I nod, blinking away tears that I will swear to my dying day are just from exhaustion and stress, and unlock his door. Cass and Watts are waiting at the elevator. They both look blankly at Vic, who just gives them a bland smile and no explanation.
In the lobby, I can see her immediately, sitting stiffly in a chair near the desk, a rosary wrapped around her palm so the crucifix rests on the base of her thumb. I’ve always remembered her as she was when I was a child; somehow I’ve never thought of her as being old. Of course she is, she’s almost seventy. But as much as she’s changed, it’s still immediately her, and my heart thumps painfully.
Vic steps to my side, between me and my mother, and as we draw closer, he pushes me along with Cass and Watts, breaking off to stand in front of her. As the three of us walk away, I can hear him address her. “Mrs. Ramirez, my name is Victor Hanoverian. I’m the unit chief for your daughter’s team.”
Cass gives me an anxious look.
“I’m not discussing it,” I whisper. “By the time we get to Manassas, I will be completely focused on Ava.”
Watts simply nods. “We’re all here for reasons, Ramirez. Just tell me if you need to step away.”
That is not something I have ever known how to tell.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of her father.
It was only natural; he’d hurt her so badly for so long. But even now, after so many years, he was still her deepest wound, her most visceral nightmare.
She hadn’t seen him since the trial, the bits of it for which her presence had been required. She’d sat trembling in the row behind the prosecutor, her advocate by her side, or up in the witness stand, watching her daddy seethe. He’d been so angry. She’d always known to be afraid when he was that angry. When the advocate led her out of the courtroom for the last time, she looked over her shoulder and saw Daddy standing at his table, in one of the nicest suits he wore for work, and he was glaring at her, like it was all her fault.
He hated her, she thought, but it wasn’t her fault. It was never her fault.
Mostly she believed that.
Her daddy was in prison, where he belonged, and whatever indelible scars he’d left on her, he could never cause her fresh wounds. She was safe. She was healing. She was okay. It had taken her a long time to get there, but the angel had promised that she was going to be okay, and eventually she was. She was okay.
Then she got a letter from her father.
She didn’t recognize the handwriting on the envelope, but it had both her names in the center, and that bolt of fear . . . It had been years since she’d been that suddenly afraid. Then she saw the name in the upper left corner, with the prisoner number and the name of the facility.
It took her four days just to open the envelope.
Another three to actually read the letter.
It started, My Beautiful Angel.
He wanted to apologize in person. There was so much he needed to tell her. Would she come see him?
She didn’t want to.
She absolutely didn’t want to, and yet . . . and yet . . .
She didn’t think either of them were surprised when she finally showed up. He’d always had too much power over her.
He still looked like Daddy. Older, greyer . . . more muscled. He worked out with the boys in the yard, he told her, had him in the best shape of his life. She was so pretty, he told her, but he missed her red hair. She’d looked so perfect with the red hair. He had a look in his eye, one that her tight muscles and hunched shoulders remembered before her mind did.
He was remarried, he told her, to a woman who wanted to save him.
They were expecting a baby, he told her, coming in August, and his lawyer thought there was a chance, given how crowded the prison was, that it might make him seem sympathetic enough to release. He had years—decades—of sentence left, but his lawyer thought he could be out in a few years with any luck.
It was a girl, he told her, grinning. We’re naming it after you, he told her, my own baby girl again, just like you never left. I do love my baby girl, he told her, and his laughter clawed in her bones as she ran away.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of her father.
If he got out of prison, her little sister would be scared of him too.
24
Ava Levine is a twelve-year-old girl who practically glows with health, giving us all confused smiles as she sits on the hospital bed with a pair of familiar teddy bears in her lap. Her brown hair is well tended, she’s a good weight for her age and height, and she doesn’t have a single visible bruise.
But when she follows the doctor’s instruction and lies back on the bed, her oversize sleep shirt drapes around the swell of what is either a baby bump or a really bad liver. I don’t think any of us actually need the doctor to confirm it’s the former.
“Shouldn’t my parents be here?” she asks when the doctor has finished her exam and helped her sit up.
Holmes checks her phone. She was definitely called straight from bed, her hair shoved back haphazardly in a clip that doesn’t quite manage to hit contained. She’s in worn jeans and a shirt so faded it’s impossible to tell what the lettering used to read, her feet shoved into two different kinds of sandal. “Detective Mignone is almost to your house, sweetheart.”
What the shit?
Nancy, sitting in a chair by the bed, looks up at us anxiously.
It’s the same bear. It is absolutely, definitely the same bear, and this is very clearly a pregnant twelve-year-old. So why is the rest of it so bizarre?
“Ava,” Watts says calmly, standing at the foot of the bed. “Did you know you’re pregnant?”
“Well, yeah,” the girl answers, still looking politely baffled.
That’s not the answer Watts was expecting, but she’s too good to show it. “Do you know who the father is, Ava?”
“My daddy.”
El mundo está en guerra. Por lo que solo hay que dejar que se queme.
“I’ve been asking for a little sister for years,” she continues, oblivious to the carefully contained reactions of the rest of us. “Mom said she got hurt when I was born, and can’t have any more kids in her belly, so I’m doing it.” Her brilliant smile falters a bit when we don’t say anything. “What’s wrong?”
“Your mom knew?”
“It was her idea, but it made Daddy really happy. He called us his smart girls. What’s wrong?” she asks again, starting to look a little worried.
Holmes tilts her phone toward me, the screen bright with a new message from Mignone. Parents are dead. Negative spaces indicate there was only the killer. Tylenol PM packets in the girl’s room.
“Ava, do you ever take anything to help you sleep?”
She nods slowly. “Growing a baby is tiring. Mom says I have to get lots of sleep so my sister and I will both be healthy. She looked it up and everything.”
So if a pregnant child took an adult dose of a sleep aid, the killer probably couldn’t wake her up enough to register what was happening.
“Why is everyone so . . .”
“Ava, what your parents did . . . it’s illegal, sweetheart, and it’s not healthy.”
“No, Mom has been getting me all my vitamins and everything. I’m fine.”
Watts shares a look with Nancy, who leans forward in her chair. “No matter what you’re taking or how you’re eating or sleeping, Ava, your body isn’t ready for everything that being pregnant or delivering a baby requires. As you get further along, you’re going to be in a lot of danger. And when Agent Watts said it was illegal . . . legally you can’t consent to anything like that until you’re older. For a parent to do it—”
“No,” Ava retorts, clutching the bears tightly. “My parents love me and we’re all really happy. We’re not doing anything wrong.”
Holmes looks exhausted. She’s undoubtedly been juggling other cases with this one, which means she probably hasn’t had a solid night’s rest in weeks.