George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'The day of the funeral, she showed up at the cemetery. I hadn't seen her for a month or so. Her phone had been disconnected, and she had been fired from her job. She had dropped out of college, too.'

'If you hadn't seen her, then how did you know all of those events had taken place?'

'Chris knew.'

'He was in contact with her?'

'I don't know how he knew. He was close to her… He was very upset, Mr Strange. But in the end, even he had lost track of her. We didn't know if she had a roof over her head, if she was eating, where she lived, where she slept. We didn't know if she was living or dead.'

'So she was at the funeral.'

'She looked barely alive that day. Her eyes, even her steps were without life. I hadn't seen her for so long. I haven't seen her since.'

'I'm sorry.'

'If Chris were here, he'd find her.' Tears broke and ran down Leona's sunken cheeks. 'Excuse me, Mr Strange.'

She turned and walked quickly from the room.

Strange did not follow. After a while he heard her talking on the living room phone. He went to the dresser and emptied the crystal bowl of matchbooks, transferring them into the pockets of his leather. He slid the photograph of Sondra Wilson out from beneath the mug and placed it in his wallet. He paced the room. He sat on Chris Wilson's bed and looked out the window.

Strange could imagine Wilson as a boy, waking up in this room, hearing the songbirds, recognizing the bark of the same dogs every morning. Looking out that same window and dreaming about catching the winning pass, knocking one out of the ballpark with the bases full, a pretty girl he sat near in class. Smelling breakfast cooking, maybe hearing his mother humming a tune in the kitchen as she prepared it, waiting for her to poke her head through the door, tell him it was time to get up and off to school.

Strange heard Leona Wilson's sobs from out in the living room. Trying to stifle it, then crying full on.

'You all right, Derek,' said Strange under his breath, feeling useless and angry at himself for having given the Wilson woman false hope.

He walked out to the living room and stood beside her where she sat on the couch, clutching a cloth handkerchief. Strange put a hand on her bony shoulder.

'It's so hard,' she said, almost a whisper. 'So hard.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Strange.

She wiped her face and looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. 'Have you made any progress?'

'I'll have a report for you very soon.'

Leona handed Strange a slip of paper off the coffee table. 'Here's Renee's address. She's going to pick her daughter up at day care, but she'll be home soon. She'll see you if you'd like.'

'Thank you,' said Strange.

He patted her shoulder impotently again and walked away.

'Will I see you in church this Sunday, Mr Strange?'

'I hope to be there,' said Strange, keeping his pace.

He couldn't get through the door fast enough. Out on the sidewalk, he stood for a moment and breathed fresh air.

Renee Austin lived in a garden apartment complex set behind a shopping center in the Maryland suburbs, out Route 29 and off Cherry Hill Road. Strange waited in the parking lot, listening to an old Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, as Renee had not yet returned from picking up her daughter. Strange was singing along to 'Pretty Flower,' closing his eyes and trying to mimic Teddy's growl, when Renee's red Civic pulled into the lot.

They sat at her kitchen table, drinking instant coffee. Renee's daughter, a darling little three year old named Kia, sat on the linoleum floor. Kia had a dark-skinned doll in one hand and a freckly faced, cartoonish-looking white baby in the other, and she was pressing their faces together, loudly going, 'Mmm, mmm, mmm.'

'Honey,' said Renee, 'hush, please. We are trying to talk, and it's hard to hear ourselves with those sounds you're makin'.'

'Rugrat kissing Groovy Girl, Momma!' said Kia.

'Yes, baby,' said Renee. 'I know.'

Renee was a good-looking, dark-skinned young woman with long painted nails and a sculpted, lean face. Her hair had been chemically relaxed, and she wore it in a shoulder-length, fashionable cut. She worked as an administrative assistant for an accounting firm on Connecticut and L, and she stayed there, she said, not for pay or opportunities but for the firm's flexible schedule, which allowed her more time with Kia.

She was a tired-looking twenty-one. Renee told Strange that she had planned to register for community college courses but that Kia's arrival and the father's subsequent departure had dimmed those plans. Strange noticed all the toys, televisions, and stereo equipment spread about the apartment, and Renee's Honda had looked brand-new. He wondered how far she was overextended, if she had dug a credit hole so deep that she couldn't even see the light from where she stood.

'Maybe when she gets into a full day of school,' said Strange, 'you can go after that college degree.'

'Maybe,' said Renee, her voice trailing off, both of them knowing that it would never happen that way.

Renee talked about Chris Wilson, how they had met, what kind of man he was. How he had been 'a better father' to Kia than Kia's own blood had been.

'How about when he drank?' said Strange. 'Was he good to her then?'

'Chris hardly drank more than one, maybe two beers at a time. When I first met him, he barely drank at all.'

'What about the night he was killed?'

Renee nodded, looking into her coffee mug. 'He had been drinking pretty heavy, here at the apartment, earlier that night. He had gone through, I don't know, maybe a six-pack over the course of the night.'

'Unusual for him, right?'

'Yes. But the last few weeks before he died, he was drinking more and more.'

'Any idea why?'

'He was upset.'

'And he was upset the night he was killed, wasn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Over what?'

'I don't know.'

Renee bent forward from her seat and handed Kia a Barbie doll she had dropped. Then Renee sat up straight and sipped at her coffee.

'Renee?'

'Huh.'

'What was Chris upset over? You told the newspeople you didn't know. But you do know, don't you?'

'What difference would it have made to talk about it? It didn't have nothin', anything to do with his death. It was family business, Mr Strange.'

'And here I am, only tryin' to help the family. Chris's mother hired me. Chris's mother sent me over here, Renee.'

Renee looked away. She looked up at the clock on the wall and down at her daughter and around the room.

'Was it about his sister, Sondra?' said Strange.

She nodded hesitantly.

'Had he been in contact with her?'

'I don't know.' Renee met his eyes. 'I'm not lyin'; I do not know.'

'Go on.'

'After Sondra lost her job and her place, Chris got more and more distant. He was trying to find her, and do his job as a policeman, and make time for his mother, and me and Kia… it got to be too much for him, I guess. And I learned not to ask too many questions about Sondra. It only upset him more when I did.'

'Where was Sondra working when things started to fall apart on her?'

'Place called Sea D.C., at Fourteenth and K. She had been a hostess there for a short while.'

'Her mother said she was basically a good girl, got in with the wrong crowd.'

'Wasn't like she was wearing a halo or nothin' like that. Sondra always did like to party, from what Chris told me. And I had some friends who worked in restaurants and clubs downtown, and I'd hung with these people a few times after the chairs got put up on the tables. So I knew what time it was. In those places, at closing time? Someone's always holding something. In that environment, it's easy to fall into that lifestyle, if you allow yourself to fall into it, Mr Strange.'