Supernatural Noir (9 page)

She dug out the rose cologne and the ginger lip gloss. In real life she didn’t love all that girlie stuff, on principle, but the job gave her an excuse and it was kind of cool, like Halloween, like a kid playing dress up.

Next was the hair. Without looking in a mirror she whacked it off—scraggly would be in character—and then dyed it what the box called “Mahogany Brown” but came out Carrot-Top Red. She told her reflection, “You are
uuuuuugly
, girlfriend, you know that?” She looked so different that she tried messing with her own mind, and couldn’t really tell if it worked or not, if she even got in. Could there be such a thing as autotelepathy? Probably—so far in her life she hadn’t run into very many totally impossible things.

Voice, hair, posture, gait, tics, breathing patterns, gestures—by now she knew how to do all that. A few hours’ practice to get them down, a little more time and effort when this was over to get rid of whatever she decided not to keep as part of her ever-evolving self.

Okay, all five of the regular senses were covered: she looked, sounded, felt, tasted, smelled different. But this was not exactly regular. This was Lourdes.

What would happen if Lourdes recognized her? There’d been some rough stuff, all in play, definitely consensual. But if Lourdes was really a pedophile, or if she wasn’t and she went off about being set up, what would happen? It seriously bit that this reading and screwing around with thoughts thing didn’t work worth crap from a distance.

For a day and a night she considered how much she was willing and able to do. A lot, it turned out. In a weird way she owed it to Lourdes not to hold anything back, not to underestimate either of them.

But there wasn’t enough time to lose or gain more than a couple of pounds or get Botox in her lips or get the very cool snake tat removed—after all the money and pain it had cost her she’d have hated to lose it, and Sammy’s artistic integrity would have been offended, but she’d have done it if she could. Hopefully things wouldn’t go far enough for Lourdes to find it.

Marina Abramovic, mutilating herself for art on YouTube, was one out-there chick, but fresh wounds would be suspicious. Same problem with actual surgery. She had to settle, uneasily, for blue contacts, lashes thickened and curled, a yellowy tan from hours under a lamp, a vaguely spider-shaped birthmark colored on the inside of her thigh, shaving all body hair and shaving it again for maximum smoothness, and wrestling her boobs into submission with an Ace bandage wrapped tight as a girdle. That last one was a big risk; Raul and his team better get right in there if kid nipples were what floated Lourdes’s boat.

When she showed up at the DA’s office in a lavender baby-doll dress and, just to stay in character, no underwear, Raul had no idea who she was. Even though that’s what she was after, it kind of hurt her feelings, which was weird.

To the giraffelike assistant DA at the desk, she introduced herself as Madison Smith, the preppy name she and Raul had finally compromised on. Behind her she heard Raul come up out of his chair. She probably could have just stirred up his thoughts so he’d believe her, but it was more fun to watch him do it himself. “Shit,” he said.

“Yup,” she said in the voice.

“Fuck.”

“Nope.”

“How’d you do it?”

“Trade secrets.”

“You’re taller.”

“That’s just shoes, dummy.” She showed him, careful not to lift her foot too high and expose herself.

His hand went briefly to her shoulder. Like every other time they’d touched—accidentally in passing, comradely fist bumps, brush of the hands maybe or maybe not flirtatious—she stiffened. Then he nodded. “It
is
you.”

“Whatever that means.”

“I take it,” Giraffe said dryly, “we’ve established that the disguise is convincing. Can we move on?” First, though, Giraffe had to brag about other child sex-abuse cases she’d prosecuted. “Sixty-nine years to life is what I got,” she told them about one particularly nasty one. The passionate, joyous pride in her voice and in her heart was really pretty creepy.

“Very good,” said Raul. Little Shit was getting a contact high from all this moral certainty.

“I’m telling you, section 85.67 of the penal code is a wonderful tool. No judicial discretion to get in the way of justice. When I know in my gut, as a person, that somebody should get life, I pick the charges and I make it happen.”

“Enhancements,” Raul said to Little-Shit-as-Madison. “Gotta get those enhancements.”

“Enhance like what?”

“GBI’s always good.”

“Great bodily injury,” Giraffe supplied, and she and Raul laughed.

“Double my rate.”

“Mayhem works, too,” Raul allowed. “That’s just disfigurement. You already got some of that goin’ on. What’s a little more disfigurement for the cause?” She flipped him off.

“And/or torture,” added Giraffe.

On a roll now, they listed burglary during the crime, which wasn’t likely in this case, and multiple victims, which was. Felony priors would have been even better. Administering controlled substances during the crime had a certain appeal; Little Shit kept what she knew about Lourdes’s sources to herself. And there was kidnapping, which could just mean driving to more than one location or even moving from one room to another. Kidnapping was good.

“Whatever works,” she told them.

“You’re awesome.” Giraffe was doing something on her computer—researching, entering data—and she said it with no meaning, like you’d say, “Have a nice day.”

“I’m sayin’,” said Raul, meaning it.

“Innocent till proven guilty, though, right?”

Giraffe waved one long hand. “Right. Sure. Of course.”

“You going all social worky on me?”

She rolled her enhanced eyes at him, then moved to where she could see the computer screen. Giraffe was playing Scrabble and had just typed in a seven-letter word Little Shit had never heard of.

During the two and a half days it took to figure out the plan and get everything ready, she wouldn’t let herself obsess about the kids who might be getting hurt. She was in Raul’s office when he called Lourdes posing as a caseworker in a homeless shelter where somebody would confirm they had a staff person by the fake name he gave if she checked. He was able to make an appointment the very next morning for his consumer, Madison Smith. Little Shit grinned at his use of the PC word.

Lourdes called her a couple of times and then when she didn’t answer texted
HOW R U?
She texted back
K
, then ignored the
MUSM
although she did miss her, too.

Just for grins, she hauled out the book she’d paid a fortune for, for the class she now couldn’t take this semester, and poked around in it for a diagnosis for somebody who finally decided they loved the person they’d been with for almost a year only after they were part of an elaborate scheme to find out if that person was a serial sex offender. Depersonalization disorder and Dissociative Fugue and Sexual Deviance had possibilities. So did Reactive Attachment Disorder. “Attachment” was on the syllabus of one of the classes she’d be taking online. So much to learn, so little time.

The contacts were bothering her eyes, the boobie girdle was pinching and itching in addition to aching, and there was a burn blister on her shoulder from the tanning lamp. Eye drops, non-allergenic gauze and tape, and Solarcaine went onto her expense report with receipts attached along with the ones from the thrift stores, where she’d loaded up with outfits for a lot more days than this thing better take, including glittery capris like she’d been hunting for and a pair of purple Crocs that looked brand new, plus a ridiculous white jumper with a pleated skirt that would get recycled right back to a thrift store when this was over. There was a really short blue satin skirt she’d have looked stellar in, but Madison Smith was supposed to be eight years old. Being professional sucked.

When Raul-as-caseworker came to pick her up he had that intensely calm, focused-mind thing going on, like a gleaming tube. There was nothing in there about his baby or his wife or the Cornhuskers or the head cold coming on. Madison Smith was in there, and Lourdes Malone, and taking this thing step by step by step and bringing it on home.

He stared at her, circled her, felt her hair, told her to walk around, sniffed, told her to say something. If he’d tried to taste her, she’d have had to hurt him. It was messed up how proud she was when he pronounced, “Madison Smith.” Pride and happiness and all that crap could get in the way of doing what had to be done just like sorrow and rage could.

Madison Smith wasn’t glad to see Lourdes, hadn’t missed her, didn’t want to run into her arms. Madison Smith also didn’t want to put her behind bars for sixty-nine years to life. Madison Smith wasn’t real, but Little-Shit-as-Madison was, and she picked the chair in the dimmest corner of the dim therapy room. She’d been thinking Madison would be surly and smart-ass, like she herself had been when they tried to make her go to therapy, but now it occurred to her that if Lourdes had to win Madison over it would drag this thing out, so she went and got a baby doll from the toy box in the other room and curled up with it. This time finding tears wasn’t hard.

Raul-as-caseworker was so hip-casual when he introduced Madison Smith and Lourdes Malone that neither one of them could stand him, and the way he went through why Madison was here—sexual assault top on the list, naturally—made her feel dissed and dirty. But when he promised he’d be right outside in the waiting room she was relieved, and when he left the room she was actually kind of scared.

Lourdes had been watching her even when she hadn’t looked like she was. Now she asked if she wanted a Coke. Little Shit drank Pepsi. Madison said sure and thank you and held the can in both hands with the baby doll in her lap. Queasy from all this vulnerability, she vowed to jack something out of here today, one of the smaller toys supposed to get kids to drop their guard, the Mardi Gras beads maybe. If Lourdes turned out to be innocent, she could have them back. If not, plenty of kids on the street would like something cheap and pretty.

Lourdes settled back. Today her hair was a good color for her, yellow silk in the lamplight, and it would be nice to touch. Her hands were crossed in her lap, crisp white cuffs folded back. Little-Shit-as-Madison crossed her own fidgety hands the same way and tried to keep them still.

She’d never seen Lourdes professional like this, majorly conscious of herself and of her client. Being on the receiving end of all that was creepy and flattering and creepy because it was flattering. You didn’t have to have a syndrome to pick up on it.

“I’d like to tell you a bit about myself so you know who you’re dealing with.”

About half of what Lourdes told Madison, Little Shit was pretty sketched about because she’d never heard it before. Looking in her head to see what was true would pull her out of character, and it didn’t matter anyway.

When Lourdes asked if she had any questions, she didn’t. “Are you a checkers player, Madison?”

This must be in the Play Therapy class she hadn’t taken yet. She had Madison say, “Am I a what player?”

Lourdes showed her the checkerboard set up on a table, neat red and black squares, red and black discs like Pogs from when she was a kid. “Have you ever played?”

“Games are retarded.” Now that she got how insulting that was to the people you used as an insult, like “gyp” and “You run like a girl,” she didn’t like saying it, but Madison did.

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk when you’re doing something else besides just sitting and talking. I could teach you the basic rules.” This wasn’t working. Lourdes ought to give it up.

“I didn’t come here to play stupid games.”

Lourdes took the gift. “Why did you come here, Madison?”

“Because the judge said I had to or go to juvie,” she sneered.

“Why did the judge say that?”

“Because I’m a bad kid?” Hopefully that wasn’t overplaying it. Madison lifted her feet up on the chair and hugged her knees and buried her face, with the doll squished in the V between her thighs and stomach. This was pretty uncomfortable but it hid a lot of her and showed a lot else of her.

“You’re not a bad kid, Madison.” That was definitely in the therapist rule book. Little Shit wanted to roll her eyes and groan at how predictable it was, and Madison wanted to go sit in the nice lady’s lap.

“I do bad things.”

Lourdes didn’t say anything. That was use of silence to get the client uncomfortable enough to fill it. Little-Shit-as-Madison didn’t say anything, either.

Madison’s thoughts were babyish, full of holes and sharp broken pieces and mushy spots, mostly about fighting things off—fighting something off right now, something circling and poking and trying to get in—and about wanting somebody to love her and fighting off anything that looked like love and letting in stuff that wasn’t even close, not knowing the difference between love and danger. If there even was a difference. Little Shit knew this space.

Eventually Lourdes was the one who broke the silence and said a few more gentle, encouraging things. Little-Shit-as-Madison just sat there all curled up until her back started to hurt and she couldn’t stand the boobie girdle cutting into her anymore, and then she threw the doll on the floor and got up and left. The Mardi Gras beads in her pocket didn’t rattle or bulge.

Raul-as-caseworker was texting and she walked right past him and out the door of the office and she found the stairway and ran down three flights and was in the street before he caught up with her. “You got a problem with elevators? Jesus.”

When she got home she stripped, soaked in a bubble bath, listened to a Grizzly Bears CD really loud, put on clean pajamas. To sop up some of the longing to go out dancing with Lourdes, she read as many pages as she could stand in the social-work policy book.

The next day she went by herself. Whether Lourdes thought that made Madison more alone and vulnerable or not, Little Shit did. This time she sat on the couch so there’d be a space beside her. Pretty much the same thing went down. After a few minutes and a few words, Lourdes stopped talking.