“Becca, you’re safe, I promise you.” Jo fought a wave of helplessness. “Tell me what you need from me.”
Becca fumbled with the front pocket of her jeans, pulled out her cell, and handed it to Jo. “Rachel.” Her voice was slurred, as if she were drunk, and Jo was getting scared.
“Right away.” Jo flipped open the cell and found the number quickly. After an interminable few moments, during which Becca lay motionless except for the tremor, Rachel Perry answered.
“Becca, thank goodness.” Her tone was warm, and Jo could hear light classical music and the tinkling of cutlery in the background. “I’m at the benefit dinner for your aunt’s shelter. Please have some emergency that—”
“Rachel, it’s Joanne Call,” Jo broke in. “Becca needs you.”
“Joanne?” Rachel sounded startled, but then spoke calmly. “Is Becca all right?”
“No. She’s had a bad shock.” Jo tried to mirror Rachel’s control. “We’re at the house on Fifteenth.”
“Do you need to get her to a hospital?”
“She’s all right physically, but she’s…there was a nasty trigger.”
“Joanne, I’m on my way.” The music was fading even as Rachel spoke. “Tell her I’ll be there soon. Just keep her quiet and sit tight.”
“She’s coming, Becca.” Jo folded the cell. “Can I get you some water?”
Becca shook her head.
Jo watched her silently for a few miserable moments.
“I’ll b-be okay, Jo.” Becca covered her eyes with her hand, and her mouth twisted before she turned her face into the sofa’s cushion. “Just give me a few minutes alone, okay?”
“Of course,” Jo whispered. On the rare occasions she cried, she preferred privacy, too. But Becca’s request was the only thing that could have wedged her from the couch, in that moment. She rose and made her way to the front door. She checked to make sure Becca hadn’t moved, then slipped out onto the porch.
The mutilated doll drew Jo like a macabre and malodorous flytrap. She crouched in front of it, as dispassionate as it was possible to be, given her still-racing heart.
Jo didn’t know what kind of doll five-year-old Becca had been clutching the night her parents died. Voakes had referred to a rag doll, and that didn’t describe the ugly little present someone had set on this porch in the few hours they had been gone. It was roughly as big as a human toddler, an unusual size for a doll but without the realistic features of a mannequin. It was pink plastic and naked, stripped of whatever clothing it had come packaged in. The chubby cheeks were generic, its single eye was the classic desirable Caucasian blue. Fine blond hair, chopped brutally by unskilled hands, stood out from the scalp in chunks.
The doll’s pink chest was splashed with red, possibly fingernail polish, but an entire bottle of it. The “blood” began at the shattered socket of the left eye, which had obviously been shot out with a gun. Jo tweezed the white hair in two fingers and pulled the doll forward. Most of the back of its head was gone.
She heard a single sob from inside the house, soft and quickly suppressed. Rage shot through Jo, fury that anyone would dare frighten Becca like this. Before she could stop herself, she clenched her fingers powerfully over the doll’s ruined head. She wrenched it off the plastic neck and hurled it from the porch, then heard it bounce into the bushes below.
“Jo?” Becca’s voice was faint, but it drew Jo to her feet and back into the house like a clarion summons.
They would wait together for Rachel Perry. If Becca wanted Jo couchside while she spoke to Rachel, the wrath of hell itself would not move her.
And Jo was banished to the porch again.
The wrath of hell hadn’t dismissed her; that had been Becca. Apparently, she wanted private time with Rachel. That was fine with Jo. Her shoulder throbbed from its smack against the step. There was aspirin in the medicine chest in the upstairs bathroom, but she had nothing better to do than sit sentinel out here on the stairs and guard Becca from Patricia Healy.
“I’m afraid she’s right behind me,” Rachel had said as Jo helped her up these same steps. “Patricia’s still saying her good-byes at her fundraiser, but she insisted on joining us here soon. It’s possible my racing to the exit, squawking in alarm, tipped her off somehow.”
Jo had seen Rachel safely settled beside Becca, then let herself out quietly to prevent any pending aunt-ambush. She used the time to wrap that monstrosity of a doll in a tarp and lock it securely in the trunk of her Bentley. She would turn it over to Pam Emerson in the morning. She considered parking the Bentley around the corner, to better distance Becca from its malicious cargo, but didn’t want to leave the porch unguarded.
The sun was taking its seasonally sweet time setting, its last gold rays bathing the cemetery across the street. Jo rubbed her shoulder pensively, wishing she could see the Lady of the Rock from here. Imagining this benevolent light kissing the Lady’s face, illuminating the young girl resting her head in her lap. Jo had seen a reflection of this image of the cemetery’s Pietá in Becca and Rachel, just now. The maternity of the older woman’s hand, resting on Becca’s hair. They touched each other so easily, Becca and her people.
It was full dark before a classic Rolls with Patricia Healy behind the wheel glided to a halt in front of the house. Wasp-waisted in a jade gown befitting a formal dinner, Becca’s aunt hurried up the stone steps, her head lowered. She almost stepped on Jo, and stumbled in surprise.
“Joanne, I didn’t see you.” Patricia righted herself, looking flustered. “Is Becca inside?”
“Yes. Rachel is with her. They’ve asked for some time alone.” Jo could read the indecision in Patricia’s face, so she simply stood up. With psychiatric aides like Peter and nosy aunts like Patricia, her height could prove an advantage. “I’m sure they won’t be much longer.”
Patricia blinked up at her. “Oh. That’s fine. We’ll wait out here, then.” She turned carefully on the wide step and managed to arrange herself gracefully to sit on it, gown and all.
Reluctantly, Jo resumed her seat one step above her.
“Can you explain what happened? Rachel didn’t share many details.”
“I’ll let Becca tell you about it.” Jo heard the genuine worry in her voice, but she didn’t feel up to cozy conversation right now.
“That girl has certainly been through the wringer.” Patricia sighed and slipped off her shoes and placed them neatly side by side on the step. “Funny. I still think of Becca as a girl, but I was her age when she came to us. And I felt as old and decrepit as a redwood then, suddenly dealing with this traumatized little child.”
“Hm.”
“Becca’s becoming a lesbian was never an issue for us, by the way.” Patricia smiled up at Jo. “Both Mitch and I think you all should have every civil right on the books. We support your community entirely.”
“Hm.” Jo remembered Mitchell’s fondness for search engines, but she doubted anything in her online presence revealed her sexual orientation. She wondered at Patricia’s presumption.
“When Becca first came out to us, we thought she might just be lining up with her friends, Marty and Khadijah. They’re a lesbian couple, and they’re both terrific women. I hope you get to meet them someday.”
“Hm.” Jo found she was actually missing Uncle Mitch’s interruptions. At least they provided some respite from Patricia’s incessant chatter. Was Rachel transplanting Becca’s liver in there? What could be taking so long?
“Thank God Marty and Khadijah knew to come to us, back when Becca was in so much trouble years ago.” Patricia sighed again and plucked at the folds in her gown. “Becca went through a period of serious drug use, Joanne, when she was sixteen. Mitch and I were quite alarmed. She managed to beat it, but we’ve thought of her as rather fragile ever since. The violent loss of her parents, heroin addiction. And now this, tonight — whatever this is. You can understand why we’re worried.”