Chalk Man Read online

  She had gone somewhere she hadn’t intended to go. Parker moved in. “Go on.”

  “Well, ya know, that this girl he liked had a boyfriend that would grab her and push her and stuff.” She squirmed in her seat before continuing. “Ya know. It’s stuff an older boy would talk about.”

  Or one who’s watching his mother get pushed around by someone.

  No one said anything for a bit, before something seemed to suddenly dawn on Ava. “Ya know. Now that I think about it? Yeah. I guess it makes sense.”

  “How so?”

  “Just. I dunno. I felt so sorry for him. He said he’d just moved here six months ago. His parents had divorced. He still hadn’t made any friends.”

  All true, from what little they knew so far. More votes for Ava being innocent in all of this.

  “Where’s your Xbox?” Parker asked.

  “In the bedroom. I play Fortnite in bed before I go to sleep each night. You need to see it or something?”

  Cooperative. Forthcoming. More votes.

  “Not yet. But we may have to later.” So. She was a gamer. Perhaps she hung out with other gamers . . . one of whom may be the suspect.

  “Did you and Charlie ever engage in any group chats?”

  “No. Not really. He always private messaged me.”

  “Did you ever private message him?”

  She looked at Parker with suspicion. “Meaaaning?”

  “Just a question. I mean, perhaps I should have asked it a different way: did he know how old you were? You know, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  Klink leaned back against the sofa. “Like what?”

  “You know. He knew I was older but . . . regardless. I run into enough weirdos online to know which ones are . . . off . . . and need to be blocked.”

  Parker couldn’t help himself. “Well, with a gamertag like HotGirl57 you can see how you might attract a weirdo or two, right?”

  Ava looked at him with contempt. “Yes, Dad, I do.”

  Dammit. He’d tried. He really had. But his burgeoning inner parent had been exposed anyway. Trudy was going to have a field day with Parker later when he told her about this.

  Meanwhile, he pulled an Ava and shrugged.

  “Look. It’s been my gamertag since I first started playing when I was, like, thirteen. Granted, I was a little bit more insecure back then and might’ve liked the attention it got me. But now? I have a history, rankings, accounts, etcetera, all tied to that name. So, if guys get the wrong idea, that’s their problem, not mine.”

  “Fair enough,” Klink said, again stepping in.

  “And besides, Detective . . . Parker, was it?”

  Parker nodded.

  “It wasn’t like that. Charlie was a good kid. Like I said . . . I never got anything but the vibe that I was the big sister he never had. He never fished around asking if I had a boyfriend or anything. He never wanted to meet up. Never asked for a number to text me at or all the other BS moves that guys pull like trying to understand my feelings or some shit when they don’t even know me. In fact . . .”

  “In fact, what?”

  “On the days I was down? He never pried. Only encouraged.”

  People were people. They all had fissures within them that gave way at different times or for different reasons. Parker knew this. But still, when Ava Thomas suddenly began to cry it was his turn to be stunned.

  “Damnit! I didn’t know. What a shit friend I am,” she said, before putting her face in her hands.

  Parker and Klink exchanged a glance. “What didn’t you know?”

  “I didn’t even know his name!” she said shrilly through her palms. “I mean . . . Charlie? I didn’t know that. In all the times we chatted . . . I never asked.”

  Parker only nodded. He’d seen a meme the other day, on Twitter, that summed things up these days. Being popular on social media is like being rich in Monopoly. The internet was mostly fake. And what wasn’t, was most likely set dressing for what was.

  “All I knew him as was 723Bucky.” She wiped at her eyes with one hand. “God. He better be okay. He has to be okay. I mean . . . do you even know what that means?”

  “What . . . means?” Klink said, confused.

  “The 723 in his gamertag?”

  “No. What’s it mean?”

  “He told me one night, just before he signed off. It broke my heart.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “723. It’s the numbers you use to spell out ‘S-A-D’ on your phone keypad. Sad. SadBucky.”

  The big innocent puppy-dog eyes that Parker guessed reflected the true Ava Thomas—not the Ava who felt she had to front or be something she wasn’t, but the one still trying to figure out who she was in the world—were back as she looked up at them with a forehead wrinkled with worry. “You guys have got to find him, okay? Please. I mean . . . ten years old? Oh my God.”

  Chapter 5

  With her permission, and after calling the station and consulting with the captain, they confiscated Ava Thomas’ Xbox so that it could be analyzed by the tech guys back at Hollenbeck Station. Initially so defiant, Ava was more cooperative now, recalling a few times when Charlie had joined her for a round of group play with strangers. “Never for very long, though. Maybe a half hour each time,” she guessed. She had no way of knowing that Parker was a gamer himself and thinking exactly what she was when she added, “He might’ve exchanged messages with one of them on the side or something that I didn’t know about.”

  She asked them to please let her know if any news broke about Charlie before they handed her their business cards and left.

  Now, as it was getting dark, they were making their way to the address of a Joey De La Cruz, aka BigArch5, that Murillo had just called them with. “Evidently, it didn’t take long to finger him,” Murillo said, sounding like a gumshoe in an old movie. “The uniforms visited the school, which was closed by then, but the director of the after-hours care program was still there. She knew right away who she thought our bully might be and was able to verify it with one of the kids still waiting to be picked up by his parents.”

  The home of the notorious Joey was located over on Wilcox Avenue near Boyle Heights. It would be a ten-minute drive, and with Klink at the wheel Parker snuck in a call to Trudy.

  “What’s up?” she answered in her trademark way.

  “The sky,” he replied for the thousandth time, just to playfully annoy her.

  “I’m not gonna change,” she said with a laugh.

  “It’s honestly the rudest way anyone can answer the phone, I swear,” he chuckled.

  “Rude? Seriously. This from the man who burps out loud after every meal?”

  “I have a slow digestive system.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Ew. Gross.” And then she giggled, and that was all it took, really, to make him miss her.

  “I’m gonna be late. Caught a call.”

  “Noooo . . .” she said with immediate frustration. “We’re supposed to meet Jim and Julie for dinner tonight!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But . . . it’s a missing kid. Ten years old.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yep. Possible foul play. We don’t know yet.”

  “Well . . . that certainly negates any stupid dinner plans. It’s too late to cancel, so I’ll just go without you and explain what happened. They’ll understand.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure they will. Tell them I said hi, though. And don’t wait up . . .” He looked over at Klink, who gave a small nod like he knew what was coming. “We’ll be working this one straight through. The first twenty-four hours are crucial.”

  She didn’t reply for a second. “Well, I guess I’ll use Rufus to keep me warm tonight, then.”

  He smiled. Rufus was the handicapped one-year-old Irish terrier that they’d adopted from the local animal shelter a few months earlier. Having been struck by a car, he was part
ially blind in one eye and had lost a leg. None of this mattered though, because he still had the raw enthusiasm and curiosity of a puppy that often made them both laugh until there were tears in their eyes.

  “Yeah,” Parker chuckled. “Luuuucky Rufus.”

  “Perv. Good luck on the case and remember that I love you.”

  “Same to you.”

  “Um. Same to you? Really?”

  Parker glanced sideways at Klink and rolled his eyes. “Love you, too.”

  “That’s better,” she said, before she hung up.

  As soon as Parker lowered his phone, Klink was on him. “Honest to God, Parker. She got two rings on the wedding day, you know that right? The one on her wedding finger and then you, wrapped up nice and tight around her pinky.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Parker laughed. “Screw you.”

  “And . . . I mean . . . I still can’t believe you let her talk you into a three-legged dog, bro!”

  “He’s a nice dog.”

  Klink sniggered. “Dude. He’s gotta hop, skip and jump everywhere, man.”

  It wasn’t funny, but it was, because Parker knew Klink loved animals as much as he did. “Yeah. And yet, somehow, he’s still faster than your ass, Klink! Imagine that.”

  Before long they pulled up to the front of the home of the notorious Joey. It did not surprise. The house was in desperate need of a new paint job, with an unkempt yard and a front porch that was loaded with clutter. This was not to say that bullies of the world did not also live in upscale homes in well-to-do neighborhoods, they most certainly did, adding even more proof to the old saying that a house did not make a home.

  As they made their way through the front gate, Parker noticed that the walkway ahead was covered in sidewalk chalk drawings of stick figures with smiley faces. Each one was holding onto a curvy drawn string that led to a colored balloon. One red, one blue, another yellow and the last one orange. A child’s hand had written “Up and away!” over the balloons.

  They knocked on the door, and before long a tall Latina woman in sandals, blue jeans and a yellow blouse opened the door. There was an apron around her waist and a wooden spoon in her hand. Evidently, dinner was on. She looked at them both—two white guys in suits on her front porch—and seemed to size them up as either cops or Mormons. With a furrowed brow, she said, “Can I help you?”

  “Yes. I’m Detective Parker and this is Detective Klink, with the Los Angeles Police Department. Is this the home of Joey De La Cruz?” Parker asked.

  Her face dropped immediately. “What’d he do this time?” And it was the way she said it, with a sort of extreme mental exhaustion, that made Parker pity her a bit.

  Klink was monotone. “May we come in . . . is it Mrs. De Le Cruz?”

  “Hell no!” she snapped, and for a second Parker had a flashback to Ava Thomas’ reply to that same question, except this woman had grown up to fear the police just a bit and knew to hide her contempt for them a lot better. “It’s Ms. Herrera. His father, that no good piece of shit, is where he gets the De Le Cruz. And you can find him”—Parker saw it coming before she even said it—“in prison, in Arizona. Kingman.”

  “My apologies,” Klink said. “May we come in, Ms. Herrera?”

  She pinched her lips together and then let out a huge sigh. “Yeah. I guess. I’m serving the kids dinner right now, I got home late from work, but come on in!”

  Parker at Klink exchanged a glance. This was going to get interesting.

  They entered a home cleaner on the inside than on the outside. Way cleaner. And outdated concept or not, this was to be expected. An unkempt yard was almost always the sign of a lack of male presence at a home. The littered porch could go either way. But the opposite also usually held true, in that if you went to a home with an immaculate yard and entered to find the house dirty inside, that usually meant the lack of a female presence.

  She motioned them into the living room, which was directly past the small foyer. “You guys can grab a seat. I’ll bring Joey out in a second,” she said, before she disappeared into the kitchen. Parker looked around. The furniture was outdated, and the wood floors were dull. A large Aztec-style area rug was beneath a large glass coffee table. On it were a few magazines and a metal plate with three white candles, sized from large to small, that had each been partially melted, the drips of wax looking like tears in frozen animation. On either side of the coffee table were mismatching couches, one green cloth, the other beige. A fireplace was nearby. There were no logs in it and little soot, suggesting that it hadn’t been used in a long time.

  Parker could hear the voices of three separate children in the dining room beyond the kitchen, one girl and two boys. One of the boys was complaining about having chicken strips and buttered macaroni for the third time this week while his siblings told him to shut up. Parker smirked, not a little sadly. He’d grown up in a home with two sisters and a brother, in a small town where times could be tough. He knew the power of pasta to feed a family between paychecks and he’d seen his mother pull off just about every variation of it during the really lean times.

  “Tami, Rafael, you both sit here and eat. Joey, your ass is coming with me,” Ms. Herrera said sternly.

  “Whaaaaaat! I’m hungry!” a boy’s voice, obviously Joey, protested.

  “I don’t care. This is a new first for you, dammit! I’ve got two detectives—de-freaking-tectives—in the living room,” she shouted. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” Joey replied, as the other two kids fell silent and the house rustled with unease.

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I didn’t do nothing and I ain’t talking to nobody!” Joey yelled.

  There was the sound of something wooden, no doubt the spoon that Ms. Herrera had in her hand a minute ago, striking something else wooden, probably the dining table, and then a scuffle broke out before Ms. Herrera led Joey into the dining room by the scruff of the neck with one hand. The wooden spoon was still in the other. Parker imagined that had two cops not been in their house Joey would’ve gotten a lot worse for talking back, and the face of the boy that greeted them seemed to confirm that fact. He looked afraid, but not just of them.

  As his mother sat him down roughly on the green couch opposite them, Parker couldn’t help but not be surprised. The boy before them was a little tall for his age but very chubby, with cheeks so big they were going to be jowls by high school, where no doubt one of the football coaches was going to try and turn him into a lineman. His hands were pudgy and even his eyelids seemed fat. Bullies. Yeah. They came in all colors, shapes and sizes. But more often than not they were bigger than their peers on the outside, smaller on the inside, and usually from a home lacking one of two things: the proper balance of either parents or love.

  Joey looked at Parker and sneered. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Parker barely had time to be shocked by this completely inappropriate greeting, by a child no less, before he was doubly shocked by Ms. Herrera’s reaction. This time, she risked the child abuse charge in front of the cops and whacked Joey on the top of the head, hard, with the wooden spoon.

  Joey screeched and pulled away as Klink stood immediately. “Hey! Take it easy.”

  As Joey began to cry, Ms. Herrera took a few steps back and looked at Parker as he stood up, too. Then, she began to cry as well.

  Great. Five minutes in here and we’ve already got a shit show, Parker thought. He and Klink exchanged another uneasy glance.

  “Everyone just calm down, okay?” Parker said softly.

  “I’m tired of this,” Ms. Herrera said, her hands trembling.

  “Mom!” Joey pleaded.

  “Every week, it’s something with you, Joey! You ditch school. They call me at work. You’re mean to someone. They call me at work. I come home and have to go out looking for you because you’re not home. And where are you? Hanging out with those damned cholitos on Harvard Street!”

  “Mom!” Joey yelled again, his face twisting beneath his tea
rs.

  “Haven’t you learned anything from what happened to your no-good father?!” she screamed.

  “Mom . . .” Joey replied, in a desolate tone that seemed to be begging her to stop. She’d crossed a line in the boy.

  Just our luck, Parker thought. We get to be the ones whose visit is their tipping point. Shit.

  “Ms. Herrera, why don’t you take a seat on the couch here with us—”

  “No! No, I won’t,” Ms. Herrera yelled, throwing the spoon to the floor and putting her hands on her hips. She turned towards Parker; her face twisted with agony. “You don’t understand! Visits to the vice principal’s office, then the principal’s office, then calls about absences from school that I never approved, then letters home, then visits from truant officers . . . it never ends! Then, you wanna know what?”

  Parker gave her a nod to go on.

  “Last month some of your friends came. The freakin’ LAPD. I got two black-and-whites out in front of my home for a certain eleven-year-old”—she turned her attention back to Joey and glared at him—“who was helping his friend steal some rims off a car at the mall! Now he’s trying to be a damn thief!”

  “Mom. I told you. I didn’t . . .”

  “I don’t want to hear it no more, Joey. No more lies. And why do you think he was doing that, Detective Rink or whatever the hell your name is?”

  Klink gave a small shrug.

  “Mom! Don’t say it,” Joey yelled, trying to stand as Klink held him down with one hand on his shoulder. And here it was, the Joey the kids knew at school. Trying to assert his will.

  “Tell them, Joey! Go ahead! Tell them they’re trying to jump you into their little gang over there on Harvard, Joey!”

  The way Joey sneered at her next was . . . unhealthy. Parker figured that Ms. Herrera had a few years, maybe three, before he would be too big to manage without being a threat to her and her safety.

  “I hate you!” he yelled at her.

  The words looked as if they struck Ms. Herrera worse than fists ever could have. She looked to the ground, then looked back up and wiped her eyes. Her hands were shaking. “So?” she said, this time fixing her gaze on Klink. “Tell us. Why? Why are you here?”