“As much of their faces as I could get in,” the cop reassured him. “And if it gets to be too much, we can take a break. Okay?”
“Okay.” He took a breath and steadied himself. “Okay, let me see.”
The faces were shadows at best, only a glimmer of recognition striking Miki as he shuffled through them. More surprising was to see his own tearstained and terrified face, a much younger and innocent version, staring back at him. The boys arranged with him were unfamiliar to him, a distant nothingness submerged in his childhood fugue.
“You doing all right there, Miki?” Sanchez finally asked.
“I don’t know any of them,” Miki whispered. “I don’t remember anyone’s names. I don’t know if I ever knew them.”
“It’s okay. Just take your time.”
Miki pulled out a page and slid it across the table to the cop next to him. “I think he was one of the kids who used to live with Carl.”
“Carl Vega, your foster father?”
“Yeah,” Miki said, nodding. “I don’t remember the kid’s name. He wasn’t there long. Just a couple of months, maybe?”
“How old were you then? In this picture. Do you know?” Sanchez’s whisper was soft, a pleading tone meant to soothe, but it rankled Miki’s skin.
Shoving down his irrational distaste, Miki stared at the photo of himself and another boy. Their eyes were glazed, nearly bleached out from the flash, and their faces were ghostly pale, floating against a brown-patterned background. “These here, they’re not from Shing’s place. They’re from Carl’s house. I remember that bedspread. I got really sick on it, so Carl threw it out. So, maybe I was twelve? Thirteen? I don’t remember exactly when.”
“How did Carl know Shing?” Again, the softness irritated Miki, but he focused instead on trying to parse out his memories.
“I don’t know. I ran once, but Carl came home early and caught me. After that, he made sure I wasn’t alone,” Miki said, turning the pages over. He couldn’t stare at the faces anymore. There were too many things coming to the surface in the reflections of their eyes, and Miki’s mind crawled with the horrors he’d left behind. “If Carl had to work at night, Shing’d take me with him to the restaurant. During the day, he’d make sure I was at school.”
“Did you talk to someone there? Tell anyone what Carl was doing? Carl’s wife, maybe? The school?”
“The school?” Miki snorted, a sharp cut of derision on Sanchez’s soft words. “Nobody there gave a shit. I’d come to school with a black eye or a bloody lip, and they wouldn’t say a damned thing. Why would they? Carl’s like a big shot with them. No one’s going to touch him. Same reason the CPS lady told me I was full of shit when I tried talking to her. Told me I was making shit up to get him into trouble. After that, I figured if I just survived it, it would be okay.”
“Someone should have helped you, Miki.” Sanchez sounded angry, and Miki pulled back a bit. Sanchez softened his voice and touched Miki’s chilled fingers. “You were a kid. It wasn’t even ten damned years ago. They should have known better. Someone should have listened to you.”
“Who the hell’s going to listen to some kid they found on the street, Sanchez?” His mouth twisted into a sour pout. “Like people even give a shit about their own kids? You think they’re going to care about me? It doesn’t matter anymore. I got out of it. It’s done.”
“What about the kids fostered after you?” he asked. “What about them? Do you know if any of them said something?”
“I don’t know.” Miki turned his head, struggling to breathe again when Sanchez hissed with frustration. “So it’s on me? That shit’s my fault now? Don’t put that on me. Don’t you fucking—”
“No, it’s not on you. That’s not what I meant,” Sanchez replied. He gripped Miki’s shoulder and turned him until the cop could see Miki’s face. “It’s on me. I’m a cop. Kane’s a cop. It’s on us. Your foster father’s a monster, and he fed on you. It’s our job to take him down. Our job to stop him, okay? Look at me, man. Okay?”
Miki opened his eyes and stared into Sanchez’s steady brown gaze. Nodding, he mumbled, “Okay.”
KANE pressed his hand against the glass. It was cold, nearly freezing on his palm, but it did nothing to numb the anguish building inside of him. If he could have, Kane would have crawled through the glass and held Miki close. Even if the cold turned his soul to ice, he’d risk it to take the terror away from Miki’s expressive face.
The door to the room opened, and Kane shut his eyes, forbidding the tears on his lashes from falling. He dropped his hand, clenching his fingers against his palm until his knuckles ached. A thick-fingered hand gripped his shoulder, and Kane turned his head to look up at his Lieutenant standing next to him.