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Temeke glanced at the gray skinned girl and picked up the letter.
I look around the house and I see her picture. I call her name and when she doesn’t answer it feels like a punch in the chest. I see the garage where my dad used to work, all his tools laid out as if he would come back any second and just pick them up again.
It scares me and it haunts me.
Then I go into my sister’s room, smell her clothes, sit on her bed and wait a while. I listen to the silence and to the wind outside and then I cry when I lie on her bed. I remember the last thing we did together, how the sun slanted across the room as we laughed, I remember exactly where she stood and how. What she wore. Her hair, the color of it and how long it was.
I pray I won’t wake up because of the pain. It hurts so much. My heart shudders a little. It’s breaking. Maybe enough to kill me. It’s the cloudy days that make it worse and the rain when it comes. So many tears. And when the sun comes out I feel a little better.
But she was happy. That’s the only thing that keeps the lump from my throat growing bigger and bigger. Both of us... were happy.
He didn’t know how to explain it, except to say that Lily had been kidnapped, kept in a basement, fed nothing more than left-overs through a grate in the door. Said she heard a solid beat that escalated now and again, a motor of some kind.
There were squeals of delight when Valerie saw her that Tuesday morning, hands brushing her cheeks, arms and whatever else she could feel. Parents always wanted to touch and smell, and they had questions... so many questions.
Lily lay in a hospital bed with an officer on duty outside. She was muttering about the color of days, some gray, some white, some red. Temeke didn’t know what she meant, couldn’t imagine the pain, didn’t want to fill her in with what had happened to Zarah Thai either. Her upper lip had been split open and her eye socket was a rare shade of blue.
“I can see a white metal bed and a window. I like the view,” she said.
“What can you see?” he asked, leaning in a little and smelling the scent of her.
“A lawn, the Pepper Pot, Alice...” She smiled and then frowned. “But it’s all a dream, isn’t it?”
Temeke knew she was remembering Los Poblanos, high stone walls, stone benches and secret paths in the Lion’s Mouth. She had been happy when Alice was there.
“Yes, it’s all a dream.”
She said she couldn’t remember how it happened, who had left her on the hard shoulder of Alameda bridge in the dark. But someone found her, one arm dangling over the parapet, fingers twitching from the cold. No shoes, no socks, no coat.
Lily said she saw the winding river and heard the rumble of a car. Said she ached all over, felt the pain in her chest, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink and her eyelids were swollen. One kind soul had stopped, parked a few feet from where she fell. She remembered because she was able to lift her head, saw him through strands of wet hair that clung to her cheeks. He kept asking for her name, gave her a coat and stayed with her until the ambulance came.
Temeke sat for a brief moment in silence, while Valerie Delgado fumbled with her purse, muttered something about how much better it would be if Temeke and Lily were alone. She walked out of the room, face lowered as if she was somehow ashamed.
She shouldn’t have been, thought Temeke. None of it was her fault.
“Mom outside?” Lily murmured.
“Yes,” he said. “Want me to fetch her?”
“In a little while.”
Lily shivered, asked for a cup of tea and turned her head toward the window at a light patter of rain against the glass. Said she didn’t dare fall asleep. She’d only dream if she did.
“You’re a little banged up, that’s all,” he said, walking toward the window and pulling the blinds down half way. “We’ll find the man who did this. You’ll see.”
Sad they couldn’t find the man who waited with Lily until the ambulance came. Temeke wondered if she was seeing things through the lens of terror and the slit of a black eye.
He studied her long and hard before he spoke, noticed the set of her mouth was sad. She had a certain presence he couldn’t define.
“Name’s Detective Temeke. I just want to ask a few questions if that’s OK?”
“The same guy who caught that Norwegian killer before Christmas?” She seemed to wait for him to nod. “It was all over the news. So you’re the big crime fighter they’re always talking about.”
“Who’s talking?”
“Everyone. All the school kids know you. All the boys want to be like you.”
For all his faults, Temeke had no idea he had a following. He often gave talks at schools, did roadshows at the mall with the K-9 unit and he was usually chased out without a smile.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“Tired.”
He sat down again, elbows on his thighs as he leaned forward a little. “I’m glad you’re home. I’m glad you’re OK.”
A nurse brought in a cup of tea and Lily seemed to take a cautious sip. Again there was silence, curiously pleasant this time and he was in no hurry to break it.
“You look different from the TV,” she said, and he caught her glancing at his right hand. There was no sign of a ring, or any visible indentation on the fourth finger. It was long gone now.
He turned on the micro-recorder he kept in his pocket and placed it on the overbed table. “Witness interview with Lily Delgado, Rust Hospital. Conversation begins...” he checked his watch, “at ten fifteen a.m. From the beginning, Lily, tell me what happened?”
She took another sip of hot tea, a steady blush creeping across her face as if she was suddenly self-conscious. “It was Friday afternoon when I went to get the mail. He drove up to the curb, asked me if I wanted to go for a walk.”
“Who asked you?”
“Paddy... Paddy Brody.”
“Where you expecting him?”
“No.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Lily squinted at a ray of sun that slipped under the blinds. “About two weeks ago.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the woods. We had a few smokes, talked. He asked if he could kiss me. I said no.”
“Why did you say no?”
“He’s dating someone, a friend from school.”
“Did he try to kiss you?”
“No, sir. Paddy wouldn’t do that.”
“He must like you a lot.”
“He always says so.”
Temeke saw the flicker of a smile at the corners of her mouth, the heavy lidded stare. He reminded himself he was a professional, a man hunter, always looking for a challenge. And here he was locked into two hazel eyes and he felt the irresistible need to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Were you drinking?” he asked. It would be no use lying about a few drinks. She couldn’t deceive him for a minute.
“Wine. I... I blacked out.”
“Fainted? Knocked out... what?”
Her eyes seemed to take in every detail, seemed to glide over his denim shirt, collar open to the second button and cuffs turned up beyond the wrist. Everything in the room went very quiet, the scent of fresh soap was very noticeable.
“Lily... Did you faint? Or were you knocked out?”
Lily blinked back the tears, as if she felt the shudder before the memory came. “I think it was the wine. There was something in the wine.”
“Take your time.”
“H-He was shouting at me.”
“Paddy?”
“No, someone else.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Dark. Everything went blurry, the kind of blurry when you know you’re in danger. I tried to calm him down, but he hit me. Then I knew it was real. I pleaded with him, but he was cussing, telling me to shut up. I don’t know what I must have said to make him so angry. I-I kept thinking, I don’t know where I am. I need help. The more I pleaded, the angrier he got. And then he dragged one finger across his throat, said he was going to kill me.”
Temeke felt like he was standing at the end of a very long tunnel which seemed to ease in and out with each breath. “You could see this in the dark.”
“Yes, the moon was light enough. I could taste blood. I thought my right eye was shattered.”
“When they brought you in, your eyes were a little swollen, and your hair was matted with leaves. But there wasn’t much blood. Just a few bruises and scrapes.”
“I went numb. I didn’t know what to do. Then he hit me again, wouldn’t stop. I told myself to let go, to just roll with it. So I played dead.”
“For how long? How long were you on the ground?”
She went quiet then, eyes appearing to trail the underside of his left arm. She was lost in a detached haze.
“Lily,” he said, a little firmer this time. “How long were you on the ground?”
Her eyes snapped back to his face and she gripped that plastic tea cup and gave it another chance. “When I woke up,” she said, trying to swallow, trying perhaps to get a grip on what it was she actually saw. “I could see stars, the moon. I thought I was lying in a grave. Buried alive.”
“You wouldn’t have been buried if you could see stars.”
It would have been darker than hell itself if she’d been covered in soil and there would be no room to move. He noticed something flicker across her face and he struggled with a wrenching feeling of uncertainty. “And then what happened?”
“I was blindfolded, taken along a track. Something stung my arm. I heard the sliding door of a van, woke up in the dark... a basement. It was really cold.”
“Do you have any enemies, an ex-boyfriend, someone who might want to harm you?”
“No.”
“Can you describe the basement?”
She said she couldn’t really, it was too dark to see anything except stone walls and candles.
“Was there anyone else with you?”
“No. I was alone.”
“Why would someone want to kidnap you, Lily?”
“Because of the curses.”
“What curses?”
She took a deep breath, brow furrowing as she began to explain it. “Alice found them in a book.”
“An Esoterica,” he said, growing increasingly more tired of the book.
“Yes... but we thought it was all a game, just make-believe.”
“Until Alice died.” He leaned back in his chair, found his eyes sliding down to her lips, but only for a second. “You’ve read it, haven’t you, Lily? A sisterhood of six.”
He summoned up the page from memory and the paragraph he knew by heart. “For it is said, the first woman to disobey shall be buried alive, the second shall have her limbs severed, the third shall be cast into a fire, the fourth shall be drowned, the fifth shall be poisoned and the sixth shall be starved of air. Do you remember how Alice died?”
Lily turned her head to the window again, mind drifting to somewhere he couldn’t go. And then they widened as she turned to look at him, the type of look a person gave when they were suddenly surer than they had ever been about anything.
“She cut herself.”
