Trail of Echoes (19 page)

He had wanted to come in and talk.

I had said, “No.”

“Can we talk out here?”

“No.”

He had shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “You wanna call your mother?”

“No.”

“Don't you wanna know why I left?”

I had glared at him—dragon-rage coiled in my belly, claws flexing, preparing to release the fire of ancient hatred. Of
course
I wondered why he left. But that's it.
Wondered
. Even though I possessed technology to search for missing people, I had never typed “Victor Starr” into the search bar. Nor had I asked Mom if sex had been their problem. Like our talk last night, I had sought to avoid that topic just as I'd avoid drinking from a water fountain in Chernobyl.

All of my life, I sought to place blame for his abandonment. Naturally, I had blamed the person closest to me—my mother. That belief softened once my marriage started to necrotize and I realized that my power to control Greg was akin to controlling Halley's Comet.

Until last night, I still wondered if Mom loved Victor Starr. But I had never asked that question, either. I
needed
Mom and Martin together. I
needed
Mom to have a happily ever after.

And so, after my litany of “No, no, no” on that December day with Victor Starr, I had closed the door on him, pulled on clothes, and then curled up on the couch to watch
The Poseidon Adventure
for the three hundredth time. Stubborn, he continued to knock and ring the doorbell.

Even if he'd been chased by bees or zombies or zombie bees, I still wouldn't have opened the door for him. I chose to lay there, mourning Shelley Winters.
There's got to be a morning after.
And there was.

Victor Starr finally stopped knocking and went away.

Although, not really. Because here he was again, leaving messages on my phone, tidal-waving my life, and, worse, upsetting Mom's.

Fucker.

Mom will have her morning after,
I decided as my partner and I reached the car. And I would give it to her.

Colin handed me a bottled water and a roll of paper towels. “You okay?”

“Victor Starr called,” I said, then guzzled from my water bottle.

His shoulders slumped. “Ah, hell.”

“Yeah.” I paused, then added, “I hate having this reaction. I should be
happy
that my father calls me, right?”

Colin shrugged.

“Your mom and dad ever gonna come out to visit?”

He forced himself to smile. “You wanna meet my folks already? We haven't even slept together yet.”

I smirked. “Your folks would stroke out if you brought me home. What would they do with all their white sheets, cans of gasoline, and wooden crosses?”

“We got a big basement,” Colin said with a shrug.

“If they fly out, we can pretend that you're up for a Medal of Valor or something. It would be like an episode of
Three's Company
.”

“What's
Three's Company
?”

“I'm not that damned old, and you're not that damned young.”

“Whatever, Lou.” He sighed. “Gonna take more than that for him to get over me bein' transferred. At least with your dad, you're the one in control.”

At least.

After cleaning my face, hands, and hems with wipes and slipping back into my nice loafers, I sank into the Crown Vic's deep passenger seat. I closed my eyes to force my banging pulse to slow.

Colin interrupted the silence by rattling Tic Tacs and singing a Maroon 5 song.

Nausea washed over me, and I sat up in the seat. “Let's hit Chanita's school and see what we can see.”

Colin drove down twisty La Cienega, then turned right onto Parthenon Street. “You gonna call him back?” He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed a bottle of DayQuil.

“I'm gonna vomit.” I pawed through the compartment, searching for peppermint candy or a sock to sop up the prehurl spit collecting in my mouth.

Colin reached into his pocket and plucked out the little container of peppermint Tic Tacs.

I accepted the gift and dumped thousands of candies into my mouth.

“He's only gonna keep calling,” Colin said.

I crunched and crunched, then shrugged.

We passed the Jungle's neglected apartment buildings, where aluminum foil sometimes doubled as curtains. We passed still-abandoned Santa Barbara Plaza, with its dead and gone businesses shuttered with wooden planks. An evangelical church now leased space in the middle of the depressed complex that had, once upon a time, boomed with fish markets, soul food restaurants, cocktail lounges, and Crase Liquor Emporium. Every business had suffered from riot-related fires and the urban troika: unemployment, crime, and poverty.

But Victor Starr had escaped this hell, lucky bastard.

“I hate when you're quiet.” Colin brought the medicine bottle to his lips and guzzled. “It worries me.”

The lump in my throat only allowed me to grunt.

He took another swig. “You okay? For real?”

“Sure,” I croaked.

“Lou, you can't solve everything by yourself. Let me help.”

“Thank you, Iyanla, but I don't need you to fix my life right now. Try again tomorrow.”

He tossed the empty bottle into the backseat. “We talk about all kinds of shit now, right? My sex life. Your lack of a sex life.”

“Oy.”

“Family, politics—”

“We don't talk politics cuz you're an idiot.”

“The point is, we're closer now,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And we've protected each other from the Crazies. And we control the Crazies so that law-abiding citizens can make a run for it.” He tapped the steering wheel. “Guess what I'm saying is … I'm here for you, partner.”

I nodded. “Thanks, pal.”

“And this monster in the Saints cap—we'll catch him. Know why? Cuz we don't let the Crazies win.”

I chuckled. “You can rah-rah all you want but law-abiding citizens—even us cops—can't control the Crazies, no matter how hard we try. It's just a matter of time before they eke into the cracks of the kingdom walls. It's just a matter of time before the monster confronts me or confronts you in a dark alley when we're least expecting it.”

“So,” he said, smiling, “to capture him, all we have to do is search every dark alley.”

“What if he makes no distinction between light and dark?”

Colin rolled his eyes. “I hate when you go all Nietzsche on me.”

“I'll go back to being quiet, then.”

We rode down spruce-lined King Boulevard and slowed as we neared Madison Middle School. The sprawling campus shimmered beneath the darkening skies as though it were Oz. But it wasn't Oz. Far from. I had despised junior high school, the Land of Misfits and Bullies, and I hadn't visited my alma mater since ninth-grade graduation. As I climbed out of the Crown Vic now, the aromas of cheeseburgers and chili mac, rot and mold came to welcome me home.

Tori had been missing during my time at this school, and now, standing here, my hands cramped from remembering the journaling, the crying and the not crying, the numbness … I didn't want to be at Madison. And as Colin and I walked those corridors, grief crushed my heart like it had so many years ago.

 

27

Only the student lockers that lined the hallways had remained the same since the 80s. The metal detectors that guarded the entryways certainly didn't exist twenty-five years ago. Students talking on rhinestone-studded Sidekicks—a new thing. Girls showing lots of leg and even more midriff—definitely new. Pregnant girls waddling down the hallways—
wow
. In some ways, they could have been my classmates and me—brown faces bright with youth and pimples. But holy moly guacamole, these girls of the new millennium. Curvier. And the boys? Rowdier. Miniskirts. Plain white T-shirts. Sagging khakis and tattoos? Not possible in ye olden days, where a skirt 0.5 centimeters above the knee got you a trip to the principal's office and a pair of sweatpants to wear until sixth period.

“I'm guessing that locker is Chanita's,” Colin said, pointing.

Down the eastern corridor, students had taped to the locker's metal door flowers, notes, and homemade posters that read “We Miss You!”

“Maybe not.” I pointed at a locker down the opposite hallway, also festooned with RIP signs. Farther down still, another locker and more posters.

“Damn,” Colin muttered, “don't these kids have enough normal shit to worry about?”

“Weird body things, stupid parents, and teenage love affairs?”

He nodded. “But now they gotta deal with their own mortality and mourning dead friends and—?” His face reddened. “Sorry. Forgot that you…”

I waved my hand, my attention now directed at the security cameras bolted to the walls at every corridor intersection. In the best of worlds, those cameras were currently working. In
this
world, though, I didn't expect them to.

The administrative office had remained in the same spot, and, since my last year here, not much inside of it had changed. Dingy American flag hanging from the wall. Dusty intercom speaker box covered in cobwebs. More Hispanic mothers than black mothers clutching doctors' forms and birth certificates—that was the only visible change.

We approached the end of the long Formica counter and the tall black woman consulting a ledger with one hand as the other futzed with her long hair twists. She peered at me with a pair of lies in blue contact lenses.

I badged her, then told her that we were investigating the murder of Chanita Lords.

She told me that her name was Alice and that she'd helped Detective Gwen Zapata back on Monday with the missing-child school notification form, which was now a part of Chanita's school record.

The other workers heard our conversation, and the office dropped into silence. Those workers soon called waiting parents to the counter just to hear us talk.

“I noticed security cameras,” I said to the clerk. “I'd like to get footage from Friday.”

Alice sucked her teeth. “Those cameras been down for almost two weeks now.”

I scowled at her, sapped of all patience for people and their wack-ass security systems.

“Budget cuts,” she said. “What we supposed to do?”

I pulled the search warrant from the case file. “We'd like to see her locker—
that
still exists, doesn't it?”

Alice nodded.

“And then,” I said, “we'd like to pop in on her counselor, Mr. Bishop.”

Alice jotted down Bishop's office number on a sticky note. Then, she pecked on a computer keyboard to find Chanita's locker number and combination. “Mr. Bishop also counseled Trina Porter.” She looked at us over her shoulder. “Just so you know.”

“Thanks for the info,” I said, squinting at her.

“Yep. Some of us are plannin' to attend Nita's funeral tomorrow. She was an angel. I hope y'all catch … him.”

Locker 336.
Bottom row. A stone's throw from the girls' restroom. Teddy bears, stuffed unicorns, flowers, and pictures of the smiling and very alive thirteen-year-old Chanita Lords. My pulse thrummed in my ears as we moved the memorials aside. Colin spun the locker's tumbler and pulled up the latch.

Textbooks and notebooks on pink-carpeted shelves. Tiny magnetic mirror inside the door along with pictures of friends and the singer Drake.

I plucked an appointment card from a pen holder.

WOMEN & CHILDREN MEDICAL GROUP
:

Your next appointment is: Tuesday, April 1, with Dr. Fletcher.

We pawed through Chanita's things and, again, found nothing strange. Still, we took notebooks, the appointment card, and the pictures of Chanita's friends.

I waited at the school's main entrance as Colin took our meager findings back to the car. No one had stopped us as we wandered the building.

“Stop frowning,” Colin said, popping up the stairs. “You're gonna scare the kids.” He followed me down the corridors, northbound this time.

“I'm frowning because I haven't spotted one security guard roaming the grounds. Any nut can invade a classroom. Any nut can steal a child.”

We walked past closed classroom doors, then stopped at the last office on the first floor. The door was cracked, so I peeked in.

A black man around my age sat on the edge of his desk. He wore a blue dress shirt, no jacket, and no tie. Two girls, both wearing green, black, and white cheerleader uniforms, flanked him. His gaze darted from the girls' chests down to their hips.

Girl 1, hazel-eyed and thick-legged, was touching his arm. She'd have a stripper's body in two years.

Girl 2, dark and pretty, doe-eyed and fake-haired, was laughing as though she'd heard the funniest joke ever. Unfortunately, she looked like she already knew her way around the pole.

Anger spiked in my gut, and I pushed open the door, then knocked on the poor wood like it had kidnapped my sister. “Good morning.”

The trio jumped. The girls gasped.

“Payton Bishop?” I asked.

He nodded, then told the girls, “You two should get to class.”

“Do we got to?” Hazel Eyes asked.

“Yes, Nikki,” he said. “Go.”

The counselor's broad, lanky frame suggested that he had played tennis or basketball once upon a time. Graying stubble dusted his chin, and a scar peeked from beneath his bottom lip. A gold band hugged his ring finger.

“Aren't they precious?” Colin said, fake smiling at Bishop. “They grow up so fast nowadays. Really, where does the time go?”

“Who are you?” Bishop asked, arms crossed. “And why are you standing in my office?”

Colin handled the introductions, then handed his card to the counselor.

Bishop went rigid. “Have a seat,” he said with forced calm.