t Chris. That disappointment registered first, followed quickly by the shock of seeing the last person she really wanted to see at that moment: her mother.

Finding Trevor Sylvester wasn’t proving easy, though that was hardly surprising. He’d have to be a total moron to stick around after killing his ex. He’d be found and when he was, they’d get the truth from him, even if they had to beat it out of him. None of that civil rights violations crap was going to come back and haunt them either. Closed doors and closed lips from all involved and the perp could squeal to the DA all he wanted, but nothing would come of it because that’s how the job got done.

This was Detective Black’s stream-of-consciousness banter on the forty-minute drive to Lewiston, the town next to Steerforth that Trevor Sylvester called home.

Sometimes Mark thought that Black spent too much time watching cop shows on TV. This was the first homicide in Steerforth in a year, if you didn’t count the knifing in a bar. That was hardly a homicide since the victim was so damn drunk that he’d died of alcohol poisoning as much as from the slice another former mill worker had left in his gullet.

That crime had been solved before it even started and Black was looking forward to having someone to rake over the coals. Probably thought of himself as a Sipowicz, Juarez thought, tearing his gaze from the view of pumpkin fields out the window to glance at his partner’s face.

His slight smile at his own humor was obviously interpreted as support of whatever Black was ranting about, because his partner grinned back at him.

Lewiston was to Steerforth as pizza was to gourmet Italian cuisine. Instead of high-end boutiques, its main street had a dollar store, a sub shop, a Payless Shoes and a dusty bridal boutique that looked like it hadn’t sold a dress since the seventies. There wasn’t much traffic either in car or on foot in town, but once they’d reached the outer edges of the business district, they saw the reason why. A big Wal-Mart with a choked parking lot loomed into view.

The Steerforth police contacted the Lewiston police, who had attempted to pick up Trevor Sylvester at his house. Only he’d left Tuesday morning, according to his second wife, and she didn’t know where. The police searched his home and determined he truly wasn’t there and promised to keep looking for him. Black and Juarez had come with a warrant to search again and talk to the second wife. They hoped Trevor had managed to sneak back home.

With this in mind, they approached the Riverview Estates town-house complex from the opposite end, parking outside the perimeter and entering the development on foot. It was probably pointless, Mark thought, since people would realize they were cops the minute they walked in. The residents of Riverview Estates looked as if they were very familiar with the police. The name was far grander than the place itself. The only river in view was a shallow, muddy creek that ran through the middle of the development and had graffiti-laden footbridges across it. The town houses, alternating white and blue frame in clusters of three, looked like they’d blow over in a heavy nor’easter. The little bit of lawn available around most properties was overgrown with dandelions and other weeds.

Trevor’s home was a dirty white center town house with a bedraggled awning over the front window above a connect-a-brick patio. A mobile made of Budweiser cans hung from the awning, clacking unpleasantly in the wind.

They split their approach, Juarez waiting until Black had snuck around the rear of the property before he stealthily approached the front. They had their guns drawn, pointing down.

Once Black radioed that he was in back, Juarez kicked the door and hollered, “Police! Open up!”

There was a sound of scuffling from inside the house and Juarez kicked the door again. “Open up!”

“Hold your damn horses!” a muffled female voice said.

“I’m going in,” Juarez radioed to Black. He tried the knob first and the door opened. He stepped inside and came face-to-face with an enormous pale women clad only in a large purple towel.

“Can’t you even give people one goddamned minute?” she said. “I was in the shower.” Her face was flushed, but he wasn’t sure whether it had more to do with anger or embarrassment. “I already told you people that Trevor’s not here.”

“Why don’t you let us determine that.”

Black’s voice behind her made her shriek. She whirled around, giving Juarez a brief yet memorable glimpse of an enormous white derriere before the towel flapped closed. “You can’t just walk in my house like that!”

“We can if your husband’s wanted for murder, Mrs. Sylvester.” Black waved the warrant at her.

“I told those other cops that Trevor wouldn’t touch that bitch. He’s not like that.”

There was a fading purple bruise high on her right cheekbone that made a liar out of her, but Juarez wasn’t interested in arguing the point.

They heard a small scuffling noise from upstairs and Black demanded to know if she was hiding Trevor. She let out a stream of obscenities at this, demanding to know why they weren’t finding Trevor for her since something had obviously happened to him. Why weren’t they looking into that crime?

Ignoring her, Juarez started up the stairs with Black backing him up. “Come out, Trevor! You’re outnumbered.”

“That isn’t Trevor!”

“Then come out whoever it is!” Juarez had his gun up and ready. To his right was an open door through which he could see a sagging mattress and a tangle of sheets. In front of him was a small bathroom, shower curtain pulled back, crusted tiles beyond it. To his left was a closed door. He silently signaled to Black and, on the count of three, he turned the knob and kicked the door open, his gun moving ahead of him. A wide-eyed toddler in a soggy diaper was standing in a crib staring at them. As if on cue, he started to wail.

Juarez immediately lowered his gun and Black turned on the woman who’d followed them. “What the hell were you thinking, lady! Why didn’t you tell us you had a baby in here!”

“You didn’t give me half a chance!”

“We could have shot him,” Juarez said, feeling a tremor shake through him as he holstered his gun. For a split second he was back in Manhattan, the darkened hallway, the figure raising his hand.

He blinked hard, relentlessly pushing the images away. The baby was crying and the woman plucked him out of the crib and straddled him on her hip.

“Quit your crying, Dylan,” she said, jogging the baby up and down. “I told you that Trevor’s gone, so get out.”

“We can’t do that, Mrs. Sylvester,” Juarez said. “Not until we talk to you.”

The song and dance went on for another two minutes until she lumbered off to get some clothes on, the baby in tow. She took her time about it, but they made good use of theirs, heading back downstairs to have a thorough look to see if there was any indication of where Trevor Sylvester might be.

There were no recent phone calls from him and no messages on the answering machine. The overflowing ashtray on the coffee table held lipstick-tainted butts and there was only one glass in the sink. If Trevor had been here recently, he and the missus had done a pretty good job of hiding it.

When Mrs. Sylvester came back into the living room, she was wearing jeans and a too-tight tank top, her breasts swelling like two small hams. She’d changed the baby’s diaper, but hadn’t otherwise dressed him, and she took a seat on the sagging couch and plunked the little boy down on the stained carpet at her feet. He promptly picked up the TV remote that had been left on the floor and began gumming it.

“All right, you can ask a couple of questions—again—but I’ve got better things to do with my time,” she said, folding her doughy arms across her mammoth chest. She’d pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail and put on makeup. The metallic purple color of her lips matched her nail polish.

“Mrs. Sylvester,” Black began, only to be interrupted immediately.

“It’s Mandi. Nobody calls me Mrs. Sylvester. Reminds me of my mother-in-law.”

“Mandi, you know why we’re looking for Trevor, don’t you?”

“Because that bitch of an ex-wife of his got killed.”

“Yes, and we think that Trevor is the one that killed her.”

Mandi shook a cigarette out of the pack on the battered coffee table and placed it to her lips. She fished around in the couch cushions and came up with a lighter. “That’s not Trevor,” she said, lighting up. “He’s not like that. He wouldn’t harm a flea.”

“How did you get that bruise on your cheek, Mandi?” Juarez asked.

“And that one on your arm?” Black added, pointing to a greenish spot near her right wrist.

Her eyes narrowed. “I fell,” she said, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. The baby gummed the power button and the large TV in the corner came on. Mandi yanked the remote out of his mouth, shut off the TV and slammed the remote down on the coffee table.

“Look, Mandi, we know that Trevor gave you those, just like he knocked Sheila around. You can deny it all you want, but we both know it’s true,” Juarez said.

“He only does that when he’s been drinking,” Mandi said defensively, her opposite hand moving to cover the bruise on her arm.

“Maybe that’s why he killed Sheila. Maybe he was drinking that day.”

“He didn’t kill her! He didn’t have anything to do with that bitch!”

“When was the last time he saw Sheila?”

“In May. At Mike’s graduation.”

“Did you go, too?”

“Sort of. I waited in the parking lot.”

“Were Trevor and Sheila getting along?”

“As much as they ever did.”

“Does that mean they were fighting?”

“No, just bickering. Same old, same old. They didn’t like each other, but he wouldn’t kill her. He had no reason to kill her.”

“Did he get to see the boys as often as he wanted?” Black asked.

“No.”

“Then he must have felt some anger toward her?”

“Not enough to kill her.” She stubbed the cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray and immediately reached for another.

“Was he drinking on Tuesday?”

“He wasn’t home on Tuesday. I’ve told you that. He’s been gone since Tuesday.”

Juarez thought of the photos postmarked a week before. Had Trevor been planning this killing a long time? He couldn’t reconcile that very meticulous crime scene with this scruffy town house and this stupid woman. None of it fit.

“Where does he go when he’s not at home?” he said, trying another tack.

“I don’t know. The Oak Barrel bar, I guess. Work.”

“Does he visit any friends? Do you have relatives out of town?”

“Yes, we’ve got friends and relatives, same as you!” She scowled at him. “But he’s not with any of them. I’ve already called them all.”

“We’ll need their names and addresses anyway, ma’am.”

This elicited another stream of curses, but eventually she got to her feet and fetched a surprisingly well-organized address book from another room. She jotted down a series of names and phone numbers on a scrap of paper, glaring as she did so, but Juarez knew it was a futile exercise. If he had killed his first wife, Trevor Sylvester had already proved that he wasn’t an idiot and only an idiot would flee to a relative’s house. Still, maybe he’d called one of them. It was the pedestrian side to police work, the endless paperwork and phone calls, dotting the “i’s” and crossing the “t’s.”

They also took a recent picture of a grinning Trevor standing in front of a race car, over Mandi’s objections, assuring her that they’d return it once they’d made copies.

“It’s important that Trevor turn himself in, Mandi,” Black said as they were leaving. “You understand that, don’t you? The longer he’s running, the more dangerous it gets. You don’t want him getting shot running from the law.”

Mandi glowered more deeply at this, but the cigarette trembled as she brought it to her lips.

“If he calls here, you call us,” Juarez said, giving her a card. “Do the same if he comes here in person. We need to talk to him.”

They stepped out of the town house with Mandi on their heels, the baby back on her hip.

“It’s her own fault that bitch got killed,” she said in a resentful tone. “She kept his boys from him with all that screaming about abuse. Keeping kids from seeing their own father—now that’s abuse.”

Next door, a large-muscled man straightened up from the Harley he was working on and surveyed Black and Juarez with a wrench in hand. “These guys hassling you, Mandi?” he said, looking from her to them.

“They’re cops.” She spat the word. “They’re looking for Trevor. Think he murdered his ex.”

The man spat on the ground. “Trevor ain’t here,” he said, “and she don’t know where he is.”

“Do you?” Black jumped in.

“If I did I wouldn’t tell you,” the man said and that was all it took. In a split second, Black had him up against the side of his own house, one arm bent high against his back.

“Let go of me, man, you’re hurting me!” the man cried while Mandi shouted at them from her front door. Juarez put his hand out to stop Mandi from thinking of interfering as a dog started howling in the man’s townhome and scratching at the door.

“Where’s Trevor?” Black demanded, pulling upward on the man’s trapped hand. He groaned.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I ain’t seen him in days.”

Other dogs had taken up the howl. At any moment they’d probably have a pack of dogs down on them. Mark shouted above the howling, “He doesn’t know anything, let’s go.” If his partner heard him, he gave no sign of it.

Mandi was screaming “police brutality” and the baby on her hip was crying so loudly that neighbors had probably called child welfare. Even now they were probably being caught on someone’s video camera.

Keeping a close eye on Mandi, Mark moved over to Black and laid a restraining arm on his partner’s shoulder. “This punk isn’t worth it,” he said. “We’ve got other things to do.”

Black snarled in response, but after a final hard tug at the neighbor’s arm, he let him go.

“I can sue you, man,” the man said. “You can’t put your hands on me!”