Trace Of Innocence

“Don’t give me that—C.C.” He pressed the electric button to move his seat way back in the car so he could stretch his legs.

I tried to avoid swerving off the road. “You can’t be serious.”

“What? You don’t think she’s beautiful?”

“Yes, I think she’s stunning. She’s also an N-U-N. Lewis…she’s not available.”

“I know.” He smacked his forehead with his hand. “My luck I finally meet a woman besides you that I’m interested in and she’s a nun. A beautiful nun, not one with a hairy mole on her chin.”

“I’m not even going to ask why that would be your impression of nuns, because I’m sure there’s some demented Lewis LeBarge story having to do with a decrepit old nun and I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s a good story.”

“Save it,” I snapped. “Lewis, be straight with me. Is the reason we’re doing this consulting work revenge against Walter Leighton or is it because you’ve got a crush on a nun?”

“A combination.”

“But it really has nothing to do with wanting to see justice served.”

“Not really, no.”

“You drive me nuts.”

“I know. Listen, do you recall whether the lid was closed on Ripper’s tank?”

About once a week, Lewis lost his tarantula.

“I think it was closed.”

I eased my car into a space on the street.

“You want to crash here tonight?” Lewis asked, looking at me.

“As long as Ripper is in his tank, yeah.”

We climbed out of the car and went into Lewis’s house. I was tired, but I was still thinking about the whole crazy night. Lewis gave me a drunken hug, which for him also usually means planting a very loud kiss on my cheek—an exaggerated form of affection.

“There’s pork rinds and Slim Jims if you’re hungry, and your usual in the fridge.”

“I’ll pass on the snacks, but I think I’ll have a Dr. Brown’s.”

I had long ago developed an addiction for Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda—not always easy to find. The addiction was nurtured by my father, who used to take me and my brother to every diner between Rahway Correctional, where we visited my uncles, and home in Montclair, New Jersey, as well as every town we ever visited that had a diner, for that matter. Lewis always kept a supply of black cherry soda on hand, along with his sickening snack choices.

I heard Lewis climb up his stairs, and then I heard first one boot, then the other hit the floor as he pulled them off. I wandered into the kitchen and pulled a Dr. Brown’s out of the refrigerator. I walked back into the living room. A soft chenille blanket was draped over the back of the very comfortable leather couch. I settled a pillow on the arm of the couch and took the remote and clicked on to Comedy Central. Part of me wanted to laugh. I popped the top on my soda and started drinking. It hit the spot, but then, like the soda often did, it made me start thinking about my father, my brother, my mother and me. It was entwined with my memories of childhood. And then, inevitably, I thought of the night she disappeared.

The lights of a cop cruiser reflected through the window and onto the walls of my bedroom. Red pulsated and filled my room. I rubbed my eyes and sat up as a police officer entered my room, the beam from his flashlight hitting my face. The cop lowered the flashlight immediately.

“Hey, sweetie,” he soothed. “You okay?”

I nodded sleepily.

“Okay, then. You go back to sleep, honey.”

“Is Mommy okay?”

“Why?”

“I heard them arguing.”

“Who?”

I shrugged.

The cop came closer to me. “Think, honey. Can you remember what they said?”

I shook my head. “Where’s Mikey?”

“Your brother?”

I nodded.

“He’s downstairs with Officer Martin. You want to come down there?”

I nodded, and my teeth started chattering. Something was wrong, and I had no idea what. The cop came to my bed, and I saw the shadow of pity cross his face, a shadow I have learned to recognize many times since then. He scooped me into his arms and carried me down in my nightgown to the kitchen where my brother, Mikey, sat eating cookies with Officer Martin. They were dunking Keebler chocolate chip cookies into milk, and Mikey was talking a mile a minute.

I looked around the kitchen, teeth still chattering, and was handed a glass of Dr. Brown’s Black Cherry soda in a highball glass with ice cubes. The officers asked me questions that I no longer remember. All I do remember is the look on my father’s face when he got home that night.

She would never have left them alone, he screamed. He shouted what I already knew. In the instant I saw the red lights reflecting on my bedroom walls, in the moments of sipping Dr. Brown’s, the bubbles tingling my nose, I knew. Whereas Mikey always had about him the belief that the world was a safe place, I knew differently.

Like Ripper on the prowl, even as a little kid I knew that sometimes bad things escaped from their hiding places.

Chapter 4

I spent that Monday at work testing a shipment of heroin to determine its purity level. Lewis called me into his office at around four.

“Here’s the file on the suicide king case. We’re supposed to look for something, anything, missed, in terms of DNA evidence.”

“You looked at the file?”

He nodded.

“And?”

“And there was a tiny bit of what could be sperm on the panties. Too small to have been tested that many years ago.”

“Anything else?”

“Well,” he drawled. “I’m no lawyer.”