Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27), Blake Banner [good books for 8th graders .txt] 📗

Brad Mitchell with Dr. Wagner. What I don’t understand about that is why you didn’t react exactly the way the Mitchells did when Leroy showed it to them.” She didn’t answer. She just stared at me. “You know what they did? Brad called his wife, and they laughed. They laughed in Leroy’s face.” I shook my head. “Why didn’t you do that, Sonia?”

She frowned, gave her shoulders a small shrug. “I was worried. He’s my nephew. I didn’t want him falling into bad ways…”

I snorted. “You were that close?”

“We were very close!”

I barked a loud laugh. “C’mon! You were his aunt! You probably saw him once a month!”

Her face flushed and her eyes were bright. “That is not true! I saw him most every day!”

“For what?”

She leaned forward now, real angry now. “Because Cherise had no car at that time, and I would take her to work and the kids to school…”

“The kids were not at school that day.”

“Because that bastard Earl said he wanted to keep them off. He said they were not well.”

Dehan’s voice was heavy with irony. “And you and Cherise thought that was normal?”

“No! We did not! And that is exactly why she called me from work and said she was worried. She wanted to go back and check on them!”

I leaned forward. “And you told her not to worry. They would be fine. You left them in the care of that…”

She was shaking her head furiously. “No! No! No! No! I had told her from the start that she should never leave them alone with him! I had told her over and over that that man was dangerous! He was hurting those children. I’ll tell you what I did. I told Dr. Garrido that I had to go out for the afternoon and I went and got her and took her….”

She trailed off, but it was too late. I sighed and sat back in my chair. Dehan said quietly, “So there was another person in the house, Sonia.”

She closed her eyes and echoed my gesture, sinking back in her seat. The smiling waitress came and distributed glasses and bottles of Perrier.

“Have you had a chance to look at the menu?”

I looked at her. “Just give us a few minutes.”

She bobbed and went away. I turned back to Sonia. “You took her home and you both went in together…”

“No!” She shook her head furiously. “I left her there. She got down from the car and I left. I had to get back to work…”

“Come on, Sonia! Time for the truth! You just got through telling us you told Garrido you’d be out for the afternoon. And you did that because, after eight years of this guy, you both knew him and suspected what was going on. That being the case, there is no way you would have allowed her to go in alone. It’s over, Sonia. It is time to tell the truth. What happened that day?”

Nine

“They were really hard up. Earl hadn’t worked for a long time. He made money selling weed, but he kept that for himself. They had sold the car and every morning I went and collected her from their house, or she’d walk to my place. It was literally just around the corner. She worked at Kmart, and that was like two minutes from where I work, so I would sometimes drive over and we’d have lunch together. We always got on, even when we were small. She was a year older than me,” she smiled, “but we always used to joke that I was the older sister. Usually I’d pay for lunch, and always we’d talk about the same thing, her relationship with Earl, how it was hurting the kids, how she should leave him…”

She sighed and shook her head.

“We even talked about getting a place together, but it never happened. A few times I would show her places we could afford, send her links by e-mail. I was prepared to pay more than half of the rent just to get her away from that bastard. But I don’t know if it was codependency, fear, addiction… I refuse to believe it was love. Nobody could love a man like that. Whatever it was, she could not let go of him.

“For a year, maybe more, before he died, she had started confessing to me that she was scared he was abusing the kids when he was alone with them.”

Dehan asked, “Did she say what kind of abuse she suspected?”

“I asked her, but she said she wasn’t sure. The kids seemed to be scared of him. He was a violent bully, with women and children. He would punish them, hit them, shout at them…” She trailed off, then said, “I asked if she suspected sexual abuse. She said no, but I could tell by her face, by her eyes, that she had thought about it. It was…” She paused, staring out at the bright, cold street. “It was depressing, hopeless, struggling day after day, week after week…year after year, and realizing all along that the person I was fighting, the person I was struggling against was not Earl. It was Cherise. She was the person who was creating all the obstacles, making all the excuses. And all the while I was aware that a disaster, a catastrophe, was coming closer. It was as inevitable as the setting of the sun. As hopelessly unavoidable as nightfall.”

She fell silent. We waited. Eventually I asked her, “What happened that day, Sonia?”

“I picked her up from home. When she came out alone I asked her, what about the kids? She said they were not well and Earl was keeping them home. I knew, by the way she said it, that she was worried sick. She was drawn, sickly, had bags under her eyes. I told her, let’s take them to the doctor, but she said no, Earl would only get mad. It was best just to leave them. So we left and I