Triptych2

  "Has she run away before?"

  "Twice."

  "It's not something I'd put at the top of my roster if I was working in missing persons. Teenage girls run away all the time. We both know that. They've probably got hotter cases right now."

  "Her home situation's not that bad."

  "People run away for other reasons." Angie would know. She'd run away so many times that even Will had lost count.

  He looked at the copy he'd made of the letter Aleesha had written to her mother. She'd used pencil on lined paper, so the reproduction wasn't that good. He tried to pick out some words but his eyes couldn't focus. Aleesha had probably run away from home, too.

  Angie offered, "I'll talk to some people I know downtown and see if I can light a fire under them. They might take it better from me than some cocksucker from the GBI."

  "Thank you."

  Will closed the phone and looked at the display.

  It was time to pay Aleesha Monroe s mother a visit.

  Will seldom drove his car to work unless he knew that he would be on his own that day. Most of the time, he took his motorcycle in so that whoever he was partnered with had to drive. Unless he was going to one of his usual haunts—the grocery store, the local Cuban restaurant, the movies—putting him behind the wheel of a car was an invitation to get lost. He could read street signs eventually, but only at the expense of the other cars behind him. Maps, with their tiny print that skipped across the page, might as well have been written in Swahili and when he got frustrated, which tended to happen when the horns started blaring, Will quickly forgot how to tell left from right.

  Driving to Miriam Monroe's house was an exercise in patience. Will ignored the angry stares and nasty shouts as he slowly made his way up DeKalb Avenue. The Monroes lived in Decatur near Agnes Scott College, a pricey little area with old Victorians and the sorts of houses most people could only dream about. Fortunately, the neighborhood wasn't large and with a little trial and error, he would find her house before the sun went down.

  Will tapped his foot on the brake as he followed the fork across the railroad tracks and onto College Avenue. He tried not to take it personally when a skinny old woman in a powder blue Cadillac sped past him, her fist shaking in the air.

  With great effort, Will had managed to push Angie from his mind. He needed to work the case from the beginning to see if there was anything he had missed. There had to be some detail, some clue, that he just wasn't picking up on.

  Thirty-two Paisley Avenue was a grand old home with a wraparound porch and a massive weeping willow draping its branches across the front yard. The house was sandblasted brick on the bottom and darkly painted shingles along the top. The tile roof was covered with pine needles, and Will imagined with the large number of trees in the yard, the Monroes had a constant battle on their hands just keeping the gutters clean.

  He parked his car on the street and double-checked the mailbox, making out the name MONROE in bold black letters. Still, he checked the street number against the address from the envelope.

  The doorbell was the old-fashioned kind that was an actual bell mounted to the center of the heavy front door. Will twisted the bow-tie piece of metal and could hear the shrill ring echoing in the house.

  Footsteps clicked on tile; a woman's as well as a dog's.

  "Hello?"

  Will assumed a wary eye was pressed to the peephole in the door. This was a nice neighborhood, but they were still close enough to Atlanta to make the residents careful about opening their doors to strangers.

  "I'm Agent Will Trent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation," Will said, holding up his identification. "I'm looking for Miriam Monroe."

  There was a hesitation, maybe a sigh, then the bolt was turned and the door opened.

  Miriam Monroe looked just like her daughter. At least, her daughter would have looked like this had she lived a different life. Where Aleesha had been malnourished, almost skeletal, her mother was a robust woman, with long curly hair and an open way about her that seemed to invite people in. There was a glow in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eyes, and even though her mouth was pursed as she stared at Will, her expression guarded as she waited for him to speak, he could tell that she was the sort of woman who sought out the positive in life.

  He looked down at the black poodle standing at her feet, then back up at the woman. "I've come about your daughter."

  Her hand went to her chest. She grabbed the door to steady herself. "Ashley...?"

  "No," he assured her, reaching out to hold the woman up. He'd never considered she had more than one daughter. "Aleesha," he told her. "I've come about Aleesha."

  She blinked several times, looking confused. "What?"

  Will had a confused feeling himself. Had he read the mailbox wrong? Was he on the wrong street? "You're Miriam Monroe?"

  She nodded. The dog barked, sensing trouble.

  "I'm sorry," Will apologized to the woman. "I was told you had a daughter named Aleesha."

  "I did have a daughter," she agreed. Her voice was faraway, as if she had lost her child long ago, which by her next words was exactly how she felt. "Aleesha left us when she was a teenager, Officer. We haven't seen her in nearly twenty years."

  Will wasn't sure what to say. "May I come in?"

  She smiled, stepping back from the door, gently moving the dog with her foot. "I've forgotten my manners."

  "It's fine," Will assured her, thinking that no matter how many times he did this, he would never be able to predict how a parent would react to news of their child being lost.

  She suggested, "Shall we go into the parlor?"

  Will was trying not to gawk at the foyer, which was the largest he had ever seen in a private home. A huge staircase spiraled up to the top floor and a chandelier that looked as if it belonged in an opera house dangled above his head.

  "We got it in Bologna," Miriam explained, leading him into the adjoining room. "My husband, Tobias, is an amateur collector."

  "Oh," Will said, as if that made perfect sense. He thought about the homes he had visited over the last few days, Aleesha's shabby two rooms, the cramped apartment where Eleanor Allison raised her grandchildren. This was a mansion, plain and simple. From the thick rugs on the floors to the colorful African folk art on the walls, this was the type of place you lived in when money wasn't a concern.

  Miriam sat back in a comfortable-looking chair as the dog settled at her feet. "Would you like some lemonade?"

  "No, thank you," Will told her, sitting on the couch. The cushions were hard and he guessed they didn't use this room much. He wondered if the grand piano tucked under the bay window was just for show. He also wondered what the hell he was doing. Will had learned a long time ago that giving a parent the news that their child was dead should be done quickly. Dragging it out only made it harder when the information finally came. Will wasn't Miriam Monroe's best friend; his job was simply to tell her the truth, then leave.

  So, why wasn't he?

  Maybe it was because there was something soothing about the woman's voice, her presence. Her face could have been the illustration dictionaries used for "mother." When Will was a kid, he had assumed that black kids were more loved than whites for the simple reason that of the hundred or so kids at the Atlanta Children's Home, there were only ever two African-Americans. Funny how stereotypes got stuck in your head when you were little.

  "How can I help you?" she prompted. Her voice was very cultured, and she managed to glance at her watch without looking impatient.

  "I'm sorry I frightened you. I assumed the woman I talked to on the phone earlier told you that I called."

  "She mentioned someone called, but I wasn't expecting a policeman on my doorstep."

  "I'm sorry," Will repeated, taking out a spiral notebook and a pen. He used this for show, mostly to let people know he was paying attention. He had clicked on his recorder when he'd taken the pen out of his breast pocket.

  He said, "You don't seem surprised that I'm
here about Aleesha."

  "I suppose I'm not. Aleesha chose a life for herself that her father and I did not agree with. I'm sure you won't be surprised to know that you're not the first police officer to knock on our door." She smiled, but there was something more guarded about her manner. "If you think we can lead you to her, I'm sorry to say that we cannot."

  Despite, or maybe because of, the woman's poise, Will knew that this was not going to be easy. "Where is your husband now?"

  "He's giving a lecture in New York," she explained. "He specializes in health issues affecting women."

  Will scribbled something in his notebook. "I see."

  "You think it's ironic that a man who has devoted his life to helping women has a daughter who is a prostitute and a drug addict."

  "Yes," Will admitted. "I do."

  She sat back in the chair, seemingly relieved that they had gotten that out of the way. "We did everything we could to try to help our daughter."

  "I'm sure you did."

  "Are you really?" she asked, as if she wanted to catch him off guard. "We spent thousands of dollars on treatments, family therapy, individual therapy. Anything we thought would help her, we did." She clasped her hands in her lap. "The simple fact was that Aleesha did not want help. She started running away before she turned thirteen."

  Will echoed something that Angie had said about the girl. "You can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped."

  "That's true," the mother agreed. "Do you have children?"

  "No, ma'am. I don't have any children."

  "It's the most wonderful blessing God has given us, our ability to bring a child into the world." She held out her hands, cradling an imaginary infant. "You hold them in your arms that first time, and they are more precious than gold. Every breath you take after that is only for your child. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  Will nodded, his chest feeling as empty as her arms. He figured even if his own mother had held him, she obviously had no problem handing him off to somebody else shortly after.

  Miriam continued, "Aleesha got mixed up with this boy." He could see tears wetting her eyelashes. "I grew up poor, as did Dr. Monroe. We both knew the value of a good education, though, and we worked very hard to take advantage of the opportunities that other folks had fought, even died, for."

  He tried to compliment her. "Obviously, you've succeeded."

  She gave him a glance that said they both knew that material things were hardly a measure of success. "We thought raising our children here in this neighborhood would protect them. Decatur has always been a little oasis."

  "Drugs have a way of getting into any community."

  "I suppose that's true," she allowed. "We wanted so much more for her. You live through your children. You ache for them, hurt for them, breathe for them when you can." She told Will, "She ran off with some man she met at the treatment facility. She was arrested a few weeks later on a drug charge. Aleesha went to jail and the man disappeared, probably found himself another silly girl."

  When Will started with the GBI, he had been amazed to find how many women ended up in jail because their boyfriends had sent them out on a deal, convincing the women that cops were more lenient with the fairer sex. Prison was full of young girls who thought they were in love.

  Miriam interrupted his thoughts. "Dr. Monroe and I realized very gradually that drug addiction is a terminal disease. It is a cancer that eats families alive." She stood up and walked across the room to the grand piano, saying, "You get to a point where you look around and you ask yourself, 'What is this doing to the rest of my family? What harm am I doing to my other children by concentrating all of my energy on rescuing this one child who will not be saved?' *

  Framed photographs lined the piano, and she held her hand over each of them in turn. "Aleesha was the last girl. We called her our middle child because she was such a handful." She went to another frame, another child. "Ashley is the oldest. She's a gynecologist, like her father." She indicated yet another photograph. "Clinton is an orthopedist. Gerald is a psychiatrist. Harley is a classical pianist. Mason..." She picked up a small frame shaped like a dog and laughed. "He's a dog groomer, God love him." She was extra careful as she put the frame back in place and Will wondered if Mason was his mother's favorite.

  Six children. A comfortable house. Plenty of clothes and food and parents who took care of you. What would it be like to grow up in a family like that? Why had Aleesha turned her back on all of this?

  Of course, Will had been in law enforcement too long to take all of this on face value. He knew from experience that drug addicts didn't generally start out as the happiest people on earth. They turned to drugs for a reason, whether it was the desire to fit in or the need to tune out. The absent father could be some kind of sadist. The brothers could have looked no farther than the hallway for their first sexual forays. The older sister could have been an overachiever who cast the kind of shadow in which nothing could grow.

  But Will was not here to rattle the skeletons in the Monroe family closet. He was here to tell this woman that her daughter, lost so long ago, was finally lost forever.

  He asked, "You haven't seen your daughter in twenty years?"

  "At least."

  "No phone calls? No cards or letters?"

  Miriam recalled, "A few years ago we got a call. She was in jail. She wanted money."

  Michael had said that Aleesha listed only Baby G as a contact when she'd been arrested, but the duty officer would have made a notation of who she called while she was inside, who visited her if she was kept more than a day.

  He asked, "Were you the one who spoke to her?"

  "Yes," she answered. "The conversation didn't last more than a minute. I told my daughter that I was not going to give her any money and she slammed the phone down on me." Miriam explained, "That was the last time we heard from her. I don't even know where she lives now."

  "Do you have any idea who she associated with? Who her friends were?

  She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Officer. I warned you I would be little help in finding her." She looked down at her hand, which was still resting on the piano. "Could you tell me what she's done? She hasn't..." She glanced up at Will, then back down again. "She hasn't harmed someone, has she?"

  Will felt a lump rise in his throat. "Do your other children live close by?"

  "Not close enough," she told him, a smile playing at her lips. "Mason is just down the street, but that's never close enough when you're a grandmother with three grandbabies to spoil."

  "Maybe you should give him a call."

  Her smile faltered. "Why would I need to do that?"

  "Mrs. Monroe, I really wish you would call your son, or somebody who could maybe come and sit with you."

  She sagged against the piano much as she had done at the front door. The dog gave a low growl as Will stood up.

  Miriam's throat worked. "I suppose you're going to tell me that she finally took too much."

  "No, ma'am." Again, he indicated the couch. "Would you please sit down?"

  "I'm not going to faint," she told him, though her chocolate complexion was a marked shade lighter. "Tell me what happened to my daughter."

  Will should have just told her and left her with her grief, but he couldn't. To his surprise, when he spoke, he sounded as if he was begging. "Mrs. Monroe, please, sit down."

  She let him lead her over to the couch and sit beside her. He should take her hand, do something to soothe her, but Will didn't feel equipped to comfort her. He did know that prolonging the inevitable was one of the most selfish things he had ever done in his life.

  He said, "Aleesha was murdered Sunday night in the stairway to her apartment."

  Miriam's mouth opened as she gasped for air. "Murdered?"

  "Someone killed her," Will provided. "I think she probably knew her attacker. I think that she followed him out into the stairway and he injured her..." He faltered. "He injured her in such a way that it led to her death."

>   ' 'Such a way,' " Miriam echoed. "What does that mean? Did she suffer?"

  He was supposed to lie—it did no harm telling a mother her child had died quickly—but he could not. "I don't think there's any way to know if she was aware of what was happening to her. I hope she wasn't—" He stopped. "I hope there were enough drugs in her body so that she had no idea what was going on."

  She gasped suddenly. "I saw it in the paper. A woman was murdered at Grady Homes. They didn't list her name, but... I never thought, I just assumed..."

  "I'm sorry," Will told the poor woman, thinking he'd said that phrase more times in the last few days than he had in his entire life. He took out the photocopy of Aleesha's letter. "We found this in her mailbox. It was returned because there wasn't enough postage."