Land of Shadows (11 page)

Macie folded her arms, but then rubbed her hand over her heart. She bit her lip, conflicted by what she needed to say.

“Please be honest with me,” I said. “That's the only way I can solve this.”

She jammed her lips into a grim line and breathed loudly through her nose. “You got a sister?”

My tongue thickened in my mouth. “Yes, I do.”
Dead? Alive? Don't know. Please don't ask.

“Then, you know how it is,” Macie said. “We fight over triflin' shit all the time now. She eats up all my strawberries or won't put on a new paper towel roll. She calls me all day, literally
all day
. Sometimes, she needs advice. Sometimes, she wants me to be the referee between her, Mom, and Dad. Sometimes, she wants me to drive her and her girls places. And she gets mad if I tell her no. Like
I'm
a bitch for not wanting to be a chauffeur for some high school kids.”

“My sister—”
Was I gonna do this?
“My sister was five years older than me and she was a cheerleader and she hated me most of the time.”

Macie laughed. “Cuz little sisters are freakin' annoying. Mom keeps sayin' that we'll be friends once we're older—”

“My mother said the same.”

Her smile dimmed. “But I'll never know that, huh?”

I shook my head. Nor would I.

“Your parents say they gave Monie a lot of attention.”

Macie stared at her shaking hands. “I was cool with that as I got older. She was the baby, the hope of the family.” She tugged at her soiled, damp tank top. “Me and Mom used to be really close when I was a kid. She used to take me to Baskin-Robbins over by the mall for ice cream every day after she picked me up from school.”

“No more ice cream dates after Monie was born?”

Macie shook her head. “She was sick so she cried a lot. It just got too stressful. We stopped doing a lot of stuff cuz Monie couldn't deal with the situation and Mom couldn't deal with Monie.”

“If she was the hope of the family, what were you?”

Macie pointed to her chest, then pushed out a laugh as hollow as a PVC pipe. “I'm the one who needs to marry a rich man. Whatever.” But sparks had flown from her eyes, so not “whatever.”

“I'm used to my parents treating us different,” she said, eyes softening again. “I mean, I'm sure your parents do, too. One kid is always difficult and the other kid is Little Miss Perfect. Except Monie ain't perfect. She likes being two people. All presto-chango, today I'm nice, tonight I'm nasty.” Macie frowned and her eyes turned dark and hard. “No. She ain't perfect. Guess being a shadow is catching up to her.”

 

15

After Cyrus signed a consent form to allow Colin and me to search Monique's bedroom, we followed him and Angie up the stairs and down the hallway. This part of the house still smelled of hot water and soap from a recent shower, and a tinny laugh track from
The Nanny
drifted on top of the steam. The sound was coming from a bedroom with a queen-sized mattress and rumpled blue comforter.

We reached a room at the end of the hallway.

“This is her…” Angie moaned, collapsed against the wall, then staggered back to the staircase.

Cyrus stood there, staring at his daughter's bedroom door.

“We'll let you know if we have any questions,” Colin told him.

“And we'll also let you know if we need to take anything,” I added.

Cyrus said, “Okay,” but didn't move.

Colin and I doubled down and didn't move, either.

Cyrus's eyes widened. “Oh. Okay. Sorry.” He crept back down the hallway, throwing one last glance at us before descending the stairs.

Colin and I gawked at each other—
was that as strange as it seemed?
—then stepped into the bedroom.

It could have been the room of any well-achieving teen girl in America, with dark brown ceiling beams and pink walls covered in posters of Ludacris and Jay-Z, puppies and Black Jesus holding a lamb. The bed had been made, and folded laundry sat atop the pink-and-blue comforter, waiting to be put away. A vase of wilting white roses sat on the nightstand and made the room smell like a funeral home. A deflating foil “Happy Graduation” balloon had floated to the corner near the window and now bobbed on an air current. Blue and yellow pompoms and yellow honor cords, still stiff and bright, hung from a white board filled with a to-do list for the week of June 10.
Go to dry cleaner. Get vacc. for Butter. Smile—Jesus Loves You!

My head swirled and my heart felt pinched in my chest. Tori's room—
our
room—hadn't been as nice as this. On the day she never came home, a
Right On!
magazine had been left on her bed, turned to the centerfold: LL Cool J. A bag of green apple Jolly Ranchers sat on the pillow, and a half-eaten can of Pringles sat on the milk-crate nightstand. For days, weeks, Mom and I had left it all there. Then, one day, I came home from school and the magazine, chips, and candy had disappeared. And I cried.

And now, here I stood, in another girl's room, tugging at my ear as though it would give milk, my sister still a question mark … Did she know that LL Cool J and Ice Cube were now respectable men, actors and daddies?

I chuckled.

“What's funny?” Colin asked.

I shook my head. “Just remembering.” My gaze on that lonely balloon, I said, “Ready?”

Colin, his eyes on the roses, said, “Yeah.”

Then, we both took deep, deep breaths.

He started searching the closet.

I turned toward the desk.

A pink netbook sat on a tray crammed with photos, paper clips, and a small ferret desk calendar. Beneath it was a yearbook for the St. Bernard Vikings.

I opened the pages and in just minor browsing saw that Monique had been class president, cheer squad captain, and Most Likely to Save the World. The slick pages had been filled with well-wishes from friends.
Never forget me. K.I.T. LAYLA. BFF.
The quote beneath her senior portrait: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong … but time and chance happeneth to all.”

Time and chance: What would Tori be if she'd had the chance to fully run her race? Would she be a psychologist today, like she had planned? Or would she be a stay-at-home mom with lots of kids and photos of her days as Most Popular on mantels and key chains?

Someone had turned off
The Nanny
, and now the only sounds in the house were Angie Darson's muffled cries.

I opened the desk drawer.

A phone charger, pens, cherry ChapStick …

Where is it? There has to be one
 …

My eyes swiveled from the lamp to the mattress, from the bedside table to the …
bed.

I grabbed the purple unicorn Pillow Pet that lay against the headboard.

It was heavier than what a purple unicorn Pillow Pet should be.

I unzipped the cushion and stuck my hand into the stuffing.
Yep.

I pulled out a pink satin–covered journal.

The lined pages were filled with neat cursive and stuffed with ticket stubs, scraps of paper, pressed flowers, a picture of a handsome kid with a big smile standing in front of a church van, and another picture, this one of a naked man, all muscles and menace, tats and scars.

Back to searching the desk.

An enrollment packet from Cal State Dominguez Hills. Random sticky notes, store receipts, and gum wrappers. A framed picture of newborn Monique strapped in a carrier with a five-year-old Macie dressed in panties, kissing her little sister's forehead while placing her hand over Baby Monique's mouth.

I searched the dresser drawers next.

Underwear, shirts, shorts … nothing unusual.

My stomach muscles relaxed, and I let out a long breath. In another investigation and search of a thirteen-year-old's room, I had found a vibrator in the girl's nightstand, along with pictures of her and her father doing shit that was illegal in every galaxy on this side of the sun. And after my sister had disappeared, Mom had found rubbers and two unsmoked jays in Tori's hope chest. The condoms and joints didn't make Mom cry as much as the framed picture of our deadbeat dad, also discovered that day.

“Any luck?” I asked Colin.

He had pushed hangers from one end of the closet to the other and was now searching the top shelves. “Nope. I gotta say, though. Girls own a lot of—” A Timex watch box fell from the shelf to the carpet. The top popped off.

Colin plucked a cloth from the box and fluffed it out. “Just a handkerchief.” It was all white … except for a large yellow stain in the middle.

I narrowed my eyes. “Why put a dirty handkerchief in a box?”

He considered the cloth, then winced. “What's this stain?” he asked, waggling the hankie. “I'll give you three guesses, even though you'll only need one.”

I grinned. “Cleanup on aisle 4.”

He nodded. “But who's the lucky guy? Von or Derek? Or is it some even older dude she was banging on the DL and was keeping evidence of, just in case?”

“Just in case of what, though? That shit got real and she needed ammo?”

Colin whispered, “Cyrus?”

“Possibly. Or like you said: some other old guy who has a cheerleader fetish.”

“I'll bet you a Code Four that this stain ain't snot.” He stuffed the hankie back into the box and placed the top back on. “I say we take it. Test it. Just in case.”

Like any cop, I liked free lunches, but I wouldn't take Colin's bet.

Because I knew that he was right.

I would tell Cyrus and Angie that we were taking the netbook and the diary. But I would “forget” to mention the soiled handkerchief. I didn't know what that stain was about but I did know that it had OH SHIT splashed all over it.

 

16

It was a little after nine o'clock when I pulled into a parking space in the station's garage. As I ducked into the building, I squinted up to the sky: the sun was out and doing its job. The squad room was crackling with quiet energy. Luke Gomez sat at his desk with a cell phone to his ear, three-hole punching reams of reports and sweet-talking a woman who may or may not have been his wife, Lupita. Joey Jackson was flossing his teeth while flipping through a stack of fingerprints. As he slid string between his back molars, he said something like, “Search
wahai
for
gwah
trailer's on your
gwehk
.”

The room stank of Luke's seven-dollar cologne and sludge only cops called coffee. An open box of Krispy Kreme donuts sat near that pot of so-called java, and from the looks of Luke's belly and sugared mustache, he had eaten at least five of the dozen.

Peter “Pepe” Kim, the tallest Korean-Mexican American in South Los Angeles, was filling in the board—squares of old and new murders and the names of dicks who worked them as well as a few new cases awaiting the assignment stork. All those victims' names—red ink for unsolved, black for solved—and ways they had died, you'd think the Apocalypse was in full swing. Nope. Just another year in the city.

It had almost been fifteen hours since I had caught the Monique Darson case and time was chipping away. My nerves always started to ping around eighteen hours in, so I needed to make some progress before I stroked out. The more time passed, the more witnesses forgot and the more people grew reluctant to talk. How far you got in the first forty-eight hours helped determine whether you would be taking victory laps or playing a sad trombone. But Monique Darson had lucked out today—the A-Team would be searching for her murderer. Each of us turned cases upside down, inside out, and then magnified them to 200 percent. Not to brag, but I had solved 90 percent of the investigations I had led. Pretty good for a girl.

Colin, seated at the desk next to mine, was nibbling on a glazed donut. He licked at the flecks of sugar on his lips and said, “Better get one before Gomez takes it.”

The search warrant for the construction site trailer sat near my keyboard … which sat near a vase of purple roses. The flowers didn't fit in the squad room with its old computers, raggedy space heater, and the men. But then, neither did I. “So, Cyrus Darson,” I said. “What do you think he's hiding?”

Colin snorted. “What do you mean? You don't believe the late-dinner-beer-and-pool alibi?”

“There were a lot of ‘umms' in that timeline.”

“Think he's getting a little on the side?”

“He's a man, ain't he?” I plucked the small white card from the bouquet.

I miss you. Sorry I've been AWOL. I'll do better. GAN

Oh, crap. There it was.

Greg had sent creamy brown roses when he had been cheating on me with Amarie. And when I had busted him texting her while he was supposed to be watching
Letterman
, he upgraded my Ford to the almighty Porsche. Purple roses … Who was the lucky whore now? And what would he buy me next? A space shuttle?

I had last talked to Greg yesterday afternoon around three. He had reminded me to send in the car insurance payment. Then, he had yawned loud and long, and begged off talking because he needed sleep. I had said, ‘I love you,' and he had said, ‘I'll call you later,' and now I wanted to tear up this new card, drive home, collapse on the couch, and have an ugly cry while eating Doritos and watching
Ghost
.

Right now, though, I only had access to the last two donuts in the Krispy Kreme box. And so, I sat at my desk killing myself with delicious pastries, listening to the frantic pleas of the cuckolded wife within demanding that I Do Something! I wanted to tell her to get bent—hell, I
was
doing something. I was eating.

Lieutenant Rodriguez must have sensed my repressed distress because he charged into the room as I picked up donut number two. He plucked it from my fingers and bit the glazed in half. Then, he shouted, “All right, fellas. Let's have a seat.”