Valley of the Lost (8 page)

Color drained from Moonlight’s face. “Forget I said that, Mom. Just forget it, please.”

Confidential police information, Lucky suspected. “Forgotten. However, as we all know, marijuana, regardless of whether Ashley used it or not, isn’t a killer drug.”

“I’m going for a walk.”

“You’re still in your pajamas.”

“Call 911 and have me arrested for public indecency.” The door slammed behind her. Sylvester barely escaped with his tail intact.

Lucky looked at Miller. The baby stared back, his face twisted in disapproval at all the noise. So Ashley’s death had something to do with drugs. The poor thing. Lucky hadn’t known the girl, not well. She’d only had contact with her a few times, down at the center, but surely she would have noticed if Ashley had a drug addiction. The police got things wrong all the time.

“Repeat after me,” Lucky said to Miller. “The patriarchal, military-industrial-corporate establishment is to be resisted at every turn.”

Miller’s eyelids flicked twice, and then they closed and he drifted off to sleep. Lucky lifted the baby to her shoulder.

***

Early Sunday morning, John Winters drove to the Trafalgar Women’s Support Center to meet the morning class on infant and child hygiene. He parked the van beside the only other car in the parking lot, thinking that this was going to be a big waste of his time. He’d gone to the hospital last night and waited to question the boy found in the alley. That had certainly been a waste of time. He should have stayed in bed, with Eliza, watching the hot, yellow sun play with the curtains, eating pancakes running with butter and maple syrup, and doing whatever else seemed like a good thing to do in bed on a lazy summer morning. Instead he’d stopped at Big Eddie’s for a large coffee to go and driven to the center.

But the house wasn’t empty, and he remembered that in Trafalgar, people, particularly young people, generally walked rather than drove. They were gathered in the kitchen. Six young women sat at the table, watching a middle-aged woman holding up a jar of baby food. A pot boiled on the stove behind her. She stopped talking when Winters came in. “Can I help you?”

He held up his badge. “I’m Sergeant Winters, Trafalgar City Police.”

“I know who you are.” Her voice wasn’t hostile, but neither was it welcoming.

“Please, finish your class. I’d like to talk to your clients, just some general questions. I’ll wait until you’re finished.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t object. The students had turned to stare at the intruder. Some of them were visibly pregnant, one held a sleeping baby to her chest. Strollers lined the walls.

He leaned against the back wall of the kitchen and watched while the instructor showed the class how to heat pre-prepared baby food. She was hugely overweight, dressed in a shapeless flowered dress reaching almost to her ankles, which were two or three times normal size. Her gray hair was tied in a long braid that touched the small of her back. Steam rose from the pot on the stove. A fan on the kitchen counter did nothing to cut the heat. Old buildings such as this had been built to keep warm in winter, not cool in summer. The instructor stopped for a moment and wiped the back of her neck with a dish towel. Not, Winters thought, a lesson in sanitation.

The students didn’t pay him much attention. No doubt they knew who he was, and also why he’d come.

The baby in the young woman’s arms grizzled, and she, very casually, opened her blouse, pulled out her right breast and stuck the nipple in the child’s gaping mouth. It settled immediately and began to feed. Winters looked away. He was just too old to take a woman’s naked breast in stride.

At last the speaker droned to a halt. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Winters stepped forward. “Before you leave, I’d like to take a few more minutes of your time, if I may. I’m Sergeant John Winters with the Trafalgar City Police.” He smiled. The women didn’t smile back. He leaned up against the kitchen counter, trying to appear casual, chatty, friendly. And not look at the feeding baby. “Have you heard what happened here on Thursday evening?”

They nodded.

“Did any of you know Ashley?”

The women glanced at each other. A pregnant one shifted her belly. It looked like she had a basketball stuffed up her shirt.
That must be so uncomfortable
. He smiled at her. She cracked a trace of a grin in return.

“Anyone?” he asked again. “You’ve seen her here in the center. How about around town?”

Quiet.

“Why do you want to know?” Someone spoke at last. She had hoops running up both ears, a silver bar stabbed into the top of her nose, between the eyebrows, and a hoop, which looked as if it were intended to hold a cow bell, through her nostrils. Her bare arms were covered in colorful tattoos.

“She wasn’t murdered, was she?” another woman said. “The paper said it was an accident.”

The paper hadn’t mentioned murder because the police weren’t releasing the details of Ashley’s death. Let the killer think they believed it was an accidental overdose.

“We investigate any unusual death. Ashley was young, found dead in the woods. That’s unusual. We want to know what happened to her. It would help if we knew more about her. Did any of you ever speak to her?”

“I did,” the basketball girl said. “This,” she rubbed her stomach, “is my first.” She looked about sixteen: Winters certainly hoped it was her first. “I come here to meet the other moms. Find out what it’s like. You know, giving birth. Having a baby.” She blushed and looked down.

“Were you and Ashley friends?”

“Not really. We talked, a bit. She said childbirth was as easy as sneezing.”

Cowbell Girl snorted, and a couple of the others laughed.

So Ashley hadn’t told the girls Miller wasn’t her natural son. Even Lucky had been surprised to hear that. “Do you know her last name?”

“No. Don’t you?”

He answered her question with a question. “Can I ask your name?”

“Carlene.”

“Carlene, thanks. Anyone else?”

No one answered. Winters let his question linger. The women began to shift in their seats.

“She didn’t talk much,” Cowbell Girl said, breaking the silence. “Not to anyone. About a week or so ago she was here, wanting to get some baby clothes.”

“We run an infant and child clothing and accessories exchange,” the fat woman explained.

“Beowulf’s bigger than her baby, so I said she could have some of the things he’d outgrown,” the young mother said. For a moment, Winters thought she was talking about dog dishes and the like. Fortunately before he could ask, he understood that Beowulf must be the name of her baby. “She came over to my place and got them. And that’s about the only time I spoke to her.”

Winters asked the same questions in different ways. But no one had anything more to add. He thanked the women for their time, and asked Cowbell Girl and Basketball to stay a while longer.

The nursing mother pulled her baby’s mouth off her nipple, stuffed her breast back into her shirt, and the baby back into its sling. The young women left quietly, their mood somber and quiet. When the others had gone, Winters pulled a chair up to the table and sat down with Basketball and Cowbell Girl. The fat woman joined them.

But the young women could tell him nothing more. They’d talked to Ashley; she hadn’t talked back. She didn’t tell them where she was from, didn’t talk about Miller’s father, not even to badmouth him. They’d tried to make friends, but she didn’t want to be friends. And so they’d dropped it.

“She wanted to be left alone,” Cowbell Girl, whose name, he’d found out, was Paula. It didn’t suit her. “So I left her alone.”

“Me too,” Carlene said. “She wasn’t rude, like. But she made sure you got the hint.”

“Did you know Ashley at all?” Winters asked the fat woman. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Betty. She came to my classes a few times. But she didn’t ask any questions, and didn’t stay to chat after. The girls usually linger for a social time after class. Sometimes, we go out for coffee. My treat. The girls look forward to that.” Clearly she was telling Winters that he had spoiled their coffee klatch.

He handed Paula and Carlene his card. Paula read it, but Carlene put it into her pocket without looking at it.

“If you can remember anything, I’d appreciate it. We need to find Ashley’s family, otherwise Miller will have to go into foster care.”

Paula looked up. Her lips were dark with purple lipstick, her eyes heavily rimmed in black eyeliner. Water filled her eyes as if a dam had been opened. “Foster care,” she whispered. “The poor thing.”

There was a story there. But it wasn’t his business. “Almost anything Ashley told you might help us find her family.”

Paula gripped the card. “I’ll try to remember. I will, Mr. Winters.”

And he knew she would.

“Thanks.” He stood up.

They gathered their things. Paula reached into a stroller against the kitchen wall, and gathered up a baby. “This is Beowulf,” she said to Winters, bursting with pride. Beowulf burped and opened his eyes.

“How old?”

“Nearly six months.”

“Wow,” John Winters said, “he’s a big one.” Good thing too—with a name like that, the kid would need to be big when he got to school.

Paula smiled and tucked the baby in amongst his blankets. “We’d better get moving. Now he’s awake, he’ll be wanting to be fed. And fast.”

Winters smiled back. Beowulf might curse his mother for his name someday, but he’d not grow up unloved.

The front door opened as the two young women reached it. Carlene was asking Paula if Beowulf was sleeping through yet.

A man stepped aside to let them pass.

It was Julian Armstrong. Armstrong had been at the hospital last night, but left when told he couldn’t see the overdose patient.

“John,” he said with jovial familiarity. “Great to see you again.” Betty held out her arms and Armstrong enveloped her in an enthusiastic hug.

“What brings you here, Mr. Armstrong?” Winters asked when they’d separated.

“Drumming up business, I’m sorry to say.”

“Julian’s setting up a counseling practice in town,” Betty said. “I thought he’d like to meet some of our clients. You’re late. They’ve left already.”

He gave her a sheepish grin.
“
I apologize, got tied up. Sorry to say, I met Sergeant Winters last night. Heroin overdose in an alley.”

“How awful.”

“It was. But the boy’s going to be okay, right, John?”

Winters didn’t reply.

“The girl I particularly want you to meet didn’t come today,” Betty said, taking Armstrong’s arm. “Let me fill you in on her situation and we can come up with a plan of attack.”

Winters let himself out.

***

Staff-sergeant Al Peterson met Smith and Evans, the duty constables, when they came on shift at three.

“Hot time in the old town tonight,” he said.

“Huh?” Evans said.

“He means we’ll be busy,” Smith said. Her dad used that expression when he was all fired up about something. Fortunately, these days her dad got all fired up about things like the scoring record of the latest Toronto Blue Jays’ prospect. Not about marijuana laws and whether or not his daughter should be enforcing them.

Peterson led them into the constables’ office. It wasn’t used as much as in the old days, Peterson had told his younger officers many times. These days, constables were expected to be out on the streets, in the cars, using their computers to write up reports and whatever other paper work needed to be done.

“At three-forty-five you’re both to be sitting in a patrol car at the back. Any problems between now and then, I’ll handle it.”

“You?” Evans said.

Peterson raised one overgrown gray eyebrow. “You have a problem with that, Constable Evans?”

Smith kept her face even. Evans had been on the force longer than she. He was out of probation, and she wasn’t. But he was such an arrogant prick that she did get a chuckle, sometimes, at seeing him slapped into place.

Of course he, Evans, liked nothing more than to watch Smith shoved back into line.

“Just curious, that’s all,” he said, his voice deep and smooth.

“Well don’t be. You must have reports to finish up. If not you can eat lunch until then.”

Paul Keller, the Chief Constable, nodded to them as he walked down the hall to his office. A miasma of cigarette smoke followed in his wake. Smith wondered if the CC had ever done surveillance work. Unlikely, as anyone within a hundred yards would be able to smell him out. Something was up. Keller wasn’t an office-hours only, keep-to-the-book Chief, but it was unusual to see him on a Sunday.

The boss stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Molly. If you have a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My office.”

“Catch you in the car,” Evans said.

Her heart tightened in her chest as Keller asked her to shut the door behind her. He walked around his desk and dropped into the big swivel chair. Here it was—the Chief was in on a Sunday to tell her she was sacked. He’d seen her name in the papers once too often and didn’t want an officer who attracted so much local media attention. She stood at attention, and gripped her hands behind her back.

“I’ve had a complaint about your mother,” he said.

“What?”

“Informal, fortunately. Not through channels. Just a private e-mail telling me that Mrs. Lucy Smith is refusing to hand over the Ashley Doe baby.” He rubbed the bit of hair that remained on the top of his head. The afternoon sun streaming in from the window behind him reflected off pieces of scalp floating in the air.

Smith hadn’t even known that child services wanted the kid.

“I don’t know what I can do, sir.”

He waved his hand in the air. “I’m not asking you to do anything, Molly. Please take a seat.”

She plopped herself down.

“I wanted to let you know what’s happening, that’s all. Your mother and I have known each other for a long time.”

Smith shifted uncomfortably. With all the equipment around her waist she had trouble settling into the chair. She’d recently wondered if the CC had a thing for her mother: she’d instantly closed that line of inquiry. But his eyes were turning all soft and dreamy as he talked about Lucky Smith. He looked like a sixteen year old boy thinking about Pamela Anderson.