The Rookie Club: Dead Center Part 7

"What are you maintaining? A mouse hole?"

"We're closed," the kid said without turning around. "Use the one upstairs."

In answer, Jamie headed for a stall.

"Jesus Christ," the kid said, getting to his feet. "What a bunch of b.i.t.c.hes."

She locked the stall and heard the outer door slam closed. When she was done, she came back out, washed her hands, and walked over to where the boy had been kneeling. A section of maybe one square foot of two-inch tiles had been newly laid. Grout was slopped all over them. She touched it. It was nearly dry.

Just then the door opened again.

"Hey," the kid called to her. "Get away from that."

Jamie didn't move. "You're doing it wrong."

"Bulls.h.i.t, lady."

"You're going to make a mess of it," she added.

He paused and crossed his arms over his chest. "And what the h.e.l.l do you know about it?"

She glanced up, scanned the boy's face. Early twenties, maybe. "Obviously a lot more than you," she said without rising.

His chin jutted up toward the ceiling. "My father owns the contracting company."

"So what," Jamie countered. "My father was a firefighter. Doesn't mean I know anything about putting out fires."

"Well, I know about this. I've been dragged along on these f.u.c.king jobs since I was nine." He looked at her with his eyebrows up, as though testing her with his language.

She just stared. If he thought language was going to shock her, he needed to spend a day in her job.

He pressed his shoulders back. "If people would stop interrupting, I'd be done already."

"You'd better get back to it before that grout dries and you've got a bigger mess."

Frowning, he slumped his shoulders. "Yeah."

She looked back at the floor and picked up the bag of dry grout.

He tried to s.n.a.t.c.h it from her hands.

"Let me show you a little trick." She grabbed a fist full of the dry powder and sprinkled it on a small section of wet grout.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing? You're just making a bigger mess that I'm going to have to clean up." He sighed. "Come on, lady."

Jamie found a dry rag and rubbed it across the area where she'd strewn the dry grout. The dry grout stuck to the wet stuff and acted as an abrasive to clean the grout off the tiles themselves while leaving it in the grouted areas.

"Seriously," he whined.

"Come look," she told him.

The kid dropped down beside her. He stared a moment then reached out to touch the grout. "Huh."

He sounded so shocked, Jamie actually laughed. Then she caught herself. When was the last time she'd laughed? The boy looked at her like she was mad.

"Well?" she said, offering the bag out to him.

He reached in and filled his fist with grout and repeated what she'd done.

Still kneeling, Jamie handed over the rag.

He wiped it across the grout, then leaned down to survey the area. "It works."

She nodded.

He scowled. "How'd you know that?"

She shrugged. Her father had redone every room of the house they'd lived in. Helping was about the only father-daughter bonding time they'd ever had. Jamie stood up and washed her hands. As she headed for the door, the kid said, "Thanks."

She looked back.

He grinned at her.

"No problem," she said, turning back for the door.

"And, lady?"

"Yeah?"

"You've got grout on your pants."

She glanced down at her navy slacks. Both knees were covered in gray mud. She swiped at it, feeling the little chunks of hard grout. She picked a few off then decided to h.e.l.l with it. She didn't like these pants anyway.

After crossing the main entrance, she walked down the hall to the lab. She stopped to write her name on the sign-in sheet. Just inside, a group hovered by the door. The senior criminalist, Sydney Blanchard, stood with three other lab techs. Two had their backs to her. Voices were low, bodies crossed and closed.

Hailey Wyatt stood with them. She met Jamie's eyes, her gaze cool. Jamie knew they were talking about Devlin. Sydney glanced over and saw Jamie. Her red eyes widened. She'd been crying.

Jamie scanned the other faces, her gut tight. She searched for anything appropriate to say, failed.

"I'm here on Osbourne."

Sydney wiped her cheeks. "It's under the second scope."

Jamie pa.s.sed them and peered down into the eyepiece. Immediately, she knew something was wrong. "s.h.i.t." It was the same something as before. A normal sperm sample showed white and red under the scope. The red denoted the nuclei of the cells. Jamie exhaled. No red in this sample. "No cells at all?"

Sydney nodded. "Doesn't look like we got any s.e.m.e.n."

Jamie shook her head. "She swore he didn't use a condom. It's just like Shawna Delman. No prints, no DNA. No way to prove it was him. So the guy just walks."

Two police officers raped and she had absolutely nothing. "Have we processed anything else from the case?" she asked.

Sydney shook her head. "We're working Devlin full force."

Jamie looked at Hailey, who stepped toward her.

"Tim came forward just after you left," she said.

Jamie didn't respond.

"You knew, didn't you?"

She nodded.

"And you protected him."

It wasn't exactly a question so Jamie didn't answer it. She didn't have a good answer for it anyway. Why would she help him? She had no allegiance to him? They weren't friends. He didn't call and check on her or keep in touch. Was it just because he seemed so pathetic, so scared? So small. No, sheer stupidity was the only thing that came to mind, but she knew Hailey could come to that conclusion on her own.

"That's a h.e.l.l of a risk, Jamie." Jamie didn't answer. "He's lucky you care so much about him."

Jamie met her gaze. "I don't care about him. I trusted him to come forward."

Hailey nodded. "It would have been better if he'd done it before he cleaned up."

Silent, Jamie turned to leave. Her surveillance on Marchek was due to expire in a few hours, and she had no evidence to keep watching him. She knew better than to think she was going to get any attention on Emily Osbourne's case now.

Even dead, Natasha Devlin would steal the f.u.c.king limelight.

Chapter 10.

Crouched inside his shed, Zephenaya watched the lady through the window. When she sat on the bed, he picked up the jagged rock that he kept tucked in the small s.p.a.ce under the cabinet. It was a good night tonight. His stomach wasn't growling and it wasn't cold like some of them. He held the rock tight in his fist and made a notch in the wood. Same as every night. He'd been watching her for thirty-nine plus ten days.

When he got to thirty-nine, he started at one again because he couldn't remember what came after thirty-nine. He knew he used to know that number, but he'd forgotten it. He kept trying to remember, playing little games with himself. Like trying to count on his fingers to distract himself from the numbers or counting super fast, hoping the next number would spring into his head. So far no luck.

Sometimes he doubted that he ever knew what came after thirty-nine. He'd only been in school 'til kindergarten. He had a few weeks of first grade, but it didn't seem much different than kindergarten. Then his father lost his job and they'd had to move. After that, he remembered three different houses, but maybe there were more. He'd never really gone to school in those places. Oh, they made him show up a few days. But he sat in the back and didn't listen. Now he wished he had. He could have used some more counting. His sister could count higher and she would have told him, but she wasn't there. He didn't know where she was. There was a man who told him she was dead, that she took drugs, but Zephenaya didn't believe it. That man was wearing a police uniform but he was a liar. No way Shawna would leave him.

That's why he came here. This lady was friend's with his sister. She came to the house after Shawna's accident. Called her and stuff. She gave Shawna her home address and phone number, wrote it right down for Shawna. His sister kept that piece of paper from the lady in her top drawer. His sister's top drawer was filled with stuff like that. Notes from some of her boyfriends. Pictures like the one of him as a baby and the one of Shawna and their mother when Shawna was two or three. Her first driver's license and the certificate saying she pa.s.sed her police exam. That top drawer was where she kept the things that she cared about.

When they told him Shawna died, he got that piece of paper and came here. Found his way, to tell the truth. Took him a couple days. Someday, he was going to talk to her. Gather up the nerve to ask her about Shawna. But not yet. He kept waiting for her to be hanging around the yard or something, but she never did. And when she came home, she didn't look too happy, so he kept waiting.

All he had to do to pa.s.s the time was watch the lady. The yard didn't have no swing set or sandbox like some of the ones around hers, but having no toys was nothing new to him. Where he came from, there weren't playgrounds or nothing. Not close by, anyway. He took pride in making fun with what he could find. Sometimes he made cool patterns from rocks or threw pebbles at a tree, counting how many times he could hit one place on it. He was getting better with that one. But then, when the lady came home, he watched her. It wasn't like he was trying to. He knew that wasn't polite, but he couldn't help it. He had to wait until he could talk to her, and the lady didn't have blinds inside her house or nothing. Her big windows looked right out on the yard. But he didn't ever watch when she was changing or anything. He was not a pervert or nothing.

First few days, he didn't think it would work, him staying there. After all, he wasn't invisible. She had a perfect view of him right down from her bedroom window. How could she not see him, no shades and all? She was like one of the women in the park who fed the birds. They seemed to stare and stare but not see anything. She was like that. Like she couldn't even see through that gla.s.s.

And it wasn't like she spent any time in the yard. Truth was, she acted like she didn't even know she had a yard. Every day, she went out the front door. At all sorts of hours, too. She'd leave at three in the morning or not until two in the afternoon. That was mostly weekends, he thought, though it was hard to keep track of the days.

He didn't have a calendar or anything, just his notches in the wood. He was careful with those. And he had his letter. He kept the letter in a secret place in his shed. When his sister got back, he would make her read it. He'd carried it in his pocket for a while, but it had gotten so worn, he could barely see her writing anymore. Now the letter was inside a grocery plastic bag he'd found flying around the yard. Sometimes he took the letter out, just to see her writing, just to remind himself that she was real.

She loved him. That was the first line. She'd read him that first line and he knew it said, I love you, Z. That's what she called him. Z.

When he went for food or whatever, it was always early in the morning or at night just before he did the notch. It was best when it was dark and no one could see him. He couldn't read or count, but he was smart enough to know a lot of things-like that people would call the police if they saw a little black boy in this neighborhood. Then he'd have to go back to one of those homes. So Z kept hisself in during the day, watched the house for signs of the lady.

He mostly knew if anyone was home or not because he always heard the garage door open and close. He could tell by the motor sounds if she was coming or going.

He never saw the men this lady was with, but he knew about the coming and going. His father had been like that, too, especially after his mother was gone. Z could think about his mother now and it didn't even make him too sad. He used to miss her. He didn't miss her so much now, but he missed having someone to talk to. He wished he could find Shawna. Prove that man who said she was dead wrong. Where could she have gone?

After her work accident, she'd been in the hospital. She told him he would have to go stay in a foster home for a while. She didn't think it would be long, but he should have asked how many days long was. He stayed in the first house for fifteen days before he went to find her. That had seemed like long enough to him. When the police people took him back there, Mom and Dad Washington didn't want him back. Said they didn't deal with runners. The second home was even worse. They were old and it was just him alone, no other kids. Mrs. Parker kept telling him Shawna was dead. That she wasn't coming back ever. He stayed there for a long time. Until Mr. Parker hit him. Then he left to find Shawna. He stayed out of sight after that. He wasn't going back to another house. No way.

The lady here treated him pretty good by not noticing he was out there, and he knew better than to mess things up. It had been that way living with his dad, too. If he was real quiet and blended in, made like he wasn't there, his father didn't seem to mind having him around. But if Z started to be loud, or ask for something, well, that's when the trouble started.

Same with his lady, he figured. If things went missing, she might start to look around. It wouldn't be too long before she got to the plastic shed in the backyard. The yard was on a hill and filled with trees and bushes, so he had good shade. No one bothered to cut the trees or anything, so it was peaceful.

The air started to get cold and he'd made his notch, so Z had only one last thing to do before bed. He walked across the yard to the hole in the far corner that he'd dug to do his business. He pa.s.sed the tree where he sometimes sat and counted stars when he couldn't sleep. Got just past it when he heard a loud crunch.

He dropped to the ground. Heart pounding. Squinting in the dark, he saw a man circle 'round the back of the house. Z held his breath, pressed his body flat. The man was maybe his dad's height. Shorter than Mr. Washington but bigger-much bigger-than old Mr. Parker.

When he got to the back of the house, he took a few steps up the hill. Z held his breath. Z had never seen anyone in the yard before. He watched as the man stared up into the windows. Z didn't see the lady now. In the dark, Z couldn't see the man's face. He was just a shadow as he climbed up the hill toward Z's house.

Z let the breath hiss out of his lips. Took another breath and held himself perfectly still. He had to pee bad now. The man stopped at Z's shed. He slapped the side of it as though to see if it might fall over, peered inside.

Light from the house next door cut across a sliver of the yard as the man pa.s.sed. He didn't look like one of those people who had made him go to school and taken him to a foster home. They always wore fancy clothes-ties and skirts and stuff. Didn't they know that dressing like that only made kids feel worse? This guy wasn't like that. He dressed like a regular guy-jeans and a brown jacket.

The man squinted into the dark. He seemed to aim his gaze right at Zephenaya.

Z blinked fast. His nose tickled. He ignored it, breathed slowly. The ground was wet on his legs. He longed to shift but didn't dare. The man turned back toward the house, started down the hill.

Zephenaya itched his nose quickly.

The lady crossed in front of the window upstairs.

The man halted, watching. He watched like he was studying her. It gave Z the w.i.l.l.i.e.s.

The bedroom light shut off and the yard went dark. Z blinked hard, couldn't see. He reached down and squeezed his p.e.n.i.s to hold it. He didn't want to wet his pants. They were the only ones he had.

The man stood there in the dark for what felt like ten minutes; then he backed away from the house, crept quietly around the side yard, and disappeared. Zephenaya didn't move for another ten minutes, until he was sure he was going to pee his pants. Then he got on his knees, peed into the tree as fast as he could, staring at the side of the house the whole time.

Back in his shed, Z found his blanket on the ground. Everything else looked the same. Shawna's letter was still inside the bag under a pot. His food and stuff was hidden because he'd worried about animals, so maybe it was okay.

To be extra safe, he opened up the narrow side cupboard where he'd removed the shelves and crawled inside to sleep. They used to call him a runt at school on account of his being so small, but sometimes being small was a good thing.

Tucking his blanket around him, Zephenaya slid the cupboard door closed. Eyes shut, he tried to block out the creepy man as he fell asleep. His last prayer was the same as every night-that tomorrow he'd find Shawna.