Blackteeth Read online

  “You going to tell me what it was that grabbed you at the river?” Moss asked. “I get the impression you know. And, of course, that you’re scared shitless of it.”

  Jesus, Hesper prayed silently, save me from idiots who can’t see a hand in front of their face at noon on the longest day of the year.

  “What do you think it was?” Hesper asked as she went to the small room that June had designated an employee break room. Once upon a time she thought it might have been a butler’s pantry or the like. Now it had two chairs, a row of lockers, and a small refrigerator. It also smelled like ass because one of the barista’s favored salami-and-goat cheese sandwiches.

  Hesper went to the lockers. She worked the combination lock and was having a hard time getting the little numbers into the right position.

  “It looked like an arm with a hand with black claws. It looked like something humanish except it wasn’t. I heard one of my friends say he thought it was a sea lion who tried to snag you like that kid in Washington, except it wasn’t a sea lion. And I’m pretty sure it didn’t want to give you up.” Moss sighed loudly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  His Alabaman accent was heavy in the last statement.

  Hesper dropped the lock and looked at the ceiling. Her hands were shaking, and she didn’t have time for Moss’s issues. “You might reconsider the sea lion slant when you retell the story. Nobody will believe you if you say it looked like an arm.” She picked up the lock again and began twisting the numbers and added softly, “Trust me on that point.”

  Moss didn’t reply.

  Hesper’s fingers failed again. She let the lock go and placed her forehead against the cold metal of the locker. Moss said, “What’s the combo?”

  Hesper lifted her head and cast him a skeptical look.

  “You’re leaving, and I reckon you’re not taking the lock with you, so what difference does it make if I know the combo?”

  “1957,” she said.

  “Is that a birthyear for someone?” Moss asked as he stepped around her. He took the lock in a large hand and expertly manipulated the combination dial.

  “The year of my grandmother’s T-Bird,” Hesper said. “Wonder what ever happened to it. It was blue. She said the company called it starmist blue. I always wanted a car like that. But hey, I don’t even know how to drive so that’s moot.”

  The lock popped open, and Moss removed it from the locker.

  Hesper didn’t hesitate. She opened the door and pulled out her backpack. She had an extra shirt, but she didn’t think she had time to change. She could change at the airport. If she was remembering correctly, she had about a thousand dollars in her account. That would be enough to get her far enough away to throw it off her scent.

  “Are you saying you saw that thing before?” Moss asked. His voice held a certain amount of horror. “Are you saying you told people and no one believed you?”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  Moss didn’t say anything. She looked at him and saw the answer in his face. No, he wouldn’t have believed her. He wasn’t sure if he believed her now. He’d seen it and time would fuzz over the edges of that memory, making it so that he questioned his accuracy. Did I really see a hand with black nails grab her ankle? Didn’t I see something more like a sea lion? Sure, that’s it because the other thing isn’t really possible.

  “Yes,” Hesper said. “You saw something you can’t explain. Go home. Get a good night’s sleep. Avoid the river for a few weeks. You’ll feel better, and your mind will fill in the blanks. It’ll be all clear then. You can talk to a therapist. I can recommend a good one. He’s nice, and he doesn’t look at you like you’re insane. Also, he prescribes good drugs.”

  Hesper turned away, but Moss snatched at her backpack.

  “Let go,” she said coldly.

  “I’ll call an Uber for you,” he said. “It’ll save you some time. They’ll be here in five minutes instead of the twenty or thirty minutes it’ll take you on your bike. You’re so rattled you’ll probably go underneath a bus.”

  “Great, you know where I work, you know where I live,” she said.

  “I know you were wearing Olivia’s shirt when you came back,” he said. “I know because I was the one who wrote her name on the collar of that shirt. I also know that the police suspected the sweatpants you were wearing belonged to Emmalee Green, but they didn’t have a name written on them. Emmalee’s mother said she thought the sweats were Emmalee’s, but she couldn’t be certain. It had been years, after all. So, you appeared wearing the clothing of two other missing girls. Then a month later, an anonymous tip led to Thomas Madrid. There was stuff in his basement that belonged to all of the kids but nothing of them.” He paused for a long breath. “Except you.”

  Hesper jerked the backpack out of Moss’s hand.

  “I’ll give you a $100,000 to tell me where Olivia is, alive or dead,” Moss said all at once. “No questions asked. No police involved.”

  Chapter Six

  One trick needs another trick

  to back it up. – English proverb

  “Okay, I can see I’m not getting anywhere,” Moss said after Hesper didn’t answer. “I’ll get an Uber. They’ll run you home. Okay?”

  Hesper looked at the pink Kit-Cat Klock on the wall of the breakroom. Its tail went back and forth in time with its eyes. She didn’t know what time the sun set, but she guessed it would be close to 8 p.m., which was only two hours away. “Yeah, an Uber, then,” she said, capitulating in a way she would have never done the day before.

  Moss nodded and removed a cellphone from his jeans pocket. It was wrapped in a baggie, which she realized he’d used for keeping it dry while he was in the water. He took it out of the baggie and got busy with pressing buttons. “I got the app,” he said as he worked the keyboard, “but I’ll call the guy I use sometimes. He’s almost always in the area.”

  Hesper stared at him. So helpful. So wanting to ingratiate himself. So I’ll change my mind and tell him all about what had happened to Olivia and Emmalee and the others. All of the others. Not five. Not only five, but more than I want to remember.

  Regardless of what Moss Symmes had seen on the Willamette, if Hesper told him what had truly happened, he wouldn’t believe her. And he would call the police. The police would ask questions. News would leak out. Then they would look at Hesper as if she was the one who’d taken children and made them vanish. But then, some of them did that already.

  Moss keyed the last number and put the cellphone to his ear. Hesper took a minute to clean up the broken glass, despite the fact that she desperately wanted to dash out the door and rush headlong down the street. She also wrote a note for June and left half of the roll of cash she typically carried for the coffee shop owner. She didn’t know how much it would cost to repair the window but getting a handyman out after hours wouldn’t be cheap. When she was done, she listened to Moss speaking. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “I need an Uber for someone else. Yes, that’s right. No, at the coffee shop. Um. Abracajava’s. Do you need the address or can you use your GPS? Good. I know I was supposed to call you next week for that thing we talked about. It’s moving up. Couldn’t be helped. Yeah. Okay. I’ll wait here.”

  Hesper used a dustpan to dump the glass in a garbage can and then looked at Moss. He glanced up and said, “Yeah. Her name is Hesper. Hesper White. Short, skinny, black hair. Looks like she’s been rode hard and put up wet. You won’t be able to miss her. How long?”

  Moss pulled the phone away from his ear and tapped a button on the screen. Hesper put the broom and dustpan away and asked, “How long?”

  “Five minutes or less. Be out front.” Moss put the cellphone back in his pocket. “You need that cut cleaned?”

  “No. I’ll do it later,” she said. She reached into a cabinet and pulled out a new Abracajava’s t-shirt with the tags attached. June sold them to tourists by the bucketful. “Extra-large?”

  “Yeah, that’ll work.”

&nbsp
; “Don’t know if I’ll get your t-shirt back to you,” she said, ripping the tags from the new one. She crumpled up the tags and dropped the ball into the garbage can on top of the broken glass. I won’t actually. I’ll have to burn the damn thing.

  “It’s okay,” he said as he took the shirt out of her hands. He pulled the pink shirt over his head. “I won’t miss it.”

  She hesitated and pulled her keys from her pack. She took Abracajava’s key off her ring as well as the key to the bicycle lock. She put both keys on top of the note next to the bills and gave them a quick pat. If the money wasn’t enough, then June could sell the ten-speed for a few bucks to make up for the difference.

  “You’re not coming back,” Moss said. It sounded like a statement more than a question, and she looked at him again.

  “I’m not coming back,” she agreed.

  Hesper set Abracajava’s alarm, and they went out the way they’d come in. She closed the door behind her and reached through the window to flip the deadbolt.

  “Why are you bothering?” Moss asked. “The window is already broken.”

  “I need to send June a text,” Hesper said. “She should be back here because her car’s still here. She might not see the broken glass.”

  Moss took out his phone and asked, “I’ll do it. What’s her number?”

  Hesper had to think about it. After a moment, she rattled off the number and watched as Moss rapidly punched on his digital keyboard.

  “There,” he said and put the phone back in his pocket before Hesper could say anything else. “And there’s your ride. Look, the Uber decals in the front and the back.”

  Moss spoke to the middle-aged man in the Volkswagen Tiguan and then opened the rear passenger door for her. “We can talk later, Hesper,” he said.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “Think about it,” he said as she slid into the car. It smelled new, and Hesper had a hint of discomfort as the driver glanced over his shoulder at her. He didn’t look particularly happy to see his fare. Uber hadn’t been around when Hesper had disappeared. She couldn’t remember if it had even existed then. She didn’t think she’d been in a taxi of any kind before the big event, but she’d been in a few since. Even a Lyft as well as a few Ubers. Honestly, she preferred her bicycle or taking public transit. Cost was always an issue, and most of the drivers wanted to have a conversation with her, which she didn’t care for much.

  Moss looked at her as he shut the door. “Don’t forget your seatbelt,” he said, the words muffled through the glass.

  Hesper’s hands were still shaking as she clicked the seatbelt buckle into its floor mounted counterpart. She said, “I’m over near Laurelhurst Park on Oak.”

  The locks engaged on the doors, and Hesper winced at the sound.

  “Oak near the park,” the driver said. “Gotcha.” He pulled away from Abracajava’s, and Hesper looked back to see Moss watching them leave.

  She didn’t like that. He had some kind of relationship with the driver and the driver could—

  But she cut her line of thought off. Moss already knew where she lived. He knew where she worked. He knew she was in Portland. He’d wanted to confront her about Olivia’s whereabouts. He’d wanted to shake her up because he might very well believe she was complicit.

  “Can you wait for me when we get there? I need to go someplace else,” Hesper said.

  “Okay, where?”

  “The airport.” Hesper adjusted herself on the seat and relaxed just a little bit. There was still that deep-seated fear inside her that screamed at her to run now and run really fast, too.

  “The airport,” the driver repeated. “Well, how about that.”

  Hesper glanced at her arm which was still throbbing. A car ride would throw her scent off, but determination and tenacity were traits held in spades by that which would pursue her. Now that they knew where she was, they would be hunting her anew, and they would be doing it full-court press.

  “Where were you going?” he asked, and Hesper took a moment to register the past tense in the question.

  Predators, as one had learned from watching Animal Planet, didn’t just come in an easily recognizable shape.

  Hesper glanced around her. There was a blue duffle bag on the seat next to her. Affixed to the handle was a paper tag with the large black letters PDX clearly visible. She took a moment to process it. PDX was the airport code for Portland International Airport and the paper tag was the thing that airlines put on the luggage to direct it to its proper destination. Isn’t that some kind of coincidence? I don’t think so.

  She reached out with her left hand to touch the dark blue luggage tag that hung from another handle.

  The driver said, “I think it’s shorter to go down Stark, right?”

  Hesper said, “That’s the way I usually go.” She looked out the window and saw businesses and the odd turn-of-the-century house between them.

  What had Dove from Abracajava’s told her about taking Ubers? The fluff-headed girl liked to talk, and some of it blended together because there was so much volume. She liked her plant-based foods and saving the universe, but she was also a party girl who used ride sharing a lot. Dove saw Hesper as an innocent and shared information she thought the other girl would need. Hesper could hear the words in her head. Always wait inside. Always stay in well-populated areas. Make certain the driver’s name is the same as on the app. And make sure to ask the driver what your name is.

  “What’s my name?” she asked.

  “Huh?” the driver said as he turned left. Hesper’s eyes shifted, and she realized she didn’t know where they were. Although she’d been in Portland for a year, she’d explored little except to find the library, the dojangs she wanted to attend, and the other people who had taught specific things she wanted to learn.

  “Security thing, right?” Hesper said. “I should have asked you before.”

  “Oh, of course,” the driver said.

  Hesper leaned to the left and flipped over the luggage tag. There was a name there and an address just it case it got lost at the airport. “And I’m supposed to ask you your name,” she added carefully. Her right hand reached for the door handle.

  “Since Moss called, we’re not using the app,” the driver said easily. “I’ll get the cash and not report it. Of course, I have a little doohickey on my phone for cards, or you can Venmo me. That’s not a big deal, right? Uncle Sam does take his fair share and then some. I hate having to take such a cut.”

  The driver had an accent. It was a slight one, but it was there all the same. Furthermore, he had the same brown eyes as his son with just a hint of green in them. Hesper could see them very well in the rearview mirror as he looked at her. She could also see a resemblance to his offspring. Without looking away from him, she unclicked her seatbelt and felt it slither back into place.

  “You’re Hesper Whitehead,” he said. “And I’m Abel.”

  Hesper pulled the door handle but it was locked. Moss had said Hesper White on the phone, not Whitehead.

  “Childproof locks,” Abel explained, unmistakably realizing the jig was up. “It’s one of the reasons we picked out this model of car.” He turned the VW down a side road and then went down an alley.

  “Abel Symmes,” Hesper said. “Obviously, you’ve been planning this. You and your son. It’s so nice to see families making an effort.”

  “We hoped you’d take the money, instead,” he said. “Now be nice. I’ve got a gun up here, and I wouldn’t mind putting a round through your leg. We really don’t want to kill you. We just need to know what you know. Olivia’s been gone for ten years, you’ve been free for two, and it’s time for you to start sharing information.”

  Hesper reached into her pack and carefully began to search around for the knife she kept in there. She used to keep one in her pocket at all times but she’d gotten lax. I thought if I kept away from the water, if I didn’t tempt fate, if I played smart, but I forgot about there being other threats.


  “What good is that going to be if you’re in jail for kidnapping?” Hesper asked.

  “We’ll just keep you under wraps until we find Olivia or her remains,” he added the last bit with a crack in his voice. Hesper knew that he was hoping that Olivia would be alive like Hesper was alive, that against all odds, she would come back to them. At the moment he didn’t consider what that would really be like. Even if Olivia did come back, she would never be his Olivia. Hesper could never say that, though, because it would be cruel, even to someone who resorted to kidnapping to get information.

  “You can’t bring her back,” Hesper said glumly. “You can’t bring any of them back.”

  “But we have to try all the same.” He came to a stop in the shadows of a warehouse, and it didn’t look like anyone was around. He put the car into park and engaged the parking brake.

  Hesper only paused for a moment before she launched herself at the front seat. She went for his eyes with her right hand trying to claw them. Her left hand tried to grasp the collar of his shirt, but the high headrest got in her way, and she tangled with his seatbelt. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight this time.

  Abel grunted as he caught her right hand, yanking her as far forward as he could, and then his elbow shot backwards into her face. Pain exploded there and she fell back clasping her hands over her nose. She could feel blood pouring out of her nostrils and cursed.

  “You bastard!” she yelled. “I had two surgeries to fix it from—”

  Abel undid his seatbelt and swiftly turned toward her. He had something in his hand, and through her tearing eyes she thought it was the gun he’d threatened her with. If he shot her in the leg, she wouldn’t be able to run from him and she certainly wouldn’t be able to run from the other things she feared so much. She shut her mouth and stiffened for a moment.

  “You asked for this,” he gritted as she twisted toward the car door again, frantically trying to force the locks to open. She would use her elbow again even if she had to break a bone doing it.