“I want to go home.”
“You will. Pretty soon we’ll go home, see your mama.”
“You promised I could go home if I didn’t wet the bed again and I didn’t, I didn’t!”
Dark Chocolate gave him a murderous glance. She hadn’t been surprised to see Angie. Oh, she knew, all right-she knew too damn much.
He said to her, “The closet. Inside.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Inside the closet.”
She hesitated, her body tensing, her face pulling tight. He moved in on her, gave her a two-handed push that banged her into the wall next to the closet door. She let loose a hurt sound and that started Angie wailing again. He shoved Dark Chocolate into the closet, slammed the door, and snapped the lock on it. Angie was still wailing. The sound of it sawed across his nerves, started the red hurt behind his eyes.
“Stop that! Stop screaming!”
“I want to go home, I want my mama!”
“Stop it or I’ll put you in the closet too. It’s dark in there, you want to be shut up in the dark with that strange lady?”
“No!”
“Then be a good girl, be quiet. You hungry? Want something to eat?”
Sobs but no more shrieks. “… Yes.”
“I’ll get you something pretty soon. You just sit there nice and quiet and play with your coloring books or your pretty new doll.”
“I don’t like her, I want my own doll.”
“What’s the matter with this one? Her name’s Kimberly, she’s got a nice pink and white dress-”
“She’s white, Mama doesn’t like me to play with big white dolls.”
“Your mama’s full of shit. That doll cost me seventy dollars at Toys‘R’Us. Seventy dollars, Angie, that’s a lot of money.”
“I’m not Angie, my name’s Lauren.”
“Be good, now. Don’t make Daddy mad.”
He smiled fondly at her and moved over to the closet door. “You in there, listen to me. You be quiet too. You can’t break through this door and you can yell your head off and nobody’ll hear you, the walls are too thick. Understand?”
No answer.
“You better understand if you know what’s good for you,” he said, and smiled at Angie again, and went out and set the padlock on the door.
Upstairs he looked at the woman’s car keys. Wouldn’t you know it: Toyota. Damn Jap car. He hated Jap cars. Sure, they were well engineered but they weren’t American. GM was American, he was American, he loved this country body and soul. He just didn’t see how any good American could buy foreign cars, any other kind of foreign shit, when loyal Americans were busting their asses building quality merchandise right here at home.
Didn’t take him long to find the Toyota. Parked right out front, practically within pissing distance of the house. Dark Chocolate had balls, he had to give her that much. He unlocked the passenger door, found her purse right there on the floor on that side. He slipped it under his coat, took a look around after he shut the door again. Nobody in sight. Wouldn’t pay any attention to him if there was, not in this neighborhood. People minded their own business on this block. Country’d be a lot better off if everybody minded their own business the way the folks here did. Except when it came to watching out for fucking Arab terrorists-you had to be vigilant about that like the president said.
He went back inside and dumped everything in the purse out on the kitchen table. Wallet first. Driver’s license… Tamara Corbin, age twenty-six, San Francisco address. And another one issued by the State Board of Licences that proved she really was a private investigator. Young black woman like that, a private cop. Women these days, didn’t matter what color they were, they had all kinds of jobs you’d think were just for men. That was all right by him. He didn’t have any prejudice against women earning a living so long as they didn’t take jobs away from family men. But a private cop… he didn’t like that. Not one bit.
He rummaged around among the rest of the stuff. All women’s purse junk except for a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it, saw that it was a computer printout. Then he saw what it said and his head started to throb again, that heavy throbbing ache behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut and jammed the heels of his hands against the socket bones and pressed and pressed until the pain began to ease some. He looked at the paper again, read everything that was printed there.
His name, his address, the kind of car he drove, where he worked, where he was born and the places he’d lived and who he’d been married to… his whole life! The hell she was after some deadbeat father hiding out on this block, the hell she’d made a mistake about the address. It was him she was after. Her car parked right out front, prowling around the property, listening for Angie and wasn’t surprised to see her. That was why she was here, why she was after him. Take Angie away from him.
But how? How’d she find out?
Nobody’d seen him take the girl, he was sure of that. Nobody could know, but Dark Chocolate knew. How could she know?
Who else knew?
Not the police, they’d’ve taken Angie away from him by now if they did. Just Dark Chocolate, or somebody else at that detective agency of hers?
He’d find out. He’d get it out of her, one way or another.
No matter what, he couldn’t stay here, couldn’t wait until the weekend like he’d planned to head east. Not him, not Angie, not Dark Chocolate. Leave now or wait until morning? He wasn’t thinking clearly anymore, couldn’t make up his mind. The pain was like fire behind his eyes. He jammed his hands against the socket bones again, pinched his eyeballs. It didn’t get any better, it wouldn’t go away.
Oh God, the things he’d done when he couldn’t make it go away..
13
TAMARA
Bad minute or two after he locked her in the closet and she heard him leave. Alone, trapped in the dark… it brought on another scare rush. Shortness of breath, cold sweat, a crazy impulse to beat on the door with her fists, bang her head against it, punish herself for being so fucking stupid. Prowling around where she had no business, letting herself get caught like this. He’d never let her go now that she’d seen the kid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
The little girl was crying again in the room. Deep, wracking sobs. She’s more scared than I am, got more to be scared of. The thought brought anger back, and the anger brought calm. She made herself take slow, shallow breaths until the tightness in her chest eased; last thing she needed was to start hyperventilating. All right. Better. Hot, stuffy in there; she shrugged out of her coat, used the hem to wipe sweat off her face and neck, dropped it on the floor and kicked it to one side.
What was that smell? Mold? Okay, now she was a mouth-breather.
The closet was small and tight, not much bigger than one of those portable toilets. No matter which way she stood, she couldn’t lift her arms up and out more than halfway before her hands touched wood. Nothing in it except a metal clothes rod that grazed and knocked her head until she got used to where it was. She wasn’t claustrophobic, but being shut up in a box like this did funny things to your head. No wonder some people had a horror of waking up in their own coffin, being buried alive. Suppose he kept her locked up in here until she suffocated or died of starvation or went batshit crazy She bit her lip, hard enough to hurt. None of that crap, Tamara, you quit that right now. Worrying, running your imagination just gonna make you lose it big time. Stay cool. You didn’t panic last Christmas and that was a worse scene than this, that dude was an out-of-control psycho and he had more fire-power than a SWAT team. This Lemoyne’s not anywhere near as whacked out and all he’s got is one ugly little revolver, looks like those Saturday night specials the gangbangers in the ‘hood carry. You can get out of this if you stay cool, use your head.
Yeah, sure. He outweighs me by seventy-five pounds. And he’s got that gun. And he’s out there somewhere and I’m locked up in this closet. Man’s a kidnapper, maybe worse-and crazy and dangerous no matter how near normal he looks. The way he went off on me, violence boiling up in him sudden like that. The way he kept saying he was that little girl’s daddy, calling her Angie as if he really believes she’s his daughter. Wasn’t an act, he meant it, and that’s no way sane.