CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

August 7th, 2015

3:45 P.M.

Las Vegas

 

LOTT PARKED HIS Cadillac SUV just down the block from the home that had taken Kirk Wampler after the accident and his father dying. Lott left the car running for a moment to keep the air conditioning pouring cool air over them. Outside the official temperature had climbed to over a hundred and seven. No telling what it was on this street.

Beside him Julia sighed, but said nothing. She clearly wasn’t looking forward to this any more than he was.

It seemed Kirk had gone into some treatment after the accident at a hospital for a few months before being released to this family. It was amazing any family would take him after his history and at fourteen.

The house was a sprawling, single-story brown stucco that needed some tender-loving care and a new coat of paint. The lawn was not only completely brown, but looked like it had gone to dirt years before. Two large green garbage cans sat near the closed garage door, both overflowing.

It didn’t look much different, actually, than the other houses along this street off the old Boulder Highway. This neighborhood had seen much better days, of that there was no doubt.

No trees or even small shrubs were around the house or any of the closest homes. The drapes in every home were pulled tight. One barren and lifeless place, that’s for sure.

Lott knew the look of this home. More than likely this family took the kids in the system just for the money. And they did just a good enough job with the kids to keep getting more. Any kid tossed into the foster care system never really got much of a break.

Kirk had vanished from all records after being with this family for just under a year. Lott hoped he and Julia might find some sort of trace of where he had gone.

“Ready?” Lott asked Julia glancing at her. The air conditioning was blowing slight wisps of hair back from her face and she had a very worried look.

“Is anyone ever ready for this kind of thing?” Julia asked, staring at the home they were going to visit.

“Never,” Lott said, smiling.

“Then let’s go,” she said, opening her door and climbing out.

He laughed and shut off the car and climbed out into the blast-furnace heat, moving to the front of the car to stand beside her. On the pavement like this, the temperature had to be well past one hundred and ten and climbing.

At a decent speed, they headed for the home’s front door. Both of them were armed and Lott had his badge ready as well to flash.

They banged on the front door since it was clear the remains of an old doorbell were long past working.

After fifteen extremely hot seconds waiting as the heat not only radiated from the porch, but off the side of the building, someone pulled the door open.

“Yeah,” the woman who answered said from the shadows. The smell of bacon hit them through a rough screen door as well as some hints of cooler air.

Lott flashed his badge, holding it up for the woman to see. “Detectives Lott and Rogers. Mrs. Mitchell, we would like to talk with you for a moment about a boy you once fostered by the name of Kirk Wampler.”

“You’re kidding, right?” the woman asked. Then she pushed the door open and indicated they should come in.

Inside the door was an entry area with empty hooks on the wall. Just beyond the entry was a big living room that looked to be an organized zone of clutter. Toys for small kids were scattered near a large wooden toy box, but not much distance from the box. A card table with a puzzle half put together was in front of a couch facing a large-screen television. And the entire place was dark and cool, something Lott very much appreciated at that moment.

Mitchell was a thin woman, not much taller than five feet, with gray hair pulled back into a bun of sorts, and an apron covering jeans and a dark blouse. From what Lott could find out from a quick call, she and her husband, a dentist, had been fostering kids for over twenty years and seemed to be good at what they did and clearly didn’t need the money from doing foster care even though their home looked like they did.

She had on flip-flops and far too much makeup. She didn’t indicate that they should sit down, so the three of them stood there on the scarred wooden entrance floor.

“Why you interested in Kirk after all this time?”

“His name came up in a cold case we were working on,” Julia said, giving the woman a smile. “Just trying to figure out what happened to Kirk after he left here. He seemed to have vanished from the system.”

Mitchell laughed, a sort of rough laugh that had no warmth at all to it.

“I suppose that case is about what happened to his dad and those poor girls in that mine, right?”

Lott nodded.

“It is,” Julia said.

“Poor kid never really got over that, even after a couple months with professional help,” Mitchell said.

Lott was surprised. Mitchell actually sounded sad.

“So what was he like?” Julia asked.

Mitchell shrugged. “Kept to himself, quiet, didn’t much like school. Real depressed. Not a damn thing my husband or I could do to change that and let me tell you, we tried. Near the end here the doctors from the hospital had him on some anti-depressants of some sort, but it did no good.”

“See any signs of other problems with him?” Lott asked.

Mitchell shook her head. “Stayed in his room all the time when not forced to come out and eat or go to school.”

“So you have any idea where he went after here?” Julia asked.

Mitchell kind of jerked back, then shook her head. “The doctors said they were going to keep it quiet, guess they did.”

Lott wasn’t liking the sound of this at all. “Keep what quiet?”

“Kirk killed himself,” Mitchell said.

Lott could see the hurt in her eyes. This woman actually did care for the kids she was trying to help.

“How did he do that?” Julia asked, her voice soft.

“He stepped out in front of an empty school bus. He’s buried beside his mom and dad up in the Palm Cemetery off the beltway.”

Lott felt like he was going to be sick. It was a school bus trip that had gone horribly wrong and killed his dad and those girls. And it had ended up killing Kirk as well.

They thanked Mitchell and apologized for bothering her and headed back out into the heat.

Their best lead was dead.

And now all Lott could ask himself was what next?