A Voice from the Field (6 page)

She needs you, Tia. Go to her.

Tia shut off her mind. Ignoring the shot glass, she raised the bottle to her lips and swallowed hard, twice. Her chest burned. Her thoughts looped in crazy circles and she laid her head back against the chair. Her friendship with Sawyer was a distant memory. And it didn't make any sense that a man like Connor Anderson could ever really care for her. There was no one to turn to. No one to confide in. Tia closed her eyes, consumed by the feeling she was utterly and completely alone.

 

FIVE

She woke in darkness. The humid air had grown cool and come alive with Wisconsin night sounds. Connor's truck still sat parked in the same spot. She heard Ringo's steady breath and saw his outline in the darkness. The dog had picked her after all. At first Tia couldn't move; it felt like her body had fused to the wood of the chair. She finally pulled herself to her feet with some effort, repeated explosions detonating just under the surface of her skull and growing louder when the empty tequila bottle fell from her lap and clattered on the porch. Ringo, no doubt fighting his own aches and pains, jumped halfway to his feet with a low growl.

Without warning her stomach did a complete 360. Tia grabbed the wooden bannister with both hands and leaned out just in time to retch up a gallon of tequila, beer, and prescription meds, all of it clearing the porch railing by a foot. The smell, along with the putrid taste in her mouth, nearly brought on round two. She turned her head away, drew a deep breath of clean air through her nostrils, and closed her eyes, concentrating on not vomiting again. The moment passed. She straightened up a bit, still swaying, and stared into the darkened field. In her present condition she could barely see the outline.

Three hundred and seventy-two steps,
she thought.
Give or take a few, depending on how messed up I really am.

Tia looked down at the porch steps as if staring into the abyss. Her first step landed with the wobbly thump of a drunk. Eventually she made it to the driveway, where she paused to gather strength, bending over and resting her forehead on the cool metal of the hood of Connor's truck. After a moment, she headed down the worn path, the grass soft and cool against her bare feet, homing in on the silver shell reflecting the moonlight. Even in her current state she walked along the path with a growing confidence brought on by childhood familiarity. She arrived at the thin metal door and pushed it open. She stepped inside and didn't fight the sense of being transported back in time.

The space was cramped but comfortable. She breathed in the familiar smell of refried beans mixed with her father's pipe tobacco. A worn couch and chair were turned toward a floor-model RCA console television that she remembered was heavy enough to double as the anchor for a naval ship. The black-and-white television took up a third of the room and the rabbit-ear antenna was still perfectly positioned to pick up the Univision broadcast out of Chicago.

Tia headed down the short hall, passing the closet-sized room that had served for twenty years as her parents' master suite. She walked into her bedroom, even smaller than the other. Brad Paisley stared down from one wall and the Dixie Chicks, still together, from another. She collapsed onto the single bed, amazed that somehow the sheets, which had spent hundreds of collective hours on the clothesline, still smelled of sunlight.

She lay there in a semi-conscious stupor, remembering. This place. This room. Looking back, she had grown to realize just how poor her family had been, but it didn't matter. As a child, Tia figured she had it all. After spending the first five years of her life traveling from one migrant camp to the next, her family had landed here. They had lived on this farm for nearly fifteen years in a tin trailer that was less than four hundred square feet. To Tia, it had been a palace. A home filled with the unconditional love of her parents, not to mention running water and electricity.

Right now, she wanted desperately to feel connected to that life. The simplicity and warmth. The
sanity
of it. Tia lay still, closing her eyes, trying to conjure up that love, those old feelings and images. Anything to help restore the life she had known.

A light weight settled onto the mattress alongside her. A small body nuzzled in close. Tia's mind screamed at her to ignore it, that it wasn't real, but it was too late. Reluctantly, Tia turned to look, knowing who was there. As expected, she saw a childish face, brown eyes filled with love and affection. The little girl's hair smelled like lavender. When she spoke, her voice was lyrical.

Hola, Tia.

Try as she might to resist, Tia found herself pouring her soul into the moment, into this bond with another person like nothing she'd experienced with anyone else. Not with Connor, not with Ben, not with her own parents. She tried to hold back, reminding herself that crazy people hear voices and see people who aren't there, not cops.

“No,” Tia said out loud, shaking her head, fighting the hallucination. Fear crept over her, making her feel sluggish, her limbs weighted down. She knew the vividness of the moment caused the terror. Staring at the girl lying next to her, Tia rejected the evidence of her own eyes.

“I am alone,” she told herself. “You're not real. You can't stay here. You need to leave me alone.”

The child's reply seemed to be coming from outside her mind, as if a real person were whispering in Tia's ear.
Usted no está
solo, Tia. Alguna vez.

Tia shook her head, refusing the magic. The young face faded and grew older. The eyes went from joyful and innocent to terrified, the lashes caked in red mascara. Disembodied hands swam out of the darkness to slap duct tape over the now-mature mouth. An unseen force jerked the girl off the bed and she disappeared into a swirl of black. Tia heard the teenager's body thud against the floor, heard her muffled screams. Unable to move, pinned in place by fear and alcohol, Tia felt her mind was filled with the child's voice, shouting,
Ándale, Tia.
Ándale!

Tia buried her head in the pillow. She could still hear the sound of a body being dragged down the hall, the front door swinging open and banging against the aluminum siding. Finally the young woman's desperate cries faded into the distance. Tia had her hands clamped over her ears, but she still heard every strangled shout.

Is she real now? Do I go after her? What if none of it is real?

All the liquor and prescription dope in Wisconsin wasn't going to drown out the most terrifying thought:
What if I really am losing my mind?

 

SIX

In the Milwaukee County Jail interrogation room, Tia sat, drumming her fingers on the wood tabletop as her knee bounced out a nervous cadence underneath. Her head throbbed and her tongue was thick in her mouth, like a crumpled sheet of 80 grit sandpaper. She felt like hell, but she pushed all that aside. Someone had to do something. For her, it was a simple fact: the girl in the van was real. She was part of this world, not a ghost, a memory, or some netherworld image.

The girl in the van needed help. She needed a cop.

The cube-like room where Tia waited was nothing more than four gray cement walls with a matching floor and twelve-foot ceiling. Two handle-less doors were cut flush into opposite sides of the room and could only be opened from the outside. A swaying lamp hung from a cable overhead, caught up in the draft of a wall fan that did nothing to lower the stifling heat. The light was intense and the furnishing sparse. It was a place that left Tia feeling exposed.

That's the whole idea,
she thought.
Makes the lies easier to see.
Tia wondered what else might be visible: The paralyzing fear that followed her everywhere these days? Her desperation?

A warning light flashed in some hazy but still-sensible part of her alcohol-sodden brain.
Leave. No one would ever know. Just bang on the exit door and get the hell out of here. Chalk the trip up as the ultimate boneheaded idea, a narrowly averted disaster.

She heard the sound of heavy footsteps accompanied by the jangle of chain. Her adrenaline kicked into high gear. Tia got to her feet at the exact moment the door leading to the cells swung open and a massive figure filled the doorway.
Too late.

Game on.

Tia stretched to her entire five feet four inches and did her best to don the mask of power and authority. She tried to make it seem as if she had stood up to establish control, reminding him that she was a cop. A glance at the newcomer told her she had failed.
This guy reads fear for a living,
she thought. He was a cheetah to her tommy gazelle, and as he looked at her his expression went from stoic to predatorily amused.

“Well, I'll be damned. Lookie here. We gonna finish our little business transaction?”

Tia kept her response short and simple, hoping to keep the quiver from her voice. “Sit down, Kane.”

She hadn't seen Gunther Kane since the night he'd been arrested, and he was even bigger and more repulsive than she remembered. The tight-fitting, triple-XL orange jailhouse jumpsuit, soaked in sweat, was open across his chest, the short sleeves hiding almost nothing of his massive arms, which were covered in tattoos. The mere sight of him reminded her of his weight on her, pressing her into the pavement.
He owned you,
she thought.
If the other cops hadn't arrived when they did, you were done.
She felt the air run out of her body.

Kane stepped into the room, towing a jail guard a third his size. His hands were cuffed in front of his body. A two-foot-long chain leash attached to a thick leather belt that dug in tight around his waist connected him to the guard, who held the leash with the confidence of a toddler walking a pit bull. With a glance, Kane communicated his intent to stand, and the little corrections officer looked away, avoiding eye contact. Kane turned back to Tia.

“We got nothing to talk to about. Maybe you ain't heard. My lawyer worked it out. I'm outta here as soon as these dumb-ass turnkeys figure out the paperwork.”

“That's right,” Tia said in a tone she knew lacked conviction. “Your case is settled, so we can talk. Now, I said, sit your ass down.”

Kane looked down from his towering vantage point and took her all in. Tia was pretty sure that included her heart slamming against her sternum. Her knees went weak as Kane licked his lips. He grabbed at the leash and tugged to get some slack, then moved over to the wooden chair on his side of the table, pulling his guard along. He flipped the chair around backward, threw a leg over, and lowered himself onto the seat, never taking his eyes off Tia. The cracking sound of the wood as it took his weight echoed off the close walls, but somehow the chair remained in one piece. Kane leaned forward so the chair back covered his chest like a breastplate, his arms and cuffed hands hanging over the top.

It had been dark during their first encounter and she hadn't seen the details of his prison ink. The shamrock of the Aryan Brotherhood stood out on one fully tattooed forearm, and the words “Trust No Bitch” were stenciled in green on the other. Once again he flashed that shit-eating grin.

“Fine. I'll sit here with ya. Don't mind me if I gawk a bit. Still got a couple more lonely nights to get through before I walk outta here.” He made it obvious he was running his eyes over her body. “This is gonna help.”

Tia dropped into her chair and returned his stare. Somehow she managed to calm her nerves enough to hold his gaze and speak in a steady voice. “I got a deal for you, Kane. It might even be better than the one you must've made with the prosecutor.”

“Is that right?” Kane leaned in close, his face less than two feet from hers, his breath smelling of jail food and pruno. A thousand beads of sweat glistened off his enormous head, where Tia could also see the red stubble of four days' growth. “Well, the part of me that ain't dreaming about ass fuckin' you right now is all ears. So let me hear it.”

“The girl. Tell me where I can find her. I'll go pick her up. Then, you walk out of here in a few days and never have to deal with me again.”

Kane stared ahead, the grin still plastered on his face. With just the slightest movement of his head, he turned his eyes to the corner of the ceiling. “I've already been over that with the lawyers. I don't know what girl you're talking about.”

“Forget the camera. Just listen. You make it happen and I leave you alone. Otherwise, I'll be in your shit from now until the time I lock you away. And that'll be for a lot more than ten days.”

He looked at the tabletop and laughed under his breath for several seconds.

“You're Suarez, right?” Kane sat back, shifted his manacled hands into his lap, and gave his crotch a long rub. “That's bold talk for a split-tail cop. Especially one who's been through as much bullshit as you have.”

Tia stuck to her guns. “Like I said, Kane. Produce the girl and you walk away. Otherwise, we're just getting started.”

“Fine by me. Like I said, we got unfinished business. I oughta be out in two days. You be sure to come find me.”

Fear gave way to anger and Tia let it fuel her. “It won't go like that, Kane. First thing I'm going to do is plant a few seeds of doubt out there in Aryan Nation. Get your ass-bag associates to wondering just how it is you cut yourself such a good deal.”

For the first time a look of uncertainty crossed Kane's face and his smile faltered. Tia let it sink in.

“Fact is, I've been wondering that myself. You attack a cop, you got a pretty good rap sheet with a prison prior, and you walk with a misdemeanor? Makes me wonder what you gave up for that?” Tia paused. “Or maybe it's
who
you gave up.”

“Bullshit.” For the first time Kane lost his cool. “I didn't give up nothin'. I got no problem doing time for kicking the shit out of cops. Even little dyke cops like you. That builds a lot of cred in my world.”