First stop—home.
CHAPTER
102
I LEFT HEADQUARTERS AND SWUNG THROUGH THE HOUSE LONG ENOUGH TO see the kids before school. Exhausted wasn’t really the word. At a certain point, it pushes past that and back into adrenaline. I’d figure out the whole sleep thing when I could.
“Who are you again?” Jannie asked, grinning over her eggs at me as I came down from a quick shower.
“I’m the Invisible Man,” I said. “You can call me Ralph E.”
“Hi, Ralphie!” Ali said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Not funny,” Nana said. “You’re going to burn yourself out, right down to the nub. And if you hadn’t noticed, we’ve still got a family emergency on our hands.”
“That’s what I’m doing home, Nana,” I said. I gave her a sideways hug at the stove and stole a piece of her amazingly flat bacon off the paper towel where it was draining. “I’ll drop the kids at school, and then I’m heading out to look for her again. All day if I have to.”
There was no talk of Elijah Creem or Josh Bergman. Bree already knew, and nobody else in the family needed to be worrying themselves about all that. We made sure to leave the TV off that morning, too.
“I want you to make an appointment with Dr. Finaly,” Nana told me, once the kids were in the hall, putting on their jackets. “You need to tend your own garden as well, mister.”
“Funny you should say that,” I told her. “I had the same thought.”
Adele Finaly is the shrink I see from time to time—sometimes more than others. She’s always there when I need a smart, objective opinion about my life, my work, my family—and most of all, about the habit those three things have of crashing into each other. First chance I got, I was going to put my figurative feet up on Adele’s couch. Just not today.
As soon as I dropped Ali and Jannie off for school, I circled back around to touch base with each of the street cops and Vice Unit detectives I’d been working with since Ava disappeared.
Mostly it was an exercise in frustration. There was no new word anywhere. Things were starting to look worse, and I knew it. I told everyone the same thing. If they so much as spotted someone who looked like Ava, they were to put the grab on her and call me immediately. I’d come and take it from there.
The toughest calls were the ones I’d started making on the Prostitution Unit and their outreach teams. Like it or not, there was one very nasty and unavoidable possibility in all of this. With a drug habit, no money, and Ava’s family history, she might very well have started turning tricks by now—for cash, or for the drugs themselves, if she was desperate enough.
It ground me down every time I thought about it. The girl was fourteen years old! Was that unheard of? Not at all. Nobody knows better than me that life on the streets of DC can get pretty damn bleak.
But this was Ava. Our Ava. And nothing I did seemed to get me any closer to finding her.
I was starting to wonder if anything would.
CHAPTER
103
IT WAS A FULL TWO DAYS MORE BEFORE WE FINALLY GOT WORD ON AVA.
I was home for a few hours that Wednesday, just grabbing some time with the family before I headed back out. I’d been alternating day and night, trawling the long list of streets where I thought Ava might turn up.
When the doorbell rang, I got up from the couch with the kids and went to answer. Every ring of the bell those days brought a combined sense of hope and dread—maybe this would be the one that gave us some kind of answer.
And in fact, it was.
When I opened the front door, Sampson was standing there on the stoop. It didn’t take long to read him. Between the fact that he hadn’t come in the back, as usual, and the tears in his eyes, I knew right away why he was there.
It felt like a crater opened up in my chest. My jaw went tight, and some part of me started trying to come up with a different conclusion. Maybe I was misreading Sampson, I thought—even though I knew it wasn’t the case.
He didn’t have to say a word. I stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind me.
“Jesus, John,” I said, choking up.
He pulled me in tight, with his hand on the back of my head.
“I’m so sorry, Alex. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
I’ve been here before. I’ve lost loved ones, and I’ve had to give other people the worst news they could possibly get. Nothing—but nothing—ever makes that easier.
Ava was gone. I knew it for sure now. But even so, it didn’t feel real.
I stood back from John on the stoop. “Where?” I said.
“An abandoned apartment building on the waterfront, across the river. Junkies flop there all the time. It was a . . . Jesus, Alex, it was a terrible scene. They took samples, but . . .”
The tears were streaming down my face, even as the anger started flooding in. Sampson was having a hard time getting through this himself.
“Just tell me everything,” I said. “What else do you know?”
John took a long, slow breath. “The body was burned. Beyond recognition. I don’t know why. Maybe she’d scored a hit and someone wanted it. Maybe someone killed her on accident and tried to cover up.”
“But it was her?” I said. “For sure?”
“It was a young woman. African American. Ava’s height and build. And Alex? They found this on the body.”
He opened an envelope and poured the blackened pieces of Nana’s locket into my hand. The two hinged halves had come apart from the chain, and the photos were either burned up, or missing. But it was most definitely the necklace that Nana Mama had given Ava on the day she’d moved out. I could just make out the engraved R. C. on the back—for Regina Cross.
Suddenly, the front door opened and Nana was there with Bree.
“What is going on out here?” Nana said. She stopped short the second I turned to look at her. It was the same way I’d seen the truth on John’s face.
As her eyes traveled down to the pieces of the locket in my hand, I reached over and pulled her close.
“No,” she said, stiffening up at first, but then buckling at the knees just as fast. “No, no, no. Not our Miss Ava. Oh, Lord. Please, no!”
“She’s gone, Nana,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
Bree was crying now, too, and I could see the kids standing behind her, moon-eyed and watching. It was like waves of heartbreak, just seeing their faces and knowing what I had to tell them.
My mind went somewhere else, in a way. Without a word, we all moved back inside as a family. Sampson didn’t even come in. There was no good-bye. He left us to grieve, and to try to explain to Jannie and Ali how something like this could possibly happen.
How it could possibly be true.
CHAPTER
104
I DON’T BELIEVE IN A VENGEFUL GOD, BUT I WILL SAY THAT I FELT CONFUSED as much as anything in those first few hours. How could something like this happen? And why? Most of all—why?
Had I done something to bring all of this down on my head? On my family’s heads?
And Ava’s?
It’s not the kind of question I ask too frequently—or lightly. But I had to confront the fact that whatever choices I’d made had brought me to this point, in some small or large way. I’d never know now if I could have done something else to stop it.
Jannie and Ali took the news very differently from each other. After we all sat and talked, and cried together, Jannie withdrew. She said she wanted to be alone and think it all over in her room, which we let her do.
Ali stuck close. I think he was just old enough to understand what had happened, but too young to have ever felt anything like this before. I read to him in bed for a long time that night, and held his hand after I turned out the light, like he asked me to.
“All the way to asleep,” he said. “Okay, Dad?”
“You got it, bud,” I said, and I stayed right there while he slowly drifted off.
I wasn’t sure which of my kids my heart
was breaking for more. All of them, I suppose. Ava, too.
When we spoke to Damon on the phone, he asked to come home the next morning, on the first bus. I told him he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to, but I was glad when he insisted. It felt like the right thing, having all of us together now.
Nana went to bed early, but Bree and I sat up late in the attic, talking for hours. Part of me would like to say that I wasn’t already thinking about the investigation on this, but I was. Bree, too. We’d been so engaged in looking for Ava, it felt like we already had a blueprint for where to start asking questions.
“Whoever sold to her, or whoever did this . . . we’re going to find them,” Bree said. “And they’re going to pay, Alex. You can be sure about that.”
Bree was the strongest one of all of us that night. In a way, she’d become this linchpin in our family that we didn’t even know had been missing until she was there. I love her more every time I think about it.
“Thank you,” I told her. “Thank you for being my wife. And for coming into my life exactly when I needed you most. I don’t know if I could have—”
“Of course you could,” Bree said. “You already did, for years. But I’m glad I’m here now, too. I love you, Alex. And I love this family. That’s never going to change.”
When we finally went to bed, we made love, and even cried some more in each other’s arms before we finally drifted off ourselves, holding each other close.
All the way to asleep, just like Ali.
CHAPTER
105
BREE AND I TOOK SHIFTS THE NEXT DAY. I STAYED HOME WITH NANA AND THE kids through the morning while she went out and spoke with as many people at Ava’s school as she could.
When she got back, we all had lunch together, though nobody was too hungry. Then I went out for the afternoon. Technically I was on bereavement, and off duty. I left my gun at home but took my badge.
One of my first stops was Howard House. I’d been in touch with Sunita, the manager, and she’d agreed to call a full house meeting, first thing after school that day. By the time I got there, all eleven girls were already waiting with the staff in the living room.
They knew Ava had died, and I could see there had been some tears, but it was all reined in by the time I was standing in front of them. It actually reminded me of Ava, the way they seemed so intent on showing as little emotion as possible.
“I know you’ve already answered some of these questions,” I told the group. “But I want you all to think hard. Has anyone remembered anything else about the day Ava disappeared? Anything you hadn’t thought about before, or since then?”
What I got back was a room full of silence. Part of it had to do with the fact that we’d been over this before, but that wasn’t all. There’s an unwritten rule out there on the streets, where a lot of these girls came from. The line between helping and snitching is gray, at best. The safest bet is to just keep your mouth shut, especially if anyone else is listening. It can come off as apathy, but I knew it was more complicated than that.
I asked a few more open-ended questions, but didn’t really get anywhere until I moved on to individual interviews. Sunita let me use her office for privacy, and she brought the girls in, one by one.
Ava’s roommate, Nessa, was the fifth girl I saw. I could tell she’d been crying again, although she tried to hide it.
I could also tell she was sitting on something the second she walked in the door.
We sat on the same side of Sunita’s desk, in two folding chairs. Nessa kept her feet pushed out in the space between us and looked at her phone more than at me, while she flipped it around and around in her hand.
“You seem nervous,” I said.
She didn’t look up when she started talking. “Just so you know, I wasn’t trying to hide nothin’ before, okay?” she said. “I even kind of asked you about it, when you was here the first time.”
I tried pulling up whatever memory I had of the day we’d met, outside on the porch. She’d taken our picture—I remembered that much.
“Asked me about what?” I said.
“Well, not asked you, exactly,” Nessa said.
“Come on, Nessa. Spit it out. What are we talking about here?”
“Ava’s boyfriend, okay? She always sayin’ how he wasn’t nothing to her, but if you ask me, I think she was just embarrassed. This boy was old.”
“Who is he?” I said. “How did she know him?”
Nessa gave a shrug and pushed her lips out. “She just said his name was Russell. That’s where she gettin’ her junk.”
That name, Russell, hit me like an electric shock all at once. Could this be the Russell? The same phantom boyfriend we were looking for in the Elizabeth Reilly case? Rebecca Reilly’s kidnapper?
Or was this just some horrible coincidence?
I tried to stay cool as I pushed on, but it wasn’t easy. My mind was racing.
“Nessa, what can you tell me about him?” I asked. “Do you know what he looked like? Or maybe what kind of car he drove?”
“It was a jeep,” she said right away. “He was white, too, but Ava didn’t care. I think she liked that jeep—and whatever else he was givin’ her, if you know what I mean. No disrespect.”
I felt sick to my stomach. I still couldn’t know if this was the same man, but the similarities were there—to Elizabeth Reilly, and to Amanda Simms as well. All these girls were disconnected from their families in some way.
Young. Vulnerable. Alone.
The idea of this monster plying Ava with drugs, promises, sex—whatever it had been—made me want to excuse myself and puke my guts out in the bathroom.
“You said he was white,” I went on. “What else?”
She sat up a little straighter then and started thumbing at her phone. “I got a picture, yo,” she said. I think she was just relieved that I wasn’t giving her a hard time for holding back this long.
She swiped past several dozen images before she came to the one she was looking for, and then held it up to show me.
“Here,” she said. “I used to see her over on Eastern, talkin’ to him in that jeep, see? Ava didn’t even know I took it, but once I showed it to her, she stopped talkin’ shit about not havin’ no boyfriend.”
The picture had been snapped from maybe half a block away. Ava had her back to the camera, but I easily recognized her long, thin frame, and the suede boots she’d worn almost constantly since Bree bought them for her.
That wasn’t all. I also recognized the gray-green jeep in the photo, and the tall, bearded man behind the wheel.
It was Ron Guidice.
CHAPTER
106
I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED TO ME NEXT. OR IF I EVEN fully understand it myself.
When I left Howard House, it was as if there were no words for anything I was feeling. There was nothing inside me at all but pure, white-hot anger. That, and the image from Nessa’s phone, burning into my brain, as clear as anything else.
I barely remember driving home. When I came in, Bree was there, with Sampson and Billie at the kitchen table. I must have looked like hell, because they all stopped what they were doing and stared at me.
“Alex?” Bree said. “What is it?”
I stood at the head of the table, holding myself up with both hands on the back of a kitchen chair.
“Where are the kids?” I said.
“On a walk with Nana. Billie wanted some cornstarch from the store. Why? What’s going on?”
“It was Guidice,” I said. Already, I was walking out of the room. I headed up the hall toward the stairs at the front.
“Wait—what?” Bree said, catching up behind me. “What was Guidice?”
I took the stairs two at a time, even as I tried to explain to Bree what Nessa had shown me. The words practically stuck in my throat. It was hard focusing on anything except what I’d come here to do.
“Did you call it in?” Bree asked as we came into the bedroom.
“No. I’m going out to find him myself.”
I opened the closet door and started working the combination on the safe. No electric keypad here—it was twenty-three right, thirty-nine left, nine right.
I took out my Glock and a magazine, slapped it home, and stuck the gun in my jacket pocket. I didn’t bother with a holster.
“Hold on,” Bree said. She grabbed her own gun out of the safe before I closed the door. “If you’re arresting him, I’m coming, too.”
“I’m not arresting him,” I said.
She grabbed my arm then and looked me deep in the eyes. If I’d been anywhere near myself, I might have seen enough right there to stop what I was doing and pick up the phone. Or even to send Sampson out instead of me. But I didn’t.
The only thing I knew for sure in that moment was that nobody had ever deserved to die as much as Ron Guidice did.
Before Bree could stop me, I was already out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and heading for the back door. Maybe I’d find some sense, or a reason not to do this, by the time I tracked Guidice down. And maybe I wouldn’t.
I truly didn’t know.
CHAPTER
107
RON GUIDICE TORE HIS HEADPHONES OFF, PULLED THE BERETTA 9MM OUT FROM under the driver’s seat, and got out of the jeep.
It was like a starter pistol had gone off. This was all fast-twitch muscle stuff coming back to him, the way his body had been trained to respond without the interference of the mind. The moment he’d heard Alex mention his name, Guidice knew. This operation was about to come to a sudden end.
Looking up Fifth Street from where he’d parked, he could see the front door of Alex’s house. There was no sign of him yet, but it wouldn’t be long now. His car was right there at the curb. He’d left it wide open when he went inside just moments earlier.
Guidice kept the Beretta pulled up inside the sleeve of his jacket, out of sight. There were several people on the street. A man clipping his hedges. A woman with two small kids riding their trikes up the sidewalk. There was no sense drawing any attention to himself yet. When this happened, it was going to be out in the open, and he needed a certain element of surprise.