The Victim (6 page)

4:47.

They lived five minutes from Publix. Gina had been home since before five.

Terror boiled in his gut. He felt the contents of his stomach lurch up into this throat. He gagged and tried to quell it with breath. He threw open the front door and ran down the walkway to the driveway. He made a circle with his hands on the rear passenger window of Gina’s Lexus. He pressed his face up to the glass to see through the tint.

There was Charley, still strapped into her car seat.

He had been outside less than twenty seconds and sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead. He opened the door, showered with a wave of trapped heat. It was easily a hundred degrees in the car.

The threads of black hair on her head were slicked to her scalp. Her head listed to the side, her flushed cheek bunched and pressed against the padding of her car seat. She’d already grown out of her newborn clothes and had started on the three-month onesies. The fabric was too loose to see the movement of her chest.

He unbuckled her and lifted her. Her diaper was heavy and soaked through. The fleshy backs of her thighs were hot and clammy. He gently bounced her in his arms until her squinty eyes peeled open and his heartbeat returned to normal.

He didn’t wake Gina. He brought Charley in, undressed her, and emptied out the dishes in the sink for a cool bath. He wrapped her in a towel and fed her a bottle. He took her temperature—treading into fever territory but it was nothing to be alarmed about. He blotted her face with a cold washcloth.

Gina showed no signs of rousing and he left it that way. He was afraid of what he might say or do should she come to.

He sat in the nursery in the rocking chair, holding Charley all night. He didn’t sleep. He was so afraid to put her down for fear that he’d missed a symptom, that something wasn’t right. Reason told him to take her to the hospital but instinct suggested otherwise. He knew what would happen if he told the doctor that his wife had left their newborn in the car for over an hour while she mindlessly wandered inside and fell asleep on the couch. A knock on the door from the Department of Children and Families. Possibly the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

The next morning he texted Jack early, asked him to cover his cases that were on the calendar. Jack said sure. Charley was sound asleep in his arms and with great hesitation, he laid her down in the crib.

Gina was still on the couch, asleep with drunken posterity. Slouched, arm dangling from the armrest, a string of drool running off her chin.

Relief over Charley had calmed him. His temper was no longer wrought with impetuousness and he could think rationally.

He called Gina’s mother and asked if she could watch Charley for the day. He didn’t tell her anything, at least not yet. Anton made an appointment with a psychiatrist he had found online.

The diagnosis came as a shock to Gina, who cried more over the stigma of postpartum psychosis than at the disease itself. Anton wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d suspected that vacant stare, her spacey disposition as of late, could be attributable to something more than mere fatigue. Mental illness ran in her family.

Gina went into the hospital for observation for a week. Gina’s mother came to help and ended up staying with them for a full month. The psychiatrist recommended that Gina not have any unsupervised contact with Charley. It was not uncommon for mothers suffering from postpartum psychosis to want to hurt their babies.

The lithium leveled her out; the Abilify curbed the mood swings. Charlotte switched to formula since Gina couldn’t breastfeed. The meds and the biweekly therapy kept her stable, but lethargic. The baby weight wasn’t coming off. She felt disconnected from her child. She felt inadequate, certainly not sexy. The meds had done a number on her libido.

Anton felt guilty for perseverating on that issue. It had been nine months now. She was showing tremendous improvement but zero interest in sex.

It couldn’t have been him, or was it? He’d been to enough parks and enough first birthdays to know where he ranked among other dads in their early thirties. He didn’t have the bearing of a washed-up high school athlete forty pounds past his fighting weight. He hadn’t gone all paunchy and saggy-chested. His hair hadn’t grayed. He still lifted weights four days a week at a posh gym that had interactive touch screens on the treadmills and lemongrass-scented hand soap in the locker room. He wasn’t in standout linebacker shape like he once was, but he was no slouch.

He could resent and adore her in the same breath, each manifestation dependent upon which one he thought would better his chances. It had been four months, one week, and three days since their last sexual encounter. And even that wasn’t fulfilling—more a languid surrender to his constant annoyances. Flat-backed, thighs still tense, while he pumped away his frustrations for a good two minutes before quietly ejaculating and calling it a night.

He heard the toilet flush. The bathroom light clicked off.

She plugged in her phone on the nightstand and climbed into bed. She was wearing just her long FSU T-shirt. Streaks of dried formula formed a white crust.

She rolled over, her back toward him. He slid up behind her, rubbing his hand up and down her bare thigh. He traced circles with his fingers along her hips and across her buttocks. His crotch stiffened. She whipped around, having felt it pressing against her back.

“
Anton, please.”

“
Please what?”

She groaned. “Just…just stop it, okay. I’m exhausted.”

His erection slowly deflated. He rolled over onto his side.

“
You don’t think I’m tired? I was in trial all day, spent an hour and fifteen minutes getting home. C’mon, Gina. It’s been almost five months.”

She stared up at the cottage cheese ceiling. Her eyes were wet. He knew how damaging it could be to lay a guilt trip on her. During the few therapy sessions that Gina’s psychiatrist had asked him to attend along with her, he knew that his role was critical in her recovery. He had to be supportive, no matter what. Any self-doubts she had as a mother or a wife could trigger a relapse.

“
You’re not going to leave me, are you?” she whispered. “Because I’m crazy? Are you gonna leave me because I’m crazy?”

“
Of course not. And don’t say that. You’re not crazy.”

“
Just hold me, please.” She laid her head on his chest. “Can you just hold me?”

He brushed away the stray hairs out of her eyes. “I will.” He folded his tongue and bit down hard. Frustration curled in his stomach. He exhaled. “I will.”

CHAPTER 7

March 30, 2003

Payson, Arizona

A teddy bear sat limply against the guardrail post, its head dangling, its brown cotton fur dappled with splashes of mud from the passing traffic. It was bound to the post by a piece of wire strung around its neck. The bouquets of flowers had lost their luster, the dried petals littering the dirt and the road, crunched beneath a million tires. Two weeks after the makeshift vigil and the hoards of friends and family members that had gathered, candles in hand, and it was all but forgotten. Even the media was losing interest, the story being relegated to a brief snippet on the local news station.

But she hadn’t forgotten.

Two wooden crosses were placed in the dirt beside the guardrail. Someone had been kind enough to write their names and lifespans in black Sharpie on each one.

kelsie rae mcevoy

april 10, 1985 - march 16, 2003

evan michael rangel

october 24, 1985 - march 16, 2003

Crude skid marks and a residue of charred rubber and fiberglass painted a cryptic image on the asphalt, like hieroglyphs on an ancient tomb. Bits of broken glass had fallen into the cracks and divots in the road, glimmering, catching the midday light. A heat wave, going on its seventh day, curdled the cloudless air, rose off the asphalt in a translucent sheet.

She cried.

She heard that Kelsie’s ashes had been spread over the Grand Canyon. How badly she wanted to be there to see for herself, but then again she was glad she wasn’t. Who wants to see a seventeen-year-old girl reduced to dust, scattered in the wind? Cremation wouldn’t have been Kelsie’s first choice. She would have wanted to be buried. But given the way she died, cremation seemed more suitable.

She kissed her two fingers and touched the cross. She found a loose piece of sandstone in the dirt and bent down to pick it up, figuring she’d leave it at the base of the cross as a sign that she had been there. Wherever Kelsie was, hopefully she would see it.

She felt the
whoosh
of a passing car.

She crouched to the ground and reached for the stone, the size of a golf ball and gritty to the touch. A cluster of manzanita had withstood the heat wave, its blooms bright and pink, vibrant and full of life thanks to the monsoon rains that had drenched the valley the week before.

She gathered a few stems in her fingers, pulled them out, creating a small bouquet. She slid the hair tie off of her ponytail and used it to bind the stems. The sprig pulled from the plant, she noticed something in the vacant space. It was tucked beneath the plant at its base, concealed by the leaves and flowers.

A glint of color. Red plastic, warped and melted.

It was a lighter.

CHAPTER 8

January 14, 2014

Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building

Miami, Florida

Quincy Arrington gave a nod to Anton as he walked into the courtroom. Judge Pena was running on Cuban time and a line of private attorneys had already formed. Most passed the time getting lost in their smart phones, heads solemnly bowed. Anton had been a prosecutor in Pena’s division before going private, so he knew that a nine o’clock calendar actually meant ten.

Anton muttered “hellos” to the defense attorneys he knew and sidestepped through the jury box to grab the seat next to his handcuffed and shackled client, dressed in the bright orange coveralls of a Dade County Jail inmate. Abel Castillo, a cameraman for CBS 4, was setting up his equipment on a tripod. David Ovalle from the
Herald
would probably be popping in as well but he knew that he could take his sweet time.

Quincy offered Anton a fist bump. “What’s happenin’?”

Anton bumped his fist. “Another continuance.”

Quincy clicked his teeth. “Man, thas some bullshit. Them niggas got me locked up five years now.”

Quincy gritted his gold-plated teeth. Anyone else and a horde of inmates would have held him down and busted his grille long ago, collecting the broken bloody bits off the floor to use as jailhouse currency. But Quincy Arrington had serious juice out on the streets. The son of Liberty City gangster royalty, his father was one of the founding members of P.I.F.—Paid In Full. Sent up to Raiford for second-degree murder when Quincy was just a year old, his legacy lived on in the respect paid to his son. Even the corrections officers didn’t fuck with him.

He shook his head, discouraged by the lack of progress in his case. His thick dreadlocks hung in front of his face like vines.
m.o.b.
tattooed across his throat in Old English script indicated his preference for money over bitches.
miami
and
dade
were scrawled vertically along the underside of each sinewy forearm. The P.I.F. emblem—a bubble-lettered dollar sign dripping with blood—was inked on the back of his right hand.

He aimlessly fiddled with his belly chain. Quincy knew it. He was twenty-four and lucky to be alive. He used to be big in the drug game, the product of Miami’s notorious Liberty Square Housing Projects. Pork N’ Beans. Featured on a couple dozen episodes of
The First 48
.

With his father doing life in prison, he was shuffled around from home to home when his momma grew tired of raising the boy. Besides, she had eight other children from six other fathers. So he stayed with an auntie here, sometimes a foster family. He ended up staying with a cousin after he ran away from a group home. It was there he learned the trade. How to buy cocaine powder and turn it into crack. How to cut it with baking soda and baby aspirin to limit purity and maximize profits.