The Nightmare Girl Read online

  Angie was grinning crazily at him now and actually snapping at his forearms with spit-flecked teeth. He dodged her first lunge, but on the second, those gleaming white teeth sank into the meat of his forearm like it was a filet mignon. This time Joe did bellow in pain, and without thinking, he shoved the girl away. The force of it surprised them both and her teeth came loose with a disgusting schlurping sound. She landed in an awkward tangle, her wrist pinned under her side. Joe heard a gruesome wet crack and made a futile wish it wasn’t a broken bone. But her pinched features and her inhuman wail of pain suggested otherwise.

  The grandma shouldered past him and fell at her daughter’s side. Grandma cradled her daughter’s thrashing head and shot Joe a look of such stygian venom that his stomach performed another somersault.

  “You’ll burn for this,” Grandma hissed. And so venomous was her expression and so resolute was her tone that Joe experienced a moment’s guilt for shoving the girl. But he’d tried, hadn’t he? He’d tried not to hurt the girl. Surely everyone could see that.

  He looked up at the young gas station attendant, but there was no help there. The poor guy was doubled over, his hands on his knees, his mouth frothing so much bloody slaver that he looked like a college freshman suffering the aftermath of his first drinking binge. Damn, but the grandma had done a number on the kid.

  Joe scanned the faces surrounding the scene, but they were like shell-shocked soldiers fresh off an unexpected air raid. No help there either. Joe turned and saw Michelle, who stood ramrod straight about ten feet from the truck, her hands pressed together at her lips, concern and horror showing in equal parts in her big brown eyes.

  Then Joe remembered the boy.

  The toddler was still crying, but it was an exhausted sound now, the kid’s face livid with anxiety and hurt. Joe exhaled shuddering breath and crossed to the boy. He reached out and endeavored to mop the blood off the kid’s lips but only managed to smear it. Joe patted his pockets in the bleak hope there’d be a handkerchief there, but of course, there wasn’t. Joe never carried one. His father had, but Dad was dead twenty years now. Joe glanced dismally at the van floor and saw nothing but crinkled fast food wrappers and what might’ve been an empty wine bottle. There was a green pacifier just visible beneath the passenger’s seat, so Joe plucked it from its nest of dirt and hair and proceeded to wipe it off with the front of his shirt. He became aware of the little boy’s gaze. Joe met it. The kid’s blue eyes—no doubt his mother’s—were swollen with tears, but they were watching him curiously. Joe’s lips trembled into a smile. He checked the pacifier one more time to see if it was free of grime and decided it was good enough. He reached out, placed the pacifier in the kid’s mouth. The kid accepted it eagerly and began to suck. Joe felt tears stinging his own eyes and had a wild urge to kiss the boy on the cheek.

  But that was when both women fell on him.

  They slammed him like an inrushing tide. Joe’s forehead cracked against the van doorway, his midsection pushed into the side of the boy’s car seat. There was a surge of shouting voices, the sense that a melee was forming behind him, and as Joe spun around, he saw this was the case. There was Angie, there was her mother. But their attention was now on Michelle, whose trance had finally broken and who was now nose-to-nose with Grandma. Both women had their index fingers jammed into each other’s faces, their hoarse shouts merging in a hell’s chorus of recrimination. Angie was cocksuckering and motherfuckering a half dozen bystanders who’d converged on the van. Present also was the gas station attendant, who despite his split lips and his bloodied front was gamely demanding the women get the hell off the premises. Joe admired the young guy’s pluck. Also haranguing Angie were a tall, skinny man of perhaps seventy, a stocky mother with curly brown hair and a small child at each hip, as well as a grizzled man in a faded Grateful Dead T-shirt and black leather chaps. This guy, who looked to Joe like a thinner, healthier Jerry Garcia, was almost as animated as Angie herself, and gesticulating so wildly that Joe worried he’d knock the girl unconscious.

  Then again, maybe that would be for the best.

  Just when Joe thought the whole situation would explode like some violent sports brawl, the sound of a child’s screams reached his ears. He thought at first it was the toddler in the van, but no, he saw with a glance, the boy was merely watching the spectacle with a look of polite interest now.

  Then Joe remembered Lily.

  “Honey?” he said to his wife. She whipped her head around and looked for a moment like she’d unleash her vitriol on him too—dear God, he’d never seen her so fired up. Then something like coherent thought seemed to seep back into her pretty face and she made for the pickup truck.

  The gas station attendant, God bless him, took it as a cue to restore order. He pointed at Angie and her mom in turn. “You and you, get your skanky asses in that van and get the hell out of my station.”

  Frantic loathing showed in Grandma’s eyes. “This place isn’t yours! Terry Overmeyer owns it!”

  The attendant nodded, his bloodied lips twisting into a flinty smile. “That’s right. And he’d tell you the same damned thing. You think he’d be okay with a woman assaulting a baby at his station?”

  Grandma’s face scrunched in mocking denial. “Angie never assaulted that child. It’s called discipline, you stupid shit, and it’s none of your business anyways.”

  “She beat the crap out of him, and you know it,” the Jerry Garcia clone said.

  “Bullshit,” Grandma answered and took a step toward him.

  “We all witnessed it,” the older man said. Joe looked at the man’s white hair and formal Sunday clothes and felt a desperate wave of affection for him. The older man nodded at Joe. “We’ll all testify on this man’s behalf.”

  “Fuck you too,” Grandma said.

  Angie was massaging her wrist. She shouted at Joe, spit flying from her lips, “You’re the one attacked me, and you’re gonna pay for it. I hope you got a good lawyer, you son of a bitch.”

  “You’re not fit to be a mother,” a woman’s voice said.

  Joe saw that this had come from the short, stocky woman, the one with a child on each flank. The woman’s lips were trembling, but there was steel in her unflinching gaze. Joe gave silent thanks for her support.

  “You go to hell,” Angie said, but some of her spirit seemed to have been stolen by the woman’s firm declaration.

  There was a pregnant moment when no one spoke. Joe felt unspeakably weary and feared he might throw up. But when Grandma broke the silence, she said, “Come on, Angie. Let’s get out of this hellhole.”

  Angie started to follow her mom toward the van, then she stopped and stared at the white-haired man, who Joe now saw was punching numbers on an older cell phone. “What’re you doing?” Angie asked, with what might’ve been a glimmer of apprehension.

  “I’m calling the police,” the white-haired man said.

  Angie’s mouth worked for a moment. Then, looking like a spoiled child who’s just been deprived of a toy she covets, she said, “Good. Tell ’em Angie Waltz needs to file a complaint about this asshole.” A nod at Joe.

  “Get out of here,” the attendant said, pronouncing each word slowly. “Now.”

  Angie’s lips pressed together, whitened, her nostrils flaring with pent rage. But she went then, stalking over to the sliding side door of the van. Without so much as a look at her son, she slammed the van door shut. Joe jumped a little, the racket of it something felt in his bones. Grandma was at the wheel now, and as she gunned the engine, Angie climbed into the passenger’s seat. Joe could see his wife and daughter on the other side of the pumps, Michelle bouncing Lily gently and soothing her. Lily was two, but she still insisted on being held like a newborn when she got worked up like this.

  The sight of his wife and his girl did his heart good, reminded him that life maybe could get back to normal, that he might not go to jail for acc
identally breaking that little punk’s wrist.

  But when Joe glanced up at the van, which had started to roll forward, he knew how far from over this was. Angie Waltz was glaring him with a look that made his flesh crawl. She didn’t just hate him, she didn’t just want him to suffer. The look on her face in the moments before the van veered onto Washington Street made him think of real life courtroom clips he’d seen, the ones where accused murderers shrivel under the baleful stares of grieving loved ones. The measureless look of hatred often present in the loved ones’ eyes…that was how Angie Waltz had looked at Joe before they’d pulled away.

  Joe watched the van grow slowly smaller as it rolled toward whatever place of misery the girl and her son called home. Probably Grandma’s house.

  A horrorshow of images unspooled in his mind:

  The squalid house awaiting the little boy.

  Unchanged diapers.

  Unwashed dishes.

  A hovel full of raised voices and bitterness and nicotine.

  Neglect and abuse.

  Jesus Christ, Joe thought. He realized he was weeping quietly. Jesus Christ, son. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

  Chapter Two

  The second policeman showed up around nine-thirty that night.

  Joe expected it, of course. After all, he’d had Michelle call the police just a few minutes after they got home from the gas station, and they’d dispatched an officer—a young guy not much older than Angie Waltz herself—to take their statements. Joe had known that wouldn’t be the end of it, known it even as he was rocking his daughter to sleep and depositing her gingerly in her crib. But it still struck Joe as surreal to see the big black police car roll to a stop along the curb in front of their house. The cop inside—a husky black man in his late-forties—engaged the emergency brake before climbing out, which Joe took as a good sign. The man was cautious. Joe’s house was near the crest of a steep hill, and though the cruiser probably wouldn’t go rolling to the bottom unless it was rear-ended, it always made Joe relax a little when folks used their emergency brakes.

  The cop climbed out, adjusted his belt buckle, and ambled around the rear of the cruiser. The man’s pants were navy blue, as was his shirt. He wore no hat, but there was a gun holstered at his side, a hell of a big one.

  Suddenly dry-mouthed, Joe moved to the front door and awaited the policeman’s coming. The guy mounted the front porch, saw Joe holding the door open for him, and entered the house without so much as a nod.

  Joe told him he could sit anywhere. The cop took the armchair beside the couch. Joe didn’t mind that so much—the only chair he really liked was in the basement anyway—but he detested sitting on their couch. It was an uncomfortable, flowery thing that reminded him of his mother-in-law, who’d helped Michelle pick it out.

  The cop introduced himself as Police Chief Darrell Copeland. Joe gave his name, and Copeland nodded curtly. “I assume you know why I’m here, Mr. Crawford.”

  “Not really,” Joe said and attempted a smile that didn’t take. “I’m not accustomed to stuff like this. Thankfully.”

  Copeland eyed him steadily. “Well, you might as well get accustomed to it now. After all, you are at the center of it.”

  Now what the hell was that supposed to mean? Joe was about to point out he hadn’t created this situation, but Copeland was going on.

  “After a brief investigation,” Copeland said, “the child and his mother were both taken into custody. We’re not sure what to do about Grandma yet.”

  Joe felt a surge of emotions, but dominant among them was a sort of paralyzing nausea. “So what happens next?”

  “Depends on who you’re talkin’ about. The girl or the little boy? Or Grandma?”

  Joe didn’t like the chief referring to Angie Waltz as the girl. It made her seem less like the vindictive harpy he’d encountered at the gas station and more like a kid who made a mistake.

  Joe said, “Let’s start with Angie.”

  “That one’s pretty straightforward. She’s charged with child abuse, so she’s either gonna await trial or be let out on bail.”

  “Can they afford bail?”

  “Don’t see how. That old house of theirs is in such deplorable shape I’m surprised they can afford groceries.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “About two blocks from the gas station. Big old home that probably looked nice about a hundred years ago. Now the whole neighborhood’s low-rent.”

  Joe’s belly was knotting up again, but dammit, how come? Was it his fault Angie was a child abuser? Was it his fault she chose to make her mistreatment of the little boy so public? And what if Joe hadn’t done anything, what then? He didn’t feel good now—hell no, he didn’t—but he felt a damn sight better than he would’ve had he not intervened.

  “You think she has a case?” Joe asked.

  “Who, the girl?”

  “Angie Waltz.”

  Copeland grunted, gave him a deadpan look. “There were a dozen witnesses, five of which have already given statements corroborating your account.”

  Joe sat forward on the couch. “She’ll serve time, right?”

  Copeland shrugged. “I’m not the judge, but yeah, I’d say there’s a very good chance of it.”

  Joe mulled it over. “They usually go pretty strict on cases like these? Even if it’s a person’s first time getting reported?”

  Copeland frowned, appeared to study the backs of his hands.

  “It wasn’t the first time.”

  “You’ve dealt with her before?”

  Copeland was still staring at his hands, which Joe now noticed were the size of catchers’ mitts. Dark brown, wide, veins wending their way up the salt shaker knuckles. At length, Copeland said, “I’ve known Angie and her mom for going on four years now. Ever since they moved here, they’ve been bad news.”

  “Bad news how?”

  Copeland looked up. “That happens to be none of your business.”

  Joe met Copeland’s gaze with difficulty and told himself he wouldn’t be the first to look away. When neither of them did, Joe said, “You told me it wasn’t her first time being reported for abuse.”

  “That’s none of your business either.”

  “I thought all that stuff was public record.”

  Copeland propped a forearm on his knee and leaned toward him. “Don’t gimme that line of bullshit. The public has a right to know and all that. It’s been a long day, and my patience has just about run out.”

  “Or maybe you don’t have much of it to begin with.”

  The catchers’ mitts balled into fists—Jesus God, look at the size of those things. Then Copeland’s temperature seemed to lower a degree or two.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, Crawford, so I’d back off, I were you. But because I feel like it—don’t ask me why—I’ll tell you one thing. When we looked at the kid, we saw bruises all over his cheeks, swollen lips, nose still crusty with blood—”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Joe said. “She was beating the shit out of him.”

  “You mind shuttin’ that mouth of yours for a minute?” Copeland said. “You’ll let me, I’m tryin’ to tell you something off the record.”

  “Sorry.”

  Copeland went on, not looking the slightest bit mollified. “The injuries we found weren’t totally consistent with your story.” When Joe opened his mouth to protest, Copeland overrode him. “Or at least your story doesn’t account for all of them. Especially the age of the wounds.”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t get—”

  “There were old bruises too, you understand?” Copeland said, his voice coming fast and fierce and low. “There were the new ones, sure. The bloody nose, the blackened eye. Kid’s bottom lip so swollen, you’d think…” Copeland broke off, voice suddenly thick. He cleared his throat. “But
there were old bruises too. Those gray-green ones you sometimes see? The kid had ’em on his arms. Like he’d been grabbed, maybe shaken. He had yellowish contusions on his rear end, like he’d been smacked repeatedly there. And not just a spanking, either. The yellowish marks were long and thin. Like maybe she’d taken a stick or a fishing rod and whipped him with it.”

  “Oh hell.”

  “There were all kinds of colors on the boy. Even some faint bruising on either side of his neck.”

  Joe could scarcely breathe. “She choked him?”

  “I’m not confirming anything,” Copeland said, looking away. “I didn’t even tell you the stuff you thought you just heard.”

  A voice from their left said, “And the boy?”

  Joe turned and saw Michelle, a nearly empty wine glass held to her chest, standing atop the short flight of stairs leading to their bedroom.

  Copeland looked up, surprised. Then he scowled at Joe as if Joe had beckoned his wife in to join them. His voice cheerless, Copeland said, “He’s in state custody at the moment, Mrs. Crawford.”

  “That quickly?”

  “You’d rather the kid stay in that house, ma’am?”

  She took a deep breath, shivered a little. “It’s not that…it’s just…what will happen to the boy now?”

  Copeland’s gaze was steady. “God willing, he’ll be remanded into foster care and eventually adopted.”

  Michelle took a step forward. “Isn’t that a bit…extreme? Can’t Angie go to classes? You know, become a better mom?”

  Joe felt like he’d been socked in the gut. Somehow, hearing Angie referred to by her first name was even worse than hearing her called the girl. Because it created a link between Michelle and Angie Waltz, some bond forged by motherhood.

  Copeland reached out, fingered the spines of the books on the built-ins. “I’d wager the boy’s never gonna set foot in that house again.”