Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Whatever. Keeping an eye out for her tail, she drove through the back alleys to 3805 Beacon Street—the village address Celeste had listed on her personal data form.
CJ parked in front of the duplex. She’d been to that door already.
The woman inside had insisted she had no idea who Celeste Martin was.
Either the woman had lied or Celeste had. It was possible that Celeste had lived at the address and then moved since filling out the form, but CJ didn’t believe that to be the case.
CJ pounded on the door. Until now, she’d knocked quietly in deference to anyone who might be sleeping. Now she didn’t care. Music blasted loud enough to wake the dead, anyway. A couple more hard pounds and the door opened.
“What?” The woman visibly stiffened when she realized it was CJ again. “I done told you there’s nobody named Celeste living here.”
“One of your neighbors says differently.” CJ wasn’t taking no for an answer. “She’s not in trouble. I just need to speak to her.”
The woman looked past CJ as if making sure there was no one else with her. “Look, you gotta go. I don’t need no trouble.” This time she spoke quietly, her voice barely audible with the music so loud.
“Please.” CJ eased a few inches closer. “I really need to find her.”
The woman tortured her bottom lip, her face a study in uncertainty.
“I swear,” CJ pleaded, “I won’t tell anyone you helped me. All I need is a location where I can find her.”
“Celeste didn’t come home last night.” The woman’s lips trembled. “You wrong about her not being in trouble. She messed up real bad. If she ain’t hiding, then she . . .” The woman caught herself. “She ain’t here.” Head shaking adamantly, she prepared to close the door.
“Did she get into trouble with Tyrone for talking to me?” CJ’s abdomen tightened at the idea. She hadn’t meant to get the girl in trouble. “She didn’t really tell me anything. We were just chatting. I haven’t lived here in a while and I was only catching up.”
“I can’t say no more.”
The door started to close and CJ blocked it with her shoulder. “I know you’re scared, but if Celeste needs help, I want to help her. Just tell me where she is.”
“Don’t you get it?” the woman hissed. “I don’t know where she is. She ain’t here. If she ain’t working the street, and I know she ain’t, then the only other place she could be is under the bridge.”
“Under the bridge?” Where the hell was that?
“Governor’s Drive overpass. She might be hiding with the homeless.”
Ricky’s aunt had said he might be there. CJ should have remembered that. If Celeste was scared, she would do what Ricky had done—go into hiding in a place with people no one cared about.
“Thank you.” CJ understood the risk the woman was taking even being seen speaking to her. And Tyrone seemed to have eyes everywhere she turned in this village. “I’ll look for her there.”
As CJ was about to walk away, the woman said, “If she ain’t there, then you know she’s probably being punished.”
CJ’s gaze meshed with hers.
The woman’s dark eyes confirmed CJ’s worst fears.
“Some don’t come back.”
Corner of Governor’s Drive and the Parkway
CJ parked in the lot on the west side of the Medical Plaza.
East of the overpass where the homeless gathered at night, Governor’s Drive flourished with massive, prestigious medical clinics and plazas.
The overpass served as a kind of border.
To the west of the overpass it was like crossing into another country.
Dive businesses. Run-down housing. Nothing pleasant or attractive.
When had the Parkway become that dividing line? The wealthy and socially elite built enormous mansions on the east side, the ritziest of retail shops and restaurants were erected on that side.
Misery and poverty survived on the west. The landfill, most of the homeless missions . . . all on the west.
Wasn’t anyone out there paying attention?
CJ checked her pockets. Keys and cell phone in the left, pepper spray in the right.
The sun had dropped behind the mountains, leaving the city of Huntsville cloaked in dusk, and still the heat simmered from the concrete and asphalt.
Sweat dampened her skin. Moments from childhood: running barefoot down the street, the sun baking the asphalt that in turn broiled her and Shelley’s feet.
But they didn’t care. It was summer, no school, and all the kids in the neighborhood were outside from daylight until well after dark.
Her chest ached with the memories. Even in the clutches of poverty, life had been so simple then.
The future had been an open window of possibilities. They could be anything, could go anywhere.
Except Shelley was dead.
Murdered.
CJ’s jaw tightened. She prayed her determination to solve her sister’s murder hadn’t caused the death of another woman.
One who had already suffered far too much.
Tyrone Nash had to be stopped.
Another memory flashed across the screen of her retinas.
Tyrone cornering her in her own house. Her mother passed out on the sofa.
Shelley locked in her room crying with the music blaring because of something Tyrone had said to her at the bowling alley.
CJ had confronted him. He’d backed her into her own living room and tried his best to rape her.
Her mother hadn’t heard a thing. Shelley hadn’t heard a thing.
But unluckily for Tyrone, CJ’s mother always kept a butcher knife on the floor just beneath the skirt of the ratty old sofa. When he’d thrown CJ to the floor, ripped off her shirt, and started dragging off her shorts, her fingers had sought and found that knife.
The slice across his cheek had been a mistake.
She’d meant to cut the son of a bitch’s throat.
He’d let her go, grabbed at his face. She’d scrambled away from him and threatened to do more damage if he didn’t get out.
He had stomped out, cursing her and threatening to come back and finish what he’d started.
But he never had.
From that day forward he’d stayed clear of CJ and her sister.
Until a few years ago, after CJ had moved away.
She wondered now if Tyrone had lured Shelley in just to get back at her.
Nausea roiled in CJ’s stomach at the idea. Leaving had been the best thing for her . . . and the worst for her sister.
Twenty-five, thirty women and men, mostly men, sat or stood around under the bridge.
Some were eating the leftovers they had probably discovered in trash cans; others were drinking from bottles camouflaged in brown paper sacks.
Conversations lulled as she walked past the huddles.
No one said anything to her, just looked.
The fingers of her right hand were tucked in her jeans pocket.
The cool, metal cylinder was comforting.
The roar and bump of the traffic overhead was rhythmic, almost soothing. Was that why, other than the obvious shelter from rain, the homeless gathered here?
So far, she hadn’t seen Celeste. CJ’s pulse kicked into overdrive. This wasn’t exactly the place to be at night, but she had to find that girl. Had to know she was okay.
A wild mane of red hair drew CJ’s attention to a huddle on the opposite side of the underpass. Her heart rate picked up, urging her pulse to skip. Dodging traffic, she darted to the other side. The girls in the huddle stopped talking and stared at CJ.
“Hey, ladies.” CJ walked right up to the group as if she belonged. Her heart sank when she could see that the redhead was not Celeste. “I’m looking for a friend of mine.”
“What the hell you doing under this bridge, bitch?” one of the women demanded.
Was she deaf? “I’m looking for a friend.”
Another swayed her shoulders side to side and made a sound of disbelief. “I have to say, you ain’t my type, but if the price is right . . .”
Stay cool. “No, I’m not looking for sex,” CJ explained. “I’m looking for Celeste Martin. She’s a friend of mine and I need to give her back that twenty I borrowed from her the other day.”
“Here, girl,” the largest of the skinny group said as she held out her hand, “I’ll give it to her.”
The ladies stopped puffing their smokes long enough to laugh at their friend’s joke.
“Seriously,” CJ interrupted, maybe a little more firmly than she’d intended judging by the glares aimed in her direction, “I need to find Celeste.”
Dead silence echoed beneath the bridge. The emptiness punctuated by the rhythmic flow of that endless traffic.
The big girl stepped forward, stuck her finger in CJ’s face. “You listen up. I don’t know why you out here slumming, or why you calling Celeste your friend, but you best mind your own damned business or you be wishing you was back on that mountain or wherever the hell you came from.”
“If you really knew Celeste,” another accused, “you’d know she won’t be coming back here.”
“You got that right,” one of the ladies confirmed.
“Hell no, she won’t be back,” another chimed in.
“She done shit in her nest good,” the big girl added.
“Is she in trouble?” CJ was relatively certain she wouldn’t get an answer, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
All eyes settled on CJ. Some were filled with frustration and disbelief that she had to ask; others showed the same fear she’d seen in the eyes of the lady at the house on Beacon Street where Celeste lived.
“What she probably is,” said Big Girl, who seemed to be the leader of the pack, “is dead.”
“If she didn’t get the hell outta here fast enough, she definitely is,” another agreed.
“Now get on outta here before you draw the po-po,” Big Girl scolded. “They be thinking we kidnapped your rich ass.”
“Thank you.” CJ hesitated long enough to garner another collective glare from the group before cutting back across the street, her heart thumping so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. This was her fault. If Celeste was dead . . .
God, she didn’t want to believe she’d caused this, but there was no other explanation.