W. Griffin: The Last Witness

Relatives wanting five more mouths to feed? Maggie had thought incredulously, reading the file. Or just five more checks from DHS?

These situations are so desperate. . no matter how much money gets thrown at the problem.

After two years, a DHS caseworker discovered evidence of abuse of the oldest Gonzalez sibling by the foster parents-and suspected there was more-and the girls returned to the safety of Mary’s House.

It would be a brief stay.

The aunt lobbied DHS to the point that she finally won court-approved custody of them. The file notes stated that all was more or less okay for the following three years-until the driver of a stolen car hit the aunt in a Kensington crosswalk, killing her. DHS, due to limited space, then split up the six cousins-the eldest two, almost eighteen, had run away and not been heard from since-between three temporary homes.

Krystal, who’d just turned fifteen, wound up back at Mary’s House with no real hope of ever living again with her sisters and cousins.

Caseworkers, as much as they wished to oversee each and every child without fail, knew that the system, frustratingly flawed, was anything but perfect-and that there were those who invariably fell through holes in the safety net that was DHS. The younger kids, particularly infants, understandably commanded the majority of attention. At high risk were the teenagers, who constantly tested the patience of caseworkers. They would talk back, lie, and sneak out at night, violating Philadelphia’s curfew. Alcohol and drug use, particularly among those who’d been abused, wasn’t at all uncommon.

Maggie McCain herself had added ample notes in Krystal’s file, most often in connection with the twins Lizzi and Brandi.

Krystal had met the attractive, blonde sixteen-year-olds at a West Philadelphia facility serving DHS, where they’d lived for almost a year. Not church-affiliated, it was two miles from Mary’s House, and twice its size. The girls had found the rules there were fewer, or not strictly enforced, or both, and being opportunistic-if not cunning-teenagers they took advantage of that.

A year after befriending Krystal, Lizzi and Brandi had introduced her to an older girl, all of twenty-one, who impressed them with the money she said she earned serving cocktails at a couple of Philly nightclubs.

Krystal had been so awed that she’d dropped her guard and gushed to Maggie McCain: “She has the latest everything-her hair, her nails, her clothes! And her own place! ‘Ya gotta use what ya got to get what ya want,’ is what she said. She’s going to help find Lizzi and Brandi jobs, and let them share her place until we can get our own.”

“We?” Maggie had blurted.

“I mean them. Lizzi and Brandi.”

But Maggie had understood exactly what she meant.

The girls had led tough lives, ones that most people could not-and, truth told, really did not want to-begin to try to comprehend. The closer the girls got to eighteen, the odds of them being adopted into any family, let alone a stable, loving one, were about as good as the chance they’d be taken bodily into heaven. And the promise of a new, exciting life on their own simply was too tempting.

Maggie at first couldn’t compose a reply.

“Use what you got to get what you want”?

That could not be any clearer. .

Then, even as she began saying the words, Maggie knew they were falling on deaf ears: “You girls must be very, very careful, Krystal. You have to understand that there’s a price, sometimes a very steep one. . ”

Maggie McCain sped through the tree-lined cobblestone streets of Society Hill, a posh section of Center City overlooking the Delaware River that dated back to the 1700s.

The knot that had formed in the pit of her stomach at the mention of Lizzi and Brandi felt like it was getting worse.

If those poor girls aren’t dead, they probably wish they were, she thought.

And Krystal may have just missed the same fate.

She turned down a brick-paved alleyway, then thumbed the button of the garage door opener clipped to her sun visor. Approaching the back of her three-story town house-in the last year she’d spent a small fortune renovating the hundred-year-old structure-she saw that the wooden door of the garage was almost completely open. The interior was brightly lit.

Glancing up, she saw that there were no lights in the windows of the second and third floors.

Krystal didn’t call back on my house phone, she thought, nosing the Land Cruiser inside the neat, orderly garage. Maybe she went to bed?

Or she’s hiding in the dark. .?

Maggie put the SUV in park and turned it off. As she opened her driver’s door, she heard a heavy thump upstairs and what sounded like glass shattering and, a moment later, the rush of air.

Maggie jerked her head, struggling to hear as the garage door closed.

Maybe she fell? But what was-?

The smoke alarms suddenly went off with a steady, ear-piercing squeal.

She got out of the vehicle and ran up the staircase. Reaching the top, she grabbed the doorknob-and instinctively yanked back her hand when she felt the heat. She tugged her thick sweater cuff over her hand, then quickly grabbed and turned the knob.

The door opened onto the kitchen. When she pulled on it, flames flickered out of the crack. She slammed it shut.

What’s that smell? Gas?

She waited for a long moment, then tried again.

This time the flames were not quite as intense-and now she could see Krystal. She was lying on the kitchen’s hardwood floor. What looked like a beer bottle with a rag tied to it lay in a pool of blood beside her head. A second one was shattered on the marble countertop. The wooden cabinetry was burning rapidly.

The room reeked of gasoline.

“Oh my God!” she whimpered, her green eyes tearing.

I need to call nine-one-one!

No-I don’t. The alarm system does that.

She pulled her sweater over her head and ran to Krystal and knelt. Krystal’s face was coated in blood. Her eyes were glazed. Maggie touched her neck to feel for a pulse, found none, then grasped her shoulders and shook her.

“Krystal!”

There was no response.

When she had shaken her, her head had moved-and Maggie now noticed a small brass object, then a second one, in the blood pool. She immediately recognized them as spent bullet casings.

She looked back at Krystal-and now followed the trail of blood on her neck to the small round entrance wound the bullet had made behind her right earlobe.

You poor thing. .

Maggie quickly looked around the kitchen, then down the hall that led to the front of the house. At the end, she could see that the front door was wide open.

Did she not lock the door?

Or did she let in whoever did this?

The flames on the cabinets suddenly grew stronger and hotter.

She ran back to the door to the garage, went through it, and slammed it shut. She slapped at the wall to the left of the door frame until her fingers found the control button that opened the garage door.

The light on the opener in the center of the ceiling came back on. The motor hummed as the big wooden door clunked upward.

She could hear the sound of sirens, faint but clear. They were coming from the direction of the firehouse not quite a half dozen blocks away at Sixth and South.

Maggie ran down the steps.

She pulled from the front passenger floorboard of the Land Cruiser a canvas sailing bag-its neat stitching read YELLOWROSE SPRING BAY RESORT amp; SPA, VIRGIN GORDA BVI-then took it behind the enclosed stairway. She opened the narrow door there. A single bulb above automatically came on, and she crouched as she entered the small enclosure.