Little Lamb Lost (2 page)

The man who answered Ashley’s
door was tall and tan, his muscular body topped off with a gray crew cut. He
had a distinct ex-military air to him, and I half expected him to bark an
order.

“I’m Mac McAlister, and this is Claire
Conover. From DHS.”

“Detective Brighton.” He shook both our
hands with a firm grip and stepped aside to let us in. The room was much as I
remembered, with dingy white walls and a pervasive fog of cigarette smoke. The
furniture was stuff Ashley had acquired gradually from places like the
Salvation Army and the Alabama Thrift Store. An oak table with a water stain on
one end. Four mismatched, scratched wooden chairs. The couch, a beige and brown
plaid circa 1980, had a small tear on the arm.

Ashley slumped on the couch, her
unwashed brown hair hanging past her shoulders. Her hazel eyes were swollen and
red. I reminded myself, as I did every time I saw her, that she was only
twenty-three. Six years my junior. Her history of hard-core drugs and booze
made her look much older. Her skin was roughened, and she was missing two teeth
on the right side of her mouth. In one hand she held a cigarette, in the other
a wad of wet tissue. She saw me and stubbed out the smoke in an ashtray on the
chipped glass coffee table.

“Cl . . . Claire. I, I . . .” It seemed
my arrival was going to trigger a fresh wave of sobs. I put my arms around her
and patted her back. She pulled it together, sniffling, and reached for more
Kleenex.

“This is my supervisor, Mac McAlister.”

She nodded. “I remember. He was at my
first meetin’ with you.”

I looked at Detective Brighton. “I hope
we aren’t disturbing you.”

“No, Miss Hennessy and I were just
winding up. I’ve asked everything I need to for now. I’ll leave you alone.
We’ll need to talk again when we get the results of the autopsy.” The detective
placed his hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Get some rest.” Genuine kindness was
there, but it clashed with the sharpness of his personality. I wondered if the
solicitousness would last once we knew what happened to Michael. “Miss Conover,
and Mr. McAlister, can I talk to you outside?”

I answered him, “I’m afraid before I
talk to you, I’ll need Ashley’s permission.”

“Go ahead, I ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”

I pulled a release form out of my bag. I
hated to. Paperwork at this moment seemed heartless, but if there was ever a
time to cross my
t
’s
and dot my
i
’s,
it was now. Mac was right to be concerned about the legal consequences of
Michael’s death. Especially if this case wound up getting us sued. And chances
were good that it would. I fished out a pen and filled in the form. Ashley
signed without even looking at it, then started to cry again.

“Okay.”

We stepped outside to the passageway
where the detective lit his own cigarette. “Tell me about DHS’s involvement.”

I deferred to Mac, who told essentially
the same story I had related back at the office.

After he finished, Brighton looked at
me. “When was her last drug screen?”

“Last week. I got the results yesterday.
It was negative.”

“She gets them regularly?”

“She’s on the color system.” He nodded,
signaling that he knew what it was. All my clients with drug issues got tested
randomly. Ashley phoned a number every day and a recording announced the day’s
color. Hers was aqua. If her color was named, she had to leave a urine sample
at the lab. No exceptions, no excuses. In any given week, one person’s color
might not come up at all, or it could be called up to seven times. DHS liked to
think it kept them honest.

“She hasn’t had a dirty screen in a year
and a half, and I haven’t seen any evidence of backsliding,” I said. “No
suspicious behaviors, no running around with her old crowd. She hasn’t been
avoiding me. No new neglect or abuse reports from anyone. She never missed work
and —”

Brighton held up a hand. “Okay, okay. We
don’t know if she’s done anything wrong, so you don’t have to defend her. There
was no immediate evidence of physical abuse on the body, and no obvious head
injury, so we’ll just have to wait and see what’s going on.”

“What could’ve killed him? Did he choke
on something?”

“The paramedics that responded to the
nine-one-one call said he was deceased when they arrived. They didn’t see
anything in his mouth or throat. My guess is that he ate something that caused
his death. We’ll see what the coroner has to say after the autopsy.”

“When will that be?”

“Probably tomorrow.”

Mac and I both gave Brighton business
cards, and he promised to keep in touch. We went back into the apartment where
a devastated Ashley was still sitting on the sofa. I sat beside her and rubbed
the back of her worn green robe. Mac perched in one of the dining chairs placed
across from us.

I asked, “Ashley, can you tell me what
happened? I know you just told the police, but I need to know.”

There was a faraway look in her eyes. I
dreaded bringing her back and making her go through it again.

“I worked last night.” Her janitorial
job was from five to ten. “I went to Dazzle’s to pick Mikey up.” Dazzle was
Michael’s babysitter. “I got there about ten fifteen or so. He was asleep, like
he usually is, on the couch. Dazzle was in her nightgown, ready for bed, just
like every night. She gave me a picture he colored for me, and we woke him so I
could take him home. He slept all the way here in his car seat. I woke him up
again so I could put on his pj’s and help him brush his teeth. I poured him
some orange juice in a sippy cup, but he was too tired to drink it. He left it
on the coffee table. Then he fell asleep right here next to me,” she touched a
place on the couch, “with his blanky.” I knew she meant the fleece blanket
printed with lambs that Michael dragged everywhere. “I watched some TV. Then I
carried him to bed about eleven thirty.”

Her eyes filled with tears again. “And
that’s it. I swear. It was just like every single other night.”

Now the hard part. “Then what?”

“I woke up at six, like always. Some
mornings I get me and Mikey dressed and go to the nine o’clock AA meetin’ at
St. Monica’s. Sometimes I just stay here. But by ten thirty he has to be at
Dazzle’s so I can get to work.” Ashley’s day job was as a waitress, from eleven
to four. “I didn’t go to a meetin’ yesterday ’cause I needed to go do laundry.
I went into Mikey’s room to get him up and sort his dirty clothes, and he
wasn’t in bed.”

She inhaled through her rising emotion.
“So I came out here, and he wasn’t on the couch, so I looked in the kitchen.”
She glanced toward the galley-style room behind us. “He was on the floor. He
was blue. Oh, Claire, he was so blue. I tried shaking him, but he wouldn’t wake
up.”

I could feel my own heart racing and my
throat was tightening again. I swallowed back tears and glanced at Mac, whose
face was unnaturally still.

“I called nine-one-one. There wasn’t
nothin’ they could do. The police came. Lots of them, lookin’ at everything.
Taking pictures and videos. Then the guy from the coroner came.”

“Did Michael eat anything? Maybe he had
a reaction to something. Like an allergy.”

“He didn’t have no allergies, and I
don’t think he ate nothin’.”

“He couldn’t have gotten into anything?”

“I babyproofed this house just like you
showed me.”

That was true. All the sockets were
covered, and the last time I’d looked, all the cabinets were fitted with those
little plastic gadgets that kept the doors from being pulled open. The cleaning
supplies and chemicals were as hidden as possible. Medications, even the
over-the-counter ones, were put away in Ashley’s bedroom.

“Well, I guess the police will give us
more answers.” I deliberately avoided the word autopsy. “Why don’t you go get
dressed? Mac and I can wait for you, and then I want to take you to Nona. I
don’t want you to be alone today. Or tonight.”

I looked at Mac for confirmation. “That
seems like a good plan.”

Nona Richardson was the director of St.
Monica’s Home for Recovery where Ashley had lived for her first three hellish
months of rehab. She and Nona shared a special bond. Nona would make sure
Ashley didn’t run off and get high again. I’d hate for Ashley to blow her
sobriety, and if she were ever going to, it would be today. And I couldn’t say
I’d blame her.

Mac and I waited while the shower ran. I
began to wander around the apartment, still shaky and restless. Except for a
quick peek, I didn’t go into the kitchen. It didn’t look any different than
usual. The avocado counters were wiped down and clean dishes drained in the
sink. I don’t know what I expected to see. A chalk outline. Michael’s ghost,
maybe. Some sign he had died there.

I paced over to the hallway, pausing by
the door to Michael’s room. It was closed, and I left it that way. I walked the
length of the living room again. On the wall above a metal cart that supported
a small TV were two collage-style picture frames for photos, the kind sold at Wal-Mart
for about seven bucks. One was dedicated to Michael. His first picture was
there, the one they’d taken at the hospital just after birth. Another was at
his first birthday party, taken by his foster mother as he blew out a candle on
a cupcake. She’d sent me a copy too. The rest were more recent snapshots of him
playing in a small plastic pool. Ashley had been absent for so much of his
young life, these were probably all the memories she’d been able to capture of
him. And now he was gone forever.

In the second collage were some people I
recognized. One picture was of Dee, Ashley’s mom, sitting in a white resin
chair underneath a tree. Another was of Ashley’s best friend. In the third, two
girls I’d never seen before leaned on the hood of a car. A fourth showed three
guys about Ashley’s age sitting on her couch, laughing. The reminders of how
happy Ashley had been before last night made me uncomfortable, and I started
pacing again.

Mac said, “Sit down, you’re making me
nervous.”

“Shouldn’t we be nervous?”

“Right now, it looks like a very
unfortunate accident. Nothing anyone could have prevented. What’s your schedule
look like today?”

I pulled my day planner out of my
satchel. “I have an intervention meeting at two, then I have to write a court
report. I was planning to catch up on other paperwork this morning.”

“Reschedule the IM. This is going to
take up the rest of the day.”

“To say the least.”

Ashley rejoined us, dressed in faded
jeans and a T-shirt, her still-wet hair tight in a ponytail. “I have to call
work.” I knew she meant the restaurant.

“Want me to do it?”

“No, it’s okay.” She uncradled the
cordless phone and went into her bedroom, closing the door. A few minutes
later, with evidence of fresh tears on her face, she emerged. “I’m ready.”

She had packed a small overnight case,
which she carried in one hand. In the other was Michael’s blanky. My throat did
that thing again.

Mac’s expression still revealed little
emotion, but now I had the feeling it was taking more effort. “I need to head
back to the office,” he said. “Are you okay to drive once we get there?”

I nodded. “I’m fine. Really.”

As we made our way to Mac’s Cadillac, I
couldn’t help but notice a car parked alongside the curb across the street. An
old Dodge Charger, painted a garish lime green, with chrome twenty-four-inch
rims. Ashley glanced at it, once, then twice, quickly. The driver slouched, a
sideways baseball cap low over his forehead. He cranked the engine and roared
away as we buckled up.

It was a mostly silent ride from
Avondale to downtown. Mac dropped us off in the parking lot of our four-story
office building, a former department store. “You coming in?”

“No, I think we’ll just go to St.
Monica’s.”

The heat was stifling in my
seven-year-old Honda Civic. I cranked the AC up all the way, but felt myself
beginning to perspire again under my thin blue shirt. Birmingham, trapped in a
valley between two mountain ridges, was hazy from the constant smog that
hovered from June through September. A cool breeze would’ve been nice.

 
Ashley leaned her head against the passenger
window. She looked worn out. I turned onto Fourteenth Street and drove to the
south side of the city. St. Monica’s Home for Recovery sat halfway up Red
Mountain, overlooking downtown. A boardinghouse built for steel workers in the
1800s, it was a mammoth place with an old-fashioned front porch, columns and
all. The surrounding area had morphed from middle class to slum to upper class.
The Catholic Church had been lucky to purchase the house during its slum phase
and could make serious money on the property if they wanted to move the home.
Nona, however, wasn’t about to let that happen. She was there for life.

I parked in the small alley that
bordered the house. One of the residents was sweeping the steps. Ashley and I
entered through the leaded glass door into the living area. Four or five women
relaxed on couches, engrossed in a courtroom show on a console television. A
woman at a small secretary said Nona was in her office. Ashley and I made our
way down the hall to a small enclosed area in the back that had once been a
screened porch. Nona was behind her massive, cluttered desk. She lifted her
over-two-hundred-pound frame out of the chair and immediately put her arms
around Ashley, who started to cry again. “There, baby, hush now.”