BlueK Dynasty: The 1st Seven Days (7 page)

Allie and Inis looked at
each other in confusion. All around them things clicked and
rustled; feet pattered, and objects were pushed and prodded. It
seemed as if the twins and their mother were the only things not in
on the loop.
  

“
If
Kurma isn’t here then where is she?” asked
Inis.
  

Carrboro said, “I was
hoping you could tell us. We need her for
questioning.”
  

“
You
already said that,” Fae said in an annoyed
voice.
  

“
Ma’am,
do you think maybe she’s run away? Afraid that whoever attacked her
will come back?” Carrboro asked. He had his pen notepad out,
waiting for any clues. Even though he was oblivious at times to
people’s circumstances—Fae’s family, for example—he was the kind of
man who stuck to facts and details.
  

Fae sat down on her green,
plush couch and massaged her knees, an old habit when she couldn’t
smoke. Her mind rambled on as she thought of what had happened in
her house while she was gone. Kurma had been with Santino that
afternoon. Was it Santino the detective was talking
about?
  

“
Mom,
what do you want us to do? We could go out and look for her maybe,”
said Allie.
  

“
Or
maybe call around and ask her friends,” said
Inis.
  

“
She
doesn’t have any friends, dummy,” whispered
Allie.
  

Fae went right on
thinking, and ignored her boys completely. Carrboro had said the
man had fallen out of the window and killed three men. ‘Had his
falling on the men killed them, or had the man, possibly Santino,
gotten up from the fall and killed them after?’ Fae
wondered.
  

Carrboro tried to guide
the twin boys away from their mother to question them separately.
He found this method always returned results—divide and conquer.
Plus it gave them less time to hatch a lie
together.
  

Fae could hear the
detective trying to lower his voice. He was keeping secrets or
planting lies. She didn’t trust him; she never trusted cops. He
didn’t even have the audacity to tell her about the supposed
struggle that had taken place between her daughter and the wanted
man. What kind of cop would keep this information from the mother
of the victim?
  

Fae hoped it wasn’t
Santino who had fallen out her window. She hoped that wherever her
daughter was, she was okay and would return home. Even though at
times they were at odd with
 
each other, Fae had only one
daughter and wouldn’t change that fact. She had to find Kurma, but
where was she to look in a city as big and as crowded as
Alexandria?
  

Then again, sitting around
waiting for Kurma to show up was not an option. Maybe she should
tell the detective that Santino must have been the man in her
apartment; then the cops could begin to look for him, which could
lead to Kurma.
  

Fae looked ahead as she
sat on her love seat, and saw the family’s portrait on top of the
small fireplace mantle. Fae was in the middle next to her
ex-husband; her twin boys were standing behind them; and Kurma lay
at the foot of the couple. Quiet and shy, Kurma was the reclusive
one in the family. With her thick, long hair, sparkling eyes, and
radiant skin, she had always been beautiful, even though at times
she tried to hide it. Fae remembered she used to brush Kurma’s hair
at night until the girl fell asleep in her arms. Kurma’s smile
could light up a room back then, before the
divorce.
  

Fae stood up and walked
over to the picture. She smeared dust from its frame and saw a
clearer image of her family. That unity—she missed that. A tear
dropped from her eye onto the portrait, warm and thick. “Don’t let
this be real,” she whispered. She gripped the picture tightly as
she walked back to her twins and Carrboro.
  

8.

It’s always the
first-born
  

Knock
,
 
knock
, and
 
knock
. Quinn, flipping channels on the television and sitting next
to her infant daughter, heard the light raps on the door. She
usually didn’t have company this late. She glanced over at the wall
clock: half past ten. Santino, her son, should have been home by
then. Maybe he had lost his keys.
  

“
Chandra, get the door,” Quinn told her six-year-old daughter.
The girl hopped off the dining room stool where she sat and rushed
to the door. Quinn rose from the couch with her baby as Chandra
swung open the front door and hid behind it. Carrboro peeked
in.
  

“
Next
time, Chandra, ask who it is first,” Quinn instructed. “May I help
you?” she asked Carrboro.
  

“
Yes.
I’m with the South Alexandria police force. My name is Detective
Carrboro,” Carrboro said.
  

“
Um, do
you have a first name at least?” Quinn
asked.
  

Carrboro seemed taken
aback. Women usually had a thing for him. “My first name is Smith,”
he replied. “What’s your name, if you don’t mind my
asking?”
  

“
Well, I
do. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on first?” Quinn put her
baby down on the couch and turned to face Carrboro. She placed her
hands on her hips and got into a comfortable stance. When it came
to the police, she needed to be prepared for anything. They only
came knocking after something happened. Quinn thought it had better
not be anything about Santino or that
girl.
  

Carrboro stood in the
middle of the living room staring Quinn up and down. He didn’t mind
a little spice from time to time, and this lady was definitely
fiery. Carrboro liked his women petite and short like Quinn, so he
could pick them up and toss them around a little bit. Big women
weren’t his thing at all. He noticed her dimples, which didn’t need
a smile in order to show up. Her eyes were light brown, and stood
out against her jet-black hair. Carrboro thought she looked too
young to have so many kids.
  

“
Sir,
you were saying something.” Quinn spoke up so Carrboro would stop
ogling her. She hated men who stared. He probably was married
anyway; married men stared, and that was a
fact.
  

Carrboro focused in and
remembered why he had come downstairs in the first place. “This can
go a lot easier if I could just have a name to start off
with.”
  

“
Quinn.
Just call me Quinn,” she said quickly, then thought,
‘
and get to the damn
point’
.
  

“
Okay, I
can work with that. Quinn, when was the last time you saw your
son?”
  

Quinn screwed up her thick
eyebrows and thought for a moment. “This morning, when I left for
work. He was taking his brother and sister to school as usual. Is
Santino in trouble? He hasn’t shown up here
yet.”
  

“
No,
ma’am, I don’t believe he is in trouble as of right now. We do need
him for questioning, however.”
  

“
Questioning for what? Do I need to call my lawyer?” asked
Quinn.
  

This was what Carrboro had
been trying to avoid. As the case progressed, the facts became even
more distorted. When he had gotten the call for a homicide
incident, he had no idea there would be this many twist and turns.
At first one body had been found dead, and witnesses had said a man
had fallen from a window. Carrboro figured these two were one and
the same. Later he learned the dead man wasn’t the one who had
fallen from the window. Then Carrboro had received another call
stating that the man who had fallen from the window—some fifteen
feet—had somehow gotten up and killed two men. This man was still
on the run, and had kidnapped two more men in the process. And
there could have been another incident involving police
officers.
  

Carrboro didn’t know what
else would pop up on his scanner, and didn’t know how to tell this
mother exactly why her child was wanted. Carrboro wanted to see—to
actually physically witness—Santino for himself, and talk to him
before charging him, getting lawyers involved, and bringing in the
media.
  

He said, “There’s a lot of
speculation going on regarding your son. Supposedly there was a
chain of events this evening that caused three deaths, a possible
assault, and a kidnapping.”
  

 
If
her son had done all those things, Carrboro would need her to talk
the boy into giving himself up. He would have to tread lightly with
Quinn.
  

“
All I
want to do is talk to him. When he gets in, please have him give me
a call.” Carrboro retrieved his card from inside his jacket in one
smooth flip. “My office number is on the front. My personal number
is on the back. This case seems to be getting thicker and thicker.
It would be wise of you to instruct your son very carefully on his
next move.”
  

“
And if
he doesn’t come home anytime soon?” Quinn
asked.
  

Carrboro looked around the
living room. He saw how the family pictures were lined up in rows
on the shelves and tables. He noticed how the little girl had come
from behind the door and held her mother’s hand. What he saw was a
young family in need of their oldest son, who, Carrboro knew, stood
in for the father of the house.
  

“
He will
come home. If he doesn’t show up in two days then we’ll put a
warrant out for his arrest.” Carrboro’s voice was flat and grave.
Whatever he had to do, however he had to twist a threat to get
results, then that was what he was going to do. He backed out of
the room, and left Quinn and her little girl staring in
shock.
  

“
Mommy,
I want Santino here,” little Chandra said in her tiniest
voice.
  

Quinn held on to her
daughter’s hand as she let the detective’s words sink in fully.
Whispers, shouts, and questions all swirled around in her head. She
didn’t want to believe her first-born son would be anything like
his father. Quinn didn’t have the heart to go through it again. All
the police questions, the letters, the lawyer fees, the visits—she
had done this already. And she had done everything right. She had
gotten rid of her husband and his bad ways. So why did it seem as
if history was repeating itself?
  

“
Chandra, baby, go take your little sister in your room,”
Quinn said. She looked down at Chandra, who was staring up at her
with an angelic face. “Mommy is going to come in there and tuck you
in.”
  

Oblivious, Chandra smiled
and ran to pick up her baby sister gently. The baby’s coos echoed
as Chandra left Quinn to herself.
  

Quinn had never needed
Santino’s father for anything. Every time he’d said he was going to
do something and didn’t do it, Quinn had never said a thing. Every
time Santino’s father had promised his son something and it had
never come, Quinn had covered for him. Now it was time for
Santino’s father to show and prove. Whatever this detective was
talking about, whatever trouble Santino could be in, Quinn did not
have the power to deal with it. The rest of her strength went into
her other three kids; she had to leave them with
something.
  

Santino’s father had never
been there—ever. Quinn prayed that just this one time he could be
the father Santino had never had. She dreamed about a day where she
wouldn’t have to deal with every turn and obstacle life threw at
her by herself.
  

Quinn found the pink,
cordless phone and dialed the number. On the fourth ring, a man’s
voice came on the other end of the line.
  

“
Hello?”
  

“
It’s
me. Quinn.”
  

“
What
brings you to call me?”
  

“
It’s
about your son, Santino.”
  

There was a minute’s pause
as the man shifted the phone’s position near his mouth. Quinn could
hear him better after that.
  

“
Santino
isn’t over here.”
  

“
I know
that, Darius. He’s in trouble and I can’t find him, and I know you
haven’t seen him.”
  

“
Yet,
you’re still calling me.”
  

Quinn bypassed Darius’s
attitude and continued with the conversation. “I’m saying that you
need to find him.”