Beg for Mercy (6 page)
“You’re not the one who will land her ass back in a group home if we’re busted.”
Amber shrugged. “So do you want to stay here, or what?”
Devany flopped down next to her. Skeeter followed, curling next to Devany, his chin resting on her denim-clad knee.
“This is the longest I’ve lived anywhere, and my aunt’s not so bad.” Really, she didn’t want to think about what ld happen when her mom was released from her latest stint in court-mandated rehab.
She drained her beer and started on another. A mellow glow spread through her limbs and loosened her tongue. “Doesn’t matter. I know my mom will try to get me back, which wouldn’t be so bad if she could just stay clean.” The first time her mom had gone to jail for meth possession, Devany had been eight. At the time, she’d believed her mom’s vows that she loved her and would get clean for her sake. Devany would be in foster care for only a little while, Janna Sinclair promised.
Once I get out, we’ll be a family again.
That had been six years, four arrests, and ten moves ago.
“I’ll probably have to go live with her, until she fucks up again.” Which was a given. For all the turmoil in Devany’s life, her mother’s talent for fucking up was pretty much the only thing she could count on.
“But if your aunt decides to fight it…” Amber let the rest trail off.
Devany shrugged. Truthfully, she didn’t expect Aunt Kathy to put up much of a fight. She suspected her aunt’s generosity had more to do with the county’s subsidy check than anything. She didn’t expect Kathy Davis to go to the trouble of taking the matter to family court, that was
for sure. “Maybe they’ll remember that last time I went to live with Mom, she moved us in with a registered sex offender.” Devany had been twelve and had taken off after the guy had cornered her in the bathroom and tried to shove his hands down her pants. She’d hit him with a faceful of Aqua Net and a knee to the balls, but she knew not to press her luck and had headed for the streets. She’d managed a month before she got picked up for shoplifting and sent to another group home.
Maybe Megan will help me,
she thought.
Ha! Like there’s really anything she can do.
Megan was a volunteer advocate, not a miracle worker. Not even a judge or a social worker. Still, Devany felt a tiny pinch of guilt as she took another swig of her beer.
Just stay straight and keep yourself out of trouble. That’s the best thing you can do to make sure you get to stay with your aunt.
Right. Like a drafty double-wide in a crappy part of town was such paradise. And no matter how good she was, she knew her aunt would off-load her the first chance she got.
Still, she declined when Amber offered her a couple Oxys she’d taken from her mom’s medicine cabinet. “Why are we talking about all this shit anyway? It’s stupid. Whatever. I don’t want to talk about my stupid mom anymore.”
She grabbed the remote off the coffee table and cranked up the TV. She and Amber spent the next two hours working their way through a six-pack.
Devany wandered back to the kitchenette for a snack and swore as she caught the display on the microwave. “Shit, Amber, it’s ten-fifteen already. Aunt Kathy will be
home by eleven.” She didn’t need to spell out what would happen.
Amber scrambled up from the couch. “I’ll be right back—I just have to go out to my car.” She yanked on her fleece-lined boots and flung open the trailer’s scree/for.
“Watch out for—” Devany called, but it was too late. Skeeter had seen an opportunity and seized it, his little body nothing but a brown and white streak as he hurled himself through the crack in the door.
“He’ll come back, won’t he?” Amber asked. “He always does.”
“Yeah, but last time he got into Dreesen’s rabbit hutch and almost killed one of them. He said if he catches Skeeter again, he’s going to snap his neck.”
Neither girl questioned that their half-crazed Vietnam vet neighbor was serious.
“Shit. I’ll get the beer—you get the dog. Meet you back here.”
Devany nodded, pulling on her sneakers and following Amber outside. Amber went right, down two trailers to her car, and Devany cut left and over two rows. She called Skeeter’s name in a soft voice, punctuating her calls with an occasional whistle. Cold, damp air haloed the weak outdoor lights spaced regularly on poles throughout the park. Devany could see the silvery clouds of her breath, but her fleece hoodie and fast jog staved off the chill of late fall.
She slowed to a walk in front of Dreesen’s double-wide. “Skeeter,” she said in a high whisper, “come on, boy.” Nothing. She called his name again, a little louder this time, casting a wary look around to make sure she
hadn’t attracted anyone’s attention. Devany had lived in worse neighborhoods, but Redwood Acres had more than its share of scumbags and lowlifes. It was not a place Devany wanted to be wandering alone after dark.
She heard a sharp bark in the distance and cocked her head, closing her eyes to make sure her beer-addled brain wasn’t playing tricks. Another high-pitched yip, followed by a series of barks that said Skeeter had found something interesting and wasn’t shutting up soon. And dammit, it sounded like it was coming from the woods all the way on the other side of the park.
Devany took off at a sprint, wincing as every dog in the neighborhood joined Skeeter in a chorus of yelps and howls. Woozy from three beers, she could still hone in on Skeeter’s bark. By the time she got to him, she was panting hard, nausea churning in her stomach.
One of the streetlights in this row of mostly vacant trailers had been smashed, and the remaining light did little to illuminate the trailers or the neighboring woods. She made out the white patches in Skeeter’s coat as he poised on his haunches in front of the last trailer, barking his head off. There was probably a raccoon on the roof or something, she thought as she walked slowly toward Skeeter.
“Skeeter, come here,” she said in her softest, most beseeching tone. She crouched low to the ground and made kissing noises.
Skeeter paused his barking for a second and whipped his head around to look at her. Then he charged up the stairs of the trailer. Devany yelled, “No,” and sprinted after him, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough to keep him from slipping through the front screen door, which hung partially ajar.
She looked around to make sure no one was watching—not that anyone around auskely to get their panties in a wad over her trespassing—and followed the dog through the door. “Skeeter,” she whispered as she came through the dark kitchenette. The trailer smelled like mold and dust, and underneath that was a heavy, metallic scent Devany couldn’t place.
She heard a scuffling sound from the back bedroom and picked her way through the dark living room and down the short hallway. Light spilled through the open bedroom door.
Devany’s stomach clenched with nerves. “Is someone here? Hello?”
She tried again when no one answered. “Sorry to bother you. I’m just here for my dog.” Skeeter let out a funny, warbling whimper.
She crept down the hall and pushed open the door. Her view of the bed was blocked by the door, but she could see the dog standing on the floor in front of the TV. “Skeeter, get over here,” she whispered through clenched teeth.
She snapped her fingers and called again, and her gaze skidded across the image on the TV screen and froze.
A woman, naked and facedown, her head turned to the side so Devany could see her sightless eyes staring out from the screen. For a split second she thought it was a horror film, one with really realistic-looking effects. But why would someone break into an abandoned trailer to watch a movie?
Then she stepped into the room. And she saw the blood.
Striping the naked back of the woman on the TV screen. Pooling under the gash in her throat.
Flowing like a river down the bedspread and staining the carpet two inches from Skeeter’s front paws.
Her scream caught in her throat as her horrified gaze took in every detail of the bloodbath in the room and on the screen. Instinct took over and she ran over, snatched Skeeter in her arms, and ran like hell into the dark night.
Megan jerked awake, discombobulated and surprised to find herself facedown on a couch cushion. She sat up, eyes sticky from having fallen asleep with her contact lenses in. The TV was still on, and her half-eaten turkey sandwich was drying out on the coffee table.
After three nights in a row spent staring into the darkness—her acid-soaked stomach clenched in a knot as she thought about Sean and the execution that had been scheduled to take place only a week and a half from today—her exhaustion had caught up with her.
A guitar lick blared through the room, and Megan’s fogged brain registered that it must have been her cell that woke her. She staggered off the couch, squinting to see through her gummed-up contact lenses, and snatched the phone off her kitchen table.
Even as she thumbed the button to look at the call log, the phone started ringing again.
Dev,
the display read. Megan’s stomach sank a little as she wondered what reason the girl would have for calling her at—she squinted at her watch—ten twenty-two on a Tuesday night.
“Hey, Dev, what’s up—” she started to say around a jaw-cracking yawn, but she couldn’t get a word out before Dev’s voice cut her off.
“Oh, thank God you answered. I don’t know what to do. You have to get over here.”
The pure terror in Dev’s voice sent a shot of adrenaline through Megan’s veins and banished the last cobwebs from her brain. “Whoa, Dev, calm down and tell me what’s going on.” Megan took a deep breath, trying to calm herself as her mind raced with infinite ways a fourteen-year-old girl could get herself into deep trouble.
She’d barely managed the thought before Dev’s next words froze her in the act of walking to the bathroom. “I think she’s dead, Megan. And there was so much blood.”
“Where are you, Devany? Who’s dead?” Panic rippled through her limbs as she struggled to make out Dev’s explanation through her sobbing. She quickly removed her contacts and put on her glasses. “Dev, I can’t understand you. You need to talk more slowly.” She put the girl on speaker-phone to yank on warmer clothes and finally deciphered that Dev was home, that her aunt’s dog had gotten out and made a gruesome discovery in an abandoned trailer.
“Did you call the police?”
“No,” Dev said. “I didn’t know what to do—there’s no one here, and I’m so scared.”
“You must call the police,” Megan said firmly.
“But I don’t—”
“You won’t get in trouble, Dev.” She knew why Dev was hesitating. In her short life, the cops at her house meant only bad news—her mom getting busted, Dev being taken away and moved to yet another new home. Megan couldn’t blame Dev for being reluctant. “I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one, and tell them exactly what you saw. Stay in your house with the door locked, and don’t open the door for anyone except me or the police.”
Megan yanked on rubber rain boots, slid a waterproof shell over her shirt, and raced out to her car. She made it to Redwood Acres in a record seven minutes, figuring that if a cop tried to stop her, she’d just lead him straight to the murder scene.
Because she wasn’t under any illusions that Devany had stumbled across anything else.
She skidded to a stop in front of Dev’s trailer. There was no sign of the police, and both trailers on either side of Dev’s were completely dark. Megan jogged down the path to Dev’s trailer and banged on the door. “Dev, it’s Megan. Did you call the police?”
She saw one of Dev’s brown eyes peek around the edge of the curtain that covered the door’s square window. With Megan’s identity verified, she opened the door for her to enter. Dev was trembling, mascara smeared under her eyes. The dusting of freckles across her nose stood out in stark relief against her ashen face, and she scrubbed her pierced nose with the sleeve of her flannel shirt. Gone was the tough-talking fourteen-year-old Megan knew. Dev’s usual attitude had disappeared, leaving behind a wide-eyed, gangly girl who was scared out of her mind. Dev cradled Skeeter in her arms as if he were a baby. Megan pulled Dev in for a quick hug, then quickly released her. “You called the police, right?”
Dev nodded, her eyes wet and haunted-looking. “I thought they’d be here by now,” she sniffed. “What if they think I was joking?” She tried to tuck her dark bangs behind her ear, only to have them fall back across her eyes.
Devany was almost as tall as Megan, but Megan guided the girl to the shabby couch as if she were a small child and sat down next to her. She covered Devany’s hand
with her own and tried to calm the girl’s shaking. Megan wanted to pull her close, but the courts had strict physical contact guidelines for advocates like herself. Megan understood that such rules were necessary to avoid lawsuits and misunderstandings, but constantly having to rein in her natural tendency toward physical affection got old. Especially at times like this, when Devany could really use a big hug. “They’ll be here,” she assured. “Sometimes it takes them a while.” Especially in a part of town like this, where all the patrols were likely tied up with the steady level of criminal activity that plagued this part of Seattle. As she gave Devany a quick squeeze around her shoulders, she caught a whiff of Dev’s shampoo, which smelled faintly of bubblegum, and something else that made her mouth tighten in disappointment.
“You were drinking, weren’t you?”
Dev stiffened and jerked away. “No.”
“Don’t BS me. You smell like you crawled out of a keg.”
“I was bored, okay? Aunt Kathy grounded me for sneaking out last week. Don’t tell her, please? She’ll kick me out.”
“Trust me, Dev, if you saw what you think you saw, we have bigger things to worry about.” Dev’s choked sob made Megan’s throat go tight. Poor kid, as if stumbling onto the scene of a grisly murder wasn’t enough, she lived in constant fear of being kicked out and sent to yet another foster home.
“But my aunt… she’ll kill me…”
Megan’s heart pinched at the genuine dread in the girl’s voice. She and Sean had been comparatively lucky after their parents had died. They had each other and they’d gone straight to their grandmother and stayed out of the foster system. But she remembered how it felt to live with a relative who wasn’t overly enthusiastic about caring
for teenagers, someone who made you feel that with one wrong move, you could end up at the mercy of the system. “I promise I’ll take care of everything,” Megan said.
Dev snapped her mouth shut as a car pulled up outside the trailer. Through the filmy curtains, blue and red lights circled the walls of the trailer. Within seconds, a hard fist was pounding at the door.
“Just tell them what you told me,” Megan said as she moved to answer the door, “and everything will be fine.”
Megan quickly explained who she was and why Dev had called her before she’d called the police. Devany gave one officer directions to the abandoned trailer while the other uniform, who’d introduced himself as Officer Roberts, stayed behind to take Dev’s statement. Dev huggesnapeter to her and took a deep, bracing breath, then spilled her story to Roberts, whose hulking bulk took up the majority of space in the living room.
“So you were here by yourself when the dog got out?” he asked.
Megan saw Dev’s eyes flick to the side before she answered. “Uh, yeah.”
Uh-oh. Someone had been here.
Megan hadn’t even thought about it, so overwhelmed by Dev’s shocking discovery.
Roberts locked eyes with Dev. It was the kind of cop stare Megan was sure they taught the first day at the academy. “Do I smell alcohol on your person?”
Dev swallowed hard and gave a guilty nod. “Just a couple of beers,” she said, and Megan winced as a little of Dev’s attitude sprang to the surface.
Roberts cocked an eyebrow. “You’re sure there was no one else here?” Dev nodded.
The radio hooked on Robert’s belt squawked. “Go ahead, Mendez,” Roberts said, and listened intently.
“I’m here at the trailer. We’re definitely looking at a one-eight-seven.”
“Ten-four, I’ll call it in,” Roberts said. He excused himself and went out to the squad car to call in the homicide.
“Who was here?” Megan hissed as soon as the door had closed behind the officer.
“No one,” Dev hissed back.
“Dev—”
“She didn’t see anything, okay? And if she gets caught drinking, she’ll be in worse trouble than I am, so please don’t say anything.”
Megan shook her head. “I can’t go along with that—”
“You said I could trust you!” Dev cut her off with a harsh whisper. “You promised I could come to you with anything.” The latch on the door clicked, warning of the cop’s return. Dev hit Megan with a warning glare.
Megan was torn. Dev was so used to being screwed over by the adults in her life; she would see Megan’s exposure as ratting out her and her friend. On the other hand, buzzed teenagers weren’t known for having the best judgment. Withholding information from the police—no matter how harmless—wasn’t a good idea for a lot of reasons.
Still, Megan remained silent, listening as Dev told Officer Roberts in excruciating detail about the few seconds she’d been in that trailer.
“I couldn’t see that well,” Dev said. “There was no light except for the TV. At first I thought it was a movie or something, like someone had paused it.” Dev closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. “Only a sicko would pause on a scene like that, right? On a close-up of… Then
I saw the blood and realized that what was on the TV was in the room.”
Something nudged the back of Megan’s brain, like a polite fingertirying to get her attention, but she didn’t have a chance to hone in on it. At that moment, Dev’s pale cheeks took on a greenish cast and she swallowed hard. Acting on pure instinct, Megan wrapped her arm around Dev’s shoulders, hauled her off the couch, and herded her into the kitchen. They made it to the sink just in time to prevent the beer and Cheetos Dev had consumed from splattering all over the floor.
Megan got Dev a glass of water and rubbed her back as the girl rinsed and spit. She stood at the sink, her back to the door, and held Dev’s hair as she heaved into the sink again.
Poor kid.
She heard a car pull up outside, followed by heavy footfalls on the trailer’s front steps. A knock, a murmur of masculine voices was all shunted to the background as Megan focused on preventing Dev from completely falling apart.
“If you don’t mind, Roberts, I’ll take it from here.”
Everything inside Megan froze at the sound of that voice. Common sense told her to stop being ridiculous, that it couldn’t be him. Even if it was, there was no reason in hell for her body to react this way.
Her body had different ideas, and warmth radiated out from her center as every nerve ending sparked with heightened awareness. Her traitorous body, which didn’t give a damn that he’d turned his back on her in the name of duty when she’d needed him most, didn’t care that he’d broken her heart so bad she knew it would never be the same.
Her senses knew what her mind refused to accept.
She turned slowly, bracing herself as Detective Cole Williams stepped inside the trailer.