Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (6 page)

Just before sunrise, I left Rauser in bed and slipped out for a jog with my brother.
We peeled off the concrete path at Piedmont Park and jogged up the hill toward 10th
Street in the foggy predawn.
Dewy fescue glistened under the skyline and soaked my running shoes. Jimmy kept the
pace next to me.

We turned right on 10th and eased into our cooldown, dodging branches from the young
maples planted in little strips between sidewalk and street. This was our new routine,
the quiet time we carved out three days a week since Jimmy had returned to Atlanta.
We’d run together as kids too—Jimmy pushing me, encouraging me. He’d never had my
competitive streak, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at high school track
meets and rooting me on. Jimmy had always been my greatest supporter. Even at home
when I’d butted heads with our mother, Jimmy’s even temper and cool thinking restored
the peace. He had always balanced out our high-strung family nicely.

We stretched tight calves while holding on to the darkened balcony railings on a row
of town houses. Across the street, a men’s bar was closed up tight for the day. The
FOR LEASE
signs that had papered the windows at what was once Outwrite Books had come down
and a new restaurant had taken the space in Midtown’s ever-changing landscape. On
the opposite corner The Flying Biscuit was gearing up for breakfast. And Caribou Coffee
was calling my name.

We walked into the coffee shop to the usual mix of bleary-eyed customers dressed for
work and those of us still hopped up on endorphins. Jimmy’s roving eye slyly checked
out a guy in red bicycle clothes that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination. What’s
up with that anyway? I mean, just how far are you people willing to go in the name
of aerodynamics? He looked like an extra-strength Tylenol with a bulge in the center.

“Stop staring at his junk,” Jimmy whispered.

“You were staring at it. Besides, look at it. It’s like there’s a little face under
there looking back.”

We put in our orders and downed bottles of water while we waited—a double-shot, skim
milk cappuccino for me and a caramel high rise for Jimmy, which appeared to be ninety
percent whipped cream and caramel sauce. Our sweet tooths had been nurtured early
as testers for Mother’s kitchen creations. Jimmy had been a good student and became
an accomplished cook himself. Me, I just learned
how to eat. I’m really good at it. Fortunately, I have a metabolism that burns through
food like a Colorado wildfire, something genetic, I thought, inherited from the biological
parents I didn’t remember—two drug addicts and one exotic dancer. They’d handed me
off to my grandparents as an infant, thank goodness, and rushed off to pursue their
dream of procuring, smoking, snorting, and shooting into their veins as many drugs
as possible. The money stuffed into my mother’s skimpy bra probably funded their binges.
I remember my grandparents, though the sound of their voices and the gentleness in
their faces has been eclipsed over the years by their murder.

Jimmy and I took a table near the window. This had become part of our routine too.
I was seven when my parents adopted Jimmy. He was five. We had bonded instantly—a
scrawny, geeky Chinese girl and an equally scrawny black boy. I’d been living with
Howard and Emily Street almost two years at the time. I’d learned to trust them. My
faith in their stability and the presence of another child in the house had helped
give Jimmy a comfortable landing in his new home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to
protect my gentle brother from the bullying he’d take in the world. By high school,
our population was more diverse. I didn’t look so different from everyone else anymore.
But my dark-skinned, light-eyed, soft-spoken brother didn’t fit anyone’s mold. And
he didn’t fight back when they pushed him around and called him a faggot. He begged
me not to fight for him. But I did. Because that’s who I am—cocked and ready to fire.
Jimmy just wanted out. He left as soon as he graduated with a bitter taste he would
always associate with the South.

“Any word from the agency?” I asked. After nine years together Jimmy and Paul had
decided to have a child.

“We’re flying to Boston next week. She’s four months’ pregnant.” Jimmy looked out
onto Piedmont Avenue. The sun was burning through, and the streetlights had clicked
off. “We’ll get to meet the father this time too. They seem like nice kids. They’re
just not ready to be parents and they don’t care that we’re gay or interracial.”

“I hope it works out,” I told him. I meant it. I thought they would make good parents.

“Me too,” Jimmy said. “Because you know if it doesn’t we’ll end up adopting a pair
of Chihuahuas and putting them in tiaras.”

I nodded. “It just escalates from there. First a tiara, then a tutu.”

“Ankle bracelets,” Jimmy added. “Chihuahua playgroups.”

“Slippery slope,” I agreed.

He set his coffee on the table and studied me with striking pale eyes that always
seemed bluer against his dark skin. “How is it with Aaron?”

“We’re still in the honeymoon phase. Kind of. I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Rose-colored glasses as usual,” Jimmy said.

I smiled. “I’m cautiously optimistic. That’s a step forward, isn’t it?” I pushed my
blueberry muffin over to him. “I have a meeting across the street. And I have a job
out of town. You want the shitty muffin?”

“Not if it sucks.” Jimmy sipped sugary foam off hot coffee. “How long you away?”

“I think I’m going to need a couple of days at least. Count me out on the next run.”

“Sounds mysterious.”

“It’s a consulting job,” I told him. I didn’t offer details. This kind of case would
bother Jimmy. “County sheriff wants some advice on a repeat offender case. Sounds
like he needs someone to interpret the evidence, translate it in practical terms.
And it sounds like he’s short on detectives. I’m cheap. And apparently less intrusive
than the Bureau.”

“So it’s a murder thing?”

I nodded. “Two bodies found in the woods. Thirteen years old.”

Jimmy’s eyebrows knotted up. “I don’t understand how someone could hurt a child. Or
an animal. I just don’t.”

“This kind of person, they’re not like us, Jimmy. They don’t think about the victim.”
We sat there a minute while that hung in the air. Jimmy pushed the shitty muffin back
to me.

“You’re going to a meeting like that?”

“I’m serving divorce papers. The guy has no idea. Thinks he’s
meeting his wife.” I pulled up the leg of my sweatpants and peeled off the envelope
I’d banded around my calf in a plastic bag so I wouldn’t lose it while running. “He
won’t care what I’m wearing.”

“Wow. Great way to start his day. You feel good about it?”

I dumped the envelope out and left the plastic bag and two thick rubber bands on the
table, got up, kissed my brother’s cheek. “Next time, I’ll jump out of a cake. Make
it fun for him.”

I crossed the street to The Flying Biscuit on a blinking
WALK
light, holding the divorce papers Latisha had picked up for me yesterday.

The breakfast crowd was streaming in. Another half an hour and there would be a waiting
list. The host, a young guy with longish hair and jeans, met me with a menu in his
hand. “I’m meeting someone,” I told him.

“Is that him in the corner?”

I recognized Edward Dabato from the photo in his file. “That’s him. Thanks.” I walked
to a small table where he sat alone with a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.
He was reading a menu. “Mr. Dabato?”

Flat brown eyes lifted to me. Suspicious eyes. Maybe he was expecting this after all.
I pulled out a chair and sat down so we could keep it nice and quiet. “I’m afraid
your wife isn’t coming, sir.” I pushed the envelope across the table. He picked it
up and read the return address of the family lawyer who had hired me. I saw the moment
when the veil came down, when his eyes showed something, when he realized a few things
about his life and his wife he hadn’t known before. Man, this is a shitty job sometimes.
“You’ve been served. I’m sorry.”

Dabato stood up very calmly, tucked the envelope with the divorce papers under his
arm, hooked thick fingers under the edge of the table, then flipped it in a surprisingly
violent, jerky movement. Everything on top came sliding at me. Orange juice splattered
my lap. Hot coffee stung my thighs. The mug and glass hit the tile and shattered.

The restaurant went silent. A saltshaker rolled across the floor. Dabato gave me a
last hard look and stalked out. I snatched a handful of napkins off the table next
to me and blotted my sweatpants while the breakfast crowd, the host, the servers,
all stared.

“What?”
I huffed. “You people really need to think about cloth napkins.”

I hobbled out with as much dignity as I could muster in wet sweatpants that made me
look like a candidate for adult diapers. It was going to be a long walk home.

5

Rauser was blasting out the door when I came down my tenth-floor hall, shoulder holster
over a white shirt, a blue blazer draped over his arm, and an electric shaver in his
hand. I saw him take in my damp clothes and the yellow-brown coffee stain on the crotch
of the sweatpants. An eyebrow came up. “Can’t wait to hear this.”

I gave him the short version. “I had a little spill.”

He grinned. “I see that. You heading out to the boonies?” He knew the details—I’d
explained last night while we walked Hank—the girls, both the same age, both of them
disappearing on their way home from school, both of them held for months before the
heavy swing of a narrow-headed object ended their lives.

“I want to at least check it out.”

“It’s bugging you, isn’t it?” Rauser asked. “Because those girls were held somewhere
and because there may be another one there right now. I knew you wouldn’t be able
to leave it alone.”

“Professional curiosity,” I said, smiling up at him. He bent and gave me a quick kiss
while keeping his body as far away from me as possible. “It’s coffee and orange juice,”
I said. “It’s not toxic waste.”

“Whatever it is I don’t want any.” He slipped past me sideways so his clothes couldn’t
brush mine and headed down the hall.

“Hey, don’t forget to feed Hank and White Trash while I’m gone!” I called behind him.

He stepped into the elevator, pointed a finger at me. “I got this,” he promised. The
doors closed on his big, handsome smile.

An hour later I was showered and packed and on the way to my office with a suitcase
in the backseat of the Impala. Neil was sitting at the kitchen table with an enormous
bowl of cereal when I came in. Latisha was there too with her nose in a paperback.
This was a first. It was quarter till nine. There was coffee in the French press.
I poured a cup and leaned back against the counter.

“You have a chance to look at sex offenders in Hitchiti County?”

He looked up at me through blond lashes. “Good morning to you too.” He was wearing
the plaid shorts and Vans slip-ons he’d had on yesterday, but his hair was combed
and his eyes were clear. “Do you mind if I finish my Lucky Charms?”

“Is that seriously what you’re eating?” I asked. “Why don’t you just lick the sugar
bowl?”

“Oh really? You want to compare diets?” Neil asked me.

I looked at Latisha. She held up a palm. “I don’t start work until nine. Besides,
I cannot put this shit down.” She used the slate-gray paperback she was reading to
fan herself. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

Neil hunched over his Lucky Charms. His spoon hit the side of the bowl on every bite.
I stood there for a minute, sipping my coffee, marveling once again at the turn my
life had taken. Five years ago I would have bet good money I wasn’t going to end up
running a private detective business with an insubordinate pot-smoking former cyber-criminal
and an insubordinate nineteen-year-old potty mouth.

Neil rinsed his bowl and put it in the dishwasher. “Okay, so here’s the thing. There’s
two hundred and thirty-four registered sex offenders in Hitchiti County,” he told
me. “A hundred of them are homegrown and either still live there or came back during
the right timeframe.
A hundred
. Out of the hundred and thirty-four transplants, only twelve of them would have been
there when Tracy Davidson disappeared eleven years ago. So that’s a hundred and twelve
possibilities among registered offenders.”

“Okay, let’s narrow the pool to something manageable. Exclude
everyone in apartment buildings, quadraplexes, or duplexes where holding a prisoner
would be too risky,” I said. I found the reports from the sheriff and looked for the
name of the town where the first victim had lived. “Melinda Cochran was from Whisper,
Georgia, and Tracy Davidson lived in Silas. The towns are twenty miles apart. Draw
a circle around that area thirty miles out, see who’s left. He dumped bodies in a
remote area. There’s ten years between the murders. He’s working close to home. He
knows the landscape. Let’s focus on those offenders with the right kind of property—freestanding
structures or fortifications—a barn, toolshed, garage, someplace that could be soundproofed.
Or someplace with enough distance from the neighbors that he wouldn’t need those things.”