Swift Justice (12 page)

I nodded and twirled my finger near my temple.

“Yes, well, then you can understand why she might shy away from male-female relationships.”

“Did he abuse her?” I asked bluntly.

“Not as far as I know,” Van Hoose answered, a troubled look in his eyes. “But he forced religion on her, made her wear long skirts to school, wouldn’t let her attend dances or try out
for any sports team. The only thing he encouraged was her participation in 4-H, where she learned to sew and can and raise chickens. He had a husband all picked out for her, he told me the one time we met, when he came storming in to tell me not to fill her head with college nonsense or encourage her to fill out applications.”

“An arranged marriage?” My hand brushed Van Hoose’s as we both reached into the chip bag, and I drew back, apologizing.

He gave me a smile that said he didn’t mind. I’d originally guessed he was fiftyish, but the smile took off five years. “With some guy from their church congregation.”

I shuddered. “A legal form of white slavery. Poor Elizabeth. No wonder she ran. When did you last see her?”

He crumpled the empty chip bag and put it in his metal Batman lunch box. I’d had an identical box with She-Ra, Princess of Power, on the front when I was in middle school. “Before spring break last term, maybe late February? I’d guess it was April before the school realized she wasn’t coming back. Look, Ms. Swift—”

“Charlie.”

“And I’m Jack. I didn’t know Elizabeth all that well. She was a middling student who didn’t cause trouble, so I didn’t see much of her, especially after Sprouse showed up and made a ruckus about college. The person who might could tell you more is Linnea Fenn. They rode the same bus and ate lunch together more often than not.”

He jerked his head toward a thin girl with dyed black hair sprouting from several ponytails, two rings through her right eyebrow, and unremittingly black clothes, including fingerless
gloves. She was bent over a thick textbook, and I thought I saw the tip of a tattoo, something green, disappearing under her T-shirt from the base of her neck. She looked like an escapee from a Halloween store display or a Dracula convention. I raised my brows at Van Hoose.

“Tut-tut. Don’t let the threads fool you,” he said, humor glinting in his eyes. “Linnea’s going to end up first or second in her class and already has early acceptance to Stanford.” He stood, topping out at about five-ten. “Look, would you like to have dinner sometime?”

The invitation took me by surprise. I passed him my card. “Yes.” How long had it been since I’d been on a real date? Not since May.

“I’ll call you.” He pocketed the card. “My middle initial’s
R
—Raymond—if you want to Google me before we hook up.” His grin was blinding against his dark skin.

I watched him as he strode across the cafeteria, stopping to talk and laugh with one or two students on the way. His khaki shorts displayed strongly muscled legs, and I wondered if he skied.

Dragging my mind back to business, I approached Linnea Fenn as she stood and struggled into a backpack that looked like it weighed as much as she did. “Linnea? Mr. Van Hoose gave me your name, suggested I talk to you about Elizabeth Sprouse.” I introduced myself and held out my card.

She glanced at the card, then studied me for a moment from the corners of her kohl-rimmed eyes. “I’ve got AP Biology. I’m going to be late.” She shouldered past me.

I kept pace with her. “She had a baby, you know. I’m trying to find out who the father is, see if he wants custody.”

She stopped dead in the doorway leading to the hall, and a couple of boys with chains dragging down the waistbands of their jeans bumped into us. Cigarette smoke wafted off them as they pushed past. I ignored them, keeping my eyes fixed on Linnea’s pale face. Her eyes, an angry green, jumped to mine and she said, “They don’t have Olivia? You idiot.”

She muttered the last words and I got the impression she was talking to Elizabeth, not me. Her words gave me hope. “Who’s ‘they’? Do you know who the father is, Linnea?”

“I’m late.” With that, she merged into the mass of students roiling the halls. My crumpled card fell from her hand. I took a couple of steps after her, frustrated, but quickly realized this was not the time or place to pursue an interview. No, I’d have to find another time to speak to Ms. Linnea Fenn, some place off school grounds. As I made my way back to the car, idly watching a bunny graze on the pristine lawn of the Mormon temple just south of the high school, I decided now was as good a time as any to scope out Elizabeth’s apartment.

A hundred-dollar bill convinced the manager of the Shady Glen Apartments, a UCCS graduate student named Truman eking out his scholarship with a job that provided a free apartment, to let me into Lizzy Jones’s apartment. Skinny, six foot two, and with a mop of dark blond hair, he exuded an attitude so laid-back I was surprised he could stand upright. Slacker with a capital
S.

“The cops been and gone,” he said, plucking the benjamin from my hand. “I don’t see why you can’t take a look. Like, you could be a prospective renter, right?”

I’d rather live in a cardboard box under a bridge
, I thought, smelling a stopped-up toilet and years’ accumulation of mildew as we climbed the stairs to Lizzy’s third-floor apartment.
It would be cleaner . . . and quieter.
The metal steps rang under our feet, and a baby squawled from the floor above us.
The View
blared from a window on our right, dueling with a noisy game show from a wide-open door on the left.

“Did you know Lizzy Jones?” I asked Truman’s back as he climbed the stairs in front of me.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Well, yeah, sure. I took her rent money every month. She paid cash.”

“Did she ever have visitors that you noticed, a boyfriend, maybe?”

“I don’t notice much. It doesn’t pay, y’know?” He waggled his eyebrows at me as if we were in on some secret. “Besides, she didn’t really do it for me, if y’know what I mean.” He winked at me and shoved his master key into the lock of apartment 30B. “Kinda fat. She might’ve been cute if she knocked off a few pounds.”

“She was pregnant.” The anger I felt on Elizabeth’s behalf surprised me.

“Wow, I guess she looked pretty good for a chick with a bun in the oven.” He pushed the door open. “I’d better stay to make sure you don’t run off with anything,” he said with a belated touch of conscience as I stepped into the living room.

“Sure.” His presence wouldn’t hinder me.

The apartment was tiny, consisting of a kitchenette with a counter for eating, a living room big enough to hold a sofa, one easy chair, and a small television, and what I presumed was a bedroom and bathroom beyond. The mismatched furnishings
were garage sale rejects. The room showed signs of the cops’ search with couch cushions askew, drawers left open, and the carpet pulled up in one corner. I pulled on latex gloves and began methodically searching the room, not sure what I was looking for, but wanting to get more of a sense of Elizabeth.

Truman wandered into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and returned with a Coke. It gave a fizzy pop as he opened it. “Want one?”

I threw him a pointed look, and he said easily, “Hey, she’s not going to drink it. And I’m saving her next-of-kin the trouble of carting it away when they come to clear this place out. Did you say you worked for her mother? If she could empty this place by the weekend, I could have it re-rented by Monday. I’d get a bonus.”

“You must make your mom so proud.” In my midtwenties, which I figured he was, I’d been in the Air Force for eight years, served in a war zone, earned a BS in computer science and a commission as a second lieutenant, then been promoted to first lieutenant and captain. Ignoring him, I turned on the TV and saw it was set on the Cartoon Network. Something about that made me sad. I picked up the phone and dialed *69, noting the number that came up. I hung up; I’d call the number later, when I didn’t have an audience. Carefully avoiding the kid where he slouched against the doorjamb, I went through the kitchen: nothing but plastic utensils and dish towels in the drawers, spoiled milk and two more Cokes in the fridge, a hodgepodge of dishes and pots and pans, and a family of mice living under the sink. “Ugh!” I jumped back and pointed them out to Truman.

“Cool.” He sipped the Coke as he bent his gangly frame to watch the rodents scramble behind a box of dishwasher soap.

“Cool? Isn’t it part of your job to get rid of them?”

“How do I know they’re not Preble’s meadow jumping mice? They’re protected.” His sly smile said he’d put one over on me.

“How do you know they’re not carrying bubonic plague that’s going to infect all your renters and get you fired?” I shot back. I headed to the bedroom, leaving him trying to herd the mice into a dustpan he’d found in the gap between the fridge and the two-burner stove.

Bingo! A computer sat on the dresser in a corner of the bedroom. I headed straight to it and turned it on, my eyes taking in the room as it warmed up. A twin-sized bed with a rumpled blue bedspread I’d bet Elizabeth brought from home sat under a window that looked onto the parking lot. A pair of tennies peeked from under the bed, and a clothes hamper stood by the open closet. A pair of maternity jeans, a skirt with an elastic waist, and two blouses hung in the closet. A cracked ginger jar lamp and three books were stacked on the bedside table. The computer reclaimed my attention, and I pulled up Yahoo, wondering if the cops had gotten anything useful off the hard drive. It didn’t matter, because I had something they didn’t: Elizabeth’s e-mail address I’d gotten from Aurora Newcastle. With any luck Elizabeth had checked the box telling Yahoo to always remember her on this computer and I wouldn’t need to guess at passwords . . . yes! I forwarded all the e-mails in her
INBOX
and
SENT
folders to my e-mail address, listening to whap-whap noises from the kitchen as
Truman apparently tried to dispatch the mice with a broom or mop.

Nothing else on the computer looked interesting—she had no documents or photos stored there—so I turned my attention to the rest of the room and ransacked it quickly but neatly. As I riffled the leaves of the books on the bedside table, something fluttered out of the fifth Harry Potter. I bent to retrieve it and found myself looking at an ultrasound of a fetus. The black-and-white blobs and squiggles meant nothing to me, but tiny text on the bottom of the frame identified the patient as Elizabeth Sprouse and the date as 12 May of this year. Undoubtedly baby Olivia. Ultrasounds were expensive, and I wondered how Elizabeth, living on what she could make from sewing and without insurance, had afforded the prenatal scan.

Pocketing the photo, I checked the clothes in the closet and drawers—nothing—and flipped the lid up on the hamper. The smell of old sweat and something sweetly rotten made me hold my breath. There were no clothes, not even a lonely sock, in the hamper, but something caught my eye. Brownish streaks discolored the sides of the white wicker and spotted the bottom. Blood.

I drew my breath in with a hiss. The police must’ve taken the hamper’s contents for analyzing. Bloody clothes maybe. Had Elizabeth died in this room? My eyes swept it again, but I saw no signs of violence, no stains. Maybe she’d been killed elsewhere in the apartment—with a knife in the kitchen?—and the killer dumped the towels he’d used to clean up in the hamper. I darted into the tiny pink-tiled bathroom. No towels. Bingo.

“Help! No! Get off of me, you motherfu—”

I dashed into the hall in response to the yells, prepared to help Truman fend off whoever was attacking him. When I skidded into the kitchen, I didn’t see an attacker, only Truman swatting furiously at himself, his eyes wide with fear, his hair tousled.

“What—”

“Mouse! Get. It. Off meeee!” The last word swooped up into a shriek, and Truman gave a convulsive wiggle. A small mouse dropped from under the untucked tail of Truman’s shirt and scampered across the linoleum to squeeze into an impossibly narrow crack beneath the broom closet. Truman continued to shake, a frenetic belly dancer, and hit at his clothes as if they were on fire.

I was laughing so hard tears welled in my eyes. “It’s gone,” I gasped. When he didn’t respond, I yelled, “It’s
gone
.”

Slowly, Truman stopped dancing around. His shoulders twitched, and then he stood still, breathing like he’d run a marathon, face flushed, sweat beading his brow. He glared at me as I tried to stifle my laughter. Revenge of the rodents. It sounded like a straight-to-DVD movie.