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As the hours passed, Busy’s calls came more frequently. When Harry put her through to her voicemail, Busy's messages were short and clipped. She was pissed—a hint of an accent started to leak into her voice, and Harry pegged it for somewhere in southern Canada. A month of eating, sleeping, having sex, and just being together, and Harry had never asked where she was from originally. Was she really so callous?
She was showing Ash around the shelter when David walked up to greet them. His smile was wide and genuine; it was the least stressed Harry had ever seen him, and she almost thought he might have been a handsome man if he didn't have the soul sucked out of him each day by kids mostly too ungrateful to even say thanks for his incredible sacrifices.
"Wow," David said, pumping her hand and gawking at her like a child meeting an idol. "You look just like Lee. It's incredible. It is so nice to meet you Aisling."
"Call me Ash," she responded. She rubbed her palm with the tips of her fingers as their hands separated. She felt the clamminess, too, Harry realized, and wondered if it was something physiological, or if the man was simply wracked with nerves. Ash turned and directed their attention to a chipped mural on the wall that was meant to greet everyone who walked in, and as they walked toward it, Harry felt the rush of air at her side as Ash wiped her hands on her expensive, brand new cargo pants. "Tell me about that monstrosity."
David laughed out loud. It was the first time Harry had ever heard it, and she wondered how he had really felt about Lee Barsten. Probably more strongly than he let on. When she thought back on it, he had seemed distraught at the idea of Barsten's death, even as he claimed he hadn't seen her in years.
"Oh, well, it's several years old. I helped the other youth counselors at the time paint it as a sort of welcome home for the kids."
Ash looked on it disapprovingly. "Not much of a welcome now, is it?"
"I guess not," David said with a frown. Looking up, his mouth turned down, he looked more like the teenager he must have been than the man he was: disgruntled, gangly, and pock-marked.
Harry turned toward them. "Why don't we repaint it? Have the kids throw in some ideas, and let them help, if they want to." She turned back around to the faded mural. "Couldn't hurt. Might help."
David made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat. "I would, but my back isn't what it used to be. And, between the two of you and me, I'm a little afraid of heights."
"Not me," Ash and Harry said in unison.
"Well, then, I guess I could round up some of the kids and see if they have any ideas," David said. He sounded sick to his stomach, and Harry blamed it on his fear of heights. Maybe it was a fear for others, too.
"I'll buy the supplies, and I can probably get Ruby to come help. She loves kids," Ash said.
Harry glanced sidelong at Ash. Lee’s two remaining loved ones seemed to have gotten close over the weeks since her death; she wondered if Ruby saw Lee in Ash, or Ash in Lee. "So, today we make a plan, and tomorrow we all get into our grubbiest and get this thing done."
David tapped a pen on his clipboard. "I'm not sure how this is going to work. The youth here don't usually get along, and I can't imagine asking them to do manual labor is going to help."
"You would be surprised at what kids are willing to do to take their mind off their problems and make their surroundings better," Harry said. "When I was hanging out at a shelter as a kid, I volunteered for all kinds of projects. Fixing leaky sinks, collecting cans to cash in, sorting through donations... We helped all over the place, because it was better than sitting around and feeling sorry for ourselves. We were proud of our accomplishments, just like any other kid."
"Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit," David said. He still sounded uncertain. “I can’t imagine my friends and I doing something so selfless at that age.” He tapped his pen on the clipboard, lost in his thoughts. Harry wondered if he was thinking about a time when Lee Barsten and her friends, Sunny Galaviz and Josie Herrin, were still alive. David’s eyes narrowed.
"So, let's round them up. Have the ones who are here get the ones who aren't to come by. Even if they just have ideas, it will be better than nothing, and we might make this place a little brighter," Harry said.
David’s face stretched in a taut smile that made him look green around the gills. "Okay. Let's get started." He handed a sheet of paper off the clipboard and a pen to Harry. "I try to keep a list of the youth who show up." He handed a second sheet and pen to Ash. "They aren't all real names, but they're the names they gave, so it's something to start on."
As they went through their lists, trying to pin down who was currently at the shelter and who would be there soon, a pattern started to emerge that gave Harry pause. She tried to brush it off as coincidence, but as the fifth kid said the same thing, she stopped and gestured for Ash to meet her off the side near the front door.
"How many do you have that no one has heard from in a while?" she asked as soon as the two were out of earshot of any of the kids.
Ash gave her a surprised look. "You have the same thing?" She glanced down at her list. "I have six who are totally off the grid. No one has seen or heard from them in days, weeks, or sometimes months."
Harry glanced over at Ash's list, and let Ash see hers. "No one is on both lists. So there are at least eleven kids who vanished without saying goodbye to their friends."
"Maybe they just went home. You know, some of them are probably just runaways who didn't want to clean their rooms or do homework. I'm sure it seemed a whole lot sweeter at home once they realized how hard it was on the street, and they ran back home without a backward glance.”
Harry nodded. "Sure, you're probably right. But all of them?"
"Definitely not all of them. What are you thinking? Is there something awful going on here?" She winced, and Harry could see the dark thoughts cross over her eyes as they invaded her mind.
"Let me get a master list from David of everyone this shelter has served for the past year or so. I know a few kids who will talk to me, no bullshit, no dodging. Don't say anything to anyone yet," she cautioned. "I'm not sure what this is about, but we don't want to start some kind of panic if there’s a logical explanation.”
Ash nodded, and the two went their separate ways. Ash took both sheets back to talk to the kids who were lying down in the sleeping area, or eating in the cafeteria block. Harry went to David's office to ask for the master list.
David was curious about the need for the list, but Harry shrugged it off with not being able to get enough volunteers. She didn't know if something was happening to the kids at the shelter, but if there was an issue, she didn't know who she could trust. She thanked him and walked back out, almost running into Sanura as she passed. The counselor ran her fingers down Harry's arm as they stood in the cramped little hallway.
"Has David got you working hard, Detective?"
The burn in her pelvis started more quickly than the last time, and Harry had to concentrate on the papers in her hand to stop herself from asking this woman for her address.
"You don't have to call me that," Harry said in a voice strangled with need. "I was just getting a list to ask for volunteers from the kids. We're repainting the wall mural."
"That should cheer them up. With the holidays so close, a lot of them get sentimental; some of them go home, even if home isn't a healthy place to be." She licked her lips. Harry could feel her body radiating animal heat, and clenched the papers tightly in her hand. "Good luck with your mural."
"Thank you," Harry said as Sanura turned and walked into David's office. She closed the door behind her, and Harry let out a breath. She stood for a moment in the empty hallway trying to bring her pulse back down to normal before she walked back out to find Ash.
