Run the Risk (10 page)

I glanced at Parks, wanting to say something, but found there wasn't a single word in my vocabulary that fit what I was feeling.

“I'll take it in the hallway,” I said, getting up and following Harrison toward the door.

“Ms. Delillo—” Parks said.

With the sound of his voice, I found the words that had eluded me before. I stopped at the doorway and turned.

“If my daughter is injured or hurt in any way,” I said, looking him in the eye, “I will charge you.”

I could see the color leave his face. He appeared to shrink in his Brooks Brothers as if it were two sizes too big for him. I glared at him for a moment, then turned and walked out into the hallway next to the school's trophy case.

“It's Detective Fraser,” Harrison said, holding out the phone.

I took it and answered.

“Delillo.”

“You're not going to like this, Lieutenant. I don't like it.”

I wasn't in the mood for a riddle.

“Just tell me what the hell you found, Fraser.”

“We were going through Breem's phone records. He made three calls to your home number.”

I heard the words, but they still had a quality of unreality.

“My number?” I asked, just to be sure I had heard him correctly.

“Yeah, the last one was the night Daniel Finley was shot at the florist's.”

The words hit me harder than the door that had just
knocked me senseless a few hours before. The phone records had just loosely linked my daughter to the business partner of Daniel Finley, who had a bullet tear through the back of his head. I didn't know in what way or how, but another dot had just been connected. I quickly tried to play it out in my head as to why she would have talked to Breem. There had been calls from a florist about her corsage for the pageant. That could be it, that is, if I was willing to forget the idea that there is no such thing as a coincidence. But even if I did buy that, which I didn't, it didn't explain why Breem would have called her the night of the murder. How had a green revolution and a loaded spray bottle become connected to multiple murders?

My mind began to fill with possibilities, one of which stuck harder than the others. If this connection to Finley's killing was real, even if tenuous, then the threat to my daughter had nothing to do with her disrupting the pageant. There was no middle-aged white male filled with rage, at least not one who was an actual threat. If Lacy was in danger, then the threat was from a man who had already killed two people and probably would kill again.

“Where's Breem?” I asked.

There was no response from Fraser.

“Do you have Breem?” I said impatiently.

“No,” Fraser said.

“Why not?” I asked.

Fraser mumbled something under his breath that I think was “Shit.”

“His wife said he left the house before dawn. We don't know where he is now.” He hesitated. “You want to tell me why a suspect in a murder called your number three times?”

I never liked Fraser. He was to police work what Hamburger Helper was to the food pyramid. He was what you used when you ran out of imagination. I ignored his question, even though it was the same one I was asking.

“See if he made any calls to the other contestants in the pageant,” I said.

I could almost hear the grinding of gears as he worked it out in his head.

“Your daughter?” Fraser said. “She was a—”

“My daughter,” I said, “is missing.”

I hung up and turned to Harrison, who was standing in front of the trophy case. Only then did I notice the 8x10 photograph next to the small gold trophy in the shape of a book instead of a tennis racket or a football. City debating team champs. Lacy was in the picture, second on the right, a wry smile on her face, staring at the camera as if she knew some hidden secret. She had joined the team about the same time she decided to try out for the pageant. I had missed the final debate for the championship because I had been investigating the beating death of a transient.

Harrison noticed me staring at it, though he didn't know why.

“That's my daughter, second from right,” I said.

He stared at it for several moments, his eyes covering every inch of the frame as if deconstructing an explosive.

“She looks like you,” Harrison said.

“No,” I said, “she's beautiful.”

My cell rang and I picked up.

“Delillo.”

“It's James, Lieutenant.”

There was a pause on the other end. “We found her car.”

I waited for her to finish but she didn't.

“Just her car?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“What else did you find?” I asked, already sliding toward panic.

“The doors were locked, her keys were in it . . . a window was smashed.”

I tried to hang on to being a cop even as my hand began to shake.

“Which window?”

“Driver's side,” she said flatly.

“Where?” I asked.

James began to answer, but my hand dropped to my side
and the phone slipped out of my fingers and fell to the floor. I moved my hand up to my mouth to suppress the urge to vomit. My knees began to sink out from under me. There was no up, no down. The one and only thing that centered me on this planet had just been wrenched right out of my arms. No door could have hit me as hard as the words she had just spoken. I was halfway to the floor when Harrison reached out and took hold of my arm to steady me.

“Oh, Lacy,” I whispered.

“What is it?” Harrison said, though the words drifted by me without understanding.

I gripped his arm and regained my balance.

“What's happened?” Harrison said.

“They found her car.”

LACY
'
S YELLOW HONDA
was parked on a quiet middle-class residential street with neatly clipped lawns about two miles from the Starbucks where she had called me. There was nothing unusual about the way the car rested next to the curb, no indication that it had been forced to the side of the road. A gardener's leaf blower droned in the distance. The normalcy of the scene only served to heighten my sense of dread.

Harrison pulled our car up behind the squad that was parked in back of her Honda and started to get out.

“I need to just sit here a minute,” I said. The words slipped out of my mouth as if I were out of breath. “I need to . . .” I stared at the bright yellow of her car. She called it her sunflower.

“I'll look it over. Take your time,” Harrison said.

He closed his door and started toward Lacy's car.

“Make sure the uniforms haven't compromised any prints,” I said, trying to cling to whatever cop instincts remained in me.

That was my baby's car, her shattered window, her . . . I tried desperately not to let my imagination go beyond that.
Stop, don't do that, don't go there, this will not help. But it was like trying to hold back the rain with your hands before it hit the ground.

I got out of the car and walked toward her Honda. My mind flashed on the day she brought it home. I had taken a picture of her standing in front of it, holding the registration. The joy on her face was what I imagined birds felt when they discovered flight. How did that joy end up here? How do these things happen? If I had just done one thing differently. If I had just . . .

I was thinking like a victim.

I'd listened to its desperation for years as stunned casualties of crime tried to make sense out of violence by stringing a thread through time so it could be traced to a definable origin. I knew better. It was never just one thing. And even if it was, what would it matter? There was no going back, no fixing wrongs. It was a free fall in the dark with no idea when you would hit bottom.

I walked up beside her car and stopped next to the shards of safety glass that littered the pavement.

“All the doors are still locked,” Harrison said.

I tried to lean in to look through the shattered window, but my body resisted the way it does when approaching the edge of a cliff. I turned away.

“Take a few breaths,” Harrison said. “Real slow, nice and deep.”

Across the street the large leaves of a banana plant rustled in the slight breeze. Curious bystanders were on the curb watching. I closed my eyes and the sound of the rustling leaves was replaced by the shattering of glass.

“She was pulled out through the broken window,” I said.

Harrison nodded.

“God,” I whispered. My stomach began to heave and I turned and walked over to a hedge of rosemary and vomited.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

I tried to let go of the image but it was too vivid. I could see the hands grabbing her hair and her shirt as she tried to
fight them off. I could see her feet struggling to grip the steering wheel as she was pulled out.

I heard the crunch of gravel as Harrison walked up behind me. He stood there for a moment in silence, then spoke up.

“You all right?”

I nodded. I had been to a thousand crime scenes. I'd looked into the faces of countless victims' relatives whose hearts had been shattered by violence. We told them we understood, we held their hands, but we never let ourselves feel, we never let ourselves see the world with their eyes. But now I was one of them. I could see it in the way the other cops looked at me. Be wary, don't get too close. I had stepped across the yellow tape and was standing on the other side now—a victim.

Two more uniformed units pulled up. A young woman sergeant walked directly over to me.

“You're Officer James?” I said.

She nodded. “I'm so sorry, Lieutenant.”

She motioned with her finger toward her lip. I reached up and wiped away some vomit from the corner of my mouth.

“We need more units to canvass for witnesses,” I said.

“They're on the way. So is Crime Scene.”

“Put a tap on my phone in case . . .” I couldn't finish the thought.

“We'll take care of it,” Harrison said.

I looked into James's face. She was probably late twenties but appeared barely older than Lacy. Her blond hair was tucked neatly behind her ears, which were pierced with a simple silver ring. She had bright blue eyes, two rings on her right hand, nothing on her left.

God, I was already a mother at her age.

“Whatever it takes, Lieutenant, we'll do it,” James said.

It was what cops say when one of their own is down. I probably said it to Traver in his hospital room, but it just didn't translate to my daughter. James reached out and
gripped my hand. The sisterhood of blue. I suppose I was a role model to officers like her. First woman head of Homicide, first this, first that. But I still couldn't protect my own daughter.

“You've been injured,” James said. “Do you need a paramedic?”

I shook my head weakly, and then she walked away to talk to the other uniforms who were stringing perimeter tape across the street surrounding Lacy's Honda.

I felt lost and out of place. I didn't know how to take the next step. What way, which direction? Some role model. I took a deep breath trying to steady myself. I felt as if the side of my face where the door struck me was glowing like a neon sign. The ground seemed to be opening up beneath me and swallowing me up. I couldn't hold air in my lungs. My heart was racing out of control.

“Work it,” I whispered. Work the scene, the witnesses, work it, work it.

I struggled to take a breath.

“We need a witness,” I said, barely able to finish the sentence before I ran out of air. “Someone must have seen something, heard something . . . anything.”

Harrison looked back at the car. I could see in his eyes that he was working out something.

“What?”

“I was just thinking,” he said, hesitant to finish the thought.

“Think out loud . . . good or bad.”

He glanced once more at the car.

“There's no sign in the car or the pavement that she was injured,” he said.

I swallowed heavily, still fighting for air. “You're saying there's no blood?”

“Yes.”

“Am I supposed to feel better for that?”

He shook his head. “I'm saying this may not be connected to Finley.”

He was pointing to something that I couldn't see, and it
made me angry. I didn't need more unanswered questions. I wanted my daughter back.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I'm saying everyone else this guy has come in contact with is dead. If this was him, I think Lacy would still be in the car.”

This was moving too fast. I wasn't ready to work a scene, not yet. I couldn't get past the fact that my daughter was gone. Someone had yanked her out the window of her car. I felt helpless. The gun and the badge felt like props, ornaments we hang on ourselves to reassure a frightened public that we know what we're doing. Tears filled my eyes and I turned away.

The street was quickly filling with other black-and-whites. Uniformed cops moved about like a useless, occupying army. I reached up to wipe away a tear and noticed my hand was trembling. I tucked it under my other arm and squeezed my fist trying to wring the fear out of it.

“The phone threats?” I said, looking back at Harrison. “The middle-aged male Caucasian?”

“It's a possibility.”

“If that's true, then we've just gone from multiple leads to none, a voice on a phone machine . . . nothing,” I said.

“We'll know where he made that call.”

“And that will be a pay phone, if we're lucky, and the one print that will matter won't be on it.”

“The only thing that's certain is that we don't know anything yet, so there's no reason to think the worst.”

“The worst has already happened.”

He shook his head. His eyes drifted into memory for just an instant, then he looked back at me. “No it hasn't.”

No, the worst hadn't happened. He knew about the worst.

The side of my face began to throb as if current were flowing through it. I walked over to my car, slipped inside, and closed the door and the windows.

“Think,” I whispered. “Do your job.”

I was pleading with myself, trying to pull myself out of
helplessness. There had to be an answer right there in front of me, I just had to see it. It had to be that simple. Every crime always was, it never failed. I tried to take some slow, deep breaths. I closed my eyes, but my mind still raced out of control. It was all tumbling down on top of me, every piece of information from the moment Lacy had screamed “You're all killers” at an audience who had come to see beauty on parade. There were Breem's phone calls. Finley's orange socks, and a stream of blood. The door swinging toward me. The uncut grass of Finley's yard. The red sweater in the dark water of the pool. Sweeny saying, “I'm sorry.” The white flash of the explosion. Dave disappearing in the cloud of dust. A car named sunflower. A young bird learning the joy of flight.

A tapping on the window pulled me back. Harrison and James were standing there. I opened the door.

“A woman saw a car driving away shortly after hearing some breaking glass.”

He motioned across the street. “She's over there.”

I quickly stepped out and started across the street. She was standing on the other side of the yellow tape. She looked sixty, white hair, slacks and a blue sweater with puffy white clouds on it. I wished it had been a man. Men were useful for identifying makes and models of cars, like it's part of their genetic code. Unless it was a kind of car they have driven, women usually give you the color.

She had been watching
Oprah.
She smiled nervously, the way citizens do in the face of this many police.

“Oprah had on a woman who had starved herself nearly to death until she found strength in . . . I just love Oprah.”

“What did you see outside?”

It surprised her that a discussion of anorexia wasn't germane to the investigation.

“Oh, I see, I'm sorry.”

“That's fine. What did you see?”

“I thought maybe a radio had been stolen when I walked out and saw the broken glass. Then I thought maybe it was
just a broken bottle so I didn't call the police. I guess I should have. Is all this about a radio?”

“What did the car look like?” I asked.

She glanced at all the cops on the street. “Am I in some sort of danger staying here?”

“There's no danger,” James said.

“Tell me about the car,” I said. “What did you see?”

She took a breath and put her hand over her heart like she was swearing to the truth. “It was going that way,” she said, pointing north. “It was white.”

I waited for more, but nothing came.

“Is that all?”

She didn't get it.

“How big was it?”

“Oh . . . small, probably, yes, it was small.”

“Two doors or four?”

“I . . . don't . . . two.”

“Did it have a trunk or hatchback?”

She thought for a moment. “It was square, hatchback.”

“Make?”

She looked at me puzzled, then understood. “Foreign, I think. Most are, aren't they? I wouldn't know what kind. It looked cheap.”

“New or old?”

“Not new. It wasn't shiny. Could have just been dirty, I guess.”

“How many people inside?”

“I only saw a driver. He had dark hair.”

“Skin color?”

“Couldn't tell.”

“Male or female?”

“Male, I think.”

“You're sure about the dark hair?”

“I think so.”

That was it. The only witness to the kidnapping of my daughter saw a small, white hatchback that was maybe not new, maybe foreign, maybe driven by a man, who might have dark hair.

I walked back to Lacy's car and forced myself to look it over. Maybe I would see something that only I would understand because I'm her mother. Maybe an answer would jump out at me by the sheer force of love. I knew it wouldn't, but I tried anyway.

I knelt next to the open door and looked over every inch of the inside. I could still smell her presence inside, the same as when I had lain down on her bed and she was still there in the fabric of the pillow. She was so close. A plastic sunflower hung from the mirror on a braided yellow and orange cord. An empty Starbucks cup lay on the floor on the passenger side: double mocha latte. The cup was crumpled, the mat was damp with spilled coffee. She had still been it drinking when she was . . . I didn't finish the thought.