Trail of Echoes (28 page)

“All y'all cops keep talkin' to Vaughn,” ShaQuan said, “but ain't nobody talked to us or asked us what
we
thought, how
we
feel. Y'all forget we people, too.”

“So what
are
your thoughts?” I asked. “How
do
you feel? Seriously.”

“Why you care?” Imunique asked.

“Cuz Jesus wants me to,” I said, eyes narrowed. “And I haven't forgotten that you're people. That's why I'm still here. Cuz bad shit shouldn't happen to you, ShaQuan, or to you, Treasure, or even you, Imunique. Or to Allayna and Chanita, but it did, and it ain't right.”

“Where you been, then?” Treasure countered. “You ain't come around here when Laynie first went missing.”

Cuz I only come around when people are dead.
“I'm here now,” I said. “When was the last time you saw Allayna?”

“Monday night,” ShaQuan and Imunique said as Treasure said, “Thursday.”

I cocked my head and peered at the trio. “Please, girls?”

Treasure dropped her gaze.

“What time on Thursday, Treasure?” I asked.

“After school,” she whispered.

“Where?”

“Near Fat Burger.”

“The one on Marlton?” I asked.

She nodded.

The dance school was also in that shopping complex, located across the street from the abandoned Santa Barbara Plaza. Did Allayna attend that school? If she did, had she gone to class on Thursday?

“What was she wearing?” I asked.

Treasure shrugged. “Clothes.”

“You speak to her?”

“We said hi,” ShaQuan said with a twisted smile. “We was gonna walk her home.”

“How nice of you,” I said. “And did you walk her home?”

Treasure shook her head. “She got a ride.”

“From?” I whispered, nerves prickling beneath my skin.

“Whoever drove that dark SUV,” Treasure said.

“Notice a license plate this time?”

“Nope,” ShaQuan said. “Didn't want to.”

I ignored her and focused on Treasure. “Treasure, did you notice…?”

She took a while but finally nodded, then shrugged, then shook her head.

“When was the last time she and Justin hung out?” I asked.

“They was kickin' it at my house on Sunday night,” Treasure said. “They was on the couch, watching DVDs and stuff. Kissin' and goin' on, but she wanted to stop.”

ShaQuan sneered. “She always wanna stop.
I
think she tryna get him in trouble. I—”

A police helicopter thundered above and away from us, and soon the circling with the searchlight began. The girls glared at the bird in the sky, then hoisted their middle fingers. Sirens wailed closer … closer … That bright white light shone closer … closer …

“Ain't Chanita's funeral tomorrow?” Imunique asked.

“It was today,” I said.

ShaQuan giggled. “Oops.”

“They ain't had to stick her in no gym bag,” Treasure said. “That's some wack shit.”

ShaQuan and Imunique snickered again, but agreed that sticking Chanita Lords in a gym bag was, indeed, some wack shit.

With tears in my eyes, I shook my head, awed and disgusted by these young women. “You guys really think this is funny? I know you didn't like Chanita, and obviously you don't like Allayna, either, but
damn
. Are y'all really who the world thinks you are? Who the world thinks
I
am? Angry black women who don't give one fuck about anything? Are you really nasty little bitches through and through? Seriously: do you want to go to hell?”

Shamed, the girls stared at the concrete, and, for that brief moment, they looked like children again.

“Anything else you can tell me?” I asked.

“Anything else you can tell
us
?” Imunique spat. “Like, why you ask us stupid-ass questions all the time?”

“She just wanna find out why Allayna gone, dum-dum,” Treasure explained.

“She ain't gone.” ShaQuan dropped her empty Cheetos bag to the ground. “She
hiding.
”

I rolled my eyes. “Is she hiding with Chanita for the insurance money?”

ShaQuan did the head-neck swivel. “She
hiding
cuz that's how she wants it.”

“Maybe if
I
disappeared,” Imunique said, “maybe people will pay
me
some attention.”

“My foster mother would probably be happy if
I
disappeared,” ShaQuan said, smiling, even though her eyes held sadness. “But I ain't lettin' that bitch be happy.” She forced herself to laugh. Sounded as empty as that cheese-curls bag now drifting across the pool of concrete.

Treasure shrugged, and her eyes hardened. “Maybe if Laynie didn't try be all that, not try to be so damn special, she'd still be walkin' around and carrying that damn dance bag.” She blinked, then gaped at me.

“What?” I asked.

“I just remembered…” She swallowed hard, then said, “2BT.”

“And what is 2BT?” I asked.

She smiled and crossed her arms.

“Don't fuck with me, little girl,” I growled. “What is 2BT?”

Her smile dimmed, and she sat upright in the patio chair. “It's all I remember. The license plate from the truck that took Laynie started with 2BT.”

 

39

2BT
.

An incredible lead from an unlikely source.

“You shittin' me?” Lieutenant Rodriguez said.

I stood near the quiet mail room in Vaughn Hutchens's apartment building. The wind had picked up even more, and now a small funnel of supermarket circulars, lint, and cigarette butts swirled between the laundry room and the entry gates.

“No, sir,” I said. “She swore to me that she remembers. That's enough for a BOLO.”

Even though the Department of Motor Vehicles didn't capture color, the agency could still run 2BT through their computers and generate a list of SUVs with that plate sequence.

And now I breathed a sigh of relief so deep that I lost a pound.
Moving forward.
Partial plate or not, though, I still had to do the hardest task: tell a mother that her daughter was dead.

In the open front door to apartment 2, two men in sweaty T-shirts and cargo shorts distributed
MISSING
and
HAVE YOU SEEN?
flyers between two postal bins. Muddy shoes and tired faces, they'd probably been searching for Allayna all day.

The guy wearing the Red Sox cap saw me walking toward them. “You a cop, ain't you?”

His cornrowed partner scowled at me and shook his head in disgust. “Somebody gon' help us look? We was out all day, and ain't one cop show up.”

“Where'd you look?” I asked. That pound I'd just lost landed back in my gut.

“Ballona Wetlands,” Red Sox said. “Laynie like goin' there, so we figured…”

Ballona Wetlands was four miles away, in Playa Vista, near my former Shangri-La condo. Close to the Jungle but as far away as the Shire.

“Go on in,” Red Sox said. “Vaughn's here.”

A tan sofa, a lopsided entertainment system, and cardboard boxes filled with gewgaws and whatnots remained in the otherwise-empty living room. Squares of carpet that had sat beneath pieces of furniture looked brighter and flatter than areas that had been exposed to smoke, food, and foot traffic.

Although most of the furniture had been removed and tchotchkes had been packed into boxes, framed pictures still hung on the walls. Allayna and Vaughn sharing cotton candy at the county fair … Toddler Allayna wearing a tutu as Vaughn, wearing a pantsuit and a prideful smile, stood behind her … Allayna and Vaughn driving mini-Indy cars at the slick track.

“Hello?” I cried out. “Ms. Hutchens?”

“Hold on!” a woman shouted from the rear of the apartment.

There were more photos hanging, but none taken with mother and daughter together. Allayna holding a bouquet of roses after an event … Vaughn wearing an ARCO hard hat and standing with a white man who also wore an ARCO hard hat …

Vaughn Hutchens strode into the living room with a pink lampshade in one hand and a bottle of drinking water in the other. Her butterscotch face looked worn and gaunt. She had gathered her long hair into two coiled buns on the sides of her head, Princess Leia–style. “Who are you?”

I held out my hand. “Detective Elouise Norton. I'm here about your daughter, Allayna.”

Vaughn narrowed her eyes—she was trying to figure out if I was a good cop or a bad cop. Not knowing that I was the worst cop, she accepted my handshake, then motioned to the boxes scattered around the living room. “Excuse all this. Can't stand this city no more. Laynie can't handle it no more, either. When she gets back home, we're moving to New Mexico.”

“Why New Mexico?” I asked.

“Lots of colors and lots of nothing. None of the past.”

We perched on the couch. I pulled out my binder, quickly turning past pages of Allayna's death scene.

Vaughn pulled a box of Parliaments and a purple lighter from her jeans pocket. “No one is listening. No one is helping. It's just me, most of the time. Frustrated. Alone. The news shows on TV talk about white girls who disappear. Their mommas get to tell the entire world stories about their babies, but have reporters come here and asked me anything?”

“Have you been watching the news today?” I asked, heart in my throat.

“Nope. Didn't want to hear about Chanita's funeral.”

No news cameras wanted to hear about it, either—none, except Mike Summit, had shown up, choosing instead to cover the funeral of Congresswoman Fortier.

“What would you want the world to know about Allayna?” I asked.

Vaughn took a drag from the cigarette, then blew smoke into the air. “The truth.”

“Which is?”

“There's a rumor that Allayna was fooling around before she went missing. She wasn't that kind of girl. I didn't even let her go to the movies with boys. People figured she had a lot of boyfriends cuz she was pretty. But she wasn't into all that. People are also sayin' that she was mentally unstable and suicidal.”

“But she wasn't any one of those things?”

Anger lit Vaughn's eyes. “What if she was? Is it her fault that she's missing? Anyway…” She cocked her head. “You're not from Missing Persons, are you?”

I shook my head. “I'm a homicide detective.”

She stared at me, the grim reaper's press agent, and light filled her eyes. Finally, she gasped, then mewed like a kitten. Her eyes crossed before she closed them.

And then, I told her that we had found a girl, dead, that afternoon. I showed her that picture in my binder.

She nodded and whispered, “Yes.”

The cigarette burned between her fingers.

We sat very, very still for several minutes.

“We…” Vaughn stared at the cigarette. “We used to do everything together. And then … We didn't understand each other anymore.” Fat tears slipped down her gaunt cheeks, and she cried without making a sound.

I watched her and waited.

“Dancing,” Vaughn whispered. “Listening to her iPod. Writing poems. That's what she loved the most.”

“That evening before you reported her missing—”

“She had dance at Miss Debbie's,” Vaughn recalled, “from three thirty to four thirty. I told all this to Detective Dean.”

“How did she usually get home?”

“She walked. Marlton to Santa Rosalia to Nicolet.”

“Where did she go to school?”

“Madison, over on—”

“I know it. I went there, too.”

She squinted at me, then puffed her cigarette.

“And the last time you talked to Allayna?”

“Thursday at lunchtime,” Vaughn said. “I'm working a new shift, so I don't get to see her much. So I checked in with her. Told her that I put her costume in the cleaner's.”

“And you called 911 when?”

Vaughn flicked ashes into the water bottle. “At three thirty Friday morning, when I got home. She wasn't here, and she hadn't slept in her bed.”

“Did you keep calling your daughter even after we got involved?”

She nodded. “And I left messages on her voice mail.”

“Her father?”

“Ain't around.” She tapped ashes into the bottle. “He's never been around.”

“Boyfriends?”

“I don't have time for boyfriends.”

“Who was her school counselor?”

“Payton Bishop.”

My scalp crawled, and I cleared my throat before asking, “How was that?”

“He's very supportive,” she said. “Very kind. A little nosy. Extremely sanctimonious. He thinks I'm holding my daughter back. He thinks he's smarter than me.”

“Did he and Allayna spend a lot of time together?”

“Like out of school?” Vaughn shook her head. “He calls
me
all the time. Tells me to take Laynie to this performance and to fill out this form or that form. It's like he doesn't trust me to handle my daughter's future. Like I'm neglectful and selfish and working the graveyard shift cuz I
enjoy
working the graveyard shift.”

I swallowed, worried that my next question would cause the cigarette now hanging from Vaughn's lips to either flip onto my lap or be put out in my eye. “I've talked to a few … students about Allayna, and they seem—”

“You talkin' about the girls who beat her up? Them evil little bitches out there?” Vaughn pointed toward the courtyard. She shook out another cigarette before smashing the one still stuck between her lips. “You know what? The last time they beat Laynie up, they recorded it. Then they put it up on YouTube.”

My eyes widened.
“What?”

She yanked her phone from her back pocket, tapped the YouTube app, then handed me the phone.