“Look,” Seward continued, reading the ambivalence in Melanie’s expression, “I may not have done things perfectly, but I’m in a very difficult position. I’m trying to be as cooperative as possible. In fact, if we’re finished with the preliminaries, I’d like to tell you where Whitney and Brianna got the drugs that killed them.”
“You know?” she asked. Ray-Ray looked at her in astonishment.
“I can’t know definitively, since I wasn’t there. But I have my suspicions,” Seward said.
“Please, by all means, tell us what you think,” Melanie said.
“Carmen Reyes, the super’s daughter, is-or I should say was-a classmate of Whitney’s at Holbrooke. She got in on a College Bound Kids scholarship. I had a hand in arranging that, and now I’m kicking myself. Because Carmen was here right before Whitney and Brianna died. The whole reason Luis used his passkey to get in is that Carmen hadn’t come home when she was supposed to, and he was looking for her.”
“You believe that Carmen Reyes gave Whitney the drugs, Mr. Seward?”
“Yes, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Carmen was here earlier tonight, right before this happened, and now she’s gone. Disappeared.”
“She hasn’t returned home?”
“That’s correct. And it’s…what? After four o’clock in the morning?”
“So you think Carmen-”
“Of course. She gave them the heroin, then she saw the terrible results of her actions, and she ran away. Carmen Reyes is the answer to this whole thing.”
5
FOR THE FIRST MINUTE after she woke up, Carmen was sure she was dead. Everything was black. Something was weird with her breathing, like she was choking. And her arms and legs were numb. She’d seen what he’d done to Whitney and Brianna. The terrible way they’d died. It probably felt like this. Maybe he’d done the same to her?
The next minute her brain started to function again. It interpreted the signals from her body more precisely. Carmen felt the pressure against her eyes and realized that it was dark because she was blindfolded. Her tongue told her that she was choking on a rag stuffed in her mouth. And the sparks that shot through her arms and legs when she moved let her know that she was tightly bound and stuffed into a confined space.
The minute after that, Carmen screamed. A hoarse sobbing sound through the gag. She screamed again and again, till her throat burned. She felt like screaming forever, until she lost her voice or suffocated on the rag or went totally insane. But at some point, when she drew breath, her mind registered utter quiet all around her. Wherever she was, she was alone. There was nobody to hear her screams, so she forced herself to stop.
Wherever he was now, she knew, he’d be coming back. Probably soon. That thought immediately calmed her-the calm one feels on the verge of death. She wanted to live to see her family again. Papi and Lulu. She had to. The three of them were so close since Mami died. They wouldn’t be able to handle another loss, couldn’t go on without her. Right that moment she swore she’d make it, for their sakes. And, having seen what this man was capable of, she’d better conserve her energy. Surviving would take everything she had.
6
MELANIE’S NEXT STEP was to interview the super who’d discovered the bodies. She and Ray-Ray took the service elevator down to the basement of James Seward’s Park Avenue building. In contrast to the exquisite mahogany car that had ferried them to the penthouse, the service elevator was painted industrial gray and smelled like garbage. Directly across from where it let them out, a grimy door bore a small nameplate reading L. REYES, SUPERINTENDENT.
Ray-Ray pressed the buzzer. They waited. A darkening at the peephole told them someone was looking out.
“Yeah? Wha’ you want?” said a gruff voice from the other side of the door. The accent threw her back years, to her father’s English. Her father had lived in New York for two decades, but his English never made it beyond passable.
“Señor Reyes, Melanie Vargas. Soy de la oficina del fiscal.”
The door swung open immediately.
“Prosecutor? Yes, I been waiting!” The short, balding, coffee-skinned man who stood before them looked like he’d walked through hell. His eyes were puffy and red, his face haggard, yet he smiled at her and pumped her hand excitedly.
“This is Special Agent Raymond Wong from the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Melanie said.
“Good, come in, come in,” Reyes said, relief in his voice.
He led them into a sparsely furnished living room with concrete walls and floors. An electric heater in the corner did nothing to dispel the basement chill. Exposed pipes punctuated the ceiling, their sickly green paint peeling off in strips. Even the small Christmas tree pushed up against the far wall looked like it was struggling.
“Here. Sit down, and I get you her picture. You need that, right?”
Melanie and Ray-Ray exchanged uneasy glances. Should they tell Reyes they weren’t exactly here about his daughter? The fact was, they did need to find Carmen Reyes. She might know something.
“Well, actually-” Melanie began.
“I’m glad you change your mind. Three times I call the police, and they keep tell me missing-person report you can’t file for twenty-four hours. But Carmen is a very good girl. She never go out at night. She never go anywhere and not tell her papi. Look at this picture. You see how good she is? This from Great Adventure last summer.”
He handed Melanie a framed photograph of a tall, skinny girl standing in front of the sign for the Nitro. She wore pink sunglasses and a huge grin that showed her braces. Her hair was pulled back into a demure ponytail, and her T-shirt read ROCK THE VOTE. No question, she looked like a dream teen, sweet and studious. On the other hand, appearances were often deceiving.
“Is this the most recent picture you have of Carmen?” Melanie asked.
“Yes. My wife die from cancer four years ago. Since then is only the three of us, and we so sad we don’t take too many pictures.” Tears flooded Reyes’s eyes. How could Melanie possibly tell this man that James Seward had just accused his daughter of supplying the heroin that killed her classmates? She decided she wouldn’t. Not yet anyway, not until she knew more.
“Mr. Reyes,” she said gently, “please, have a seat. I’d like to ask you some questions.” She nodded at Ray-Ray, who opened his notebook.
“Of course. Whatever you need, you tell me. What she wearing, when I last see her. I remember.”
“We’ll get to all that. But first tell me about Carmen going to visit Whitney Seward tonight.”
“Yes, I think it’s connected, right? Could be some drug dealer give Whitney the stuff, and he kidnap my Carmen so she don’t tell! ¡Ay, Dios! ” Tears began falling from Reyes’s eyes, and he buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know what I gonna do if sonthing happen to her!” he cried. His stocky frame began to heave and shake with sobs.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” Melanie said.
She went into the adjacent galley kitchen and flipped on the overhead light. The shadows of dead cockroaches stood out in bold relief inside the plastic light fixture. New York was strange, the way extremes of wealth and poverty coexisted so closely, even in the same building.
After he drank the water, Reyes seemed calmer.
“About seven-thirty, Whitney call Carmen and say can she come upstairs and study for the math test. My Carmen a genius with numbers. They got her working in the office at Holbrooke because she so good with math. She could make a lotta money in business someday, but she say she wanna be math teacher instead, work with kids.”
“So it was Whitney who called Carmen, not the other way around?”