Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

Broussard sighed. “I’ll get a screwdriver.”

Jerry Springer looked at the audience knowingly. The audience hooted. Many words were bleeped out.

Behind us, Helene said, “Oh, cool. Springer Time.”

Broussard came out of the bathroom with a tiny screwdriver with a red rubber handle. “Miss McCready,” he said, “I need you to wait outside.”

Helene sat on the edge of the torn-up futon, eyes on the TV. “That lady’s yelling ’cause of the cats. She said she’s calling the police.”

“You tell her we are the police?”

Helene smiled distantly as one of Jerry’s female guests threw a lopping punch at another one. “I told her. She said she was going to call ’em anyway.”

Broussard brandished the screwdriver and nodded at Angie. She shut off the TV in mid-bleep.

Helene said, “Damn.” She sniffed the air. “Smells in here.”

“Want some cologne?”

She shook her head. “My old boyfriend’s trailer smelled worse. He used to, like, leave dirty socks soaking in the sink. Now that’s a smell, lemme tell you.”

Poole tilted his head as if about to say something, but then he glanced at her and changed his mind, exhaled a loud, hopeless sigh.

Broussard unscrewed the back of the TV, and I helped slide it off. We peered in.

“Anything?” Poole said.

“Cables, wires, internal speakers, a motor, picture tube,” Broussard said.

We slid the casing back on.

“Shoot me,” Angie said. “It wasn’t the worst idea of the day.”

“Oh, no.” Poole held up his hands.

“Wasn’t the best, either,” Broussard said out of the side of his mouth.

“What?” Angie said.

Broussard flashed his million-dollar smile at her. “Hmm?”

“Could you turn it back on?” Helene said.

Poole narrowed his eyes in her direction, shook his head. “Patrick?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a backyard behind here. Could you take Miss McCready out there while we finish up in here?”

“What about the show?” Helene said.

“I’ll fill in the blanks,” I said. “Ho’,” I said. “You dirty dog,” I said. “Bleep,” I said.

Helene looked up at me as I offered her my hand. “You don’t make sense a lot.”

“Whoo-whoo,” I said.

As we approached the kitchen, Poole said, “Close your eyes, Miss McCready.”

“What?” Helene reared back from him a bit.

“You don’t want to see what’s in here.”

Before either of us could stop her, Helene leaned forward and craned her head over his shoulder.

Poole’s face sagged and he stepped aside.

Helene entered the kitchen and stopped. I stood behind her, waited for her to scream or faint or fall to her knees or run back into the living room.

“They dead?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Very.”

She moved into the kitchen, headed for the back door. I looked at Poole. He raised an eyebrow.

As Helene passed Wee Dave, she paused to look at his chest.

“It’s like in that movie,” she said.

“Which?”

“The one with all the aliens who pop out of people’s chests, bleed acid. What was it called?”

“Alien,” I said.

“Right. They came out of your chest. But what was the movie called?”

Angie made a run to the local Dunkin’ Donuts and joined Helene and me out in the backyard a few minutes later, while Poole and Broussard went through the house with notebooks and cameras.

The yard was barely a yard. The closet in my bedroom was bigger. Wee Dave and Kimmie had placed a rusted metal table and chairs out there, and we sat and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood as the day bled into midafternoon and the air chilled—mothers calling for children, the construction crew using mortar drills on the other side of the house, a whiffle-ball game in progress a couple of blocks over.

Helene sipped her Coke through a straw. “Too bad. They seemed like nice people.”

I took a sip of coffee. “How many times did you meet them?”

“Just that one time.”

Angie asked, “You remember anything special about that night?”

Helene sucked some more Coke through the straw as she thought about it. “All those cats. They were, like, everywhere. One of them scratched Amanda’s hand, the little bitch.” She smiled at us. “The cat, I mean.”

“So Amanda was in the house with you.”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Because earlier you weren’t sure if you’d left her behind in the car.”

She shrugged again, and I resisted an urge to reach out with both hands and slap her shoulders back down. “Did I? Well, till I remembered the cat scratching her, I wasn’t sure. No, she was in the house.”

“Anything else you remember?” Angie’s fingers drummed the tabletop.

“She was nice.”

“Who, Kimmie?”

She pointed a finger at me, smiled. “Yeah. That was her name: Kimmie. She was cool. She took me and Amanda in her bedroom, showed us pictures of her trip to Disney World. Amanda was, like, psyched. Everything on the ride home was, ‘Mommy, can we go see Mickey and Minnie? Can we go to Disney World?’” She snorted. “Kids. Like I had the money.”

“You had two hundred thousand dollars when you entered that house.”

“But that was Ray’s deal. I mean, I wouldn’t rip off a nut job like Cheese Olamon on my own. Ray said he’d cut me in at some point. He’d never lied to me before, so I figured it’s his deal, his problem if Cheese finds out.” Another shrug.

“Me and Cheese go way back,” I said.

“That right?”

I nodded. “Chris Mullen, too. We all played Babe Ruth together, hung on the corner, et cetera.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No shit?”

I held up a hand. “Swear to God. And Cheese. Helene, you know what he’d do if he thought someone had ripped him off?”

She picked up her soda cup, placed it back down again. “Look, I told you, it was Ray. I didn’t do nothing but walk into that motel room with—”

“Cheese—and this was when we were kids, fifteen maybe—he saw his girlfriend glance at another guy one night? Cheese shattered a beer bottle against a streetlight and slashed her face with it. Tore her nose off, Helene. That was Cheese at fifteen. What do you think he’s like now?”