She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“None of us wants to move on, Maggie, but we have no choice. I have to work. Faz can’t keep covering for me.”
More sobs. In between, Maggie said, “What more could I have done, Del? What more should I have done?”
She’d asked that question of him for more than a week, and he answered the same each time. “You did everything you could, Maggie.”
“Then why isn’t she alive?”
Del thought of his conversation with Celia McDaniel. What would Maggie have given just to keep her daughter alive? Everything, and then just a little bit more.
The family had tried counseling when they learned Allie was using, but Allie had left the facility. They tried to have her involuntarily committed to a hospital psych ward, but she’d bolted. When they pushed the issue, they’d learned that they couldn’t have Allie committed without her permission, that teenagers could refuse treatment in Washington State—unless a mental health specialist deemed her a threat to herself or to others. Apparently, overdosing on heroin was not considered enough of a threat. Allie overdosed a second time and then a third. The paramedics brought her back, stabilized her, and left her in her room. They had no place to take her. The treatment facilities were overrun with a long waiting list. Maggie called Del and pleaded with him to have Allie arrested, but Washington law prohibited it. Besides, even if arrested, Allie would have been released within hours.
We can’t police our way out of this problem, Celia McDaniel had said.
Then, out of the blue, Allie walked in the front door of the house one morning after disappearing for three days. Maggie described her as looking like hell. She said she looked like death—so rail thin her clothes hung as if on a wire hanger. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her arms were so bruised they looked like pincushions. Allie told Maggie she was done using. She said she didn’t want to die. She begged for help. Del and Maggie scraped together every penny they had to get her into a facility in Eastern Washington. It wasn’t cheap. Del took out a loan using his pension as collateral and he’d have done it again and again. The thought made him recall what Celia McDaniel had said.
They got Allie away from her user friends, user contacts, and the familiar places to buy. By all accounts, Allie went through hell, physically and psychologically, even with the drugs to ease the pain of withdrawal. On the day they released her, Allie’s counselors told Del and Maggie, The loss of hope is nearly as dangerous as the drug itself. Addicts have a lot of self-hatred. They believe they’re worthless. Allie has a lot of fear she’s going to slip back to using again. It can be debilitating.
When they brought Allie home, she looked better, though timid. She’d put on weight. The black circles beneath her eyes had faded. She looked like the old Allie—the happy, funny kid with the quick wit. Her eyes sparkled when she talked about finishing high school and attending Gonzaga in the fall. Del got her a job at a coffee shop. She went to NA meetings. Maggie accompanied her and Del watched the twins. Once he went with Allie and learned what he already knew. She was a good kid from a good family, but she was in a fight for her life, a life-and-death struggle to be here each day. A life-and-death struggle she’d ultimately lost. My God, how could it get that bad for someone so young?
She just couldn’t beat it. Using always lingered on the edge of darkness, a devil looking for any tiny crack to squeeze through and tempt her. It came in all forms, from her addict friends to the suppliers who wanted to make a buck and didn’t care whom they killed to get one.
Del cared.
They’d killed the wrong girl.
“If I’m going to find out what happened to Allie, I need to get into her room,” Del said.
The tears trickled down Maggie’s cheeks. She wiped them with the sheet. She’d left the room the way it had been, with the needle on the floor amid the pile of clothes, a half-finished can of Coke on the dresser, posters on the walls, unfinished homework open on Allie’s desk.
“I need to get on her cell phone and her computer. I need to find out who she was talking to so I can find out what happened. So I can get the people responsible. It’s time, Maggie.”
“I can’t go back there, Del.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll do it for you. Moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting the past. Moving forward means doing something about the past. Let me move forward, Maggie. Let me do my job.”
CHAPTER 9
Tracy and Kins missed the 7:55 p.m. ferry back to Seattle and now waited in a short line to board the 9:05 crossing. Rather, the car waited in line. It was too cold to sit in a parked car, though that wasn’t what had initially motivated Tracy to go inside the sports bar across the street from the terminal. She had an upset stomach, and she’d been having hot flashes since they got back into the car after interviewing Trejo. Dr. Kramer had indicated both were potential side effects of the Clomid. She went into the bathroom and splashed water on her face, taking short, quick breaths, briefly feeling like she might throw up.
When the nausea passed, Tracy returned to the restaurant. The walls and ceiling were adorned in Seahawk blue and green, and Mariner and Seattle Sounders paraphernalia. On a Tuesday night, the crowd was sparse and the atmosphere subdued. Kins sat at a table staring up at one of the flat-screen televisions, oblivious to the fact that Tracy had been in the bathroom long enough to write War and Peace, or maybe just not wanting to bring up the subject for fear her prolonged absence had been related to a “women’s issue.” The TV was tuned to ESPN—a tape-delayed broadcast of a Mariner preseason baseball game—not that what was on the television mattered. Dan did the same thing; he’d watch any sport, even when he already knew the outcome.
When she sat, Kins said, “You want to split an order of french fries?”
Tracy had to stifle a burp. “I thought you were trying to lose weight before your surgery?”
“I’ve decided that if I’m going out, I’m going out in a blaze of glory.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said. “I hope you don’t say these things around Shannah.”
Kins ordered coffee. Tracy asked for ginger ale but had to settle for Sprite. They got around to talking about Trejo. “He’s lying,” Kins said for at least the third time since they’d left Trejo’s apartment. He sipped his coffee. “And he knows that we know he’s lying.”
“And we know that he knows that we know he’s lying,” Tracy said over the sound of two men at the bar.
“Sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine,” Kins said.
“About what, exactly, I’m not sure,” Tracy said.
“How do we prove it?”