Family Affair: A Smokey Dalton Story Read Free Page B

They
had worked their way through the Helping Hands program and had bought their own
house last summer.
    I couldn’t believe she would have left
that place for this one.
    But people’s prejudices made them do all
kinds of crazy things.
    The apartment smelled sour. A blanket was
crumpled at the end of the couch, and a sweater hung off the back of a kitchen
chair someone had moved near the window. The kitchen was to my right. The
table, with two chairs pushed against it, was beneath a small window with a
good view of the house next door.
    A full ashtray sat on the tabletop, along
with a coloring book and an open –and scattered — box of crayons. Dishes
cluttered the sink, which gave off a rotted smell.
    More cigarettes floated in the water
filling the bowls at the bottom of the sink. A hand towel rested on one of the
burners. It was the only thing I moved, using the skeleton keys so that I
wouldn’t have to touch it.
    Then I went through the kitchen into a
narrow hallway. The second bedroom was back here. A bed was pushed against the
wall. Clothing — pink and small — was scattered all over the floor.
More clothes hung on the make-shift clothing rod by the door.
    The clutter was every day clutter, not
slob-clutter. It looked like the kind of mess a person made when she left in a
hurry, meaning to clean up later. It disturbed me that a woman who cared so
much about her daughter — a poor woman — would leave most of her
daughter’s wardrobe behind.
    The hair rose on the back of my neck. I
didn’t want Valentina to be right. If she were right, then we had lost more
than a week in searching for this woman.
    And a week, in a missing person’s case,
was a long, long time.
    I made myself walk back through the
kitchen and down another narrow hallway to the full bedroom. It wasn’t much
larger than the daughter’s room. The full-sized bed left barely enough space
between the wall and the side of the bed for me to walk around it.
    The bed was unmade. Pillows sideways,
blankets thrown back. But the bottom of the blankets — along with the
sheets — was tucked in. The tucks were perfect military tucks, something
that wouldn’t last during weeks of restless sleep.
    Linda Krag usually made her bed. She
usually made it with great precision.
    Her clothing hung in the small closet,
separated by color. A pair of shoes was lined neatly against the wall.
    The sour smell was stronger here. It
didn’t smell like dirty dishes, but something else, something that I should
have recognized, but couldn’t.
    I pushed open the bathroom door, and the
smell hit me, making my eyes water. Vomit. Old vomit. It lined the edge of the
bathtub, the floor beneath the sink, and the toilet itself. It had crusted
against the wall.
    I made myself go into the room. Another
cigarette butt floated in the sloppy toilet water. The bathroom mirror was
cracked, and a small handprint — child-sized — marred a white towel
still hanging on the rack.
    I looked at the handprint, wondering if
that delicate little girl had been the source of all this vomit.
    But as I pushed against the towel, I
realized the handprint was a different color.
    The handprint was made of dried blood.

 
    ***

 
    I couldn’t find any more answers in Linda
Krag’s apartment, so I drove home.
    I’m sure my neighbors wondered why I
hurried out of my car that afternoon, and took the steps to my apartment two at
a time.
    Jimmy had a half an hour of school left
before Franklin picked him and the Grimshaw children up and took them to an
after-school program we had started three years ago. If I called Franklin now,
I could probably arrange for Jimmy to stay the night.
    I wasn’t sure I would need all that time,
but I figured I had best plan for it.
    Linda Krag and her little daughter Annie
had been missing for several days. Some would have argued that a few more hours
would make no difference, but to me, they would have.
    If the woman was in trouble, then every
second wasted would be