The Damaged One (2 page)

“The coroner ruled it an overdose.”

It was exactly what Augustus had known it would be. But still…the words still reverberated in his mind, mixing with guilt and anger and grief, creating an overwhelming torrent that threatened to drown him. Augustus sat back and closed his eyes, tried to keep his grip on the control he always prided himself on.

He was in his office, the door closed
. The sounds of a normal day unfolding just feet outside that door permeated the room with what should have been the comfort of normalcy. Not today. Augustus wanted it all to disappear, wanted to make the world stop. His life was forever altered, yet things moved on as though nothing had changed. It didn’t seem right.

“Overdose of what?” he asked, his voice as deep and calm as ever.

The sound of shuffling paper. “Heroin. Alcohol. A little GHB.”

Augustus opened his eyes and sat up. “Heroin? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Foster said in a voice that was filled with uncertainty. “Why?”

Augustus shook his head. “Cocaine was her drug of choice. She always said she would never try heroin.”

Heroin was their mother’s drug, the drug that was so much more important than feeding and housing the four children she had brought into the world. Jackie always insisted that what she did was different, that she was different. She would never slip into down the slippery slope where their mother lived.

It was just another insult, another push over the edge of insanity.

He closed his eyes again, reliving a memory he had buried so long ago that he wasn’t even sure he could recall the details properly. He was only five or six. His mother was still so young, so beautiful. That flowing, dark hair that she always took pains to brush out each night before bed. He didn’t understand why she was just laying there, that needle sticking out of her arm that made him think of cold doctor offices and Superman Band-Aids. She wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t go make his breakfast like she had done every Saturday since he could remember.

That was the first time. There were so many after that.

He took them out of that place, saved them from seeing everything he had seen. And, yet…

Yet, that’s exactly where Jackie ended up.

“Tell me,” Augustus said, waving his hand at the clearly uncomfortable private investigator.

Foster glanced down at his papers again, shuffling through them even though he did not appear to be looking for anything in particular.
He cleared his throat three times before he began.

“She was living with a boyfriend, Kaleb Rodriquez.
His family has a house out in Argyle, a small town just outside Denton. He claims she was clean, that she hadn’t used in several weeks. They had a fight and he says she stormed out. When he found her the next day, she was dead in the front seat of his truck.”

Augustus
nodded, trying not to picture his little sister dying alone on an isolated road in Texas. Texas. That part still bothered him. How could she end up back in Texas? In Denton, of all places? Why hadn’t she called? Why didn’t she let him know where she was and what she was looking for? Surely, she was looking for something. But she wouldn’t find it there. Nothing of them remained there. Not even Angela.

It was just another mystery he needed to understand.

“There was no indication that she was injected involuntarily?”

Foster looked up, pity in his rheumy eyes.
The last thing Augustus wanted was pity. He gripped the armrests of his office chair, forcing himself to stay calm, to concentrate on the information Foster still had for him, not the storm of emotions boiling over in his chest.

Maybe seeing the struggle for control in
Augustus’s face, Foster broke eye contact, again shuffling through the papers on his lap. “No,” he finally said. “The police report is pretty clear. They felt it was a simple overdose. There was an investigation into a therapist—”

“A therapist?”

Foster shrugged his beefy shoulders, knocking a few of the papers to the floor. “Your sister was talking to someone,” he said, his voice partially muffled as he leaned over to retrieve his papers. “A student therapist at one of the universities.”

Augustus
stood, the movement knocking his chair back against the long windows behind his desk. “Why?” he asked, as he moved around the desk and began to pace behind Foster’s back.

“I don’t know,” Foster said, twisting in his chair.
“Those records are sealed.”

“Was it a drug
therapist?”

“No.”
Foster again shuffled through his papers, but this time appeared to find something useful. “Her name was Toby Vonn. She was a graduate student working toward the hours required by the state for her to get her license.”

Augustus
continued to pace. “What does she have to do with Jackie?”

“The boyfriend,” Foster began before pausing again.

“What?”

Foster twisted in his chair again, trying to make eye contact with
Augustus, but failing. “The boyfriend went to the police and told them that Jackie met with this therapist in a bar the night she died.”

Augustus
stopped pacing. “She conducted counseling sessions in a bar?”

Foster shrugged.
“That’s what the police wanted to know. They spoke to her, but she refused to break therapist/patient privilege. But the law is a little unclear here since the woman is still, technically, a student. When she wouldn’t talk to them, they went to the school. The school did an investigation of their own. Again, those records are sealed, but it appears they cleared her.”

“What kind of a therapist
counsels a drug addict in a bar?” Augustus began to pace again. “Who saw her after that?”

“No one.”
Foster stood and leaned back against Augustus’s desk so he could see his face. “That was what made the boyfriend so upset. He claimed that something this therapist said to Jackie is what caused her to overdose.”

“What did the cops say?”

“They checked it out, but decided there was nothing to it after the university completed their investigation.”

“But the university could have been covering their own ass.”

“Yes. That’s what the boyfriend is still saying.”

Augustus
dragged his fingers through his hair, his thoughts still spinning so quickly he could hardly keep up. He kept seeing Jackie, Jackie as she had been as a precocious child. The memory was nearly twenty years old, yet it was how he still saw his baby sister. Big blue eyes, dark hair, a smile perpetually on her face. Until that day. Until the day when he knew he had waited too long to get her out of that rundown apartment.

“She was alone when she died.”

“Yes.”

“Did they find the source of the drugs
?”

Foster shook her head.
“They weren’t able to find the dealer, but they think she bought them herself just a few hours before she died.”

“How do they know that?”

Foster shook his head again. “They don’t. All they have to go on is what the boyfriend says.”

“When was the last time the boyfriend saw her?”

“The afternoon before.” Foster glanced at his papers again. “Three o’clock.”

“How does he know she met with the
therapist?”

“It was a bar he and Jackie went to often.
Some of the other customers recognized her and told him.”

Augustus
nodded, his thoughts slowly beginning to focus. Why would a therapist meet her in a bar? What did the woman tell her? How did it affect Jackie’s actions? Would she be alive now if she hadn’t met this woman? And who was her dealer? Who gave her the drugs that killed her?

Who was responsible for his sister’s death?

“Why didn’t I know?” he said more to himself than the investigator. Foster answered anyway.

“She was using a fake name. Lucky…” again those papers. “Lucky Khaled.”

It took Augustus a moment. When it sunk in, he threw back his head and laughed. It was a humorless laugh, more of a howl of pain. Foster must have thought he had gone insane because he jumped to his feet and took a few steps toward Augustus before he thought better of it.

“Jackie
—fucking—Collins,” Augustus said between cold chuckles. “I can’t get away from it.”

“Excuse me?” Foster asked.

“That name.” Augustus swung his hand toward the investigator. “It’s a combination of two Jackie Collins’ character names. You know, the novelist? Our mother was a fan.”

“Is that where your name…”

“No. I was born before the fascination began. I was named after Augustus Chapman Allen, one of the founders of the city of Houston. But my siblings were each named for a character in Ms. Collins’ books. Or, in Jackie’s case, after Ms. Collins herself.”

Foster nodded, settling back against the desk. He must have decided Augustus wasn’t about to flip his lid. Though Augustus wasn’t quite as sure.

He should have thought about it. If he had, maybe they would have found her sooner.

A year
. All this had happened a year ago and Augustus didn’t know.

He should have known.

But Jackie didn’t want to be found. She had told him.

“You’ve done so much for me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t keep doing this. I will never be the person you need for me to be.”

“I don’t need you to be anyone but who you are.”

“You need me to be sober. To be okay. But I’m not as strong as you, Augustus.”

Those words would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“Lucky was a beautiful soul.”

Augustus nodded, trying not to take a swing at this helpless idiot. Kaleb Rodriquez might have been sober a year ago, but he was far from it now. His eyes were rimmed red, a dark, sunkenness making them appear bigger than they really were. His hands shook, he wasn’t interested in the burger sitting in front of him, and he kept looking around the room as though searching for an escape path. Typical addict.

“You told the police her
therapist met with her at a bar that night?”

Kaleb suddenly straightened, his thighs making a sucking sound as the vinyl of the booth argued against movement. “This bar,” he said with more animation than he had shown in the hour since he walked in. He pointed across the room to the filthy barstools. “Right over there.”

“How do you know?”

“Toad told me,” he said, pointing his chin at the dirty blonde bartender.

“How would Toad know what the therapist looked like?”

Kaleb glanced around the room again. “She came in here all the time. A fucking lush, if you ask me.”

Augustus glanced out the window next to their booth, barely able to see the tall buildings of Texas Women’s University across the street through the grime. He wondered if they had cleaned anything in this place in the last decade. Or ever.

“How did Jackie
—” Augustus caught himself as Kaleb’s red eyes found his in the dim light. “How did Lucky meet this therapist?”

Kaleb shrugged. “Don’t know. I told her she didn’t need no
therapist. If she needed to talk, she could talk to me.”

“How long was she seeing her?”

Kaleb shook his head. “Why do you want to know all this stuff? The police ran that lady off months ago. What does it matter now?”

“Just wrapping up loose ends,” Augustus said.

Kaleb shook his head. “Lucky didn’t need all that head shrinking bullshit. My parents tried that route once. I put an end to it right away. Ain’t no amount of talking can fix what ain’t broke.”

“Is that what you told Lucky?”

“Exactly.” Kaleb slapped his hand on the table. “No woman of mine needs no head shrinking.”

Augustus studied Kaleb’s face for a minute. A handsome young man, once upon a time, Augustus could almost see what about this fool appealed to Jackie. Jackie was never one who was easy with her own company.
She sought out pretty boys, boys who made her feel wanted. But the bruises and scabs on Kaleb’s knuckles made Augustus wonder if Jackie might have been in over her head with this one. He wasn’t exactly a prince.

“Who was her dealer?”

Kaleb bristled at the question. He straightened in his seat again as he glanced around the room with that same, panicked caution. He leaned forward, whispering in a loud, booze scented voice, “I can’t tell you that, man. Come on, you trying to get me killed?”

“Did you give her drugs?”

Kaleb’s eyes met Augustus’s for the first time. “Hell no.”

Augustus believed that as much as he believed everything else he had said
.

“You want to know what happened to her?
” Kaleb gestured vaguely around the room. “Go talk to that fucking head shrinker.”

Kaleb stood, a little unsteadily, his overly thin face quickly losing color with the movement. Augustus watched him, wondering if the kid was going to fall down dead right there and then. But then he seemed to gain control of himself. He snatched up the twenty Augustus held out to him and stormed out with his head held up high, as though trying to prove he still had a little dignity left.

Augustus picked up his beer glass and made his way over sticky floors and broken furniture to the bar.

“Refill?” the bartender asked.

“Yeah.” Augustus settled down on one of the stools, trying not to think about what was quickly adhering to his linen slacks.

Augustus had been in Denton for three days, but still knew little more than what Foster had already told him. The cops couldn’t be bothered to rehash a year old overdose
case. To them it was simply another addict off the streets. And the university wasn’t interested in talking about the case. All they would tell him was that Lucky Khaled was a patient of Toby Vonn for a little less than four months. Nothing more.

He’d been to the cemetery. That had been surreal. It wasn’t real, somehow, looking at a stone with a fake name and fake birthdate on it. It wasn’t Jackie.
Couldn’t be. A little piece of him had held some hope that Foster had been wrong, that Jackie hadn’t come to Texas, that she didn’t hook up with that douche bag Kaleb, that she was still alive somewhere. But a visit to the coroner’s office had killed that little spark.

It was her.
Dental records had confirmed it.

And he still didn’t know who to blame.

“You were asking Kaleb about Lucky?”

Augustus looked up as the bartender set his beer down with a thump. “Yeah,” he said, running his finger through the small pool of spilled beer.

“Why?”

Augustus shrugged. “Her family’s looking for her.”

The bartender, Toad, nodded. “Yeah. It’s tough, what happened.”

“You knew her?”

“Yeah.” Toad grabbed a rag from under the bar. “She worked here for a while. Picking up the odd shift to help out with the rent.”

“I thought she was living with Kaleb at his folks’ house?”

“She was when she died. But they had a little apartment up the road before that.”

That was news to Augustus. He picked up his beer and took a slow sip, trying not to appear too eager. This was the first new information he’d had. He didn’t want to scare this guy off.

Toad ran the rag slowly over the bar in front of Augustus, careful to rub its dirty fibers over everything but the spilled beer. “It was getting kicked out of that place that inspired them to get sober. Lucky decided she’d had enough of sleeping in cars and living off the generosity of other people.”

Augustus jerked his chin up, gesturing toward Toad. “Kaleb says you were here the night she died.”

“I’m always here,” Toad groaned. “But, yeah. She sat right there, with Toby,” he said, pointing to a couple of stools at the end of the bar.

“They do that a lot?
Hang out here?”

Toad shook his head. “No. Toby’s not that type. She rarely ever came in here.”

That was the opposite of what Kaleb had said. Augustus set his beer down carefully, his mind mulling over this information. “So, you knew the therapist before that night.”

“She and my sister were roommates for a while.”

Augustus nodded again, trying not to show his interest. “You didn’t happen to know anything about her relationship with Lucky, did you?”

Toad leaned back against the shelves behind the bar. He crossed his ankles, glancing around the bar in a strange imitation of Kaleb’s paranoid search. “Why you want to know all this, anyway?”

Augustus shrugged, taking another slow sip from the warm beer, trying to appear anything but interested. “Like I said,” he glanced at Toad as he set the beer back down, “her family wants to know what happened.”

Toad looked down at his boots for a minute, as though contemplating that idea.
“I always liked Lucky,” he said. “Thought she could have done better than Kaleb.”

It didn’t take the ability to read minds to see what Toad was thin
king. He’d had a crush on Jackie. Not that the idea surprised Augustus. She was beautiful, intelligent, charming. Everyone had always loved her.

It made her choices that much harder to understand.

“I told her to see Toby,” Toad said, breaking up Augustus’s thoughts. “I was hoping Toby could help her out. At least, get her away from Kaleb.”

“Is that why she was seeing her? To help her break off from Kaleb?”

Toad shrugged. “Lucky…she had problems. Nightmares. She didn’t like people sneaking up on her, didn’t like strangers grabbing at her. Not really a good attitude for a bar waitress, you know?”

Guilt slid slim
ily down Augustus’s spine. He knew about those things. Had tried to help her, paid a dozen therapists to help, too. But Jackie was so stubborn, no one could get through to her. Not even him.

“I thought Toby could help. Toby…she’s easy to talk to.”

Augustus ran his finger around the rim of his beer glass. “Do you know what they talked about the night Lucky died?”

Toad shook his head. “Whatever it was, though, it was intense. Lucky was crying.” Toad bit his lip, his eyes moving to the stools the two women occupied that night as though the memory were so strong he could still see them there.
“I never saw Lucky cry before.”

Augustus followed Toad’s gaze, trying to imagine his little sister sitting in this dark, dirty bar. He couldn’t
, no matter how hard he tried. Which was odd, since this is the kind of place where they had begun their lives. He could easily picture their mother here, could even hear that cackling laugh she had when she was flirting with a new john. But not Jackie.

He’d had enough. Augustus tossed a few bills on the bar and stood.

“You should ask her. If she thought it was for Lucky, for her family, she might tell you.”

Augustus watched Toad collect his tab. “What do you mean?”

“Toby.” Toad turned to the cash register, tucking Augustus’s fifty under the cash tray. “This thing…it tore her up. Might help her to talk to someone.”

“She still live around here?”

Toad shook his head as he turned, offering Augustus his change. Augustus waved it away, his eyes on Toad’s. “Naw,” Toad said after a slight hesitation. “She went home after the investigation ended. Decided not to finish her degree.”

“And where’s home?”

“Katy. Just outside Houston.”

How appropriate, Augustus thought.

His life had suddenly come full circle. He was going back to Houston.