Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel Read online

  “Grandma can’t hold you today, baby doll. I’ll have to love on you like this.” She kissed his chubby face and neck until he giggled and waved his arms.

  “You’re hurting,” the younger woman observed.

  “I can’t seem to get comfortable, that’s all,” the older woman replied. “They say it’s a compressed disc. It’s just going to take time.”

  “We’re going to make sure those people make this right,” the daughter told her.

  Latisha looked over at me. “This is depressing.”

  “No shit.” I tossed my headphones onto the seat. “Let’s go. We’ll upload it to Larry when we get back.”

  “That’s it? What if she didn’t get like that in the grocery store fall? What if she faked the whole thing ’cause she was already injured?”

  “Larry Quinn wanted to know if she was hurt. She’s hurt. Send him an invoice and let him decide what to do with her.”

  “Well, I don’t trust it,” Latisha grumbled. “That fall looked fake to me. I coulda faked a fall better than that.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I took the microphone out of her hand and put it in the backseat. “I don’t trust it either. But that’s not our problem. Not today anyway. Today we take her at face value because that’s what our client cares about.”

  “That sucks,” Latisha said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  4

  I picked up a couple of dozen Krispy Kremes on the way to a meeting. It was my week. Lot of coffee and doughnuts go down at these things. I knew from experience not to show up without the sugar when it’s my week.

  I pulled up to a squat redbrick building about the size of my living room surrounded by the hulking silver towers from the Georgia Power station. A cloud of cigarette smoke burned my sinuses as I waded past a group of four hot-boxing cigarettes around the front door. Facing an hour without nicotine had put them in a spin. I don’t judge. We all have our crutches. I was holding mine, warm and sugar-glazed in a green-and-white box of pure happiness. I’ve been sober a little over four years and back in the program for only about six weeks. It’s a pain in the ass—AA. Seriously. Carving out the time, whining about the tricks my obsessive addict’s brain plays on me, slashing a vein for an audience. Not crazy about any of it. Way out of my comfort zone. Fortunately, the program works without love. It only requires my commitment. And to be honest, there’s something about the people, all of them so different, from every imaginable background, probably feeling as awkward and exposed and as vulnerable as I do standing up in front of a group of strangers and bleeding out weakness, guilt, shame, and secrets. Okay, so if the bloodletting goes on for too long, I tune out. Zero tolerance for complainers and me, me, me people. But when someone steps up there after their lives have been totally derailed by addiction and they’re not hanging on by the fingernails, they’re not complaining, they are kicking it in the ass, now that’s something to be present for. And if I’m lucky, I can duck out before the praying and hand-holding start.

  I didn’t speak at the meeting. A white chip was handed out to a newbie and I sat in a folding gray metal chair and sipped coffee from a small Styrofoam cup and listened to his story. Our stories all have a common thread. They all end with our addiction taking a claw hammer to our lives. This is part of what these meetings do for me. They remind me. And next time I want a drink, I’ll remember that man standing up there tonight, thirty years old and utterly terrified he’s not strong enough to do what he knows he must do—stop or die.

  I found Rauser at home with a Braves game on television, a baseball cap on backward, Hank lying next to him and White Trash in his lap. He was sipping bourbon on the rocks. “You hungry?” he asked. His eyes hadn’t left the television. “I ordered Indian.”

  “Starved,” I said, and filled a glass with crushed ice and Diet Pepsi. I know, I know. It’s frowned on here. It’s a Coca-Cola town. Atlanta will forgive you for a lot of things, but being disloyal to the brand is just over the line. I have to sneak out to the grocery store in the dark of night with a fake mustache and glasses to buy what is generally referred to in Atlanta as swill.

  We propped up on the floor once the food arrived with our backs against the couch and our plates in our laps. We seldom had time to do this without someone’s phone going off. Our schedules are like that. Inertia or frenzy. There is rarely middle ground. Tonight was blissfully quiet as we pulled off pieces of naan and raked it through spicy eggplant and lentils and mint chutney. Rauser kissed me and the bourbon was warm on his lips. I wanted a drink every time I smelled it. But I would have never admitted this to him.

  After dinner, I found the reports from Sheriff Meltzer I hadn’t had time to absorb in the car with Latisha. Rauser was glued to the television. I wouldn’t have known he even noticed I’d moved to the couch behind him except that he leaned his head back against me. This is just one of the things I love about the man. He’s not the least bit threatened when my attentions are diverted.

  I began reading the reports from the crime lab on the case of two dead girls discovered at the bottom of an embankment in Hitchiti County. Both victims had bone injuries. A forensic anthropologist had determined that the significant bone injuries occurred in life, not after death. But when the injuries had occurred in their young lives was unknown. Tracy had chips and fractures in her wrists, ankles, and feet. Her arm had been broken. Melinda had sustained similar injuries to her ankles, plus several other fractures. Melinda’s body hadn’t been in that hole long enough to disguise superficial curiosity marks on her arms and face—the point of a knife. Not deep. The killer was experimenting, still inventing himself. I began making notes of things I’d need from the sheriff. Interviews with the parents were at the top of my list. They would know if and when their children had been injured. I’d need medical records, which would confirm the parents’ statements. I wanted to know if domestic abuse reports had ever been filed on their residences. The sheriff had excluded the families as suspects. I wanted to know why. I had some ideas about the breaks and fractures, their severity or lack thereof, and the location of the injuries. I’d seen similar injuries to ankles and wrists in victims who had been restrained, beaten, handled, victims who had fought and struggled with their restraints. But I needed to know more about these girls’ physical conditions at the time they were abducted in order to develop a clearer understanding of their environment while they were prisoners and of the person who abducted and murdered them.

  I went over the photos from the disposal site again—Tracy’s bony remains peeking though leaves, Melinda’s nude corpse draped around the rock that had kept her from hitting bottom. The blouse the fisherman and his son pulled off the bank had been the only article of clothing found. Trace evidence, hair and fiber, can cling to clothing even after long-term exposure to the elements. And so can DNA, as evidenced by the skin cells still in the collar of the blouse. Semen had been found in the underpants of victims after months of exposure, and it had been used to convict offenders. Did our killer know this? Was he educated in evidence collection? I thought about where those girls had been held. Was it damp and dark? Or were they positioned so they could see the free world passing by? Wherever they were, their terror must be painted on those walls.

  Rauser was standing over me when I opened my eyes. I’d fallen asleep in the second hour of reading and rereading. “Braves won,” he said. “It’s after midnight.” He’d taken the reports I had in my lap and stacked them neatly on the table. He smiled, held up the new smartphone I’d given him for his birthday, and snapped a picture.

  “I’m going to take that phone away from you.”

  He held out both his hands for me, pulled me to my feet. “Get your shoes on.”

  We walked under the Midtown streetlights, holding hands, talking about our day—his cases at APD Homicide and the reports I’d received from a small-town sheriff—with Hank straining against his leash, sniffing at everything, seemingly unaffected by his Viagra incident. We didn’t talk abou
t the silverware drawer or Rauser’s anger this morning. We walked home and Rauser closed the bedroom door as I undressed. His arms came around me. He kissed my bare shoulders. I felt his breath in my ear, his hands brushing my nipples, running down my body, between my legs. He knelt and pulled me hard against him—my hands in his thick hair, his mouth hot and wet. When he stretched out and I slipped easily down on him, felt his hands holding on to my hips, saw the muscles flex in his shoulders and arms, we kissed and rocked and I rode him until I felt him pulsing inside me. And then we slept that heavenly, dreamy, connected, after-sex sleep that’s so good once you’ve learned each other’s bodies. Our movements, even in sleep, were perfectly synced now.

  Just before sunrise, I left Rauser in bed and slipped out for a jog with my brother. We peeled off the concrete path at Piedmont Park and jogged up the hill toward 10th Street in the foggy predawn. Dewy fescue glistened under the skyline and soaked my running shoes. Jimmy kept the pace next to me.

  We turned right on 10th and eased into our cooldown, dodging branches from the young maples planted in little strips between sidewalk and street. This was our new routine, the quiet time we carved out three days a week since Jimmy had returned to Atlanta. We’d run together as kids too—Jimmy pushing me, encouraging me. He’d never had my competitive streak, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at high school track meets and rooting me on. Jimmy had always been my greatest supporter. Even at home when I’d butted heads with our mother, Jimmy’s even temper and cool thinking restored the peace. He had always balanced out our high-strung family nicely.

  We stretched tight calves while holding on to the darkened balcony railings on a row of town houses. Across the street, a men’s bar was closed up tight for the day. The FOR LEASE signs that had papered the windows at what was once Outwrite Books had come down and a new restaurant had taken the space in Midtown’s ever-changing landscape. On the opposite corner The Flying Biscuit was gearing up for breakfast. And Caribou Coffee was calling my name.

  We walked into the coffee shop to the usual mix of bleary-eyed customers dressed for work and those of us still hopped up on endorphins. Jimmy’s roving eye slyly checked out a guy in red bicycle clothes that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. What’s up with that anyway? I mean, just how far are you people willing to go in the name of aerodynamics? He looked like an extra-strength Tylenol with a bulge in the center.

  “Stop staring at his junk,” Jimmy whispered.

  “You were staring at it. Besides, look at it. It’s like there’s a little face under there looking back.”

  We put in our orders and downed bottles of water while we waited—a double-shot, skim milk cappuccino for me and a caramel high rise for Jimmy, which appeared to be ninety percent whipped cream and caramel sauce. Our sweet tooths had been nurtured early as testers for Mother’s kitchen creations. Jimmy had been a good student and became an accomplished cook himself. Me, I just learned how to eat. I’m really good at it. Fortunately, I have a metabolism that burns through food like a Colorado wildfire, something genetic, I thought, inherited from the biological parents I didn’t remember—two drug addicts and one exotic dancer. They’d handed me off to my grandparents as an infant, thank goodness, and rushed off to pursue their dream of procuring, smoking, snorting, and shooting into their veins as many drugs as possible. The money stuffed into my mother’s skimpy bra probably funded their binges. I remember my grandparents, though the sound of their voices and the gentleness in their faces has been eclipsed over the years by their murder.

  Jimmy and I took a table near the window. This had become part of our routine too. I was seven when my parents adopted Jimmy. He was five. We had bonded instantly—a scrawny, geeky Chinese girl and an equally scrawny black boy. I’d been living with Howard and Emily Street almost two years at the time. I’d learned to trust them. My faith in their stability and the presence of another child in the house had helped give Jimmy a comfortable landing in his new home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to protect my gentle brother from the bullying he’d take in the world. By high school, our population was more diverse. I didn’t look so different from everyone else anymore. But my dark-skinned, light-eyed, soft-spoken brother didn’t fit anyone’s mold. And he didn’t fight back when they pushed him around and called him a faggot. He begged me not to fight for him. But I did. Because that’s who I am—cocked and ready to fire. Jimmy just wanted out. He left as soon as he graduated with a bitter taste he would always associate with the South.

  “Any word from the agency?” I asked. After nine years together Jimmy and Paul had decided to have a child.

  “We’re flying to Boston next week. She’s four months’ pregnant.” Jimmy looked out onto Piedmont Avenue. The sun was burning through, and the streetlights had clicked off. “We’ll get to meet the father this time too. They seem like nice kids. They’re just not ready to be parents and they don’t care that we’re gay or interracial.”

  “I hope it works out,” I told him. I meant it. I thought they would make good parents.

  “Me too,” Jimmy said. “Because you know if it doesn’t we’ll end up adopting a pair of Chihuahuas and putting them in tiaras.”

  I nodded. “It just escalates from there. First a tiara, then a tutu.”

  “Ankle bracelets,” Jimmy added. “Chihuahua playgroups.”

  “Slippery slope,” I agreed.

  He set his coffee on the table and studied me with striking pale eyes that always seemed bluer against his dark skin. “How is it with Aaron?”

  “We’re still in the honeymoon phase. Kind of. I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “Rose-colored glasses as usual,” Jimmy said.

  I smiled. “I’m cautiously optimistic. That’s a step forward, isn’t it?” I pushed my blueberry muffin over to him. “I have a meeting across the street. And I have a job out of town. You want the shitty muffin?”

  “Not if it sucks.” Jimmy sipped sugary foam off hot coffee. “How long you away?”

  “I think I’m going to need a couple of days at least. Count me out on the next run.”

  “Sounds mysterious.”

  “It’s a consulting job,” I told him. I didn’t offer details. This kind of case would bother Jimmy. “County sheriff wants some advice on a repeat offender case. Sounds like he needs someone to interpret the evidence, translate it in practical terms. And it sounds like he’s short on detectives. I’m cheap. And apparently less intrusive than the Bureau.”

  “So it’s a murder thing?”

  I nodded. “Two bodies found in the woods. Thirteen years old.”

  Jimmy’s eyebrows knotted up. “I don’t understand how someone could hurt a child. Or an animal. I just don’t.”

  “This kind of person, they’re not like us, Jimmy. They don’t think about the victim.” We sat there a minute while that hung in the air. Jimmy pushed the shitty muffin back to me.

  “You’re going to a meeting like that?”

  “I’m serving divorce papers. The guy has no idea. Thinks he’s meeting his wife.” I pulled up the leg of my sweatpants and peeled off the envelope I’d banded around my calf in a plastic bag so I wouldn’t lose it while running. “He won’t care what I’m wearing.”

  “Wow. Great way to start his day. You feel good about it?”

  I dumped the envelope out and left the plastic bag and two thick rubber bands on the table, got up, kissed my brother’s cheek. “Next time, I’ll jump out of a cake. Make it fun for him.”

  I crossed the street to The Flying Biscuit on a blinking WALK light, holding the divorce papers Latisha had picked up for me yesterday.

  The breakfast crowd was streaming in. Another half an hour and there would be a waiting list. The host, a young guy with longish hair and jeans, met me with a menu in his hand. “I’m meeting someone,” I told him.

  “Is that him in the corner?”

  I recognized Edward Dabato from the photo in his file. “That’s him. Thanks.” I walked to a smal
l table where he sat alone with a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee. He was reading a menu. “Mr. Dabato?”

  Flat brown eyes lifted to me. Suspicious eyes. Maybe he was expecting this after all. I pulled out a chair and sat down so we could keep it nice and quiet. “I’m afraid your wife isn’t coming, sir.” I pushed the envelope across the table. He picked it up and read the return address of the family lawyer who had hired me. I saw the moment when the veil came down, when his eyes showed something, when he realized a few things about his life and his wife he hadn’t known before. Man, this is a shitty job sometimes. “You’ve been served. I’m sorry.”

  Dabato stood up very calmly, tucked the envelope with the divorce papers under his arm, hooked thick fingers under the edge of the table, then flipped it in a surprisingly violent, jerky movement. Everything on top came sliding at me. Orange juice splattered my lap. Hot coffee stung my thighs. The mug and glass hit the tile and shattered.

  The restaurant went silent. A saltshaker rolled across the floor. Dabato gave me a last hard look and stalked out. I snatched a handful of napkins off the table next to me and blotted my sweatpants while the breakfast crowd, the host, the servers, all stared.

  “What?” I huffed. “You people really need to think about cloth napkins.”

  I hobbled out with as much dignity as I could muster in wet sweatpants that made me look like a candidate for adult diapers. It was going to be a long walk home.

  5

  Rauser was blasting out the door when I came down my tenth-floor hall, shoulder holster over a white shirt, a blue blazer draped over his arm, and an electric shaver in his hand. I saw him take in my damp clothes and the yellow-brown coffee stain on the crotch of the sweatpants. An eyebrow came up. “Can’t wait to hear this.”

  I gave him the short version. “I had a little spill.”