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“I didn’t do nothing—”
“You went to the shopping mall—”
“I was cleared!”
“You saw her last. Before she vanished off the face of the planet.”
“I was cleared—”
“Your wife’s family lined some pockets.”
“That little girl is with somebody else—”
“Pocket lining doesn’t clear shit. Death does.”
Desperation and vindication both: “I told her stupid fucking old man I had nothing to do with that little girl! I told him as soon as I turned my back some pervert must of took her! I didn’t even wanna go to the mall! Her old man was probably banging her out himself and then hired some junkie to shut her up! That’s why he asked me to take her to the mall instead of doing it himself! A set-up! He was always dog shit like that! It’s just that the people around him never knew! He hid it well!”
Francis. Like a scorned woman crying to the police about her boyfriend hitting her.
But his next words...those he says with contempt. And worse, honesty. Flat pulse honesty: “Fuck that girl and fuck her old man for pointing the finger at me.”
I let the last bit sink into the air.
“Her old man always points the finger at me.” Like a spoiled child.
“He pointed the finger at you, Francis, because you did it.”
“I didn’t do nothing—”
I strike his head and he collapses forward. S
ees stars. Hell, I can see them dance around in his eyes like old cartoons. He groans. Growls. Had enough. He rolls and leaps up. Teeth bared at me.
Unfortunately for him my left cross is just short of a freight train. I bury my fist into the crumpling structure of his mouth. His eyes roll back to white.
No time for unconsciousness.
My cigarette rubs a burnt ashen sore on his forehead. Francis wakes with a searing startle. I shake the sting of a good punch out of my hand and lift him up by the hair. I turn him to face a silhouette waiting in the shadows. His eyes adjust to the contrast of dark on darker. He sees what the shape makes out. Who the shape makes out. Recognition. Horror.
“This is how I see it played out, Francis,” I say. “The girl’s mother trusts you. And why not? She knows you. That is what you want. The girl’s dad knows better but he doesn’t tell his wife for obvious reasons. Something inside is hungry. I know the type. Maybe you’ve been starving it since the incident when you were a child.”
He looks to me. Wants to ask how I know but won’t. To ask how I know is to admit it’s real.
“Your brother told me, friend. But maybe you’ve been feeding that hunger all these years. Maybe after I gore you out, I could dig up your back yard and find a slew of four-foot tall skeletons still with some baby teeth lining their jaws.”
A single tear freshens his cheeks.
“But whatever that hunger is, you give in this time. You plan a nice day at the mall, just you and Alisha. Buy her a soda and a stuffed animal. Listen to the music in her laughter, you cast your smile down onto the little girl. Your next meal. You don’t take her home. You take her someplace else, do whatever it is you do, and stash her away for later use.
“Or you dumped her corpse.” I twist his hair until I feel clumps tear out from his scalp. More squealing. Thrashing.
“Of course you’re the prime suspect. No security videos, no eyewitnesses. Nothing to prove you didn’t do it. Your wife and her nouveau riche family bought your freedom. I checked. The D.A. owes your father-in-law a blow job or two for all the campaign money, the fund raisers. They release you on your own recognizance; shake down a few convicted child molesters to make everybody else feel good. Slowly loosen the squeeze on you. Just let it slip from memory. You get away scot-free.”
“No!” Clawing at my fingers as I tighten my grip.
“Yes. Too bad I got the case.”
The silhouette walks forward. An apparition appearing before us. The gray of the evening, the jejune bleakness of the situation paints the new man with its sad brush. Washed out, defeated and hollow. His eyes say it all: he just wants an end. No matter how ugly. Or truthful. He wants his little girl in whatever remaining condition she may be found.
