THE SHOCK OF SEEING THE BOSS’S FACE LEFT LATISHA SHAKEN, and it took some time for her to be able to put the SUV back in gear and drive. But still, if the cops knew who he was, maybe that meant they were that much closer to catching him. When the phone rang again, Latisha expected it to be her mother.
“It’s my grandmother,” Garth said. “Somebody must have called her.” He took the call without putting the phone on speaker, leaving Latisha to listen in on only half of the conversation.
“Yes, it’s true,” he said, after being quiet for several moments. “I did get shot. They’re taking me to the hospital in Bisbee, but don’t worry. I’ll be all right. We managed to stop the bleeding.”
That statement was followed by another long silence. “They’re sending someone to pick you up and bring you to the hospital? That’s great. Okay, I’ll see you there, but one more thing—do you happen to have any more of yesterday’s meat loaf? You do? Great. If you could whip up a couple more of those sandwiches and bring them along to Bisbee, it would be terrific. I have someone here who thinks your meat-loaf sandwiches are manna from heaven.”
The thought of having another meat-loaf sandwich was enough to make Latisha smile, and she treated herself to another bite of the one she had.
“Okay, Grandma,” Garth continued. “See you there. And yes, I love you, too.”
Some distance ahead of them, Latisha caught sight of a plume of dust, rising skyward and speeding toward them. “Is that them?”
“Probably,” Garth said. “There’s a wide spot just ahead at the turnoff to Slaughter Ranch. Pull in there.”
Latisha was easing into the turnoff when another call came in. “Hello,” Garth answered. “Yes, Mrs. Richards, your daughter is right here, but she’s driving. As soon as she gets parked, I’ll put her on.”
When Latisha went to take the phone, her hands were trembling again. She knew what was coming and didn’t want to go through it—didn’t want to have to tell anybody else about what had happened to her, most especially her mother.
“Hello?”
“Latisha, Latisha, Latisha,” her mother sobbed into the phone. “Dear God, is it really you? When Lyle called to tell me, I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought I was dreaming—that I’d wake up, it wouldn’t be true, and you would still be gone. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Latisha wasn’t exactly hurt, but she wasn’t okay, either.
“I broke a tooth,” she said.
That broken, aching tooth was the least of it, but it was one thing—the only thing, really—that she could admit to right then, as long as she didn’t have to explain exactly how it had gotten broken. Would she ever get around to telling her mother and Lyle about having to eat kibble?
“Who’s the man there with you, the one who answered the phone?” her mother asked. “Is he like a boyfriend or something?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Latisha answered. “He’s a deputy sheriff, and he’s my friend.”
“Oh,” her mother said. “Trayvon always claimed that you ran away from him—that you took off with someone else. But where have you been all this time, Latisha? We’ve missed you so much. Why didn’t you ever call home? Why didn’t you contact us and let us know that you were okay?”
At the moment those questions remained unanswerable. What was Latisha supposed to say—that she hadn’t called home because she was being held prisoner, naked and chained to a wall, in some pervert’s basement? That she’d been beaten and starved? That her friends had all been murdered? That she wasn’t okay, not even close?
For years when she was a child, her mother had dodged Latisha’s insistent questions about whether or not the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus were real. Eventually Latisha had worked out the truth about those things for herself, and the same thing might need to happen here. For the time being, her mother would have to figure it out on her own, because Latisha was incapable of putting any of it into words.
“I couldn’t,” Latisha managed. “I just couldn’t.”
Her mother seemed to sense that she had pushed too hard, and she backed off. “The important thing is that you called today,” she declared. “Lyle’s probably on the phone making travel arrangements at this very moment. He says we’ll need to fly into Tucson, but with him coming from one place and me from another, I don’t know how long it will be before we see you.”
“Wait,” Latisha said. “Lyle’s not in St. Louis with you?”
“No, he’s down in New Orleans.”
“New Orleans!” Latisha repeated in dismay. “What’s he doing there?”
“Trying to get the goods on Trayvon Littlefield,” her mother said. “When we didn’t hear from you, we were so worried that Lyle and I drove down to New Orleans and filed a missing-persons report. When we tracked down Trayvon, he swore that you’d run away. We didn’t believe him, not for a minute. Lyle said he’d probably murdered you and dumped your body in a bayou somewhere.
“We tried telling the cops the same thing, but nothing came of it. After that we hired a private detective, but he didn’t get anywhere, either. So for the past three months, Lyle’s been working the case on his own, using his vacation time and days off to drive down to New Orleans and look around—talking to people, asking questions.”
Two approaching vehicles—an ambulance with flashing lights and a marked SUV with a sheriff’s-department logo on the door—ground to a halt beside them in a blinding cloud of dust.
“I’ve gotta go, Mom,” Latisha said hurriedly as people piled out of the other vehicles and hurried toward them. “Someone’s here. I can’t talk right now.”
“Please, don’t hang up on me,” her mother begged. “Is this your phone? Can I call you back at this number?”
How could Latisha explain that she no longer had a phone—that when she’d awakened in the bunk of the Boss’s truck those many months ago, her purse, her phone, and all her ID had disappeared?
Latisha looked at Garth for help. “She wants to know how to call me.”
“Tell her to contact the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “Have her ask for Chief Deputy Hadlock. He’ll be able to tell her how to reach you.”
“Did you get that, Mom?”
“Yes, Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. Got it.”
“Good-bye, Mom,” Latisha said. “I love you.”
Knowing that her mother would be even more worried if she heard that cops and an ambulance had just arrived, Latisha ended the call and returned the phone to Garth just as the first EMT tapped on his window. With a click of the lock button, the door swung open.
“Sir, are you Deputy Raymond?” the EMT asked.
Garth nodded.
“I understand you’re in need of some assistance. Let’s see about getting you out of there.”
Meanwhile a woman wearing a navy-blue pantsuit and holding up a badge was rapping noisily on the driver’s-side window. Latisha barely noticed. Overcome by what she’d just heard, she leaned into the steering wheel, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed.
The whole time she’d been locked in the basement—all those hours when she’d been sure that no one cared about her and that no one was bothering to look for her—none of that had been true, because her mother and Lyle had been out there spending time and money, frantically trying to find her.
In her mind’s eye, Latisha tried to imagine straight-arrow Lyle prowling the streets in Trayvon’s seedy, gang-infested neighborhood, looking for him and looking for her—for Latisha, for the stepdaughter who had given the poor man nothing but grief. Latisha wept about that—as ashamed as she was grateful.
By the time she regained her composure, the EMTs had Garth on a gurney and were loading him into the back of the ambulance. When the doors closed and the vehicle sped away, Latisha felt totally abandoned. The two of them had been through a terrible ordeal together, but in the course of those few desperate hours they had become friends. Latisha had already lost so much, and she was crushed to think that now she was losing him, too.
At last the woman outside, tired of knocking on the window, pulled open the door. “Excuse me, Ms. Marcum,” she said. “My name is Detective Howell. I’m here to take you to the hospital so the doctors can check you out.”
Wiping away her tears, Latisha started to hand over the car keys.
“Just leave them in the cup holder,” Detective Howell said. “A CSI team is on its way to investigate the shooting incident. They’ll be here in a few minutes, and they’ll pick up Deputy Raymond’s vehicle on the way.”
Latisha started to get out of the vehicle. As she did so, she spotted that very last bite of sandwich, still in the plastic bag. She paused long enough to eat it, because she knew she needed to.
After months of enforced inactivity and days of endless silence, the intense activity and emotional upheaval of the preceding hours had left her feeling drained and exhausted. Stepping out of the car, she could barely stand on her own. She wobbled and would have fallen if the lady cop hadn’t caught her and steadied her. Detective Howell led Latisha to the waiting SUV, helped her inside, and reached across to fasten the seat belt around her.
Spent and exhausted, Latisha leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. The detective probably had all kinds of questions to ask, but Latisha didn’t want to answer any more questions. It was one thing to tell Garth what had happened. He was a friend. From now on, though, she’d be talking to people who weren’t her friends—first to a bunch of strangers and finally to her family—and what she had to say to all of them were things nobody would want to hear.
Just then she remembered that first day in the basement and what Sandy and Sadie had done when the Boss had come downstairs to get her. They’d covered themselves with their blankets, lying there side by side as still as death, hoping he wouldn’t choose them.
Latisha no longer had her blanket, so she did the next-best thing. She sat with her eyes closed and her hands folded in front of her, pretending to be asleep. Once the vehicle started moving, though, and before they had traveled a full mile, she was no longer pretending.