The Case of the Red-Handed Rhesus (A Rue and Lakeland Mystery) (17 page)

“It
is
possible, but again, that’s a long hike for a little kid. And he has
never
, not before, and not since, exhibited a desire to take it off. When Detective Carmichael gave him a new one, he got hysterical because he wanted the old one back.”

Trudy waited until Lance had also studied the device and given it back before she picked up Darnell’s thread. “Here’s what we think happened. An unknown individual was watching the Marine, maybe waiting for a group like Natalie’s, a single parent with a group of children to keep track of. This individual then followed the Forrester minivan home. The individual may have planned to wait for an unsupervised child to come outside, or perhaps he or she zeroed in on William when William walked away from the group a couple of times at the pizzeria.

“In any case, William certainly became the target nearly immediately once the family got home, probably because he
did
wander a slight distance. The individual lured William to his car. These types of predators are almost always men. William struggled, and the individual tore off the watch and threw it out the window.

“The individual then took the boy home. William showed no signs of sexual assault, but he had oddly placed bruises on his back and arms, and he was absolutely concussed as if he had been struck. After holding him in one location several hours, the kidnapper tried to move the boy and drove past the Marine.

“William’s a smart kid. He may not be able to tell us how it happened, but he’s good in a crisis. He was one of the people who called 911 when Sara nearly got hit and hurt her head, when he was very young and almost completely nonverbal. He had to hand the phone to an adult after someone answered. But he let himself into a woman’s apartment and placed the call.

“We think he knew he was in trouble, and we know he can operate a car door. He waited for the car to slow down, and he jumped out. He had abrasions on his hands and knees consistent with that story. He scrambled to his feet and ran. Knowing the person pursuing him was larger, almost certainly faster, and highly motivated to catch him, he looked for shelter.

“
That
is when he ran up behind the Marine on the other side of the truck, out of sight of the cameras, and crawled under the Dumpster.”

“And then the kidnapper walked away and left him there?” I shared the skepticism I heard in my father’s voice.

“Hardly. This would have been early in the morning, and news of the disappearance would have been everywhere. As I said, the kidnapper was
highly
motivated to get the child back. Something happened to
force
him to go away.”

“What? What happened?” Mama’s eyes were wide.

“It’s hard to be sure. But your truck has a loud engine, and it would have been easy to hear you coming.”

“You’re not saying when we drove up there was somebody . . . he seemed to be asleep, though, until Natasha woke him up.”

“Perhaps,” Darnell said. “Maybe he’d been stuck for a while. But I don’t think so. I think he was hiding as quietly as he could. It’s possible if you had not arrived precisely when you did . . .”

“Stop it!” bawled Natasha. “Stop!” Nobody had been paying attention to her, but she was shaking and in tears, every bit as volatile as she had been in June. “Don’t you dare tell me my baby brother nearly got killed.”

Dear Nora:

Now the dog has fleas.

Pooped

Dear Pooped:

Better it than you.

Nora

Lance smacked his forehead. “
That’s
why you’ve been so adamant about this from the minute Merry suggested we foster William.”

“What?” I passed Natasha the box of tissues Lance had given me earlier. Layla’s taunt, her asking Tasha why she lived with her grandparents instead of her father, must have triggered something. But I would have put this low on my list of expected responses. I tried to conceal my shock to keep from upsetting my foster daughter further. She still had a poetry slam to get ready for, after all.

“No,” she said. “Or not on purpose. I only remembered it now, when Darnell was talking.” She dabbed her dripping mascara, hiccupped, and blew her nose. “We have . . . the same Dad . . . and
God
I remember why I hate Layla so much.” She snatched the tissues.

“I wondered if you knew,” Trudy said. “It seemed like a large thing to omit, but you never discussed it, and it didn’t hurt anything for you to keep his name to yourself if you wished.”

“Whose name?” said Mama.

“T-Bow Orrice,” said Natasha. “Layla’s my sister. The twins are our siblings, and I can’t believe I forgot!”

“It’s a protective shield,” I reminded her, masking my own amazement by talking. “I couldn’t bear to face certain things about my relationship with Alex, so I stopped knowing them for the longest time.”
Also, in my case, there was head trauma.
“You have more to face than I did. Be patient with yourself.” Of Trudy, I asked, “You knew the twins are her siblings?”

“Are
probably
her siblings. Nobody has put the thing to a DNA test, but we have no reason to discount it. He has numerous children, few of whom share a mother.”

I turned to Lance. “What did you mean about her being adamant since we found William?”

“Back at the Marine, when I let Merry pigeonhole us about fostering the twins, it was because Tasha said, ‘Please, listen to her.’ And since
she
hates the Orangutan Lady as much as we do, I went along with it. Then Drew said, ‘He could do worse than you for parents,’ and by then I was already feeling protective. What he said really set me to thinking. By the time Sara turned up, Tasha had been after me two more times during the monkey chase, and my mind was going in four different directions.”

“I’m confused about something here,” said Mama. “And I’ve never minded putting my foot in my mouth, so I’ll just say it. T-Bow Orrice is black. Natasha’s as white as
I
am.”

“I’m not.” Natasha blew her nose. “Biracial doesn’t always mean looking like somebody poured cream in the coffee. I mean, I thought I was too, but I’ve got plenty of friends whose looks favor one parent or the other. I’m not half so pale as Mom was, but I’ve still got a fair complexion, and I have her hair. I need the truck key.” Lance tilted his head quizzically, and she added, “Relax. I’m not going anywhere. There’s something I need out of the dash.”

“Goodness but I have a lot to learn!” Mama said.

“I didn’t know it either until we all wound up at Mrs. P’s. And now . . . I remembered so much all at once. It’s all running together. See, I always thought my dad was Terry Dalton. Give me a minute.” She left to go to the truck.

She returned with the DVDs we had spent the morning so carefully gathering to protect from federal discovery. “I don’t think you’ve got this one,” she said.

Trudy studied the case of the DVD we had gotten from Layla and the unlabelled silver disc we had recovered from the young men involved. “Same format as the others,” she noted. To the rest of us, she explained, “The material was distributed as physical fitness videos, video games, and straightforward perfectly legal porn.”

“This was my first one.” Natasha resumed her seat. “It was before half the operation got busted for drugs with T-Bow’s people and all the kids got pulled for a while. I’d forgotten, blocked, what was on it.” Natasha was about to cover ground I had been trying to keep Mama from finding out about. Didn’t the girl know the torrent of mothering she was about to unleash?

“When you were ten, Gary and his crew threw a big party, got you drunk and high, and . . . and . . .”

“You don’t have to say it, honey.” Mama’s fingers curled on the table. I was proud of her for respecting Natasha’s need for distance. It was hard to balance the urge to protect against the need to listen.

Tasha shrugged. “And they filmed it,” she finished. “And that was your first tape.” She went on to explain how this one had come into her possession. “Layla said I ought to know why we hated each other so much, but I didn’t. When you were talking about William like he’d come close to dying, I was thinking about Mrs. P’s and things started rushing in. Everybody knew who the twins’ dad was, but he didn’t claim them. He only claimed Layla because her mom pulled a runner. But when the state put the twins in with the rest of us, Layla said we were
all
siblings.”

“She didn’t figure I’d be with them in foster care long, and she was jealous. Gary was about the only one who didn’t get nailed for something. He was my squeaky clean cousin. Layla figured he’d find a way to get Mom off so I could go home with her or that Granddad would buy me free.

“Layla and I didn’t much like each other anyway, and she was jealous because I’d aged in and would
get
to go back. She should have aged in, but Gary didn’t want trouble with T-Bow, so he kept her out. She didn’t understand why I was all of a sudden so desperate to get out.”

The more she spoke, the more Natasha’s points jumbled together, much as her memories must have been doing. Trudy’s fingers flew on her screen. She was taking notes as fast as Natasha could talk, and I had no doubt the machine was also recording every word Tasha said.

“Gran and Granddad were looking into getting custody of me. They knew Mom was a prostitute, but none of us talked about the films to people on the outside, especially not relatives. We knew better. When social services picked me up, I had to be pretty much detoxed. I don’t know . . .

“Anyway. Layla. She told me the boy who . . . who . . . aged me in,” she shook her whole torso like an animal rinsing away water. “Layla said I was her sister and he was our brother and not even T-Bow knew it. And that just set me on fire. I grabbed her hair and smashed her face into Mrs. P’s mailbox. Crunched her front teeth in pretty good and busted her nose.

“I was labelled violent, and Gran and Granddad pulled back. And it caused social services to have to listen to Layla’s mom, because she was raising Cain about her kid getting injured so badly in the system.

“All of a sudden, our roles were reversed. I went back to Mom, and Layla got out. I got what she wanted, and she got what I wanted. And Shannon never cared much for my mom or knew the tapes were more than straightforward porn. When we were little, we all thought our mothers were famous actresses. They even showed us some of the cleaner stuff on the films. Shannon was a big star, because she was petite and soft-spoken. She looked so fragile and easy to break. That kind of thing is popular. She got special treatment, and I doubt she knew how bad life was for everybody else.

“When she went clean, it was about a year before she started fighting to get Layla. Then after T-Bow got arrested, she used her insider knowledge for leverage. And I’m willing to bet she knew some devastating stuff.

“At Mrs. P’s, I had time to fall in love with the twins. I mean, they were practically babies. I felt responsible. I cared about them even when I couldn’t remember why. I’ve tried to keep up with them ever since. I forget so much, though, and my memories come back slowly. When Layla told me I was their sister, all I heard was what she said about the guy who was supposedly our brother. I don’t think he was, by the way. I think she said it to get me going. I
hated
her so much. I guess I didn’t want to remember why.

“Before Mom died, I remember asking if T-Bow was my dad and her saying, ‘Probably, but I wouldn’t put it around. As far as everyone is concerned these days, Terry Dalton is your father, and that’s the story you stick to.’ ”

“Layla remembered
me
, though. Easy to do when you aren’t stoned all the time. And the only thing we
ever
agreed about was the twins are awesome. I think that’s why she called me when William went missing and why she didn’t think I’d talk to her as herself. It’s why it matters so much to get the twins here. I’m tired of saying goodbye to them. Even when Gran and Granddad come home, I’ll still live close. They won’t be far away anymore.”

Trudy tapped the case. “Why did Layla have this? How did you get it from her?”

Natasha refocused herself. “Layla is . . .” Natasha pursed her lips and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, thinking. “. . . scared, for one thing. She’s in trouble over the phone call, when she meant well doing it. But she’s still jealous of me. She gave me the film to give you, even though she said the opposite. I think it was kind of a dual challenge. She never got to be a part of things, and they tried to keep her in the dark. But she thought she knew what it was, and she wanted in. We all thought we were going to be famous actresses like our mothers until it happened. I guess she finally found out for real when she saw this. And I think she had to admit her mom wasn’t who she wanted her to be.

“She wanted me to have to deal with something she knew, or thought she knew, I had kept hidden, because Gary gave her these over a year ago and she hung onto them out of fear I’d do something to her.”

“And she gave them to you now, why exactly?” Darnell pressed.

The longer Natasha talked, the more dead her voice sounded. “Because her mom made her? To get you off her back?”

“Interesting. I’ve never met her mother. I’ve only ever seen her with her aunt,” said Trudy.

Tasha shrugged. “I’m pretty sure these are the only copies of this video. Gary kept all the first films for his personal pleasure. His ring was falling apart when he pulled out of Columbus and went to hide up in Michigan, then followed me here to the sticks. He knew sooner or later I’d break and tell. I was always his weak link. I was scared. I wouldn’t go anywhere with him. But he came by every week to ‘check in.’

“My grandparents had no idea how closely affiliated he and Mom had been. They thought he felt sorry for me because my mother died. It didn’t occur to them he all but murdered her.”

“That explains one.” Trudy tapped the case. “What about the other?” She tapped the disc.

“Layla made a copy. She gave it to a couple of classmates to cause me trouble. They gave it back to me as soon as they realized what was on it. It’s how I knew to get the original back from her. And no, before you ask, they don’t have
anything
to do with this.” Natasha was skirting the edges of honesty to protect a couple of guys who I honestly found pretty creepy. But they had clearly come by the CD the way they claimed, and I wasn’t sure I’d wish federal questioning on
any
kid about this issue.