I finish up the ceiling, set down my spray bottle and sponge.There’s no easy way to walk away, but we’ve both picked the loadswe’re determined to carry.Sometimes, the best thing to offer a fellow warrior is faith in their fortitude.
“I’ve left messages for Sabera’s caseworker,” I say, “and the volunteer coordinator at your resettlement agency.”
“Who are much too busy to call you back,” Ashley provides.
“Even about her?A woman missing three weeks?None of you are worried about her?”
“Worried?Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?”Ashley’s turn to set down her cleaning supplies.“I’m worried aboutallof them.Every single person I’ve placed in every single apartment.I don’t have enough hours, days, or headspace for the amount of worry I carry in my heart.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”Her tone is hard now, her gaze piercing.I imagine weaker humans quaking before that look.But I can hold my own.
“I’m here to help,” I state.“To find Sabera Ahmadi and bring her home to her family, or at least discover the kind of answers that will offer some comfort.And I’m staying till I get this job done.”
“I won’t pretend to understand you, Frankie Whomever, but I will pray for you.”Ashley bites her lower lip, stares at some point just past my ear.I sense some kind of internal battle…
“We’re not supposed to talk about the families,” she states abruptly.“That’s one of the issues you’re encountering, why Staci and Carlos won’t call you back.”
I wait.
“Privacy matters.These people aren’t going to just grant us their trust; we must earn it.”
I don’t say a word.
“Sabera and her husband are Muslims.Among other things, most practicing Muslims don’t drink.”That pause again.I keep my face blank, my body language neutral.
“The last time I saw Sabera… I would swear she smelled of alcohol.She noticed, mumbled something about having to deal with spilled wine in one of the rooms she was cleaning.I know sometimes people leave booze behind in the hotel rooms.Once, she gifted me a bottle of champagne.But… her words were too slow, her movements awkward.She was impaired in some manner, I’m certain of it.And Isaad knew it, too.The expression on his face—he was not happy with her.”
Ashley looks at me.“I don’t pretend to know what Sabera has gone through,” she repeats.“But from the little I’ve witnessed… There are things she has seen, things she knows, we should both be grateful to never have in our heads.”
Ashley picks her sponge back up, opens the next kitchen drawer.And after a final moment, I exit the apartment.
CHAPTER 7
ARE WE CLOSE TO THISaddress?”I ask Daryl as I climb into the back of the sedan.He’s covered the black leather seat with a checkered red wool blanket.Smartass.Then I look down at my T-shirt, which is now covered in flecks of grime and white splotches of bleach.Maybe he has a point.
Daryl takes my phone and studies the information Aliah has supplied on Sabera and her husband’s apartment.He grunts, which I take to mean yes, hands back my mobile.
It’s after fiveP.M., but still hot enough you’d never know.The family, I notice, has disappeared from underneath the tree abutting the parking lot.A young white male, however, now stands in front of the murder unit, peering intently at the door.He’s tall, thin, and wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt in the searing heat.I’m already guessing it’s to cover the track marks on his arms.
Daryl doesn’t give the man a second glance, just peers over his shoulder and expertly reverses the sedan out of the parking lot.He has the car’s radio tuned to the news, which is listing adrug-related shooting, a near-fatal stabbing, and just to round out the trifecta of violence, two men attacked and killed with a hammer.I’m grateful when he shuts it off.
“I’m still alive,” I speak up cheerfully after a bit.Maybe to break the silence.Maybe to irritate my driver.Even I can never tell.
Daryl merely shakes his head, keeps his gaze fixed on the road.We make it a few more blocks and then he takes a right, followed by a left, followed by another right.I know we’ve arrived at the target location when we hit a run-down apartment building that’s missing entire chunks of stucco and has red roof tiles dangling down like bloody teeth.To add insult to injury, a razor wire–topped fence separates the mud-brown complex from a clearly brand-new, shiny, white storage facility next door.
Last time I encountered such a formidable chain-link wall, I was visiting a female penitentiary in Texas that housed death row inmates.Versus, say, the two children I now see attempting to roller skate around the cracked and cratered pavement, while a tired woman in a voluminous white blouse and simple gray head covering watches from the door of one of the units.
She glances up at the sound of the car engine, a flash of alarm crossing her face.She claps her hands, saying something to the boy and girl that I can’t hear.Both kids, clad in jeans and T-shirts, scramble toward her, the younger girl, maybe sixish, trying to change direction too quickly and promptly wiping out.
The woman yells something else, but the older boy is already turning back for his sister, while Daryl hits the brakes, slowing the vehicle to a gentle stop.He looks at me via the rearview mirror.
“If I get out, it will scare them further,” he states.
I see his point.A dark sedan driven by a hulking male?I scrabblewith the door handle, grateful for my small size and disheveled appearance.How threatening can a scrawny female in a grungy T-shirt appear?
The little girl is crying as I exit the vehicle, her brother kneeling beside her and working the straps of the ancient metal skates buckled around her sneakers.He has thick black hair and carefully guarded eyes as he watches me approach.
