Privileged to Kill

21

I idled past Jan’s Pizza Parlor, looking at cars and crowds. The place was hopping, and I didn’t recognize many of the faces. I wouldn’t have even if I had been able to see them clearly. New generations of kids were passing through the school so fast that I had long since given up trying to keep track of them all.

Posadas was a tiny place by most standards. Still, I was discovering that it was startlingly easy to grow out of touch.

All four of my own kids had graduated from Posadas High School, and back then when I saw a kid on the street, odds were ten to one that I would recognize him-and probably in eight of those cases I’d also know the parents, know what the father did or didn’t do for a living, know what the closet skeletons were.

Now I was lucky to recognize one out of ten. And that included the two victims of the truck crash that night. I’d heard Stub Moore mention the name, and it had meant nothing to me. Nor had a quick glimpse of the kid’s ashen face as he was strapped onto the stretcher. All I’d seen of the passenger was a lump under a blanket. But I was content that I’d find out in due time who they were, and I knew that they’d be just two more faces in a passing crowd.

I swung around the back of the restaurant and parked the patrol car next to the Dumpster. The service entrance was unlocked and I slipped inside.

The smell of fresh pizza and all its possible toppings hit me like a club.

Crowded though the restaurant was, the atmosphere was subdued. The patrons didn’t know whether to celebrate the winning game they’d seen or mourn for a lost classmate. But folks eat at both wakes and weddings, so what the hell. The pizza soothed either way.

“Sir?”

I turned and waved a hand in recognition at Jan’s assistant manager-whose name promptly escaped me. I handed her a photocopied yearbook picture of Vanessa Davila. “Have you noticed her in here tonight?”

The young lady, a short, stocky, well-manicured gal who looked like she could work sixteen-hour shifts back to back, squinted at the photo and shook her head. “But then, we’ve been really busy, you know? She could have been in here a dozen times and I wouldn’t have seen her.”

I nodded, stepped up closer to one of the cash registers, and scanned the faces in the restaurant. There was no Vanessa.

The same was true at the other pizza joint, and at the convenience store. I drove down to the Ranchero, but trailer number three was still dark, with Mama asleep somewhere in the back.

I was no longer feeling gracious. I parked 310 and left the door open so I’d have some light. This time, Mrs. Davila took her sweet time. I knocked, pounded, rang the bell-and finally heard muffled footsteps.

Mrs. Davila opened the door and surveyed me with complete disgust.

“Did your daughter make it home yet, ma’am?”

“What?” There it was again, the automatic bastion of the deaf or the dull.

“Is your daughter here?” I kept my voice down and worked hard at keeping the frustration out of it.

“Does it look like she’s here?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I can’t see into your home.”

She snorted and stepped to one side. “Well, then, come on in and see for yourself. She’s not here.”

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have bothered to press the point-and I didn’t think that Mrs. Davila expected my response-but it was the middle of the night, and I had nothing better to do.

“Thanks, I will,” I said, and stepped past her. “Where do you think she’s staying? With one of her friends in town?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Davila said, her voice winding up and down as if the whole thing was an unfathomable mystery. “I told you that before.”

I stood in the middle of the tiny, narrow living room and surveyed the place. The ten-by-twelve room didn’t offer much space for decorating. But it was clean and neat, even heated in winter…a hell of a lot more than Maria Ibarra had been looking forward to.

“Mrs. Davila, how old is your daughter?”

“What?”

“How old is Vanessa?”

The hesitation that followed was a bit too long for a mother, even one who’d given up. “Fourteen next month.”

“Fourteen.” I turned and looked at the woman. “And at fourteen she comes and goes as she likes? When she likes?”

The woman didn’t answer my question, but instead asked, “What do you want her for? I deserve to know that.”

“We need to talk to her about one of her friends. We told you that before.”

“Well, she’s not here. You can search the place if you want. She’s not here.”

“All right,” I said. “I’d like to take a look, with your permission.” That wasn’t what Mrs. Davila wanted to hear, but I didn’t wait for another invitation. I had no warrant, and it was my word against hers. The opportunity was there and I took it.

I sidled down the narrow hallway, past the closet door and the doors for the furnace and the front bathroom and then, on the opposite side, a small bedroom. I would have gone further, but there was no need.

Vanessa Davila was sitting in a chair by the window of her little bedroom, rocking back and forth, tears streaming down her face. She was hugging a huge stuffed skunk. She looked up, saw me, and buried her face in the skunk’s silky fur. Her body, so large that it overflowed the chair in all directions, shook with her sobbing.

I didn’t go in, but turned and beckoned Mrs. Davila. I was acutely aware of Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s absence. If she hadn’t been busy investigating a traffic fatality, I would have headed for the telephone and let her come and unravel the mess.

Mrs. Davila ducked her head in either relief or embarrassment and shuffled down the hallway until she was within arm’s length. I reached out a hand and rested it lightly on her shoulder.

“Mrs. Davila, now listen to me. I know this is hard for you and your daughter, but we really have to talk to Vanessa. And it would be so much easier if you went along.”

“She never did nothing…”

“I know that, Mrs. Davila. We’re after information, is all. Just give us an hour or so, all right?”

“I got to come, too?”

I nodded. “We really need you to be there. Your daughter’s underage. She needs you. She really does.”

It was obvious that Vanessa certainly needed something. Mrs. Davila coaxed and got a response that was an odd mixture of rattlesnake venom and abject misery. The two of them slipped into Spanish and left me far behind.

At last, Vanessa rose out of her chair, still holding Sammy Skunk. Through lids puffy from crying, she regarded me as if I were the cause of all her misery. Still, she shuffled across the bedroom toward the door.

I back-pedaled out of her way, taking a step down the hall so she could walk by. Just as she reached the doorway, she turned and flung the skunk into the room. The rejected, soggy thing hit the wall near the head of the bed and tumbled into a corner.

“I’ll drive you down and then bring you both back home,” I said, and Mrs. Davila nodded.

“My coat’s in the kitchen.” She didn’t say anything about a coat for Vanessa. The girl was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and I could see her bare ankles above her soiled and stretched athletic shoes.

“Are you going to be all right?” I asked as Vanessa reached the front door. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I got.

Without a backward glance, Vanessa yanked the door open and stepped out into the brisk night. I followed, but she was beyond reach. She ignored the patrol car and set off across the open spaces of the trailer park at a wild gallop.

I bellowed something but I was shouting at the darkness. Vanessa Davila might have weighed enough to squash the scales, but she was only fourteen years old and determined as hell. The last glimpse I had of her was her broad back disappearing around the end of the dark mobile home in slot 12.

Mrs. Davila stood in the doorway, her hands tightly clasped.

“Do you know where she might be going?”

She shook her head. “She doesn’t talk to me anymore,” she said.

“She’s going to talk to us,” I said, and forced myself to take the three steel steps down to the car one at a time.