FORGET DRIVE-IN ZOMBIES and cow-mutilating drug lords. That was last night. Ric and I had slept in until noon. We should have been ravenous, but could only nibble on road snacks.
Today was the first day of the rest of my life, and the really scary part of my trip back to Wichita was starting now, this afternoon, with Ric and me sitting in Dolly’s front seat wearing what could pass for our “Sunday best” anywhere, preparing to enter a bland brick three-story building to find out all about … me.
The place looks like a morgue, Irma warned me. You do not want to go there, Street, in any meaning of the phrase. We do not want to go there, even with a bodyguard as professionally accomplished as Ric.
“Hush,” I said to quiet her nervous chattering.
“Huh?” Ric asked. “I didn’t say a thing.”
I just shook my head, unable to explain my paralysis. I was so full of dread I’d let him drive, even here in Wichita, through streets I knew like the lines on my palm. Leonard Tallgrass had provided the computer-map route past the three group homes he discovered I’d lived in until I was sprung from the system to attend Our Lady of the Lake convent school.
They were all sprawling one-story ranch-styles set in modest neighborhoods. I remember there had been uproars about having group homes in single-family communities, but I was used to being something of an outcast and that hadn’t really affected me.
I didn’t even recognize the exterior of the one home I’d supposedly lived in for four years. What might go on today in these five-to-six-bedroom homes gave me the willies.
Ric’s hand stretched across the wide front seat to take mine.
“Your fingers are like icicles, amor. It’ll be all right. You can stop hugging the car door. Dolly will be here when we get back.”
“You’re sure Quicksilver is all right with Tallgrass?”
“They hit it off like old camping buddies, you saw that. A dog wearing sunglasses waiting in a parked fifty-six Caddy convertible wouldn’t be cool in Kansas, you know that. In Vegas, anything goes, but here we’re undercover. Think of us as census takers. We’re official. We want dates and places and details and we are a couple of mean bureaucratic badasses no one will want to mess with.”
He wore a dark gray suit I’d never seen, drab and slightly shiny. I had inserted my gray contact lenses again and had clipped my hair in back so it seemed vaguely bun-like but covered my neck. I wore my TV-reporter outfit, a navy suit and matching pumps that did nothing for me but make me blend in with any background, from political press conference to neighborhood murder scene.
I’d copped an idea from lady police detectives. All my working suit jackets had deep, if discreet pockets. Carrying a bothersome purse makes a woman easier to dismiss as girly on the job. A narrow reporter’s notebook and pencil, ID and money clip were all I needed on me. With my black eyebrows and lashes, I’d only needed a pot of lip gloss and a dab of concealer for the camera. Nowadays, of course, I also armed myself with Lip Venom and Mid-night Cherry Shimmer. That was New Delilah, though. I was here in Kansas to meet Old Delilah’s worst nightmare.
I still kept my eyes glued to a fire hydrant coated in shiny aluminum paint on the street in front of the Wichita Child Protective Services building. That seemed like a good omen.
“Will I recognize this Haliburton woman Tallgrass dug up?” I asked, needing to clear my throat first.
Ric shook my captured hand. “Doesn’t matter. Lighten up, Delilah. I know a nonentity from a bad past can be even more terrifying than a monster in the present. I’ve been there, right? You saw me through. Now I’m seeing you through.”
I nodded, opened Dolly’s heavy door, and got out, checking the building’s side windows. Was anyone watching the parking lot below? My gaze panned rows of uncurtained windows with flower vases, photo frames, and office knickknacks lined up on the indoor sills.
“Mrs. Haliburton,” Ric said, “was in charge of group homes during the years you were in the system. Tallgrass had to do a lot of white-collar-crime type of digging to come up with someone who should know everything we want to find out. Relax. This is the simplest party we’ve ever crashed. Remember the Karnak.”
I couldn’t help smiling. Only Ric would call our life-threatening expedition to an underground empire of ancient vampires “crashing a party.”
The trouble was, I’d mostly done all my derring-do to save someone else’s skin. It’s harder to be as brave on your own behalf, especially when confronting childhood monsters.
Toughen up, Irma advised. The man is gonna find answers; it’s his calling. His inner kid has faced nightmares that make ours look like Saturday morning cartoons.
Except I’d never been a morning cartoons person. I’d hid out in the group homes to watch midnight monster movies. Any cruising vamp boys found the rec room with its Ping Pong table, jigsaw puzzles, and small-screen TV too nerdy to venture near.
I was beginning to understand why my memories of living in Wichita had gaping holes. We walked through the social services building into a bland lobby, elevator, and halls so forgettable I couldn’t describe them moments after passing through. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t remember much about my childhood; it was so forgettable. Not terrifying.
“We have an appointment,” Ric told the ash-blond receptionist in rimless glasses.
See what I mean? Irma prodded. Boring and bland and forgettable. No wonder we split this burg for Sin City.
We were shown into one of the offices without a vase or any trinkets in the window.
Mrs. Haliburton was sixtyish, with permed iron-gray hair and the required rimless glasses, and she, too, wore navy blue, which suited her pinkish complexion. Navy blue made my white skin look bluish, like skim milk.
She rose to greet Ric. “Mr. Montoya.” She gave me a demanding stare.
Already I hated her.
Ric was all professional interrogator. “Good to meet you, Mrs. Haliburton. This is my assistant, Miss Place.”
“You’re formerly with the FBI?” she asked Ric as we sat on molded blond-wood chairs while she reclaimed the squeaky black desk chair.
“Yes,” he said. “The Phoenix office.”
News to me. I guess if I could learn more about Ric, the trip to Wichita would be worth it.
“I don’t see,” Mrs. Haliburton said with a superior little laugh, “what you’re doing here, making inquiries. We’re up-to-date in Kansas, you know. We have our own FBI offices.”
“This is a Kansas case file I’m investigating,” he said, “involving a Wichita group home resident of a dozen or so years.”
“No longer in our system?”
“No.”
“You do understand, Mr. Montoya, that our group home clients are disabled in some way, have learning or behavioral difficulties? We must protect their privacy.”
Even Irma cringed inside me.
“I have a signed and notarized paper from the individual in question,” Ric said, producing a folded document from his inside jacket pocket.
“Is this related to a civil suit—?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Haliburton.” Ric’s smile was dazzling. “Merely a routine question of information—where, when, that kind of thing. So far,” he added, without the smile.
Mrs. Haliburton’s poodle-cut head reared back as she frowned at the paper. I didn’t sense that she recognized my name.
She handed back the document, folded. “Well, Mr. Montoya, Miss Place. You’re in luck. Everything was computerized during this girl’s residence. I can look her up in an instant.”
Gulp, Irma moaned.