A cold draft blew in, so she shut the door behind her and took a quick look around the small living room. The lack of curtains and a southern exposure guaranteed the room would be incongruously sunny, its neglect brightly illuminated. Sun shone on a tattered brown couch, next to a blue beach chair with ripped plastic lattice. Dirt, cigarette wrappers, and old newspapers littered the dark red rug, and the air was thick with filth and stale cigarette smoke. There was no TV, stereo, or radio, and it was almost as cold in here as it was outside. Against the wall, the old-fashioned white radiator had cracked, spilling blackish water onto the floor. The heat must have been turned off, so the pipes had burst. Vicki went into the next room, where she gasped.
Mrs. Bristow lay on a dirty, bare mattress, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open.
Please don't be dead. Vicki hurried to Mrs. Bristow's side, searching her still face, and grabbed her wrist. She was feeling for a pulse when the older woman snored deeply. Vicki started, then relaxed.
"Mrs. Bristow?" she asked softly, jostling her, but the woman didn't stir. How could Vicki interview her now?
Damn! She scanned the room, stumped for a moment. The floor was strewn with empty Gallo and Thunderbird bottles, and the end table next to the mattress overflowed with crack paraphernalia: an orange glass pipe, another plain pipe, and matches. Empty glassine envelopes of nickel bags, one-inch square, came in pink and purple plastic.
Vicki picked up one of the bags and caught the sweetish whiff of crack; she had prosecuted drug cases in state court and had sniffed more than her share. Her gaze went automatically to Mrs. Bristow's hands, resting palms up. Burns on her fingerpads, where she'd held a hot glass pipe, confirmed the obvious. Vicki was looking at a long-standing crack habit; she didn't know if Mrs. Bristow ever had cancer or if she had beaten it, or if those were lies that Reheema had told her boss.
Vicki had questions, but no answers. She checked her watch:
4:45. Reheema would be released from the FDC soon and shemight come here to see her mother. Vicki left the sleeping Mrs. Bristow and went into the next room. Fifteen minutes later, she had snooped around the first floor, having learned nothing probative. Empty liquor bottles lay everywhere, some broken. The refrigerator held only fast food and take-out debris; the cabinets were empty except for canned peas, a few loose Newport cigarettes, an open box of Frosted Flakes, and, inexplicably, Libby's pumpkin pie mix. The grimy kitchen was overrun with cockroaches too bold to run even from a federal prosecutor.
Vicki checked on Mrs. Bristow, determined she was sleeping deeply, then went upstairs to snoop some more. At the top of the stairs was a small bathroom, and she peeked inside. The stench of human feces almost overpowered her, though the toilet lid was closed. The floor was wet with filth and urine that it was luckily too dark to see. Old rust streaked the sink, and water had frozen in a colossal teardrop at the faucet. A white plastic trash can overflowed with trash and toilet paper. She shuddered, left the bathroom, and went down the hall to the nearest bedroom, in the back of the house.
It was darker here, and cold, but the bedroom was empty, unused. The radiator had cracked in two, draining black water, and the bed and mattress were gone, as was the box spring and the metal rack to hold it; only a darker square remained on the floorboards to tell where a bed had been. A battered end table sat in one corner, and there was no lamp or dresser. Vicki left the room and went back down the hall. If the row house was typical, there'd be another bedroom in the front, facing the street.
She opened the door onto another bedroom, also disemboweled, with everything of value sold off. A lighter square in the floorboards sat against the interior wall, where a double bed used to be, facing the sunny windows. The rug was gone, the empty closet hung open, and a lone battered chair sat in front of a bare corner. She figured a desk used to be there because a cork bulletin board clung to the wall, colorful and cluttered with items, the one cheery sign of human habitation.
She crossed the room and found the bulletin board covered with high school paraphernalia. REHEEMA BRISTOW, read a certificate for the National Honor Society, with a tiny metal pin sunk into the corkboard. A large W made of maroon felt was next to it, with ribbons in red, white, and blue. One ribbon read PENNSYLVANIA TRACK CLASSIC in gold letters, and next to the ribbons, a handwritten list, in a girlish high school scrawl, that was titled Personal Record: 800 meter run
2:15. 71, one mile 5:02. And underneath had been written: GOALS, 800 meter run 2:11, 1 mile 4:55.
She didn't get it. Reheema had been a good student and a track star in high school. When had she gone so wrong? How had she ended up in the FDC? Vicki stared at a photo of Reheema in a black track singlet, in a formal group photo with her teammates. Their singlets read Willowbrook Lady Tigers, and Vicki felt a start of recognition. Willowbrook High was her father's alma mater! He never talked about his high school days, except to say that he was in chess club, but she knew he'd graduated from Willowbrook.
Her gaze fell to another snapshot of Reheema, lovely and smiling in the middle of her track pals, and they all stood in front of an old Ford Econoline van with a homemade sign painted on a bedsheet: PENN RELAYS OR BUST. In the driver's seat of the van sat a tall woman with a mature version of Re-heema's camera-ready features and an equally dazzling smile. The driver had to be Mrs. Bristow, before she'd become a ghost of herself.
The image turned Vicki's emotions on their head. She'd thought she knew about crack addiction, but she had learned it from cases she'd tried, in a legal context. She had never seen it up close, viewed as part of a family. And in this case, it wasn't the daughter who was the user, it was the mother. And Vicki had always thought of criminal defendants as simply "the defendant"; she had never personalized a felon. But here it was, staring her in the face. She was prosecuting a girl who graduated from high school only a year ahead of her, and in National Honor Society, as she had been. A girl who worked a job and was "super-reliable," as she was. A track star who had borne up, even excelled, under odds that Vicki never had to deal with, like a mother who had disintegrated into powder. And what if Mrs. Bristow had gotten worse after Justice had put her daughter away for the straw purchase?
What was going on? Was what she was doing right or wrong? Was Reheema guilty or not? Could Vicki help Mrs. Bristow at all? She turned, puzzling, from the bulletin board and left the bedroom. She got halfway down the stairs, and the sight in the first-floor bedroom told her that she didn't have the right answers.
In fact, she didn't even have the right questions.
FOURTEEN
Arissa Bristow was gone. The mattress in the makeshift bedroom lay empty. And Vicki's purse lay on the floor, its contents strewn onto the filthy rug.
Damn! How could she have been so stupid? She hurried to her purse and kneeled on the rug. Her mascara, eyeliner, a lipstick, her thick black Filofax, her BlackBerry, and, happily, her car keys, had been dumped in a pile. Of course, her wallet was gone and so was her cell phone.
Vicki sat back on her haunches, angry at herself. She had set her purse down when she thought Mrs. Bristow had stopped breathing and had forgotten about it when she went to the kitchen. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she had fifty bucks in her wallet, a black nylon Kate Spade, which cost a hundred bucks. Luckily, she didn't carry her checkbook, but she did have three zillion credit cards; Visa, Amex, Ann Taylor, Gap, Lord amp; Taylor, Nordstrom. Her ATM card and her driver's license were gone; and worse, so were her DOJ creds, in their little black bifold.
Vicki couldn't believe it. Losing her Justice ID was an even bigger deal than losing her license. A guy at work had lost his and had to get authorization from Bale and reapply to Washington for a replacement. She couldn't even get into the office building without it these days.
"Argh!" Vicki considered calling 911, but she had no cell. And Mrs. Bristow had no telephone. She threw her stuff back in her purse, scrambled to her feet, and sprinted for the door after Mrs. Bristow. Okay, so I haven't worked out in a few days. I can still catch a crack addict.