Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel (22 page)

“Juan is going to kill me for sending our son away.”

“We can move you into a women’s shelter where you’ll be safe,” I told her. “I’ll have him arrested, but you’ll have to swear out a complaint and agree to testify against him.”

A horrified look filled Maya’s face. “No, no, no, he will kill me if I do that.”

“We can get an order of protection from a judge. You can’t let this man brutalize you and your son.”

Despite my pleadings, Maya was simply too scared. Juan had her under a controlling spell. I felt frustrated. I couldn’t help her if she didn’t want to help herself. Before she left, I wrote my home number on the back of a business card and gave it to her.

“Your husband has no reason to stop unless you get the police involved.”

After she was gone, I tried to focus on my work, but I was worried about her. I didn’t want a repeat of the Hitchins/Mary Margaret tragedy, so I called the police in Yonkers where Maya lived with Juan. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to develop a relationship with the Yonkers police chief and he wasn’t around, so I spoke to one of his deputies.

“There’s a woman in Yonkers, her name is Maya Lopez, and she’s the victim of domestic violence. Her husband beats her and I’m worried that he is going to seriously hurt her. She put their son on a flight to Puerto Rico this morning because the husband began beating him as well.”

“She swear out a complaint with your office?” he asked.

“We’re working on that. I’m calling to see if you could you have one of your officers swing by their apartment to check on her.”

“We don’t have enough manpower to do that. Especially not for a domestic. I don’t know how things are in White Plains, but in Yonkers, we can’t babysit every woman who gets backhanded by her husband.”

“Listen,” I said in an irked voice, “I’m not talking about someone being slapped. This guy may kill her.”

“Well, if you’re that damn worried, maybe you should drive down here and check on her yourself,” he said, hanging up.

I was restless all night. The next morning, Anne Marie hurried into my office. “It’s Maya,” she announced. “You won’t believe what he’s done to her!”

“Is she okay?” I asked, shooting up from my desk.

“She’s in our lobby. I’ll bring her into your office.”

Maya appeared with two black eyes and swollen lips. I was angry, but not horrified. I had seen much worse.

“Juan was angry because I sent our son away. He said I had no right to take his son. I showed him your card and told him he couldn’t treat me like a dog.”

“Good for you!”

She shook her head and said, “No, it was not good for me.”

Anne Marie said, “Maya, show Miss Fox what he did to you.”

There was more? I thought.

Maya pulled up her blouse, revealing a large strip of bloody gauze across her abdomen. She gingerly removed it. Just under her bra, her husband had carved his name—JUAN—with a paring knife. The red cuts were ugly jagged lines.

“Anne Marie’s taking you to a doctor right now,” I said. “And you’re going to a shelter. I’m having Juan arrested.”

“No, no. I shouldn’t have sent our boy away.”

“Bullshit! Maya, your husband beats you. He cut his name into your skin. We need you to go into a safe house before he harms you again. I’m getting him arrested.”

“But he’ll lose his job. How will we pay our bills?”

“I’ll get you help. This man doesn’t love you. Someone who loves you doesn’t cut his name into your flesh.”

“He gets jealous. But that’s because he does love me. Maybe you can talk to him first. Tell him to stop. Please, just talk to him first.”

It was the same rationalization I’d heard from Mary Margaret and a dozen other abused women. I told Anne Marie to take Maya to the emergency room and then to a Yonkers women’s shelter. The moment they were gone, I called the police. As I was dialing, I heard the sounds of a commotion coming from our lobby. I dashed out to see what was wrong and nearly collided with a huge Hispanic man who weighed at least 285 pounds and stood well over six feet tall.

“You the bitch who gave my wife this card?” he yelled, holding up the business card that I’d given Maya the day before.

“Juan Lopez?” I asked.

The fact that I didn’t appear intimidated surprised him.

“Stay away from my wife,” he said, poking a finger at my nose. “You’ve got no right to interfere between me and her. This is family!”

“Sir, I have every right to interfere when you beat your wife and cut your name into her abdomen. I can put you in jail right now for what you did to her, and if you ever touch her again, I’ll—”

Juan cut me off. “Look,” he hollered. He dropped both of his massive arms to his side and grabbed his untucked shirt, which he raised with his hands, exposing his fat belly. The word “MAYA” was carved into his skin.

“You don’t know nothing. I cut us because we love each other. This shit is family, not you.”

Lowering his shirt, he said, “No one tells me what I can and can’t do when it comes to my wife and kid. Stay the fuck out of my family’s business.”

“Mr. Lopez, I’m calling the police!”

He looked at me with menacing eyes and said, “You ain’t taking Maya from me. She’s mine!” He headed toward the exit as I raced back to my office phone.

One of our workers called the Yonkers shelter where Anne Marie was taking Maya.

“Maya’s not here,” the shelter’s director said. “She left a few minutes after Anne Marie dropped her off. She was too scared to stay.”

No one knew where Maya had gone, but I suspected it was back to be with her abusive husband. That was the last place she should go.

I telephoned O’Brien. “Please call someone you know at the Yonkers P.D.,” I pleaded. “I want Juan arrested, but they aren’t taking me seriously.”

A half hour later, O’Brien called back. A Yonkers policeman had stopped at the apartment that the Lopezes rented but no one had answered.

It was late when I got home that night, and Wilbur made it clear when I brought him inside the kitchen that he didn’t like waiting for his dinner. I generally fixed something for both of us at the same time. If you think dogs can be persistent beggars, you’ve never had a pot-bellied pig at your feet.

I was putting the final touches on my pasta salad and Wilbur’s bowl of apples and pig pellets when I heard the sound of breaking glass and car tires squealing. I stopped what I was doing and quietly moved to the front of the house. Nothing seemed amiss until I noticed slivers of glass sprinkled across my hardwood floor beneath my front window. I walked closer for a better look, and what I saw made me instantly drop to the floor.

There was a bullet hole in the front window about the size of my pinkie. Someone had shot into my house, and for all that I knew, the car I’d heard squealing away had left the shooter lurking outside.

Keeping low, I pulled the drapes and duck-walked to a light switch. I turned off the light in the room, making it completely dark. Rising next to a window, I peeked outside. I didn’t see anything suspicious.

Suddenly, I remembered I hadn’t locked my front door, so I immediately crawled to it and threw the dead bolt. That’s when I remembered that I’d brought in Wilbur through the back door and not dead bolted it, either. Wilbur looked up from his bowl as I rushed past him in the kitchen. For the first time since I’d gotten him, I thought about how a Doberman might have been a better choice.

I didn’t own a handgun. I didn’t even have a baseball bat in the house. The only weapon close was a knife. Wilbur gave me a nervous glance and grunted when I grabbed it.

I dialed the police and waited with the knife in my hand while Wilbur happily gobbled his dinner. A uniformed officer arrived within minutes, followed by O’Brien. The detective looked at the bullet hole in the window and followed the trajectory to my dining room wall where the slug was embedded.

“I’ll have forensics dig it out,” he explained.

“I’m sure glad I was in the kitchen.”

O’Brien noticed Wilbur. “What’s a pig doing in your kitchen?”

“Wilbur is my pet.”

“Fox, you’re one kooky broad. Don’t you know, you eat pigs, not feed them.”

Obviously, O’Brien and Wilbur were not going to become pals.

“Any idea who took a shot at you?” O’Brien asked.

“I think it was Juan Lopez.”

“The guy from Yonkers who likes to cut names in his wife’s belly?”

“And also his own belly.”

“I’ll station an officer outside your house tonight.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not spending the night here. I’m going to my mom’s.”

“How about the pig?” O’Brien asked. He glanced at Wilbur and went “Oink, oink.”

Wilbur grunted and walked past O’Brien to his bed for a nap.

“You need to get yourself a handgun,” O’Brien said. “I should have insisted on it after Hitchins murdered Mary Margaret.”

“How do you know I don’t already have one?”

“If you had one, you’d still be carrying it or it would be on your coffee table or in the kitchen. I saw a knife next to the sink. That’s what you grabbed, am I right?”

“Yes, Detective.”

“Let me ask you something, Counselor. You ever cut up a chicken?”

“Of course I’ve cut chicken.”

“Then you know what it’s like to cut through meat and bones. You really think you got it in you to stick a knife into a man and feel that blade cutting through the flesh and muscles, ripping into his organs and hitting his bones? Knives are personal.”

The thought of it turned my stomach.

“We’re going to get you a gun,” he continued. “Pulling a trigger is easy. Besides, chances are Juan Lopez would have taken that knife away from you and carved something on your belly.”

I couldn’t tell if he was trying to scare me or was just being honest.

“Get your stuff together,” O’Brien said. “I’ll have an officer drive you over to your mom’s.”

“What about my car?”

“Leave it. That way if the shooter comes back, he’ll think you’re here. I’m going to have an officer watch your place. Besides, someone needs to guard that pig.”

He chuckled but I don’t think Wilbur found it funny.

I dumped most of my salad into Wilbur’s bowl and took it and him out to his pen while O’Brien stood watch. After collecting a few personal items, I was ready to leave for Mom’s. The patrolman driving me had gone only a few blocks when the radio in his squad car cracked with O’Brien’s voice.

“Change of plans. I just got a call from Yonkers. I need you to drive Miss Fox to this address. I’m heading there now.” He gave the officer instructions. We took the Cross Westchester Expressway to the Saw Mill Parkway and didn’t speak the entire twenty-five-minute drive. I spied O’Brien’s unmarked car parked next to two Yonkers cop cars on Hamilton Avenue. An officer from the Yonkers fourth precinct was standing guard on the front stoop of a row house that had been converted into apartments. He yelled inside an open door of a ground-level apartment to O’Brien, announcing my arrival.

“You found Maya?” I asked, rushing to the entrance.

“Yes, but there’s no sign of Juan.”

O’Brien was standing in the doorway, blocking my path.

“Well, let me talk to her,” I said impatiently.

“Dani. She’s dead. He killed her.”

“She’s dead?”

I felt like I was caught in a recurring nightmare, only this time the victim was not named Mary Margaret. How could this be happening again?

“I want to see her.”

O’Brien bit down hard on the toothpick in his mouth. “Not sure that’s a great idea, Counselor.”

“Where’s her body?”

O’Brien stepped out of my way so I could enter the tiny apartment’s living room, where a Yonkers officer was writing on a notepad.

“The woman,” I said, “where is she?” He glanced at me and then at O’Brien, who said, “It’s okay, she’s a lady assistant D.A.”

The Yonkers officer pointed toward the kitchen.

O’Brien said, “Dani, you really don’t need to see this. He stuffed her in the oven.”

I froze.

“He shot her first,” O’Brien said, walking up next to me. “So she probably was dead when he turned it on.” I knew he was sugarcoating it. Something in my gut told me that Juan had put her in that oven while she was still alive. He wanted to punish her, to torture her for disobeying him.

I walked into the efficiency kitchen and was hit by a putrid smell that caused me to gag. The oven door was open. Thankfully she was not inside. The medical examiner had put Maya’s body on a stretcher under a white cover. The outline showed that she was still in a cramped position.

“I want to look at her. I want to see what that bastard did.”

“Why?” O’Brien asked.

“Because if I ever have a moment of weakness when I might feel sorry for one of these sick sons of bitches, I want to remember Maya and what she looked like.”

O’Brien didn’t react. “Show me!” I said.

He lifted the sheet.