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  Rob answered on the second ring. “Randy?”

  “Yeah, Rob, hi, it’s me. I just got a call from dispatch. A dead Mexican girl was found in some farmer’s cornfield. I’m on my way to the site. You gonna come over?”

  A long silence, and Randy counted the seconds.

  When he reached thirty, Rob spoke, hoarsely.

  “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

  Randy clicked off.

  “What do you think?” Josie asked.

  “Rob did it, I’m sure of it now.”

  “Great,” Josie said.

  “Rob’s been . . . losing his focus, lately,” Randy said reflectively.

  “Is it time . . . to deal with him?” Josie asked in the inky darkness.

  “I’m thinking it may be time,” he said, and gazed at her. She looked away.

  “Motherfucker,” she said, “things are starting to get really bad.”

  “Babe, they’ve been bad for a while now, you’re only just noticing.”

  16

  Thursday, April 11, 8:55 a.m.

  Anne Delacourt answered her cell on the first ring and checked the number. Brittany’s school.

  “Mrs. Delacourt,” the voice on the other end of the line said, “This is Mrs. Harbegast, Brittany’s homeroom teacher, and we’re getting ready to leave on a field trip today, and Britany forgot to bring in her permission slip.”

  “Oh, dear,” Anne said, gripping the cell. What with the morning sickness putting her out of commission, and having to deal with Fred’s new job, she had so many things to do, and she was behind with all her work, and now this.

  “Can I just give you my oral permission for Brittany to attend this field trip?” Anne asked.

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that anymore, Mrs. Delacourt. We had some problems with that, and we now require the permission slip signed by the parent, in hand.”

  “Hm,” Anne said. “I’m almost certain I saw my husband sign it. Can I bring it to the school?”

  Mrs. Harbegast hesitated, and Anne, seized with a sudden idea, said, “Hold on, hold on. We’ve got a home office downstairs and I can fax it in. Will that work?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Harbegast said. “That works.”

  “Does Brittany know where she put this permission slip?”

  “Hold on, Mrs. Delacourt. I’ll ask her.”

  Brittany came on the line. “Mama,” she said, in her soft, sweet voice.

  Anne’s heart softened at the sound of her step-daughter’s voice. She hated to admit to this, but when she found out Brittany would be coming to live with them, after her dear mother died, she’d worried just a bit, that her relationship with a step-daughter wouldn’t be as good as a relationship with her own baby, soon-to-be-born, but Brittany was such a sweet girl, so kind, so nice, and so quiet.

  And so very very disorganized.

  Didn’t Fred used to brag to her about how organized Brittany was? How she kept on top of things better than he did? And yet, ever since she came to live with them, she’d become careless about things. She forgot things. She’d go to school and forget to take her lunch money with her, which wasn’t such a big thing, because she could always charge her lunch, but then there were other things, more serious things, that she was forgetting.

  Like her homework. She’d started forgetting to bring her homework home, and even if she did bring it home, she forgot to do it, and then she forgot to turn it back in, and this wasn’t at all like Brittany.

  Her grades were slipping.

  Over Fred’s objections that it wasn’t necessary, Anne took her to a therapist, to help the poor girl to deal with her grief, but they’d only had a few sessions yet, and no real progress was being made, but all the same, Anne sensed something wrong in her step-daughter’s disposition.

  And it was a lot deeper than just forgetting to do her homework.

  “Mama, the permission slip’s in the red backpack, the one I use for Girl Scouts,” Brittany said.

  “Why’d you forget your permissions slip, sweetie?”

  “Oh, Mama, not now, I don’t have time for this. I’m holding everybody up.”

  “All right. You do want to go on this field trip, don’t you?”

  “Mama, they’re walking out the door. I don’t have time for this. I just need you to tell my teacher I can go on the field trip. Here, I’ll put her on.”

  “No, wait,” Anne said, but Brittany had handed the pone back to the teacher and As the teacher came back on the line, Anne ran upstairs to Brittany’s room, checked the closet and, sure enough, there was the red backpack, lying on the floor in a heap beside all of Brittany’s shoes, and Anne grabbed the red backpack, the one that Brittany used on her weekend camping trips with the Girl Scouts, unzipped all the pockets and scrabbled around in each compartment until she found a slip of paper, which she pulled out and set onto Brittany’s bedspread, and then she reached into the backpack again and her fingers curled around something small and hard and she pulled that up as well and set it onto the bedspread beside the permission slip.

  “Hello, Mrs. Delacourt?” Mrs. Harbegast asked.

  “Ah, hello, Anne said. “I think Brittany got confused and thought I could give her permission over the phone to go on the field trip to the Aquarium, but I just found the permission slip and now I’m gonna run downstairs to my husband’s home office and I’m gonna fax it right over to you.”

  “Oh, well, that’s just fine, thank you. Brittany will be so grateful.”

  “Oh, yes,” Anne said absently, studying the digital camera. It sat on Brittany’s snowy white bedspread, a malignant tick on an otherwise pristine bed.

  “Well, I think that’s all we need,” Mrs. Harbegast said. “Did you want to talk to Brittany again?”

  “Only if she wants to talk to me,” Anne said. “I’m on my way downstairs right now.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Delacourt,” the teacher said, and then off the phone, Anne heard her saying to Brittany, “It’s okay, Brittany. Your mom found the slip.”

  “Oh, okay,” Brittany said, weeping, and Anne’s heart softened even more for this poor little girl.

  “On my way downstairs,” Anne said. She grabbed the permission slip, ran downstairs to her husband’s office, threw the slip into the fax machine, typed in the school’s fax number, and watched as the machine whirred and to life and then beeped as it scanned through the reader.

  “Here’s Brittany again,” Mrs. Harbegast said.

  Brittany came back on the line, her voice sounding so much better. “It came through, Mama. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she said. “Enjoy the field trip.”

  “I will. Bye,” and Brittany hung up on her.

  Anne clicked the cell phone off and pulled the permission slip her husband had signed the night before off the fax machine and studied it. Thought about it. Wondered about it. Considered it some more.

  It was weird with Brittany, odd. Why’d the girl deliberately leave this important permission slip in her fire-engine-red-backpack, the one she took to Girl Scouts? Why’d she do it? Because she kept only her Girl Scouts stuff in the red backpack, and she kept only her school stuff in the black backpack.

  It was as if . . . and here, Anne knew Fred might disapprove of her read on this, he said she read too much into things, but it was as if . . . Brittany had done it on purpose. She’d put the permission slip into the wrong backpack, so that she didn’t have to go on the field trip, but then, when the class was walking out the door, and she realized her error, then suddenly, she wants to go?

  But why would Brittany do that?

  Still musing, Anne walked up the stairs and back to Brittany’s room and studied the digital camera lying on the bedspread.

  Where’d this camera come from?

  And why did Brittany keep it a secret?

  Anne racked her brain, trying to remember if she’d ever seen this camera before. No, she didn’t think she had. She’d never seen it, and Fred ran every single hou
sehold purchase by her first before making any big-ticket purchases, and this camera looked expensive. Then again, Brittany could’ve gotten this camera from when she lived with her mother, but for some curious reason, it disturbed Anne to see this camera here, lying on Brittany’s snowy white comforter, when she’d never seen it before.

  Why did it disturb her so to see it?

  Leave it alone. It’s Brittany’s private property. You want to earn her trust, and you’ll violate that trust if you look at what’s inside it . . .

  True, she’d been told to go to the red backpack, empty it out, but it’d all been in the pursuit of searching for the permission slip Brittany had forgotten to bring with her to school that day.

  Brittany certainly hadn’t given her step-mother permission to peek at her camera, an expensive camera that Anne had never seen before in her life, but curiosity and a strange kind of dread bubbled up inside her, and she picked the camera up off the bedspread and held it in her hands.

  This camera is her private property. How many times did she rail against Randy Randalls, for all the times he violated her privacy, helping himself to things in her bedroom, claiming he had the right because he paid for them? How many times? How many times did she awaken in the dead of night, aware of someone’s eyes gazing at her. How hard was it for Brittany to open up to me like that? And I’m going to violate her trust now? Do I really want to do that?

  Didn’t she want Brittany to feel safe here, in this new home she’d made, a family with her father and the girl’s baby brother?

  Yes, but this was her house, and in the process of looking for something for which she had express permission, she’d discovered something else, and it’d piqued her curiosity.

  She picked up the camera.

  Pushed the button to turn it on.

  And saw the photos.

  A few minutes later.

  “Fred,” Margaret Pierce, his secretary, stood in the doorway of the partners’ meeting. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but—”

  “It’d better be good,” Henry Wentworth, and Fred’s partner, said gruffly. “I expressly told you, Margaret, not to interrupt us.”

  “I know that,” Margaret said, with heat, “but Fred’s wife is on the phone and she says you need to come home right now.”

  At these words, Fred’s heart plummeted into his bowels. The pregnancy was going apace, everything was moving forward splendidly, but Anne wasn’t due for another two months. If she was calling, sobbing, from home, then that could only mean—”

  “You’d better see to your wife,” Henry said. “Go along, Fred.”

  Fred jumped from his chair and ran to his office and picked up the landline phone. “Anne?”

  “Frederick,” Anne said, weeping, “you need to come home.”

  “Why, my sweet? What is wrong?”

  Her sobbing was so awful, and so heart-wrenching, he thought he might burst into tears himself. If she’d miscarried, then yes, that was a terrible thing, but at this moment, in this terrifying moment, the only thing he cared about was that his Anne was safe and healthy. They’d gotten pregnant too soon, he saw that now, too soon after the ectopic pregnancy—

  “Come home, Fred,” she whimpered.

  “I will, my sweet.”

  As he hung up the phone, he heard a cough behind him, and turned and saw Henry, standing in the doorway. “I couldn’t help but overhear, Fred. Of course, you may take the rest of the day off.”

  “I believe she’s miscarried,” Fred said. “I’ve never heard her so upset.”

  “Poor girl,” Henry said. “Go home, take care of your wife.”

  17

  Thursday, April 11, 12:00 a.m.

  Rob drove out to Houser’s Farm. He was starting to think it was time to find a new venue for their transfers but couldn’t think of a single place better than this remote farm, with its easy access to the highway and yet located far enough off the road as to escape notice.

  He decided he’d mention it to Randy when he got back. Perhaps they could move it to the Casino; they’d started out there, long ago, but quickly moved it to Houser’s Farm. The Casino, strangely enough, might be safer.

  A sense of foreboding filled his heart as he drove down the gravel road, an apprehension that things weren’t right, that something bad was going to happen, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

  As Manuel herded the travelers out of the back of the van, Rob noticed one particularly pretty girl. Light-skinned; light-skinned enough, in the right lighting, to pass for white, and with a lovely, curvy body. She shot him a hard look as she climbed out of the van and he wondered . . . what if he took her along with him to his house, had some fun with her, before sending her back on her way?

  But his thoughts became distracted by the sight of one of the workers approaching him. Steve Capslock.

  “Rob,” Steve said. “The Attorney General’s Office is starting an investigation.”

  “Oh fuck,” Rob said.

  “Yeah, thought I’d give you the heads’ up. They’re coming in next week.”

  “Well, we’ve been planning to move this operation for some time, so I guess we just got a reminder to get our shit in gear.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you tell Manuel?”

  “Yeah, I did. He knows. When’s the Sheriff gonna arrange a different venue?”

  “Soon,” Rob said.

  “Just wanted to make sure you knew,” Steve said, and walked away.

  Mother of God, when the hell were things going to start going their way, for a change? He didn’t know what else he was going to do.

  He walked over to the buffet to get his lunch and supervise the transfer. The next van was due in an hour.

  A few minutes later.

  As Rob kept an eye on the travelers as they climbed back up into the van, Manuel approached him. “One of the girls, she is missing.”

  “Oh, fuck me,” Rob said. “You sure about that?”

  “Si,” Manuel said. “Her sister came to me, said she’d gone missing.”

  “How the fuck did you let this happen, Manuel?”

  “I am sorry, Rob, but it is difficult to keep track of this many people.”

  “God-dammit, I’m gonna have to look at the security tapes.”

  He walked into the tiny, makeshift office, and got ahold of Steve, who uploaded the video feed for him. They hunkered down in front of the screen and watched the video feed of the women’s restroom, because that was one place that did have camera access to it. Steve backed up the tape, and they watched as the Mexican women wandered into the women’s restroom and then came out, heading toward the buffet table. But one girl—and goddamn if it wasn’t the same hot girl he’d noticed earlier, getting out of the van—she looked around furtively for a moment, then ducked around a corner.

  “She ducked around the corner and took the south exit,” Steve said.

  “How long ago did she do this,” Rob asked.

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Then I may still be in time to catch her.”

  “Okay.”

  Rob left the room and burst out the door through the south exit. He saw her, the willowy, pretty girl, running across the cornfield with the McDonald’s on the other side of the highway, hot-footing it as fast as she could through the cornfield, toward the McDonald’s across the field from the Casino. A clever little woman, running bent over, and that must’ve been so hard for her to do, because she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself, scampering across the field as if the devil himself were on her heels.

  He took off after her, running silently, but at that moment, she whirled around, her eyes large and shining, saw him, shrieked, and broke into a flat-out sprint. She crossed the cornfield like a sprinter, jumped across the highway, ran to the back of the McDonald’s, and disappeared behind it.

  He ran.

  He had to catch her before she found someone and ruined it all for them.

  A few minutes later.
/>   Rob chased the girl for a good mile past the McDonald’s, steadily gaining on her with every yard. She finally collapsed onto her face and screamed with anger and pain and terror, and he slowed down as he drew near her. She fumbled to her knees and gazed up imploringly at him. “Patron, por favor, I no go back.”

  He hunkered down to his knees and gazed around him. They were alone in a cornfield. She smiled up at him.

  He considered.

  He knew someone who could give her an I.D., a social security card. He could put her up into one of the empty apartments in the apartment building his wife inherited from her dad.

  This was workable . . . and she was pretty.

  Very pretty.

  He gazed around him, at the surrounding countryside. Not a soul for miles.

  He looked at her and smiled, and she relaxed.

  Well, that was her first mistake.

  A few minutes later.

  “Please, Patron, take me home with you,” the beautiful, dark-skinned girl pleaded. “I will be a good wife to you. I will make you happy.”

  Rob hesitated.

  She gazed up at him so winsomely. He could just tell, she’d be a tiger in bed. Not that Shelley was a slouch, but still . . . Hispanic women were hot. He could see her now, in his mind’s eye; nude, between the sheets, her pendulous breasts positioned above his lips, begging him to suck on her tits, her gazing down at him as she rode his cock—

  But there were other considerations, other problems. How’d he explain her presence to the world? Shelbyville was a mighty small town, and it’d get even smaller when everyone noticed the hot tamale suddenly sashaying around the town, saying that Rob was her patron, and sure, he could make it work, and everyone would snicker about it behind his back, that Rob now had a mistress holed up in one of the empty apartments—

  As if she sensed his thoughts, her face fell and she looked away.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just can’t do it.”

  “I no go back,” she said, with defiance.