Year of the Monsoon (26 page)

“THE KIDS WENT ON
their field trip to the zoo this morning,” Maddie reminded Leisa over the phone as she and Nan waited impatiently for their plane to board. “The chaperones don’t know what happened. She was with them one minute then gone the next. They put out an alert and searched the entire zoo, but there was no sign of her.”

Leisa listened to this as she paced. She pressed her other hand to her eyes, and suddenly froze. “Alarcon.”

“What?”

“I never told you,” Leisa groaned. “At the cemetery, the day we buried the ashes, I saw someone I couldn’t place at first. Then I realized it was Alarcon. I forgot all about it until now.”

“He was shadowing us?” Maddie asked incredulously.

“He must have been.”

Leisa suddenly gasped. “That’s why she’s been afraid to go to school! She must have seen him hanging around there, too. You have to let the police know he’s the one who has her,” Leisa insisted anxiously.

Nan sat helplessly beside Leisa on a tense, nearly silent flight back to Baltimore, knowing there was nothing she could do or say to comfort her or to ease the guilt she felt. It was a feeling Nan knew from personal experience.

“How is this your fault?” Maddie had asked Nan several years ago when one of her clients had committed suicide. “You can’t be responsible for this. You couldn’t have known.”

“That’s just it,” Nan tried to explain. “It wasn’t anything he said, or threatened to do. It’s just that I ran into him downtown, coming out of a pawnshop that specializes in selling guns. I thought it was an odd place for him to be, and I meant to follow-up at our next session, but he cancelled and before I could call him to re-schedule, he had shot himself. If I had taken the time to put the pieces together, if I had made more of an effort and followed up… but I didn’t and now he’s dead.

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell Maddie about him,” Leisa kept muttering.

“The police at least know where to start looking now,” Nan tried to reassure her. “That’s more than they had before.”

It was almost eight p.m. when they landed at BWI. Maddie and Lyn were waiting for them. Lyn was driving their Explorer and Maddie was listening to someone on her cell phone as Nan and Leisa slid into the back seat. “All right,” Maddie was saying. “Let me know if you find anything.”

She turned around in her seat as she hung up. “Nothing yet.”

“But they know about Alarcon?” Leisa asked anxiously.

Maddie nodded. “They do. They don’t have a current address on him.” Seeing the look on Leisa’s face, she hastened to add, “But they’ve circulated his photo and Mariela’s to all their patrols and the local news stations. They’ll find him.”

“What are we going to do?” Leisa asked.

Maddie glanced quickly at Nan before saying emphatically, “‘We’ are not going to do anything. We’re going to let the police handle this.”

Nan reached for Leisa’s hand. “Maddie’s right. Let’s go home and wait.”

Lyn drove them to their house where she made a pot of decaf, lacing each cup liberally with a couple of shots of Kahlua. “This will help you relax and get some sleep tonight,” she said soothingly as Leisa paced anxiously.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until she’s safe,” Leisa fretted. “Why didn’t I listen more carefully to her? She had a reason for not wanting to leave St. Joseph’s. She knew he was out there. She knew how dangerous he was.”

“I’m more at fault than you are,” Maddie said miserably. “We all missed it.”

A few hours later, Nan called Maddie and Lyn in a panic. “She’s gone. I woke up, and she wasn’t here. I found a note that said she had to try and find Mariela. She said she’d call later. She’s not answering her cell. Where would she even start?” Nan asked in bewilderment.

Maddie thought for a minute. “The only place I can think of is the building where Mariela and her mother were living. I’d have to look it up in her file.” She mumbled something to Lyn that Nan couldn’t make out. “We’ll be by to get you in a few minutes.”

Together, the three of them drove to St. Joseph’s. There, lying open on Leisa’s desk was Mariela’s file. Maddie quickly found the original police report and wrote the address down.

“This is crazy,” Lyn muttered a short while later as they drove into a very bad section of downtown Baltimore. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

“Probably,” Maddie admitted, “but if Alarcon is here with Mariela, any sign of the police will make him take off.” She drove slowly, reading the street signs while Nan scanned the alleys for any signs of movement.

“Here’s Leisa’s car. This is it,” Maddie said, parking behind the Sentra in front of a run-down brick building that stood five stories high. She pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment.

They got out of the vehicle, quietly closing the doors. “We’re a bunch of lesbians, for crying out loud. Why didn’t we at least bring baseball bats?” Lyn asked nervously.

“Because we don’t play softball?” Nan reminded her.

“Let’s look around the outside first,” Maddie suggested. “See if we see any sign of Leisa or Mariela.”

Staying close together, the three of them walked down the alley that ran along one side of the building. There were several overflowing dumpsters and the equally strong odors of rotting trash and stale urine.

“This is disgusting,” Nan whispered.

“This is what Mariela came from,” Maddie replied, also whispering.

They all jumped at a rustling in the shadows near one of the dumpsters. Maddie aimed her flashlight in the direction of the sound. A homeless man sat up, peering at them with bleary eyes as he tried to shade his eyes from the harsh beam of light. Reaching into her pocket, Maddie pulled out a couple of bills and crouched near the man, lowering her flashlight.

“Have you seen a little Latina girl around here today?” she asked in a low voice.

The man squinted at her, then at the money in her hand. “There’s lots a them Mexicans lives here,” he said.

“This little girl used to live here, but hasn’t for a while. She may have come back here today, maybe with a Latino man.” She dangled the money, but didn’t offer it to him yet.

The man wiped a grimy hand across his eyes. “I seen ’em. I think she ran away from him, ’cause he was cussing in Mexican, lookin’ for her.” He chuckled. “He didn’t find her, though. That little chica knows how to hide.”

“Thanks,” Maddie said, holding the money out to him. As he reached for it, she yanked it out of reach again. “Is there a back way into this building?”

Scowling, he jerked his head to the left. “There’s a door to the basement down there. It’s s’posed to be locked, but the lock is broken.”

Maddie gave him the money and got to her feet. “Ready?” she asked, leading the way to the door the man had indicated.

Spying a broken pallet leaning against the wall, Nan tore a piece of two-by-four loose and, thus armed, followed Maddie and Lyn inside.

“Where is it?”

Leisa glared up at Pedro Alarcon who was pacing agitatedly, his hand spasmodically gripping and releasing the butt of the revolver tucked in the waist of his pants. She worked her jaw back and forth, trying to tell if it was broken. She could feel her lips swelling and taste the blood inside her mouth.

Alarcon was the only man Florida Gonzalez had been truly afraid of. Most other men were stupid, especially if she could get them drunk or hard. Then they only thought of one thing. Occasionally, one of them might hit her if he was a mean drunk, or couldn’t get off, but mostly, they were easy to manipulate. Not Alarcon.

He was never drunk or stoned. Florida had never seen him with one of the girls. He was always in control, and he was dangerous. One night, she had watched in horror as he slit the throat of one of the other girls, slowly, as if he was enjoying it. Calmly, he looked up at her as he wiped the bloody blade on the woman’s dress and Florida knew that he would do the same to her if she said a word. She warned Mariela, “Never let him see you. Hide when he’s here.” Now she would have said to Leisa, “Be careful what you say.”

“I asked you a question, bitch,” he said, standing over her as she sat on the floor of the empty apartment. He drew the revolver and aimed it at her.

She had no idea what he was talking about, but whatever it was, he wanted it badly. She didn’t think he was likely to shoot. She decided to stall. “Where’s Mariela?” she countered.

It was apparently the wrong question, as he responded by kicking at her viciously, catching her in the right flank. Gasping in pain, she tried to catch her breath, grateful she didn’t have a kidney on that side anymore because she was certain it would no longer function if she did.

“I know she told you where it is!” he shouted, sounding desperate. “Why else would you be here?”

Blinking rapidly, trying to clear her vision, Leisa managed to croak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mariela saw all of this while peering through a tiny crack in the door of her hiding place. A couple of years ago, she had discovered a sliding panel at the back of one of the closets in their apartment. It opened to reveal a kind of dumb waiter that was originally intended for moving tools and maintenance supplies from one floor to another. If there were clothes or boxes in the closet, it was nearly undetectable. When Mariela found it, it hadn’t been used in decades, but the well-greased pulleys were still operational. She discovered how to manipulate the pulley system to take her all the way down to the basement. This was how she got in and out of the building most of the time, especially when her mother had men in the apartment. She had remained silently crouching in the cramped space for the past several hours, since she’d managed to get away from the man who took her from the zoo.

She knew what he wanted. Her mama had given it to her the day before she died, saying, “Take this, Mariela, and give it to the
policía
. They will know what to do with it.”

Mariela had taken the bundle, but was too afraid to go to the police. The police had taken her mama away before, and she knew they would do the same with her. She had hidden the bundle on the top of the moving carriage instead. When she returned to the apartment late that night, her mama was still and wouldn’t wake. She was like that sometimes. But this time she didn’t wake up the next day or the day after that. Then the police did find her, and then Leisa came.

Silently, Mariela slid open the access panel above her, and cautiously reached up, feeling for the bundle. It was still where she’d left it. She was just about to pull it down, when she heard the sound of the basement door being opened four stories below her, as even quiet sounds were magnified if you were inside the shaft.

“Mariela?”

Startled, Mariela heard her name being whispered from below.

“Mariela, it’s Miss Maddie. If you’re here, let me help you.”

Mariela quickly peeked through the crack again. Leisa was on her side on the floor, and Mariela could hear the pacing footsteps of the man. She knew he could hurt Leisa because he used to hurt her mama. Carefully, she began pulling the ropes that moved the box down. She hoped the box would still move silently like it did before.

When she got to the basement, she slid open the door that closed off her carriage. There, she saw the beam of the flashlight, but couldn’t tell who was behind it. She knew better than to show herself if she wasn’t sure who was there.

“What floor did Mariela and her mother live on?” a voice whispered.

“I think the apartment number was 4C,” another voice whispered.

“I’m here,” Mariela said softly, scaring all three of the women.

The flashlight beam whipped through the darkness, illuminating her as she stood outside the dumb waiter. Maddie rushed over to her and dropped to her knees, hugging Mariela to her.

“Oh, honey, are you all right?” Maddie asked.

Mariela nodded. “He has Miss Leisa. She’s hurt.”

Maddie released her and held her at arm’s length. “Where?”

“Upstairs,” Mariela replied.

Maddie thought quickly. “Lyn, you need to go call the police. Lock yourself in the car until they come, and then bring them up to the fourth floor.” She looked at the dumb waiter. “Does this open directly into your apartment? Is that where Leisa is?”