She paused, squeezed her eyes tightly closed, her hands rolled into fists. Suddenly, she screamed, a howl of pent-up anger and revulsion.

  “Oh Rachel,” Sarah cried.

  My blood ran cold.

  The silence afterward was almost too much to bear.

  A nurse appeared in the doorway, looking from the women to me and back again, her eyes wide with concern. “It’s okay,” I said. Sarah nodded, and the nurse left us.

  Rachel opened her eyes, her face a mask of anguish, “I got a perfect, beautiful rose every time. And every time I got one more. Like each act, each violation, was to be celebrated. What did he want, Max? What did it mean to him? What was I supposed to do?”

  I could hardly stand holding her gaze.

  Her eyes stopped pinning me, slipped away. She shook her head, looking drained now, empty, lost, abandoned.

  Sarah took her hand again and said, “Go ahead, Rach. Tell him the rest. He needs to know everything. If we’re going to get the rat bastard, Mr. Plank needs to know the whole truth. He won’t tell. I know he won’t.”

  I was glad to have her trust, and I sure hoped that whatever Rachel told me was something that I could keep to myself.

  Rachel tightened her grip on her friend’s hand and said, “Okay…okay.” For a moment, it looked like she was going to break down into tears again, but she gritted her teeth, let out a short grunt of determination. “Okay. Okay…

  “That’s all we had was each other. Mom stayed out of the house as much as she could manage. She must have felt so helpless. She adored him. God knows why. She didn’t want to lose him. You’d never know it from the way she is now, but she was a meek lamb around him. I don’t know if she ever tried to protect us. We were too young when it started, and by the time I was aware of her role, her responsibility, the fact that she should have done something…anyway, she never even acknowledged what went on in that house. To this day, she hasn’t. None of us has.”

  Rachel closed her eyes, gathered herself, continued. “So Christopher and I had each other. We were all alone in the world. No one else could know. Could understand what we were going through. We became very close. We were best friends, spent all our time together when we were kids. I loved him. I loved him so much. We were everything to each other. Without him, I wouldn’t have survived. Do you understand? Our connection was way beyond just brother and sister. We were survivors of the same war. Battle-hardened together is how he put it to me once not too long ago.”

  She looked into my eyes. A cold feeling, a tremor ran through me. I knew where this was going, and I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “I was sixteen the first time it happened. He was fourteen. I can’t tell you how natural it felt. We knew it was wrong. We were petrified. But there was no way to avoid it. Until now, I’ve never had the same feeling,” she stopped, winced. “Oh, no…sorry Sarah, I didn’t mean to—”

  “S-okay. I understand.”

  “Christopher was the only one who understood me. I’d found my soul mate, the boy I grew up with and suffered with. He felt the same way.”

  I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me.

  “I know what you must think. Please, please don’t tell anyone. I know how perverse it sounds. How awful and unforgivable.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them, she was looking at me with a raw, unguarded look of such complete pain and, oddly, innocence, that I glimpsed the young girl inside her that had been fouled, despoiled by her own father, the same girl though, who hadn’t been totally ruined, who’d survived by finding the only way out. Violating society’s norms but staying alive.

  Her brother, ultimately, hadn’t been so fortunate.

  “How long did it go on for?” I asked, as gently as I could.

  She looked away. “Until six months ago…” Her voice broke, a catch in her throat, a small swallowed cry. “I know. Unbelievable. I’d tried. For a couple of years before that. But every time I mentioned it, Christopher would fall apart. He said he needed me. He couldn’t live without me. He threatened to kill himself, more times than I can bear to remember.” She stopped, her fingers twisting, turning, writhing like earthworms in a deep muddy.

  “Finally, I cut it off completely. We’d been living together, but I told him he had to leave. He did, but he kept coming back. I changed the locks, stopped answering the door. It killed me to hurt him that way. He threatened again to kill himself. But I knew that my life was over if I didn’t break it off. I still thought it was over for me…until I met Sarah.”

  “Did anyone else know or suspect? Your mother or father?”

  “My mother knew. She found us one day. A couple of years after we started. When I was eighteen. She came home unexpectedly. She didn’t see us…” A sharp intake of breath, her hands untangled and gripped her thighs. “But… Christopher was half-dressed, pulling on his pants. Our faces were flushed. I’ll never forget the look on her face. The shock. For once, the mask she always wore slipped, and it was horrible to see. I just sat there on the couch wishing I was dead. Christopher rushed out of the room. She didn’t say a word. After a while, she left me there alone. She never mentioned it again.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like living in that house holding secrets big enough to destroy any adult’s heart and soul, let alone a child’s fragile ones.

  “And your father didn’t know because he wasn’t there.”

  She nodded, then looked at me sharply. “He wasn’t there because when he was thirteen, Christopher ran away and somehow ended up at the Children’s Network—”

  “What?” To say I was gobsmacked would be an understatement.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you. But, of all the terrible secrets that my family has, that one may be the most consequential. If it gets out, the family reputation will be ruined. Mother will be devastated.”

  I sat there rethinking everything I’d learned, questioning every revealed fact and clue that had brought me here. Perhaps they were all red herrings.

  Staring at her hands, speaking in that flat, unaffected voice, she described how the Executive Director, Scott Tripp, was going to turn the evidence of Christopher’s abuse over to the authorities before her mother intervened. She not only gave the Network the biggest donation they’d ever received, but promised to get her rich friends involved. She said Mr. Tripp played hard to get, acting as if this was an excruciating moral dilemma, but ultimately, he was swayed by the money and what he could do with it. Rachel also mentioned that as time went by, he seemed more and more entranced by his access to the creme de la creme of San Francisco society that Mrs. Wambaugh afforded.

  Sarah broke in. “I guess it’s time for me to come clean, too. I don’t know if you know that I volunteered there for about a year. That’s actually where I first met Christopher, although he didn’t ask me out until he saw me perform at the club. He didn’t volunteer there much, but I saw him once or twice.”

  Sarah paused, closed her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. “Still feel pretty tired. I guess I’m not used to talking, eh?” She smiled weakly.

  “I was there alone a few times. Once I was doing some work in Scott’s office. He had me looking through a personnel file to get him some information, and I stumbled across a folder that’d he’d inadvertently left on his desk. It was Christopher’s.” She formed a pyramid with her hands, and her forefingers touched her lips. “It was all there. Just what Rachel said. The details of what Christopher had conveyed the night he’d run away and ended up there. I took photos of the files with my phone. There was nothing about the relationship between the Network and the Wambaughs or how his mother had paid Scott off. I didn’t find that out until I asked Rachel about it and she filled in the details.”

  Rachel said, “Sarah wanted to expose it all. She tried to talk me into it. She was outraged. Thought the Children’s Network, or at least Scott, had betrayed not only Christopher, but all the kids. She was right, of course. But I wasn’t ready, I talked her into holding off, for the sake of my family, our business, my mother—”

  “But I did confront Scott, and he had a fit. Said that I didn’t know what I was talking about. That it was complicated and that he’d made sure Christopher was safe and protected. That his abuser was sent away. I quit working there. I kept at Rachel, and I agonized about just going ahead and talking to a reporter for the Examiner.”

  “Did anyone else know about this. Your mother? Your father. Christopher?”

  As I said it, I realized that Scott might very well have gone to Mrs. Wambaugh after his encounter with Sarah.

  “Not that I know of,” Rachel said.

  But Sarah echoed my thought. “I’d guess Scott told her mom.”

  We sat there in silence for a while. I didn’t know what they were thinking or trying not to think about. The implications of all this were pretty stark. A reason for murder? And who was the most likely culprit: Mrs. Wambaugh or her husband. Scott, although the wheelchair afforded him an alibi. Speed? Or the already fingered Christopher?

  Rachel interrupted my thoughts. “What Scott told Sarah is right. He did extract a promise from mother that she would get my father away from us permanently. I guess he needed to salve his conscience somehow. Ever since, Mother has been the Children’s Network’s biggest benefactor. But her donations are anonymous, and her name is not even listed in the donor lists that they publish.”

  “So that’s why your father left?”

  “Yes. Scott was the one who finally freed us from him. But I sometimes think about what my father might be doing to other children, other innocents, and then I feel guilty as hell for keeping silent.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and said, “No more. No more secrets. I don’t care what happens to me or my mother or our damn company.”

  She shook her head, and her face crumbled again. She sobbed and choked the words out, “Even after he left, he was still there. His spirit dominated that awful house. We all tried to run away from him, but we never escaped. He haunted us every day. It caught up with Christopher. My mother…she…got swallowed up years ago. It’s just me now and…” She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around her body tight, collapsing into herself, her shoulders shaking like tree branches in a high wind. Sarah grabbed hold, cradling her, murmuring, almost singing to her, like a mother comforting her sick child.

  Thirty-Five

  Q had the girl’s cell phone number, but she wasn’t taking calls. If she was anything like me, she had forgotten to charge her battery.

  Q made some calls, narrowing down the possibilities until he got a reasonable lead and offered to take me to where he thought she might be holed up. He felt he should be there with me to make a formal introduction. It seemed like a good idea, especially considering the company he said she tended to keep.

  He and Felicia were friends from way back, but it was hard now because of her increasing drug use and the kinds of people it had brought into her life. She’d been a beautiful girl. An innocent that got mixed up and messed up by Speed Weed, among others.

  Q knew his way around addicts and hustlers. He was one of them, more or less. In another lifetime, he added, when his statement left me without a response.

  As we were driving on over to see Felicia, Q got a call from Phoebe.

  “Settle down, Phoeb. Take a breath. Gonna be okay.”

  He waited a few seconds and said, “You okay? Good. Talk to Q.”

  I could hear the sound of her, high-pitched, excited, sad, but couldn’t make out many of the words. “Uh-Uh. Uh-uh. Right. Right. Okay. Sure. Good. Good. He doesn’t deserve you, Phoebe. He gives you any more trouble, let me know, and I’ll sick Henry on ‘im. Or, better yet, our friend, Max. Here, talk to ‘im.”

  I took the phone with my right hand, steadied the wheel with my left.

  “Max, I don’t wanna bother you.”

  “I’m bothered. That boyfriend of yours been acting up?”

  She explained how they had a big fight over her not spending enough time in the kitchen catering to his needs. How he forbid her from going to see Sarah. How she told him to go to hell. How he slapped her. How she slapped him back. How he stormed out of the house. How she had the locks changed. How she was through with him.

  “Good for you. But when he comes back, do you think a locked door is going to stop him?”

  “I have a can of Mace.”

  “Right in the eyes,” I said.

  “Right in the eyes,” she repeated solemnly.

  “Or hit him over the head with one of your drumsticks. I’ve seen you play. You’ll knock him out cold.”

  She laughed. I thought she’d be okay. I didn’t get the impression that her boyfriend was dangerous, just a run-of-the-mill asshole. But I made sure she had my number and told her to call me if he came back and bothered her in any way.

  The Motel Stax, just off 16th Avenue and Geary, had seen better days. I didn’t know if, back in its heyday, the owner had been a fan of Memphis soul—Booker T & his MG’s, Otis Redding, the amazing Sam & Dave, the foot stomping rhythms of their great classic Soul Man, popped inside my head—and named his bright new enterprise after the famous record company, Motown’s poor cousin.

  Or maybe it was just a nonsense word. Maybe he liked flapjacks.

  All this came into my mind via the inappropriate brain glitches I tend to have on a regular basis, sitting behind Q in his old Pontiac Coupe Deville, looking at the worn Stax Motel sign, the “a,” “o,” and “e” blurred with age.

  Beneath the name, ownership touted vibrating beds, free television, brew your own coffee, and candy machines.

  All that for sixty-nine bucks and change. I was surprised to see the vacancy sign.

  I stood behind Q as he inquired of the desk clerk. The high-school-aged youth with more acne than facial hair wore a name tag that read Welcome on top, and George beneath it. He had an admirable sense of his fiduciary responsibility, apologetically refusing to divulge the name of any of the motel’s guests.

  I guessed the employee training regimen must have been intense, perhaps lasting the better part of a morning.

  “George,” I said. I glanced at his badge. “Welcome.”

  He angled his neck quizzically, like a puppy trying to determine if its owner had a treat in exchange for the trick he was demanding.

  “Sir,” he said, politely, immediately separating him from a young canine.

  “I understand and appreciate motel policy. But, please, we need your help here. This is a touch and go situation. I can’t say more. But I don’t want to get the police involved. I don’t want them coming here tonight. I think we can handle this quietly, keep from disturbing the other guests, if you’ll just tell us what room Felicia is in. She’ll be happy to see us, I can assure you of that.”

  As I spoke, his face morphed from an expression that indicated he was smelling a hint of poo poo to a more studied look resulting in a lower lip pout.

  I smiled innocently, sincerely, imploringly.

  “I don’t know. If something happens, Del is going to blame me.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen, except that you’re going to have a very happy guest in room…?” I raised my eyebrows, opened my mouth slightly, anticipating.

  “Twelve,” he said, without thinking.

  “In room twelve. Right. The police won’t have to come bothering you. Poor Del won’t ever know. I’m sure he’s got enough problems, right?”

  George nodded.

  We left him there, before that smelling poo poo expression returned to his face.

  Felicia answered the door in some kind of state.

  She danced from one foot to the other, as if there were hot coals beneath her feet. “Oops,” she said. “Say ho, Q.”

  “Ho,” Q said, cooperatively. “Can we come in, Felicia?”

  She nodded her head up and down, still rocking back and forth. “Sure can. You surely can.”

  Suddenly she grabbed him, hugged him tight to her body. She closed her eyes and mumbled, “Q, so nice to see you, Q,” she said, repeating his name with a funny cadence.

  With an awkward stumble, she stepped away and threw me a glance.

  “That’s Max. A friend.”

  She dipped her chin, turned, and went back inside.

  Q followed her, and I followed him, closing the door behind me.

  Felicia sat on the edge of the bed, her right foot tapping out a rapid rhythm on the floor. Her hands played her thighs like drums, she was humming something that sounded like the Wicked Witch’s marching castle guards in the Wizard of Oz’s chanting: “O-EE-Yah! Eoh-Ah.”

  Her eyes were split wide, pupils were dilated, red-rimmed.

  She sat up ram-rod straight, bristling with electricity, like she had a cattle-prod stuck up her spine.

  Q pulled one of two joint-fractured particle board chairs up close to her.

  I stood near the TV set nailed to high on the front wall of the unit.

  “What you on, Felicia?”

  She stopped humming her Oz-like chants and said, “Me?”

  Q waited.

  “Damn, Q. You know me. I’m high on life.”

  “Sure you are. I know that, girl. What’s helpin’ you love life so much right now?"

  She laughed, jumped to her feet, danced to the side of the bed, picked up a pack of Camel Lights and a black lighter with the outline of a high-tailed cat on it. She lit up, inhaled, blew it out through her nose.

 

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