I went on, not babbling this time. “So I think, I mean, thinking on it, maybe I’m listed. And obviously my cell isn’t. So whoever it was, was trying to find me and that’s how she found me.”
“What did she say?” Nightingale queried.
“She said, ‘If you still care about Chantilly, you better come and see to Chantilly.’ Then she hung up. And that creeped me out not only because it was two in the morning and I had a call on my landline, or because she said that, and it was clearly a warning. But she called her Chantilly. No one calls her Chantilly.”
“Even at work?” Chavez asked.
I shrugged, shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been to her . . .” I swallowed, “work.”
“Of course,” Nightingale muttered. “So you went to Diane’s after the call?”
“I called her,” I told him. “She didn’t answer. I called her again. She didn’t answer. I was creeped out enough to get up and go. So I went. I called her again on the way.”
“She didn’t answer,” Chavez finished for me.
And again I was nodding to Chavez.
“We’ve listened to the 911 call,” Nightingale stated. “You didn’t go inside?”
I shook my head. “I got to her house. The lights were on. But when I got up to the door, it was open.” I shook my head again. “Not open, ajar. Not much, a few inches, but it freaked me. She doesn’t live in a good ’hood. No one leaves their door ajar in the middle of the night. I looked into the window, you could see light through the blinds, one blind was not all the way down. I saw a lamp that was lit, but it was on the floor, the shade off, but still, it was lit. It tripped me out. I got worried, Diane didn’t keep good company, and not just the porn variety of not-good company. So, I ran back to my car, got in and called 911.”
“That was the smart thing to do, Rebel,” Chavez informed me.
“Was she . . . was she, I mean,” more swallowing, goddamn it, “should I have gone in?”
“No,” Nightingale said. “Like Eddie just told you, what you did was right.”
I looked in his eyes again. “What I mean to ask is, could I have helped her?”
Nightingale leaned back in his chair, sorrow filling his eyes for a second before he blanked it and answered gently, “No, Rebel. She was gone before you arrived.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
It was his turn to nod. “I’m sure.”
“You’re sure,” I pushed.
“I’m sure, Rebel,” he said quietly.
I looked to my purse in my lap and tried deep breathing again.
It came shallow.
And more shallow.
Then came my eyes feeling funny.
“Rebel—” Nightingale called softly.
I aimed my gaze at him and snapped, “Why is it so hard to breathe?”
“We’ll give you a minute,” he offered. “You want more coffee?”
“I want my friend not to be dead,” I told him.
He glanced at Chavez.
“She was going to be a goddamned therapist,” I shared.
Nightingale looked back at me.
“She didn’t know, physical, occupational, even speech. She was leaning toward physical. She already had her psychology degree. But she wasn’t into it. Her folks and I thought she just wasn’t coping. You know, not having the challenge of school. Getting good grades. Working hard at something. Then she took that bad fall. Playing volleyball. Fucking volleyball. She was into sports. So fit. God. Always running or hiking or playing tennis or volleyball. Goes up for a spike, runs into the other chick, bam!”
Nightingale and Chavez were silent.
“Docs give her Oxycontin.”
“Damn,” Nightingale murmured.
“Yeah,” I spat. “Next thing you know she’s on oxy, on meth, smoking pot, and starring in porn movies as Chantilly.”
I shuffled my ass back in my seat, tucking my purse deep into my abdomen. So deep, I could feel the clasp digging into my flesh.
Neither man spoke.
So I did.
“You know, I watched one. I watched her have sex and give blowjobs to four different men in forty-five minutes. She took it everywhere. And the whole time she was gone. Diane was not in her eyes. She was spaced out. Doped up. So damned high, my girl, my Diane had left the building. I don’t even think she knew what was happening to her. Like a trained dog, going through the motions, moving and moaning, just to get her fix. It made me sick. Literally. I haven’t vomited in years. That DVD ended, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.”
After offering that morsel, it happened.
I dropped my chin into my neck and there was no holding it in by pressing my bag to it. The pain tore up my stomach, burned through my lungs and forced its way out of my mouth laying waste to my throat as it came out on a ragged sob.
My purse was gently pulled from my hand and a dark blue handkerchief was pressed into it.
I bent forward, lifted it to my face and pushed it hard against my mouth as my shoulders shook with silent sobs.
“She was . . . she . . . she was . . . sh-she was gonna be a physical therapist,” I whimpered into the blue cloth.
“I’ll get her some water,” Chavez murmured.
“Yeah,” Nightingale murmured back.
Eventually, I saw the toes of his boots close to mine. I sniffed, wiped the cloth on my face, tipped my head back and saw Nightingale had wheeled himself close, elbows on his knees, not in my face but encroaching my space.
This was soothing too.
Shit, he had this down.
“You hear these stories a lot,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
“Someone has to do for them what they can’t. Make things as right as they can get after they’ve gone so wrong. Find justice. And someone has to find answers for people like you.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“Most people surprise themselves with the stuff they can do,” he told me.
“Both the good and the bad.”
He did a slow nod. “Both the good and the bad.”
“She was good,” I told him quietly. “Honest to God, however you saw her tonight, that wasn’t the real her. She was good. She was sweet. She was funny and smart and hard working. She was a great friend. She loved her folks. God, she loved her folks so much, Lieutenant Nightingale. They were so close. I was jealous of that until she gave me them too.”
“Hank.”
“What?”
“Call me Hank, Rebel.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure you should go with Eddie and me to see them.”
I straightened and shook my head.
He straightened with me.
“I’m not certain they should learn this at all if I’m not there when they do,” I returned.
“So, you’re tight with them too.”
“That happens when you wage war against addiction,” I educated him, though I reckoned he probably knew that a lot better than me. “We did interventions. All the shit. But they’d already adopted me before.” It surprised the hell out of me when I felt myself grin shakily. “Her mom and I’d sneak a flask of mojitos into her volleyball games. Made them a lot easier to watch.” I tipped my head to the side as I did a one shouldered shrug. “Neither of us are into sports.”
He grinned back. “Mojitos help make a lot of stuff a lot less boring.”
“Word on that, policeman.”
His grin got bigger.
“I see Hank has worked his magic,” Chavez remarked as he re-joined us carrying a paper cup of water.
He handed it to me.
I took it, thanked him, and took a sip.
Then I held Hank’s handkerchief to him.
“Keep it,” he said.
Yeah, I should keep it. We weren’t quite done with our thrill-a-minute night and I had a feeling the best was yet to come.
“How many of these you lose in a year?” I asked.
“Enough my wife keeps boxes of them in the linen cabinet next to the toilet paper she’s obsessive about never running out of, due to her mother’s decree we’re always prepared for a blizzard.”