Her Last Scream (11 page)

“You have your action clothes?” I asked as Rein pulled garments from her suitcase. We were kicking off the action tonight, turning Rein into a threatened lady. Normally a woman might make several visits to a center – like Rhonda Doakes – before the threat level made the vanishing act a possibility. Disappearing into the system was a red-alert condition, and we had to get past the ramp-up colors in days, not weeks.

“I’m thinking something spangly.” Rein held up a low-cut sleeveless shirt with gold sequins.

“No, dammit,” Harry said from the couch, turning a thumbs down on the selection. “You’re out of the life, right? That’s the role.”

Rein took a deep breath. “My character is used to glittery clothes, Harry. I can’t go dressed in business casual. It’s not what she’d wear.”

“It’s too revealing,” Harry argued.

Rein cocked her hips and rolled her eyes. “It’s what people my age wear, Harry. Stop being so old.”

Harry froze. Rein realized what she’d said. “You know what I mean,” she backtracked. “I’m dressing in a contemporary manner. The top came from Wal-Mart.”

“I’m taking a walk,” Harry said. The door slammed behind him.

“It’s OK, Rein,” I said. “He’s having a hard time.”

“This operation is the kind of thing he’s told me about since I was a kid. Putting yourself out there to help others. I’d think he’d be – he’d be …”

I saw tears come to her eyes. “What?” I asked.

“Proud of me. I just want him to be …”

Her voice failed and she fell into my arms. “He’s very proud of you,” I said. “But the pride is hidden so deep under his fear he can’t find it. It’s why he pushes so hard, gets so angry. He’s scared.”

“It doesn’t seem to get to you, Carson,” she said. “His moods. Snapping at everything.”

I shrugged. “Mostly I find myself studying the power of his feelings.”

She looked at me in puzzlement. “Why?”

“It’s foreign to me, Rein. No one ever loved me like that.”

Treeka slipped from the compact car into the dark country park, pulling her suitcase behind her. The only sounds were the burring of crickets and a growl of semis from the distant interstate. A gibbous moon hung low in the sky.

“The road circles behind the playground,” Marge said through the window, pointing past shadowy swings and slides. “Your next helper should be parked behind those trees. Wait for lights to blink three times.”

Treeka nodded. Everything about the system – the ‘underground railroad’ several had called it – was spooky.

“Walk to those trees and wait for lights to blink,” Marge said. “Don’t dare get close if there’s no lights.”

They’d been on the road for hours, Treeka’s heart in her throat every mile of the way. Though she was sure Tommy couldn’t have tracked her, she was still frightened. She reached into her purse and found the blue bird in her wallet, safe. She squeezed her wallet for luck.

The woman beside Treeka said, “Time to go, Darleen. God be with you.”

“Bless you,” Treeka replied, pushing tears from her eyes and waving a forever farewell to the woman with whom she’d spent three days. Treeka had stayed in a spare bedroom in the woman’s home, never venturing outside unless it was night, and only then in the back yard. Marge’s husband, the trucker who picked her up at the truck stop, had left the next day, running a load of electronic parts to Detroit.

Treeka crossed the small roadside park, feeling cool grass on her sandaled toes as she passed swings and a slide. She looked into the cluster of maples behind the playground. There, on a pull-off, was a large truck, black in the shadows.

The lights made three brief blinks, like Morse code:
flashflashflash.
Behind her, Treeka heard her temporary savior drive away. The hand-over was made.

Treeka pulled her cardboard suitcase tight and walked to the SUV. “Darleen?” asked the driver, a voice a dozen feet away, behind the wheel. It was a whispered rasp.

“I’m Darleen,” Treeka replied.

“Hop in, dear. Toss your stuff in the back seat. Hurry … The police patrol the park every half-hour. They’re almost due.”

Treeka climbed into the front passenger seat as the diesel engine rattled. She aimed a prayer toward the moon and held her breath as the truck roared toward the anonymity of the interstate.

In the low light of the truck’s instrumentation, Treeka shot glances at her new protector. A lesbian, almost surely. No trace of make-up, rugged, lined face of someone in her forties who’d seen time outdoors. It was actually a rather handsome face, slender and well proportioned, cheekbones high, nose straight and aquiline, the jaw firm. The brown-toward-blonde hair was close-cropped and mannish, with just a touch of feminine shag and highlighting. The woman wore faded blue denim, shirt and jeans. Cowboy boots below. She drove the truck with a solid authority, blowing past slower traffic, settling into the center lane, the engine at a steady rumble, like a powerful ship cleaving through deep night.

During her pre-flight instructions, as they were laughingly called by the black woman with the owl glasses, Treeka had been told most of the links in the chain were women. There were some husband-and-wife teams and a few men. Some of the women were gay, as were some of the men, but in the system everyone was sexless, no interest in anything but helping women along the road to freedom. “So if you have anything against gays,” her instructor had pointedly told her, “get over it now.”

“I don’t dislike anyone for being who God made them,” Treeka had said. “Except one.”

“Are you hungry, dear?” the driver, her new benefactor, asked Treeka when they were fifteen minutes past the exchange.

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

“I’ve got coffee in a Thermos. Valium, if your nerves are shaky. Or whiskey if you prefer. Hell, my nerves are shaky and I’m not on the run.”

“Really, I’m fine. I just need to –”

“I’ll stop talking so much, and you just lean back and relax, sleep. We’ve still got a couple hours to go, but then you’ll have a bright new place to live. At least until the next jump.”

“I think you folks were sent by Jesus,” Treeka said. “Helping people get new lives in new places. I can’t wait until I get to –”

The driver jammed her palm into the horn, the blast drowning out Treeka’s words. “No,” the driver said, releasing the horn. “Don’t tell me. Don’t tell anyone. That way only one link in the chain knows where you are at any given moment. You don’t want
him
finding you, do you?”

“I’m sorry. I was told a dozen times not to say where I was coming from or going.”

“Don’t worry about it, dear. It’s all about keeping you safe.”

Treeka looked at the woman’s hands. Large and hard, like a rancher’s hands. The woman was tanned, too, like she spent a lot of time in the sun. Even her raspy voice sounded sizzled in the hard sun. A lesbian for sure, Treeka thought. It didn’t bother her a bit; Treeka figured that, given the hatred Tommy had for lesbians – though he’d probably never knowingly spoken to one – they must be pretty good people.

“Half-past nine,” the driver said, breaking into Treeka’s thoughts. “We’ll be there by midnight. You can get a shower; I’ll fix us up a big snack. Tomorrow, well … you’ll love what I’ve got planned for you.”

The woman started laughing.

Setting his briefcase and laptop on the desk, Sinclair fired up his iMac and hurried to the chat room.

1 Member online

Figuring HPDrifter was lurking silently and waiting for company, he sipped his single malt, took a toke from his joint, and entered his password.

2 Members online

3 Members online

2 Members online

Sinclair leaned back and watched the screen as a minute elapsed.

This time three minutes passed. Sinclair relit a dead joint and stared at the screen until lines appeared.

A half-hour later Rein and I parked in front of the center in an eight-year-old Chevy pickup Cruz had borrowed from a colleague. I wore paint-spattered cut-offs and a T-shirt advertising cigarettes, one of those freebies handed out by tobacco companies near high schools and colleges. My role was Accidental Samaritan. Rein was Battered Woman. My job was to set the scene, hers to upstage me and be sheltered by the center tonight.

Harry had another act to add, but that came tomorrow.

I looked across the street at the slender two-story bar, the Beacon, seeing no one at the front window, no one on the small porch upstairs either, just a lonely blue bike. Rickety metal stairs angled down the side of the building. The place recalled an apartment I once rented on the periphery of the University of Alabama, tumbling down the stairs a time or two after nights on the town.

I gave Rein a good-luck hug then reached into my pocket for the vial of fake blood, splashing her blouse as she dabbed drops into her nose. I took her hand and guided her to the front door of the Women’s Crisis Center of Boulder.

“Showtime,” I whispered, one-arming the door open and pushing through, holding Rein under my arm as if keeping her up. She played fumble-footed, disoriented, like she’d been pulled from a garbage compactor. There were two women talking, one behind a desk, one leaning the wall to the side. The sitting woman was fortyish, square-built, with short red hair and dark eyes. The standing woman was in her mid-thirties, slender and black, with delicate features and round, Elton John-sized glasses. Their eyes went wide at our entrance.

“What is it?” the square woman said, jumping up. I swung Rein around to drop her into one of the chairs in the tiny room, barely space for a desk and four mismatched chairs. She flopped forward and tucked into herself, a portrait in misery.

“She’s my neighbor,” I said. “Y’all got to do something. She told, uh, this guy she wanted to leave him. He went crazy and started pounding on her.”

“Is he nearby?” the square-built woman asked, jumping to the front door and throwing the lock.

“No. He beat and booked.”

The square-built woman knelt beside Rein and took her hand. “What’s your name, dear?”

Rein wiped her face with the back of her hand, wet, she’d made herself cry real tears. “S -Sondra, Sondra Jakes.”

“My name is Carol,” the square woman said. “That’s Meelia over there. Are you all right, Sondra? Is your nose broken?”

Rein started sniffling, like trying to grab hold of herself but not there yet. I leaned in again. “I had medical training in the Army, ma’am. Nothing’s broken and I got the bleeding stopped on the way over.”

Carol looked at me and nodded. I’d jumped from unknown quantity to someone with the intelligence to understand first aid. We wanted to make Rein look hurt, but didn’t want paramedics called.

“Do you know the signs of concussion?” the woman asked me.

“I’ve made three pupillary checks and she’s OK. I stopped at a gas station and told her to pee and look at it. No blood.”

I’m not sure what all that meant, but it added to my cred. “You don’t think she’s injured enough to call an ambulance?” Carol asked.

I waved it off. “The guy wanted to scare her bad, but not break anything.”

A frown from the lady in the owl glasses. “No one called the police?”

“The guy had a gun, ma’am, the grip hanging outta his pocket. I never seen so many doors close so fast.”

“But couldn’t someone make an anonymous call to –”

I motioned the woman named Meelia to follow me to the corner. Carol sensed I was about to say something important to the situation and followed.

“She called the guy her boyfriend,” I whispered. “But he’s really her, uh, pimp. Everyone on the street’s scared of him because he’s a psycho. I heard rumors about him, nasty stuff.”

“Like what?” Meelia asked.

“Two women that worked for him disappeared. There one day, gone the next. Tee Bull – that’s his street name – laughing about them being where no one would find them. He didn’t mean California.”

Both shot a look at Rein, then at each other. I said, “Sondra’s a really good person, lady. I think she got jammed up, had to do what she had to do. We live in a rough neighborhood.”

“She’s on drugs, though. Right?” Meelia asked.

Most hookers are on drugs. Some get hooked before they enter the life, selling themselves to pay for the habit. Then it becomes the only way to get through the days and nights. An addicted woman wasn’t allowed into the system, the addiction making her erratic and a threat to everyone concerned. But we had cooked up a story that brought Rein in clean and, even better, made her a candidate for redemption.

“She was on dope once,” I said, setting up the story. “You could tell by talking to her. But for the past couple months she’s been off the shit – you can tell that, too. I thought she’d stopped doing that, uh, other thing. Hooking. Until he showed up.”

The women went back to Rein, taking a chair to each side.

Carol said, “Sondra? Are you using? We don’t judge anyone here at the center, but we need you to tell the truth. Truth is how we help you.”

Rein unfolded from herself, her face a mix of fear and determination.

“I quit drugs, every one. I been to that twelve-step over on Riser Avenue. I did it all in secret and on my own. I been clean of dope for two months and the thought of ever doing that stuff again makes me sick. I even quit smoking and drinking, everything. My baby sister goes to high school and I been borrowing her books so I can get my diploma. I took the practice test two weeks ago. The teacher said I’d nail the real test. All I got left to do is get away from Tee Bull and I can have a real life.”

“What’s that mean to you, Sondra?” Carol asked. “Real life?”

“I wanna go to school and be a nurse. I did my own study of the job market and there’s a real shortage, so I can get a job right away when I get certified. I wanna work at a doctor’s office, a pediatrician. I wanna get married to a guy who likes to laugh and tell stories. I wanna family and a house with grass in the yard. I can do it, too. I know I can.”

Rein’s delivery was brilliant: street rough with the incidental polish of someone driven to read, to grab the bootstraps and pull. I gestured the lady named Carol to the side.

“Can you help her?” I begged. “Can you hide her?”

“We can give her a place to stay for a night or two.”

I shook my head like the offer was totally inadequate. “Lady, if you saw Tee Bull, you’d know she needs to be locked away in a Brink’s truck.”

I left Rein at the center, a one-woman show whose opening-night performance had to convince the women that she was in dire need of a disappearance in days, not weeks. Returning to the truck, I felt hairs prickle on the back of my neck and checked behind me, to the sides, seeing only darkness and the interior lights of the bar across the street, its second-floor windows dark and curtained.

From this point on, everyone was suspect.