nodded, oblivious. “The self-mutilation?”
“Right. How about pulling out his own damn toenails?” Lou cracked his knuckles. “He told the doctor he couldn’t feel anything.”
“He was disturbed when he went in. I’d say prison made it worse. Teaser needs help.”
“And be still my bleeding heart.” Lou shook his head. “Doc, he’s in for drug possession with intent to deliver—not some psycho-crime.”
Forget diplomacy. “A plea bargain. Before the girl ran away, Teaser was charged with rape of a child in the second degree. This girl, Holly, she was twelve and she was pregnant.” Abe set his pipe in the stone ashtray. He thought about what to say. “Lou, he was having sex with her for three months. She was eleven when he took her off the street. In prison he says he stopped feeling things. According to the file, Teaser’s unusually bright. What do you think he’s capable of now?”
Lou pointed at the smoke rising from the fire in Abe’s wastebasket. Abe stood, frustrated and surprised, as always, by his own absent-mindedness.
Lou laughed out loud, a gravelly sound.
The phone rang. “Abe Stein,” he said, pouring the remains of the Diet Coke onto the fire set by his tossed match. “Oh no…” Lou shook his head, watching the smoke. Abe whispered something then hurriedly cradled the phone. “Gotta go,” he muttered and tapped Lou on the shoulder on his way out the door.
Fifteen minutes later Abe ran up the wide stairs of the old hardware building just south of Pioneer Square. The paramedics were packing up when he burst from the elevator, running toward Corey’s office. Annie was on a gurney being wheeled out the door. Abe took her hand, squeezing gently. Annie smiled at him, a thin, sad smile. The lines in his face deepened as he watched her being wheeled out.
When the last paramedic had left, Corey put her arms around him. “It’s my fault.”
“Our fault.”
“You said it could happen.”
“Could, not would. A possibility.”
“He found her on the Ave, brought her to an abandoned building in the trunk of his car. She jumped through a locked window to get away.”
He held Corey close. He knew how troubled she’d been about bringing Annie home. How she’d labored over that decision. He’d encouraged Corey to meet with Luther and his CCO to work it out. He stepped back, trying to get his bearings. The price for their mistake was too high.
“The police are there now,” she said quietly. “Mom is saying Annie fell. She swears Luther didn’t do it, that he was out with her.”
“Let’s make sure Annie’s safe, then we’ll deal with them.”
“Abe, I blew this. It’s—”
He touched a big hand to the small of her back. “She’s still alive, babe. Let’s do what we can for her.”
Billy’s eleventh-grade family night was at 5:30 on Queen Anne Hill. Abe and Corey agreed to meet there at 6:00, after his last appointment. She’d pick up Billy as planned.
Corey cancelled a meeting and went to check on Annie at the hospital. She stayed at Harborview until Annie was sleeping soundly, safe and settled, then Corey called her lawyer, Jason Weiss.
She told him about Luther and Annie. When she asked him to get a court order to keep Luther away from the battered girl, he said, “It doesn’t often work.”
“I’m going to talk with him,” she replied. “I need a starting place.”
She could picture him, thinking about it, rubbing his right ear lobe between thumb and forefinger. “That could work,” he admitted.
Some time later, she didn’t know how long, Corey made her potluck purchase, then she went home to pick up her son.
Billy was brooding. When she pulled up, he was sitting on the front porch bench looking up at the clouds. On the way to the truck he just stared at his phone scrolling through old text messages, shrugging noncommittally when she asked how he was doing. Now he was leaning against the window of their black pick-up, staring at the faces on Broadway. They lived on Capitol Hill, and Corey was coming south on Tenth, anticipating the soft right past the Harvard Exit Theater, toward Lake Union. At the last moment she veered left, following Billy’s eyes down the busy street.
Broadway wasn’t picturesque, like the waterfront, or old, like Pioneer Square. It was, however, Broadway, and it was, in its way, a Seattle phenomenon: quirky street life, hip stores, the “hot” spots, the fringe. Corey drove slowly, trying to see it through his eyes. Wild hair colors. Pierced body parts. Cross dressing. Ethnic restaurants. Gay bars. Straight bars. Edgy clothing stores wedged between fast food franchises. Tourists. Tattoo parlors. Homeless people. A fancy market (the QFC). Sex shops. Smoke shops. A trendy mall. Dick’s Drive-in. College kids. Street kids spanging, asking for spare change. Suburban kids. City kids. Cruising. Drugs scored at ice cream parlors, pizzerias, hamburger stands.
Much of her work led to this odd adolescent mecca. She found runaways and this was one of the places they ran to. And though she knew the kids, knew every shop and every stoop, Broadway was still as foreign to her as the mountains on the moon. Growing up, she worked summers on a fishing boat, and after school at the wharf, canning fish. As a teenager Corey didn’t have free time. Billy smiled, a girl with blue and green streaks in her hair was blowing bubbles. “You’re awfully quiet,” she said. “Something wrong?”
“Mom.” It came out ma-umm.
“Okay. Sorry.”
At the light, a woman in rags pushed a shopping cart full of garbage in front of their car and into the QFC parking lot.
“I can’t reach Aaron.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not responding when I text. I call, I go straight to voicemail, which is full. He’s not at school. Two days now… Today I couldn’t find Maisie.”
“Won’t Aaron be there tonight?”
“Un-unh, I don’t think so.”
“And that’s okay? It’s his house.”
Billy shrugged. “His dad stays out of stuff, unless Aaron says fireman instead of firefighter.”
“Easy—”
“Sorry. He’s just so serious…his mom’s in New York.”
She turned down Denny, thoughtful. “His dad’s pretty high up at Olympic—”
“Yeah, a dean.”
“Just what does he do?”
“Tries to figure out what’s going on, I guess.” Billy tapped his thumb on the seat. “If there’s a problem, he decides what’s okay. Like where you can use your phone. Or if something’s racist.”
