She moistens her lips and takes a halting breath. “We all got together and decided something had to be done. Painting those words on the building where he works was my part. It was what I had to do.”
I struggle to stay calm on the outside. This is the break we’ve been waiting for. “What were the other parts, and who was supposed to do them?”
“I don’t know who was supposed to do what. I mean, it was all really secretive. I just know that the goal was to make it look like someone was warning him, and then he would disappear. The police would believe some vigilante took care of him.”
Oh hell. I hesitate, feel almost compelled to suggest we talk about her rights before going on. But I can’t. I have to know the rest. “Who else was involved?”
She looks to her husband. He is back at her bedside and has reached for her hand.
“All of us.” She bites her lip for a moment. “His victims.”
“Mario Sanchez?” I ask.
“Detective,” the husband interrupts before his wife can answer. “I think my wife has said all she needs to say without a lawyer present.”
“Thank you,” I say, rather than argue. I have what I need for now. “You’ve been more help than you realize.”
On the way out, I make the call for a surveillance detail on the Shelby home. Then I head home myself.
I won’t call Liv about this. Let her do what she must.
I have to find Hyatt and Reeves. With the two unreachable for so long, there’s no question in my mind that they have either taken Fanning or are his victims ... again.
Either way, this is not going to end well.
Twenty
The Child
By my next birthday, something new was happening to my body.
I decided I no longer disliked the boobs—that’s what he called them—I grew. My wide hips and long legs no longer made me mad. I noticed how other girls looked, and I decided I liked my look. I was no longer “the child” or an “it,” and I knew it.
No matter what he called me, I was a girl, a young woman.
This made me very happy. At least for a while. I don’t know when my real birthday is, but he chose one for me. May fifth. On May fifth of that year, I was fourteen, he told me.
We had started a different method for getting money. I was still very good at pickpocketing. But it was harder to get close to the unsuspecting old ladies and the distracted mothers. I had to work harder to grab a few bucks here and there. We never took credit cards. Too much risk of getting caught, he claimed, with all the authority of a man who had mooched off others his whole life. A lot of stores have cameras now, he told me. They could look back and see who used the credit card. So we stuck with cash rather than take the risk.
The new method of making money involved me pretending to be one of those girls who haunted the street corners. It was easy, really. All I had to do was flirt with the guy and lure him into the alley where hewas waiting. Sometimes I worried about how hard he hit the guys, but none of them died as far as I know. We didn’t have to worry about any one of them looking for us because we always went to another part of town or even to a nearby town. Never shit where you eat, he said.
One of the things I hated most about the changes to my body was when the blood came between my thighs. The first time, I thought I was dying. About the time I started to get used to it, it stopped. I was really, really glad.
I hoped it never came back. I didn’t tell him this. I didn’t like talking about it.
Then I started to get sick. I felt really bad all the time. If I ate, I puked it up. And I was so tired. He eyed me suspiciously, but he didn’t say why. I begged him to take me to the doctor, but he refused. He said I would live as if he knew all things.
Pretty soon the sickness passed and I felt better. Not tired anymore. We kept running the scam on the guys who wanted to buy me for a few hours of disgusting pleasure. Until my belly started to swell like I had swallowed a ball or something. That was when things went to hell for me. He screamed and ranted and kicked at me. I cried and cried, begged him to tell me what was wrong. Finally, he said I was pregnant. I was having a baby. But I shouldn’t be pregnant since I didn’t have a husband or a boyfriend. All I had was him. Then I realized he was the one who got me that way.
I had no idea how those things worked.
I stared at my belly. I had a baby growing inside me? He started to cuss and scream about the time he got drunk and forgot to use a condom. I didn’t completely understand, but I eventually figured out it had something to do with the stuff that came out of him when he was grunting and rutting into me.
The angrier he got, the more terrified I became. What were we going to do? How did I get it out? What did we do with it? At first he wouldn’t answer me. He just stared at me as if I was a pile of dog shit in his path. Then he told me he was going to fix it. Over the next fewdays, he forced me to drink nasty black medicine. When the only thing that accomplished was to make me shit myself to death, he punched me in the belly and beat me up worse than he ever had before.
That didn’t work, either.
My belly just kept growing.
