Lisa Gardner - Say Goodbye

“Who else saw Ginny wearing this ring?”

Delilah shrugged. “Dunno. Never asked.”

“Did she tell you how she got it?”

Another negative.

“Anyone else know you found it in Mr. Dinchara’s truck?”

“Hell no! Now, see, this is the kind of business that can really get a girl hurt-”

“Yeah, yeah. Got that.” Kimberly frowned, studied the ring. Frowned again. Finally, she sat back. “Can I take this?”

“Sure, yeah, that’s why I brought it. You can open a case now, right?”

“Not quite.”

Delilah’s turn to scowl. “Hey, you asked for evidence, I gave you evidence!”

“Strictly speaking, Delilah, this ring is not evidence. No chain of custody, meaning it would never hold up in court. That it belongs to Ginny has not been corroborated. That it was found inside a subject’s truck is equally murky. At the moment, it’s merely a very dirty class ring.”

“I don’t like your attitude,” Delilah said.

“Trust me, feeling’s mutual.” Kimberly rapped the end of her pen on the table three times fast. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, Delilah. Remember what I said? You gotta pay to play. We’re going to consider this ring a down payment.” She took out a business card, circled the Bureau’s main number on the front. “Bring me more information. Times, places, even other people who can vouch that Ginny Jones used to work in this area, wearing this ring, and has now disappeared. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you can find enough to build a case for the local PD. I’ll help walk you through it, but I gotta be honest. As of this time, this is a case for the locals, not the FBI.”

She started gathering up her supplies again. This time, Delilah didn’t try to stop her, just crossed her arms over her chest with a look of resigned hurt.

It wasn’t until Kimberly stood that Delilah spoke again.

“How far along?”

“Pardon?”

The girl was staring at Kimberly’s stomach. “When’re you due?”

For a moment, Kimberly was nonplussed. Then she caught herself. She was at that point now where other people were bound to notice. She said, “Summer.”

“You feel okay?”

“I feel fine, thank you.”

“Smells bother me,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “I get tired, too. But I keep away from the alcohol and the drugs. Just because I hook for a living doesn’t mean I don’t want better for my baby.”

The girl let her jacket slide open, and for the first time, Kimberly saw it, the tight, rounded abdomen, not so different from her own. Delilah reached for Kimberly’s mini-recorder, picked it up.

“Can I take this?”

“No. Government property. Gotta buy your own.”

Delilah put it back down. “But if I can get more information from Spideyman, maybe get him saying something about Ginny on tape, then you’ll help me?”

Kimberly was still staring at the girl’s belly. She was suddenly sorry she had come down to the Sandy Springs PD. She didn’t want to be handling a young, very vulnerable, pregnant hooker.

Her business card was still lying on the table. Finally, she picked it up and wrote her cell phone number on the back.

“If you get him on tape, call me at that number.” Then, not really as an afterthought: “Delilah, be careful.”

MY OLDER BROTHER USED TO TELL ME, “DO AS I SAY, OR THE Burgerman will get you!”

“There is no such thing as a Burgerman,” I would shout back.

“Sure there is. He’s big, seven feet tall, dressed all in black. He enters the rooms of all the naughty boys in the middle of the night, snatching them out of bed and taking them off to his factory, where he grinds them into burgers and sells the meat to grocery stores. All the cheap stuff that’s turned brown in the meat market? That’s naughty-boy burgers. You can ask anyone.”

I didn’t believe him until one night I woke up, and the Burgerman was standing at the foot of my bed.

“Shhhh,” he said. “Don’t say a word, and maybe I’ll let your family live.”

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I just stared at this large hulking form, nearly seven feet tall, all in black. I couldn’t believe my brother had been right. Then I started to shake, and my heart started to pound, and I think I wet the bed.

“Move!” the Burgerman demanded harshly. “You wanna save your family, boy, then get your scrawny ass outta bed.”

But I couldn’t move. I could only shiver uncontrollably.

He tossed back the covers. He grabbed my arm and yanked me to the floor, his fingers digging into my upper arm. He twisted my shoulder and it hurt.

My legs followed him on their own, I swear that’s how it happened, because surely there was no way I wanted to go with a man like him.

In the hallway, he paused as if to get his bearings. I could see the cracked door of my brother’s room, just two feet away. I could hear the sound of my father snoring one room beyond that.

Scream, I thought. This is it. Do something.

In the dark, I could feel the Burgerman appraising me. He didn’t seem panicked or even alarmed.

Instead, he smiled, a flash of white in the dark.

“See, boy. See how much they care about you? I’m about to ruin your goddamn life, and your family can’t even be bothered to wake up for the event. Remember this, boy. You mean nothing to them. As of this moment, they no longer exist.

“You belong to me.”

He took away my clothes. Tossed me facedown on the bed. I fought as much as a nine-year-old boy can fight, my face pressed into the mattress, my lungs screaming for air. I thought he would kill me. Maybe I prayed he would once he was done.

But he rolled over. Smoked a cigarette.

I didn’t know what to do, lying facedown, wetness everywhere.

I fell asleep.

He woke me up, beat me, yelled at me until I did what he wanted me to do. Afterward, more cigarettes and then it all started again.

I lost track of time. I lived in a hazy, naked state, my insides too hot, my outside too cold. He wouldn’t allow me to even have a blanket.

Sometimes he brought me food. Burgers, pizza. First time I ate, I threw up. He laughed and told me I’d get used to it. Then he handed me a spoon, pointed to the pile, and said if I wanted to eat again, I’d better get busy.

On and on and on. Life with the Burgerman, grinding the naughty boy into dust.

One day, he opened the door of the hotel room. The sunlight blinded me. I had to shield my eyes. The air smelled like rain and, unconsciously, I drew in a deep breath. The rain was the first thing I tasted that wasn’t like ashes on my tongue.

Burgerman laughed. “See, boy, even after all that, you still want to live. Guess you must have liked it some after all.”

He tossed me clothes. Not my old ones, but new ones he’d purchased somewhere. Barked at me to get dressed. “Goddammit, show some pride, boy, and stop running around so naked. What’re you trying to do, tempt me again?”

I scrambled to get dressed, but wasn’t fast enough.

This time when he heaved off, he grunted, “See, boy, told you you liked it.”

He drove me to another hotel. He wore a suit. I was in a stiff, navy blue sweat suit, two sizes too big. I felt thin and small and ghostlike. I must have looked like a refugee from a foreign war, exhausted, glassy-eyed, hollow.

The receptionist regarded me with concern.

Burgerman leaned close. “I’m with Social Services,” he confided in a low voice. “Just removed the boy from his family. Hard, hard case. The stuff his parents did…He’s had a rough start, but God willing, I’ll take him to a good home now and his real life will begin.”