Disembodied Bones (6 page)

Jacques spared Louis a brief sour look. “I’ve
never heard of him,” he said, his eyes shooting back to Roosevelt.
“What does he have to do with Leonie?”

“You gentlemen mind waiting a bit?” Roosevelt
asked politely. “I need to make some phone calls and maybe we can
find out exactly what the deal is.”

Jacques shrugged. Even though the distance
was over seventy miles to his wife, Babette had still received the
gist of the information that she needed. She was already in her car
on her way to help look for their daughter, as were several members
of the family. Between themselves and the police perhaps their
p’tite
could be found before some ill befell her. He didn’t
know what was happening, but he was worried about the child. Leonie
was typically so sensible, so trustworthy, that these actions were
absolutely terrifying coming from her.

•

Everywhere Leonie looked she found something
more and more interesting. She was creeping around the back of the
large house, trying to keep out of the view of the glass windows in
the front of the house. She couldn’t see inside because the glass
was darkened somehow. The bright light of the sun bounced off the
windows and made the reflection unbearable to look upon for very
long. But there were fewer windows as she rounded the back of the
house and discovered the playground.

Leonie stopped for a moment in abject shock.
It was as if someone had decided to plop some huge whimsical
creation on an alien landscape. There were huge hedge animals
carved in animal shapes. A bear, a rabbit, and a cat guarded the
edge of the area, their boxwood claws reaching out dangerously.
Within their realm were all the accoutrements that a child would
want, would ever desire. Monkey bars, swings that were three times
the length of any Leonie had ever seen, a set of slides that curled
around and around like a twisty straw. There were swings and giant
tires sitting on top of sand boxes painted in a vivid rainbow of
primary colors. There was a swimming pool with intricate
waterslides and a dozen bright red beach balls lazily floating
across its serene blue surface. There was a tiny replica of a
castle with real glass windows sitting a dozen feet from the pool.
Rope ladders dangled from trees and there was a tidy tree house
built in one, from which a child could look down upon this
dreamlike empire.

She looked around slowly and saw the utter
emptiness of the playground. It was a place for ghostly children to
frolic, their silent antics an escapade of nothingness as only a
mild breeze moved a swing and a faint squeal sounded as a door to
the little castle swung lightly shut.
No one really played
here
, Leonie realized. It was a place of horrifying blankness;
a tribute to children who might look out upon the temptation of the
playground and yet never get to touch one single piece of the
equipment.

Leonie didn’t quite understand what it was
that she was thinking. But somehow she knew that children had not
been allowed to play there. They had looked upon it and never been
allowed, lest they ruin its sheer perfection of being an unabashed
enticement. She wouldn’t have been able to put the words into her
mouth but she knew what this was; it was a trap.

She forced her gaze away back to the house.
Douglas hadn’t fallen for the playground. No, it was something
else with him
. And right now she could almost reach out and
touch him. He was asleep, his little mind dreaming about arcade
games, not quite able to win, but not able to let go of the game
controls. His limbs twitched as he lay awkwardly tied up to a hook
that was set into a floor. His head rested against a satin pillow
but he wasn’t comfortable.

Leonie snapped back into herself. There was a
way to get inside. She wasn’t stupid. She would get inside in
whatever way she could. At the edge of the playground was a line of
river smoothened rocks that delineated the gravel of the play area
from the green grass of the sweeping lawn. She leaned down and
picked one up, testing the weight of it for heft.

That’ll do
, Leonie thought and stared
at a door that led inside. The bottom half was solid wood the color
of mahogany, but oh, the top half was glass partitions with neat
little squares that invited someone to break a pane or two. As she
drew closer to the door she saw that there was a parking area
behind the house as well. It sat empty of vehicles, but its gravel
surface showed habitual use. Her eyes followed the curve of the
road up a rolling hill as it led to the west. There was the back
entrance
. This is where he will return to, that man, the one
named Whitechapel.

Leonie raised the rock and broke out a pane,
wincing at the abrupt loud noise shattering glass made as fragments
hit the floor inside the door. She took the rock and knocked the
fragments out all around the little frame, so that it wouldn’t
immediately be obvious to someone returning that the glass had been
shattered. Then she reached inside with a slender arm and fumbled
for the mechanism that would open the door.

She was simply amazed that the door seemed to
open so easily. There was no bleating alarm that went off, no
security man running up to quickly arrest her, or worse,
Whitechapel himself. In Leonie’s mind he would be a monster, a
thing with a rabid snarling mouth that would devour her to prevent
her from spreading her knowledge of his misdeeds. She didn’t
understand then that he didn’t dare have an alarm system that would
invite police officers to intrude on his personal sanctum while he
was gone, lest they discover his nasty horde of secrets.

The door swung open and silently invited
Leonie inside.

•

Roosevelt wanted to pound his head against
the desk in frustration. His high school Spanish wasn’t doing the
job in getting through to the man whose name Gerald Ritchie had
scribbled on a rumpled sheet of notepaper. The man who had answered
the phone was very willing to play a verbal game of
decipher-the-rotten-Spanish with Roosevelt, but he didn’t actually
understand what he wanted. “
Si, mi nombre es
Detective
Roosevelt Hemstreet,” he repeated carefully for the third time. “I
need…I need, oh, hell, how do I ask for this guy?”

Eloise Hunter said from the doorway,
“¿Puedo hablar a…?”

Roosevelt looked up and winced. But he
repeated the words anyway, hoping he wasn’t inviting the man on the
other end to have oral sex with his donkey or something equally
vile.
“¿Puedo hablar a
Faustino De La Torres …?”

The voice on the other end made a weary sound
of acknowledgement. “
Si, un momento, por favor, Senor.”

Eloise poured herself a cup of coffee and
said loudly, “It’s amazing what an old gal like me can do with a
lollipop stuck up my butt.”

There are twenty other coffee pots situated
in the building, thought Roosevelt and Eloise had to appear in his
office at the precise moment he needed someone to do something he
couldn’t quite do. She would be lording this over him for the next
twenty years, if he lived that long. He made a mental note to buy
her a bag of Tootsie Pops and ask how many licks it took her to get
to the center.

“
Hola
,” said a crisp voice on the
crackling phone line after a minute.

Roosevelt’s eyes snapped open wide as he
suddenly sat straight up in his chair. “Uh,
si. Mi nombre es
Detective Roosevelt Hemstreet. Is this Senor Faustino De La
Torres?”

“Fortunately for you,” came the dry reply, “I
can speak English very well, and yes, this is Detective De La
Torres.”

“Okay,” said Roosevelt, surprised at the
crisp almost accentless English that the Mexican detective spoke.
“I’m calling from Shreveport, Louisiana in the United States.”

“Do tell.” De La Torres lost the amused note
immediately.

So much for détente
. “I don’t know
what the sergeant you spoke to said, but I’m very sorry if he
didn’t help you or he was rude to you,” Roosevelt said hurriedly.
Gerald was going to owe him for this and Roosevelt was in a mind to
make the Sarge pay up in chocolate éclairs, the kind that would put
two spare tires around his middle. “Like yourself, I’m sure you’re
overworked and understaffed and he was extremely busy.”

De La Torres sighed on the other end of the
line, but said nothing.

“It’s about this Whitechapel guy,” Roosevelt
added quickly. “I’m wondering why you wanted information on
him.”

The other man digested the information
quietly.

Roosevelt sighed. “Okay. I get it. The
sergeant was rude to you so you get to be rude to me. But this has
to do with-”

“A missing child?” De La Torres
interjected.

“Yeah,” said Roosevelt, not exactly
surprised. “A little boy.”

“There will be others, you know,” said the
other man. “Maybe you haven’t made the connection. Children go
missing all the time. We hear about your infamous milk cartons,
even in Chihuahua. Maybe this Senor Whitechapel has been clever
enough not to poach from his own backyard. But there are others. I
am most definitely sure about that.”

Roosevelt’s mouth opened and then shut.
Finally, he said, “What did he do there?”

“Six months ago, Senor Detective, Monroe
Whitechapel came to Chihuahua. He stayed at an exclusive resort in
a separate
casa
, a house, you know? Two boys disappeared in
the month he was here. Of course, many young children go missing
here. The poor are very poor here, and they move north to the
maquiladoras
on the border to make money, much more money
than they can make begging or doing menial labor here.”

“
Maquiladoras
?” repeated
Roosevelt.

“
Si.
These are foreign-owned assembly
plants on the U.S./Mexican border. They use much labor, but pay a
fraction of the U.S.’s minimum wage. But as I was saying, children
move north all the time, but these two, a nine year old and an
eight year old vanished within weeks of each other, and they left
their possessions, as meager as they were. Their mothers swear
their children did not leave voluntarily.” De La Torres’s voice was
sardonic. “I admit I did not take them seriously when they reported
their disappearances. As I’ve said, children as young as six move
up to the border, seeking work, looking for a way to make enough
money to persevere.”

“Sounds like a helluva life,” Roosevelt
muttered, thinking about his six year old son.

“
Si,
but the crux of the matter was
that both boys were seen speaking with Senor Whitechapel in the
hours before their disappearances. However, a search of his casa
revealed no evidence of their being inside and he did not hesitate
hiring a fancy lawyer from Mexico City.” There was a lingering
pause that suggested to Roosevelt that De La Torres shrugged
cynically on the other end. “We couldn’t hold him and he left
Chihuahua immediately. I thought perhaps that he might have a
record there in Louisiana. Or at the very least I could warn your
fellow officers of the danger that this man presents. But your
sergeant wasn’t very receptive.”

“You think he did those boys.”

“I think that maybe in months or years we
might find a jawbone that will let us know what happened to their
bodies, but identification will be
muy diffícil
. These
children are the members of very poor families. There will be no
dental records to access, nothing left with their bones to tell us
who they were.” De La Torres’s voice became a little deeper. “But I
know. And I think you know, too.”

“Two boys,” Roosevelt said quietly. “Jesus
Christ. There’s a ten year old boy missing here. Maybe Whitechapel
saw someone who he just couldn’t resist.”

“A fox in a hen house cannot help but to eat
a few of the chickens, even if it means that the farmer will know
exactly who has done that thing.”

Roosevelt didn’t like the analogy. “I’m going
to call you back, Detective De La Torres. I’ve got some work to do.
I’m going to let you know what I find out. If this man turns out to
be our man, then perhaps you’ll be able to get something out of
this.”

De La Torres sighed again. “It doesn’t
matter. This fox, he is too clever to come back to this chicken
coop. He knows that as long as I am here, then he won’t be able to
freely follow through with his…practices.” He hesitated. “I would
like to be able to tell the mothers where the remains of their sons
are located.”

Roosevelt was silent. Finally, he said, “I
don’t know if this guy is our guy, but I’ll keep you informed. I
promise.”

“
Si
. Perhaps your missing child will
turn up okay. I will light a candle for the boy. Vaya con Dios,
Detective.”

“Thanks,” Roosevelt said absently. And when
he hung up the phone, he didn’t feel any better. He looked up and
found Eloise Hunter still standing by the coffee pot, slowly
sipping at her mug. “What?”

She shrugged. “Ah was just thinking of all
the missing posters on the wall next to my desk. Not all boys, of
course, but some of them are. Some of them from Texas. Some from
Arkansas. A few from Mississippi. Just interesting, that’s
all.”

Roosevelt rubbed his head. Inside his brain
that gold Cross pen was still slowly twirling, torturing his
thoughts. “I got to look at some records.”

•

Leonie was standing in the middle of a living
room. It was a messy place filled with toys. An elaborate train set
wound its way around the perimeter of the room and disappeared into
the hallway. There were children’s books and record players and
arcade games lining the walls. She counted two pinball games and
three standup models. They were plugged in and made twittering
bleeps or abbreviated sets of tones, while they waited for a child
to play with them.

She moved into another room and found more of
the same. The inside of the house looked like a toy store with all
the packages opened up and the toys played with. Unlike the
playground outside, the toys here were used. At least someone
turned them on once in a while and listened to the horn of the
little train as it pumped relentlessly through a series of rooms.
But no one was playing with them now and Leonie shivered.