Michele Martinez - Most Wanted

“You really think the motive could have been robbery?” Butch asked.

“Sure. You see carnage like this sometimes in a typical home invasion, where the perps force their way into a house to steal something they know is there. Whether it’s drugs or money or expensive jewelry. Then again, you wouldn’t expect something like that to happen in a neighborhood like this.”

“You wouldn’t expect the animal who did this to be walking around such a nice neighborhood in the first place,” Butch said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Tell me about it. I live a few blocks from here,” Melanie said, going cold at the thought. A few blocks from this carnage, her daughter was sleeping.

“But he was here,” she said. “We know that. And we know something else, something even worse. He’s still out there.”

THE SEVEN BLOCKS BETWEEN THE BENSONS’ TOWN house and Melanie Vargas’s apartment were long and desperate ones for Sophie Cho. She trudged, hunched over, clutching the stroller handles for comfort, trying to keep visions of the Bensons’ faces at bay. She had the baby to think of. She was very conscientious with Maya. She forced herself to pay careful attention to the traffic lights.

Guilt and anxiety were familiar emotions to Sophie, like old friends, but she’d never experienced them with this paralyzing intensity. She was first generation, grappling with the restrictions of her old culture, fighting to adjust to the new. Life wasn’t easy. But still, she’d always done her best. She could look herself in the eye as she put up her hair every morning. She’d never had this feeling before, like she’d done something wrong, like it had terrible consequences.

She paused at the corner of Melanie’s block. The doorman, Hector, stood under the long green awning leading to the curb, fanning himself with his cap in the wet heat. She thought he noticed her, but then he turned away to watch two small dogs yap wildly at each other, their owners yanking on their leashes to pull them apart. Hector was a nice man, with a jolly laugh and a paunch, always offering to fix her up with his accountant son. Would he read her guilt in her eyes now? Would he turn away in disappointment, in disgust?

“Hey, Miss Cho! How’d you get the little one?” Hector called, spotting her with the stroller.

She managed a demure smile as she approached him, always the polite daughter, even under stress.

“Melanie had to work. She asked me to bring Maya home and baby-sit.”

“So late? Too much working for a mommy. Not good.”

Normally she would’ve sparred with him gently about the importance of women working, but tonight every word of normal conversation felt forced. She couldn’t do it. She stood there numbly, unable to muster any chat, choking on the humid air. Beneath her shirt, rivulets of perspiration slid down her back. The silence lengthened.

“I have keys,” she blurted suddenly, her tone uncharacteristically sharp. Hector looked at her curiously.

“Sure, honey, it’s late. You must be tired. Go on up.”

At Melanie’s floor Sophie stepped off the elevator onto the small landing and worked the keys in the lock easily. She should-she’d chosen the door hardware herself. She struggled into the brightly lit foyer, heaving the stroller over the threshold with one hand while holding the door open with her shoulder. Once inside, she couldn’t help smiling despite her unhappiness. Melanie had left all the lights on, something Sophie herself was much too compulsive to do. She felt a great surge of affection for her friend, this baby, this apartment she’d renovated and then spent happy hours hanging out in.

Melanie’s apartment had been one of Sophie’s first architecture jobs after going out on her own, a vote of confidence, an early bankroll that set her on her way. She looked around the foyer now, eyes smarting with unshed tears, remembering how happily the three of them had worked together, how proud they’d been of the results. With a little taste, you could make your money go far. Elegant but not showy, still nice and homey. Sophie looked up at the ceiling, praying that nothing would have to change, that Melanie would never need to know what she’d done, that she’d still be welcomed here with open arms. But she was fooling herself. Things had changed already. Hadn’t they, after what she’d seen tonight?

A sigh caught in her throat, threatening to become a sob. She dropped the keys on a small wooden table, next to a tall stack of unopened mail addressed to Steve, and picked up a silver-framed photograph of Melanie, Steve, and Maya. The picture had been taken about six months ago, shortly after Maya came home from the hospital. In it she had the red, scrunchy face of an infant, so unlike her yummy plumpness now. Sophie lifted the stroller hood and gazed down at that sweet face, crescents of dark lashes resting against fat cheeks. She could almost be a Korean baby with all that black hair. She could almost be Sophie’s own.

This child, this and no other, not even her own many nieces and nephews, had awakened the baby hunger she’d only read about in magazines. Now, when it seemed less and less likely she’d ever have one of her own. She’d been raised in a schizoid way, an American girl at school, a proper Korean girl at home, expected to steer clear of any entanglement with boys until an appropriate marriage was arranged with some son of her parents’ friends. When the time came, she was in architecture school, having succeeded beyond her own wildest dreams, but poised to shatter her parents’. The few young Korean men who would look at a girl with her résumé dutifully paraded through, took tea, and went on their way, immediately seeing her lack of interest in them, in bearing their sons, in working at their grocery stores and manicure salons. By now they’d found other, more suitable wives, and Sophie had aged well beyond marriageability. As for Anglo men…well, she’d never connected with them. Besides, they didn’t chase her the way they did some Korean girls of her acquaintance. She was too round, her short stature suggesting not the petite exoticism she privately accused them of seeking but rather a tendency to fat in later life.

Maya shifted in her stroller and gurgled breathily, sending a rush of pure love through Sophie’s heart. She wheeled the stroller carefully down the hall to the smaller of the two bedrooms, glowing with golden light from the night-light, and stood reverently in the center of the room, breathing deep. It smelled of baby-the powdery smell from the changing table, the faint whiff of ammonia from the Diaper Genie. A happy nursery for a special little girl, with white furniture and a parade of pink wallpaper bunny rabbits marching around the top of the room.

Maya looked so comfortable that Sophie decided to let her sleep in the stroller until Melanie got home, rather than risk waking her by transferring her to the crib. She picked up a fluffy pink blanket that was folded neatly over the back of a white glider rocker. But as she bent to tuck it around Maya, a great wave of despair washed over her. She sat down heavily in the rocker, clutching the soft fabric to her chest, stifling her sobs as best she could to preserve Maya’s tranquil sleep. Her vision blurring, she saw not Maya but Jed Benson’s handsome face. What must it look like now?

THE MORNING SUN BOTHERING HIS EYES. HE SITTING in a diner across from where he follow that Chinese bitch with the baby to last night, smoking a cigarette and watching. Watching and waiting, long as it took. With the look he give the waitress when she refill his coffee cup, she ain’t hassling him about no cigarette. She know he hurt people, he hurt her if she give him an excuse. She look in his eyes and see that. He love the second when they figure it out.