Dane imagined it must be tough for a woman in her position—surrounded by so much male posturing—but he also imagined Velasquez was the type to already come aboard wound up. The chip on her shoulder was already firmly in place before she ever attended Quantico. Her pacing the room like a lion, however, was giving off enough nervous energy to make everyone in the room uncomfortable. “Sit down, Velasquez,” Dane whispered as he stretched out his legs under the seats in front of him. Roselita grunted at him and continued to pace the lobby until a petite blond woman, wearing red lipstick so bright it washed out the rest of her facial features, appeared through one of two doorways, holding a clipboard. “Special Agents Kirby and Velasquez?”
Dane put a hand in the air. “That would be us.”
The woman smiled. “Sorry to keep y’all waiting. I’m Clem Richland. Come on back.” She propped the door with her foot, but Roselita was already inside.
* * *
“Sorry, folks. Have a seat.”
Dane and Roselita sat down in two plush office chairs facing Richland’s desk. The cubicle was small but cozy. Pictures of Richland’s family cluttered her desk, and it was clear from all the UGA paraphernalia scattered among the walls and bookshelves that she was a Bulldogs fan. She sank into her own chair behind her desk. “I pulled an all-nighter. I didn’t even have time to get home and shower before I had to be here to meet you guys. I’m running on fumes. Another one of these”—Richland picked up a coffee mug from her desk that read ALL THE POWER. HALF THE PAY and drained half the contents—“and maybe I’ll be able to be coherent enough to help you this morning.”
“An all-nighter?” Dane said.
“Yes. We had to go pick up this poor kid from an RV park over on Moreland. His mother and her latest loser boyfriend were cooking crystal over one of those portable propane camping ovens right out behind the trailer—stinking up the whole park. Like someone wasn’t going to call in that complaint?” Clem Richland stopped talking abruptly and addressed Roselita. “I’m sorry, Agent Velasquez, right?”
“Correct.”
“Could you please take your sunglasses off. I have trouble talking to someone when I can’t see their eyes.”
“Of course,” Roselita said, and tucked her aviators into the outer pocket of her jacket. “Please, continue.”
Richland did. “Well, the police got there, arrested both of the so-called adults, and found the kid covered up in a mound of dirty laundry. He was using it for a bed, and eating dry cornflakes out of a baseball cap—a friggin’ baseball cap. Can you believe that? The kid is nine years old. He’d been taking care of himself and getting himself to school for months from living conditions like that and not a single one of his teachers thought to let us know. He was filthy. Hadn’t taken a shower in weeks. It’s like no one cares anymore. It happens so often that no one pays it any attention. It breaks my heart.”
“It breaks mine just hearing about it,” Dane said.
“And can you believe, when they finally called us out there to get him, he didn’t even want to come. He didn’t want to leave his mom. He said he wanted to go to jail with her and not with us. It’s unbelievable.”
“Not really, Mrs. Richland. That’s family.”
“Please, call me Clem. My name is Clementine. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, but I go by Clem.”
“Okay, Clem.”
“You were saying?”
“I was saying, that kid. His mother is his family. Kids who get raised in that kind of environment don’t know any better, so taking him away from the only family he knows is always going to make you look like the bad guy. I’ve seen it a hundred times over up in McFalls County.”
Richland finished the coffee in her cup and nodded. “You’re absolutely right, Agent Kirby, but it doesn’t make it any easier for us to deal with.”
“What’s going to happen to the kid?”
“Well, he’s going to spend a few days at one of our halfway houses while we try and find a foster family to take him in. If we come up empty, he’ll go into the system and stay at the halfway house until mommy of the year is cut loose and then the whole cycle starts over again. I swear to you, Agent Kirby—”
“It’s Dane.”
“Dane.” She nodded. “By the time that kid is sixteen, he’ll be the one cooking the crank, just like his mama, and we’ll be fishing his baby out of the laundry. Every time I come to work it’s like going to war—and there’s more of them than there are of us.” Richland held up her mug and whistled at someone down the hall. A few seconds later, a big bruiser with midnight skin and arms like redwood trees walked into the cubicle. He wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt, two sizes too small, and an equally tight argyle sweater-vest. Clem handed the man her mug.
“Thanks, Hank.”
“Half a pound of sugar, no cream?”
“You know me too well.”
Once Hank gave Agent Velasquez a once-over that clearly turned her stomach, then disappeared, Richland sat as far back in her chair as possible and stretched her arms above her head. She was cut and toned like a runner, with thick, natural blond hair that hadn’t seen a brush in at least twelve hours. Her facial features were sharp and pronounced. She wore no makeup except for the ruby-red lipstick, but she didn’t need any. She was a natural beauty and Dane didn’t understand the need for the cherry-red lips, but he guessed it wasn’t for him to understand. He also guessed she couldn’t have been a day over twenty-five.
“Okay,” she said. “Enough about that. Your boss, a friendly old man named O’Barr, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Right, O’Barr. That’s it. He asked me to get everything I could on William Blackwell, so here it is.” She slid a file as thick as the Monday edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution across the desk and Dane picked it up.
“This it?”
“That’s it.”
“Was he one of your cases? I mean you handled him personally?”
“He was, and I did. And to be honest, he was one of the better ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there was no sign of abuse of any kind. It was a refreshing change of pace. Up until last year, William was a pretty well-adjusted kid living with two well-adjusted parents. You can see there in the file what happened to end all that. Both his parents, Matthew and Nadine Blackwell, were killed in a car accident on the two eighty-five bypass. They were sideswiped by a tractor-trailer.”
“Drunk driver?”
“No, actually. The driver was a long hauler. The truck drifted. He barely tapped the Blackwells’ SUV, but it was enough for them to lose control of the vehicle. They ended up rolling the truck doing about seventy, and both of them were killed. The truck driver didn’t even realize there had been an accident until he heard it on his CB. He turned around immediately but there wasn’t much he could do. Him or anyone. Accidents happen.”
Dane felt his skin go cool and moist. For a moment he thought he might be sick. He muscled through it before anyone could notice but still looked uncomfortable in his chair.