When She Flew (16 page)

“I don’t want to go,” Lindy said. “I want to stay with my father.” She gripped his camouflage jacket.

“Can I go get her first thing tomorrow?” Ray’s eyes darted from the sergeant to the bruisers in the doorway. On cue, they walked toward him, hands in that ready position that makes even the innocent want to run or start punching.

“Well, Ray, we’ll have to see what DHS says,” the sergeant continued, a commanding tone in his voice that Jess knew pushed every button Ray Wiggs had. “Once we put her in foster care, she’s out of our jurisdiction.”

Jess wanted to interject, to stop this thing from happening this way. Why hadn’t the sergeant sat down with Ray alone, human to human, and explained the situation if he felt so strongly that Lindy needed to be in foster care? Why had he sprung it on him like this? Now that the decision was made and witnessed and documented, it was too late for negotiation, for warnings—actions Jess would have thought far more appropriate in a case like this.

“Unfortunately,” Everett blustered on, “we’ve determined that we need to get DHS involved in this one. See, there’s this ordinance that says you can’t put someone else’s life in danger, especially a minor who’s in your care. The girl should be living in a safe environment, going to school. Now, we’re not going to detain you, but—”

“Don’t do this,” Ray said, voice rising. “We have our own money. We can find a place to sleep on our own.” He started to stand but the male officers moved in quickly, each grabbing one of Ray’s arms and yanking him out of his chair. Ray struggled, grimacing as his arms were forced behind him.

“You’re hurting him!” Lindy cried, trying to rush for him but Maddy stepped in to block her, wrapping an iron arm around the girl to restrain her.

“Calm down, now,” the sergeant said. “It’s just a matter of procedure, for Lindy’s own good.”

“The best thing for my daughter is to be with her father.” Ray struggled, trying to twist from their grip. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Well, actually, Mr. Wiggs,” Everett said, annoyed now, “you were camped illegally on state park lands, and that’s no place to raise a young girl. There’s a whole lot of charges we could be throwing at you, and if you want me to add resisting—”

Jess stepped between them. “Ray, Ray, don’t fight,” she said, moving closer, holding her palms up to him. “Please, don’t fight. I’ll be with Lindy every step of the way. I’ll take as good care of her as I would my own daughter.” She fought to catch his eyes; if she could only convey to him that she would work this out, somehow, even though she wasn’t sure yet what that meant. He looked at her finally, his gray eyes distraught, wary, but he quit struggling, and she kept talking, trying to calm him. “Really, I promise. I’ll stay on this until we can get you two back together, as quickly as we can. I’ll give you my cell phone number and you can call me anytime, night or day, and check on her.”

Lindy let out a long wail and lunged at her father. Maddy grabbed for her but the sergeant shook his head. “Aw, let them say goodbye,” he said. “Just for a minute.”

The officers dropped Ray’s arms and he pulled Lindy to him, whispering into her hair as she cried. After a moment he pulled back and looked at her, saying steadily, “It’s all right, Lindy. You’re okay.”

“No,” she cried, “I want to stay with you.”

“Please, Lindy,” he said, then looked at Jess.

She stepped closer, put a hand on Lindy’s heaving shoulders, fingers trembling at how warm the girl was. “Honey, I’m going to take the very best care of you I can and get you through all of this as quickly as possible. We’ll get you back to your dad real soon. Cross my heart.” Jess looked at Ray. “I promise,” she said.

“Be a good girl, Lindy,” Ray said, taking her chin gently in his hand and looking into her eyes. “Come on now. You can do it. I know you can.”

Lindy nodded, still snuffling, and let Jess lead her away.

 

 

 

JESS SAT In the WOMEN’S locker room, waiting for Lindy to finish up in the toilet. She’d been in there a long time. If it hadn’t been a secure facility, Jess would have gone in looking for her.

All that was left to do was drive Lindy to the foster home, get her checked in, then bring the cruiser back to the station and clock out, change out of her uniform and go home. Considering what they’d been through this day, it would be an uneventful and routine resolution, all on the level and according to Oregon statute. Even with media scrutiny, the department would be above rebuke.

Jess opened her locker. Her civvies hung on the pegs inside; her sandals sat on the shelf with her earrings. She sighed. She’d driven other children to the foster home in Wood Dock, a few miles north of the station, but they’d been kids with no good options. Kids with unfit parents, abusive parents. No parents. It usually made sense. This didn’t. It was late; everyone was tired and just wanted it to be over. She wanted to get home, get some sleep, but she’d never felt this way about a case, had never felt she had to do something so wrong and against all common sense. There was no logical reason to separate Ray and Lindy, and she knew DHS would prove that over time. They’d arrange a physical for Lindy, a mental-health evaluation and find she was a normal, or above average, healthy thirteen-year-old. Jess knew when something wasn’t right between parent and child—she’d witnessed it hundreds of times (especially in her own household)—and this was not one of those cases. If only she could prove it now, tonight, before they did irreversible damage to a kid whose only desire was to be with her dad.

Even though Jess had never gotten to know her own father as anything more than the heroic figure in their family, she knew how Lindy felt. Her dad had always made sure things went all right in the family when their mother couldn’t. Sure, he was gone a lot, but when he was home, he was really there. Making waffles on Sunday mornings before church. Waxing the station wagon in the driveway, giving the boys and Jess chamois cloths to buff out their own territories on the car. The boys got the good parts: the fenders, the doors, the hood. Jess usually got the hubcaps, but she made them shine like mirrors, just to hear her dad say, “Good job.” They had all depended on his approval, his normalness. After the accident, after her father’s death, everyone wandered in different directions and became solitary. Her brothers lived in different states now. Her mother lived inside her own little world. Once torn apart, they’d never felt that idyllic cohesion of family again.

Jess shook her head, closed her eyes for a moment, then changed into her street clothes. She grabbed her purse, banged the locker door shut, and looked around, but no one would be coming in until the end of the shift. It was still only one thirty. Adrenaline filtered back into her system. She’d thought the night’s events had depleted her lifetime supply.

She knocked at the bathroom door. “Lindy? Are you okay in there?”

“Yes, Officer Villareal, I’m fine. I’m just washing my hands.”

The door swung open. “Oh, you look so pretty.” Lindy seemed surprised that Jess turned into a regular woman without the uniform, the weapons.

“Sweetie, I need you to be very quiet as we leave. We’re going to do something a little different than we should, so we need to hurry to my car, which isn’t in the same parking lot we came from. It’s around the other side of the building, okay?”

Lindy nodded, swinging the huge backpack to her shoulders. She seemed to understand everything Jess was saying, everything Jess was implying. The girl looked prepared for whatever came next, whatever it took to get back to her dad.

Jess wasn’t at all sure she was ready for what lay ahead, but she did know she was in the worst trouble of her life. She could only imagine all the charges a district attorney would dream up for her absconding with Lindy: disobeying direct orders, reckless endangerment of a juvenile, abusing a position of trust, certainly. Worse, she could be charged with kidnapping.

But Lindy’s fate was in her hands. Jess wanted to cross herself, to pray to god and Jesus and the saints and the Virgin of Guadalupe to protect them both, to deliver them safely, wherever they needed to be.

“Follow me,” she said, and Lindy smiled. They stole quietly away, through the empty lobby, the glass security doors, and out into the dark.

16

N
octurnal birds are rare in the Pacific Northwest, other than owls, of course, so when I looked out the car window and saw the gull flying alongside us, a white flash against the dark, I knew it was a sign. If he could fly at night, so far from water, I could do this hard thing, too.

The policewoman was nice. She kept saying I could call her Jess but I liked calling her Officer Villareal. It sounded important and beautiful all at once. We took her car, not the police car, and I was glad. Her car was small and messy, and I had to scoot things out of the way just to sit, like shopping bags and mail and a hairbrush, but it felt more like I was with a real person than with a police officer.“Sorry.” She tossed the bags into the backseat. “Presents for my grandson,” she explained.

“You can’t be a grandmother!”

Her face went from smiling to about to cry and back to smiling again. I noticed that about her up in the woods, too, when she was questioning me, and at the police station. Her face told all of her feelings, like Crystal’s did. I can never tell what Pater’s feelings are half as well.

I felt bad about blurting that out. “I mean, aren’t you too young to have a grandson?” Pater always said I needed to work more on my manners.

She smiled. “Thanks for the compliment, but I am indeed a grandma. I have a three-year-old grandson named Mateo.”

“Mateo,” I said, to feel the shape of it in my mouth.

“We mostly call him Teo for short,” she said. “Like you’re called Lindy, right?”

I nodded and settled back.

“Buckle up,” she said. “We’re not going to Wood Dock.”

I already knew that, but I just smiled. She was taking me to meet Pater at the place they were sending him. I just knew it.

On her dashboard there was a small statue that looked like Jesus’ mother except more colorful. She saw me looking at it. “That’s Our Lady of Guadalupe,” she said. “Mexico’s version of the Virgin Mary. My mother makes me keep it in my car, for protection.” She looked over her shoulder to back out of the parking lot, and then turned onto the street.

“Like my svastika?” I asked.

She kind of laughed. “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Do you believe in her?” I reached forward and touched her tiny praying hands.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Like right now? Oh, yeah.”

We drove for a few minutes, then turned in the direction of my little library, and then past it, pulling into the parking lot of the big redbrick building for sick people. The hospital.

“Is this where they’re taking Pater?” My voice was high and panicky. It was his worst nightmare, he always said, ending up in a hospital.

“No, of course not, Lindy. What makes you say that?”

“Aren’t we going to meet him, if you’re not taking me to the other place?”

She turned in her seat, touched her lips with her fingers, watching me.

“What?” I asked. I couldn’t help being rude.

“I know you said no before, but it’s just me and you now, and I have to ask you again. Has your father ever touched you in a way that made you uncomfortable, or tried to do anything inappropriate?”

I felt blood burn in my cheeks. Why did she keep asking me this? “No! He’s my father. He wouldn’t.”

She studied me some more. “Would you be willing to help me prove it?”

I didn’t understand what she was asking me to do, but slowly I nodded.

“How long since you’ve been to the doctor?”

I couldn’t remember ever going, not for me, anyway. Sometimes when Pater had trouble with his back, we’d go to the VA clinic to see Dr. Toby, the only doctor Pater trusted. I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Is that what you want me to do? To see a doctor?”

“I want you to have a checkup to prove you’re healthy. If you want, I’ll stay with you the whole time, and explain everything to you.” She touched my arm. “Sweetie, they’ll want to examine you down there. It’s not fun, but I’ve had it done a bunch of times, and it’ll be over quickly. Personally, I’d be more scared of spending the night in the woods.” She smiled. “Don’t you ever get scared of wild animals up there? There was that bear sighting at the west end of the woods not too long ago.”

I laughed, snorting through my nose, which was embarrassing, but I couldn’t help it. “Bears only come around when they want food. They don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Well, sure,” she said. “But what if a hungry one came into your camp, even if it was just looking for food? Don’t you worry you might bump into something big and scary up there in the woods?”

“Officer Villareal, you have to respect Nature enough not to go walking around in the dark and letting something bump into you.”