The Gray Zone (12 page)

Kelly smiled a tight smile. “I need a little time to maneuver through a minefield.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And I just need to have the kids in a safe place for a while.”

“So we’ll meet at the place we always talked about—unless we hear from you?”

Kelly nodded. She found herself in the strange position of being the one to comfort Frank. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan. And they’re better off with you for right now.”

Holly came up to the two of them. Her voice was firmer than Frank’s. “I’m glad you called us for this. You’re smart to have a safety hatch for them, and I’m glad we can help. We’ll see you in a few days. Keep in touch.”

Holly’s kind efficiency made Kelly’s eyes start to sting. She gripped Holly’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she said earnestly. Then she leaned into the car. “It won’t be long, my true loves,” she whispered to her sleepy kids, kissing their temples, between their eyes, the tips of their noses.

Holly squeezed Kelly’s hands before getting into the front seat. “We’ll take good care of them,” she said softly.

Kelly could only nod, holding back the tears she didn’t want the kids to see. The car drove away, and she ducked back into the elevator and rode up to her room. She tiptoed into the bathroom, shut the door, and stared at her image in the mirror. Looking pale and unbalanced in the fluorescent lights, she grimaced. One part of her mind was desperately torn away from her, was holding on to her children even as they got farther and farther away. She forced herself to let the other part of her mind take over.

The plan was falling into shape.

THE TEACUP RATTLED IN ITS SAUCER AS CHERYL Gordon placed it on the coffee table. Jake didn’t drink tea, but he was aware of the social obligation at work here. Mrs. Gordon must have served a lot of tea to Houston county officials over her years as a foster parent. There was both a practiced and a guilty air to the ritual.

The large living room was neat, almost obsessively so, although the furnishings would have looked cluttered in a less orderly environment. The five out-of-date issues of
National Geographic
stacked on a side table looked as though they had been arranged with a ruler. All the wooden surfaces in the room gleamed. The room smelled of strong cleaning fluids overlaid with air freshener.

Mrs. Gordon sat on the edge of a Lambright Comfort Chair. “You’re with Child Protective Services?” she whined. “I’ve never seen you before.”

“Actually, I’m an attorney with the county council,” said Jake,
turning the handle of the teacup ninety degrees. “I’m following up on a complaint.”

Mrs. Gordon narrowed her eyes.

Jake smiled. “Someone’s always complaining. It’ll be something dismissible, I’m sure.”

Mrs. Gordon regarded him silently. Jake pushed on, hoping she didn’t know that a social worker or court-appointed special advocate was supposed to accompany him for this sort of visit.

“Do you remember Natalie St. Clair?” he asked.

Mrs. Gordon sucked on her thin lips. She scratched one thumbnail across the other, pushing the cuticle back. “Yeah, I remember her.”

Jake pushed his Xerox of Kelly’s driver’s license across the table. “Did she look like this?”

Mrs. Gordon squinted. “Could have. I don’t really remember. She ran away all the time. She was troubled.”

Jake sat back. The woman wasn’t meeting his eyes. He held himself back, knowing that when the time came, he would be able to make her tell him what she was hiding. From the way she looked, she had a lot to hide. She was about five-foot-two and weighed around two hundred pounds. The skin on her feet puffed up and around her flip-flops, nearly burying them entirely. Below the hem of her skirt, her calves sagged; her blouse was sleeveless, and her papery arms, bulging with several rolls of flab, wobbled every time she moved. The top had a turtleneck collar around which Mrs. Gordon had tied a scarf that her fingers adjusted and readjusted. It was impossible to tell if her face had once been pretty. It was now swollen with fat and had unnatural dark markings, possibly from bruising, and her suspicious eyes peered out of it with animal fear.

“Why did she run away all the time?” asked Jake.

“She was just one of those out-of-control kids. A real difficult one.”

“Did she have any reason to be unhappy here?”

Mrs. Gordon’s hands fluttered to the knot on her scarf. “She was always unhappy. Gary used to say she was born a hard case and would never change.” Her mind’s eye appeared to lock in on Natalie. “She seemed to look at us like a wounded cat on the run.”

Startled at her own words, she clenched her teeth to stop herself from uttering any more.

“Does Gary enjoy having foster children?” Jake kept his voice neutral and focused, wondering what angle would draw her out. He was confident one would; he just had to find it.

“He was a great dad. They were lucky to have him. You know, these kids come here like animals. They smell, they’re wild, just like animals. Gary is strict. He teaches them values. He gives them discipline they’ve never had before. They need it.”

Jake forced himself to take a sip of tea. “You keep a very orderly home,” he said. “It must take a lot of work to maintain it the way you do.”

Mrs. Gordon stared at him, judging his flattery. He smiled at her, the way he smiled at juries he needed to sway.

“Mr. Gordon will be home any moment,” said Mrs. Gordon. “He’s just gone to the market.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” said Jake politely. “But I’m enjoying talking with you too, ma’am. Do you have any pictures of your foster children?”

Mrs. Gordon touched her throat. “Gary doesn’t like it.”

Jake kept the polite look on his face. “But you do keep photos?”

Mrs. Gordon’s eyes flicked toward the door. “I keep an album in the closet. Do you want to see it?”

Jake tried to conceal his enthusiasm. “How many have you had?”

“Just one.”

“Album?”

“Yes.”

“I meant foster children.”

“Oh. Twenty-five, thirty.”

“I’d like to see the album.”

As Mrs. Gordon plodded up the stairs, Jake looked around. There was an umbrella stand by the front door with half a dozen canes sticking out of it. A fan tried to move the stale air through the room. Jake loosened his tie.

Mrs. Gordon returned with the album, and Jake dutifully looked at each picture, pushing back his eagerness to find a photograph of Kelly. Each child had a story; Jake noticed that Mrs. Gordon labeled them either as “a good kid” or “a clumsy, troubled kid.” He wondered how many had run away from the abuse that was evident by the Band-Aids and bandages that marked the “troubled” ones.

“I don’t see any pictures of Natalie. Are you sure she lived here?”

“Of course she lived here. All the children are like my own. Even the bad ones.”

“Tell me more about her. What did she look like?”

Cheryl Gordon’s face turned sour. “Very pretty. Skinny kid, though, and real wild. She always gave us a lot of trouble. She ran away.”

“Why don’t you have her photo in the album?”

Mrs. Gordon looked at her hands. Jake asked her again, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“How long have you been married?” Jake asked abruptly.

Mrs. Gordon stirred in her chair. “Thirty-one years.”

Jake looked surreptitiously at his watch. He had to do this before Gary got home.

“He ever hit you?”

Mrs. Gordon’s fingers went to her scarf again, and she looked like she was about to answer, but stopped herself.

“Did you ever try to stop him?”

Mrs. Gordon looked down, her thumbnails working against each other double time.

“Did he hurt you too, when you tried to stop him?”

Mrs. Gordon looked up, her small mouth trembling. “Natalie got it some of the worst,” she whispered. “She got to him like no one else did. If she had just stopped resisting, he would have quit on his own. If she had just stayed put, or—” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut. “He’s in the driveway.”

Jake cursed to himself, and saw through the window a red-faced man getting out of a minivan. Jake spoke urgently.

“Mrs. Gordon, this is critical. You let him ruin her life once. This is your chance to make it up to her. I need to have the information. Whatever it is you’re not telling me, I need to know it.”

Mrs. Gordon squirmed in her chair. Jake could hear Gary Gordon’s shoes crunching on the gravel walkway.

“I never understood why she lived with us. She had an uncle. He always came by to check on her, but he never took her home. I didn’t understand that. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.”

There was a key in the door. Jake held Cheryl Gordon’s eyes.

“What was his name?”

“Michael. Michael Young.” The front door swung open and in walked Gary Gordon, carrying a bag filled to the brim with cigarette cartons and liquor bottles. He stopped when he saw Jake; his eyes narrowed when he noticed the photo album.

“Gary, this is Jake Brooks,” said Cheryl Gordon.

“Mr. Gordon.” Jake stood. “I’m with Child Protective Services,” he said, hoping Mrs. Gordon would back up his lie. “We’re interviewing foster homes in the area to assess the educational assistance our foster children need. There is a national focus on matching academic mentors with our kids.”

Gary Gordon grunted, putting the grocery bag down by his feet.

“We’re hoping to highlight some of our families who’ve made a special effort to educate the kids. We think it will get new families involved.”

“We’re not interested in statistics,” said Gordon, his voice surprisingly high-pitched for his size.

Jake pressed on. “We’ve lost track of some of the children over the years. Do you remember Natalie St. Clair?”

Gordon turned on his wife. “What have you been talking about?” he bellowed. Cheryl Gordon cringed in her chair, her eyes averted.

“Hang on,” said Jake, trying to appease him. “I just got here. Your wife had only just gotten out the album. She wanted to wait until you got home.”

“Natalie St. Clair was real troubled. Real bad. She’s the type of girl that makes people stop fostering.”

Mrs. Gordon had dissolved into a fidgeting mound, her hands working overtime on her scarf and fingernails.

“Anything else you could tell me about her would be very use—”

“Nothing else to tell. It’s time for you to go.”

Jake decided not to push it. He thanked Mrs. Gordon for the tea, but she didn’t look up. Jake watched them for an exchange of information. There was none. But as he shut the door behind him, he heard the distinctive sound of skin slapping skin.

SIX LANES WIDE IN SOME PLACES AND SIXTEEN miles long, Wilshire Boulevard unfurled from downtown, in the east, all the way out to the Pacific Ocean, in the west. Its wealthy corridors shimmered in the sun, mirroring the glass high-rise buildings that lined it on both sides. The BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, and Jaguar coupes and convertibles cruised leisurely up and down the perpetually fresh-surfaced asphalt, gliding in and out of spaces between behemoth SUVs.

Kelly pushed an old Rent-A-Wreck Toyota Corolla that she leased for all cash through the traffic, adjusting to the peculiar rhythm of Los Angeles drivers. On the surface, they were unhurried and lazy, moving toward their various destinations just over the speed limit; then, all of a sudden, someone would cut off someone else, or a car would stop for a pedestrian, and a salvo of horn honking and gesturing would assault the driver. The undercurrent of pent-up hostility was notable for its surface calm, and Kelly observed that LA drivers
switched back and forth easily between the two roles. She watched a woman in a white Lincoln Navigator lean on her horn, apoplectic because the Volvo station wagon in front of her wouldn’t turn left at a red light. A few minutes later, the same woman brought two lanes of traffic to a halt as she herself stopped suddenly and waited for a parking place. As Kelly drove past, she saw the woman chatting amiably on her phone, sucking on a coffee cup, willfully oblivious to the horns and silent screams around her.

Kelly pulled onto a side street a block away from the Bensenhill Rolls-Royce showroom. Stepping out of the car, she caught her reflection in a store window. What she saw was a beautiful redhead, hair long and silky, wearing a black stretch Donna Karan dress and black sandals with high heels as sharp as steak knives.

The showroom was a glass-fronted building situated next door to an art deco—style theater. Inside, it was like an automotive museum. The air-conditioning was turned down to permafrost. The room was quiet but for the faintest drift of Vivaldi. The cars gleamed like hard candies—green, red, yellow, black—under precisely focused spotlights that picked out their salient and expensive features. Kelly’s heels clicked on the marble floor as she entered, then stopped as she scanned the room, purposely looking above the heads of the salesmen. They had not approached her but were appraising her out of the corners of their eyes, like a pride of lions that go perfectly still at the scent of prey, even as their ears prick with excitement.

Almost immediately, Kelly knew which man to choose. His brown hair was gelled into place, his Armani suit tailored perfectly both to reveal and to hide his weight-trained muscles. Kelly saw him searching out his own reflection in the mirrored walls of the showroom. This man was obviously obsessed with his image—camouflaging a severe case of self-loathing, no doubt. He could be swayed by flattery. Kelly smiled at him, her eyes scanning his physique
appreciatively. He assessed her from head to toe before throwing out a welcoming smile of his own.

“I’m Ali. See anything you like?” he asked, puffing his chest.

Kelly had seen his type again and again in Vegas. She pointed to an exquisite 1968 Corniche convertible.

“This one,” she said, smiling unctuously.

The salesman glided over to the Corniche, holding an arm out and selling all the way. He caressed the glossy pearl-colored metal, pausing at the hood, just above the headlight.

“There are only six of these beauties in the entire country,” breathed Ali. Kelly noticed the way he was touching the car with just his fingertips, as though stroking a woman’s breast.