Vanished in the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

I work the night shift.” She glanced up at the clock. It was close to eight o’clock now. “I have to be there in a few hours.”
    “Okay, well, thanks again for this photo. We’ll make a copy and get your original back to you as soon as possible. We’ll also keep you posted when we learn anything concrete. In the meantime, feel free to call if you can think of anything.”
    She nodded and showed them to the door.
    As they walked to the car, Zach looked back at the condo, strewn with fake spiderwebs and strings of pumpkin lights.
    “I say we go talk to the stepfather next,” Rodriguez said.
    Zach got in the car. “Damn straight.”
They were gone. Veronica sat at the kitchen table and laid her hands flat against the wood, trying to soak up its stillness and stability. How much more horrible was this going to get? McKnight had said Max had been dead for a while. A year? Ten years? They probably didn’t know themselves yet. Had he been trying to get back to her when he’d somehow ended up in that construction site? Or had he still been running away?
    Would she ever know?
    If there wasn’t enough left of Max for her to ID, was there enough to start an investigation? Veronica didn’t even know what to hope for. Knowing he was dead was bad enough. Having to probe back into those days when he was still around? Pretty much the opposite of priceless.
    Some kids learned to block traumatic memories, and she often wished she was one of those. It would be nice to settle a hazy curtain over her childhood.She didn’t need it blocked out entirely; she’d learned some valuable, if unpleasant, lessons. How to calm an angry drunk. What to feed a person with the mother of all hangovers. When to duck and when to hide. She sure as hell didn’t need to remember it in the kind of detail that she did, though. She didn’t need to replay it in her dreams. She didn’t need to flash on it at work when things got crazy.
    Most of the time, she kept the door shut tight on the past. At the moment, that wasn’t so easy. Images flooded back to her: Her father’s face distorted with rage, spittle flying from his lips as he roared at Max. Max’s head snapping to the side after a hard slap, his screams when his arm was twisted up behind his back. The racial slurs. The insults. Her mother’s tears. Her brother’s shame and quiet courage.
    Things had calmed down some right after Max went away. Her father had seemed harder to set off. There’d actually been some family dinners where nothing had gotten thrown at anyone and no one had ended up in tears. It hadn’t lasted, though. Dad never went after Mama with the ferocity that he’d gone after Max, but Veronica understood now that the focus of the anger was really secondary to the anger itself. Something burned inside her father. Something hard and fetid and nasty.
    She hadn’t understood that as an eight-year-old.She’d been terrified that Dad might send Mama away next and the only target left in the house would be her. The slight nausea of shame crept up her throat. Her mother had been a human shield for her; could anyone blame her for dulling the pain with booze?
    At first it was wine. Then Celeste had discovered vodka, which is not nearly as odorless as everyone says. By the time Veronica was thirteen, she could recognize when her mother was on a bender by the scent when she walked into the house.
    Eventually the booze had killed Celeste—and it had probably killed Max, too. If she hadn’t been drinking, maybe Mama might have looked for Max. Maybe it wouldn’t have been too late. Maybe they would have found him before he ended up nearly unidentifiable and alone in a construction site.
    Maybe he would have told Veronica that it was all okay—that he didn’t blame her for anything.
    She finally laid her head down on the table and cried.
It was well past dark by the time Zach and Frank got to Veronica’s father’s house. The porch light was off, but there was a light on inside and