Angel of the Underground

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Acknowledgments

  About David Andreas

  Copyright & Credits

  About Kaylie Jones Books

  About Akashic Books

  Also available from Kaylie Jones Books

  Foamers by Justin Kassab

  Strays by Justin Kassab

  We Are All Crew by Bill Landauer

  All Waiting Is Long by Barbara J. Taylor

  Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night by Barbara J. Taylor

  Unmentionables by Laurie Loewenstein

  Starve the Vulture by Jason Carney

  The Love Book by Nina Solomon

  Little Beasts by Matthew McGevna

  Some Go Hungry by J. Patrick Redmond

  The Year of Needy Girls by Patricia A. Smith

  For Alice Cooper

  To forgive is divine,

  but vengeance is mine.

  —Alice Cooper

  CHAPTER I

  Three children recently checked out of the Hartman Catholic Group Home in unspeakable ways. Their murders are amongst the worst ever committed on Long Island. I haven’t blamed God for not protecting them, but I am coming to believe His ways are as mysterious as they are malicious.

  * * *

  Kim Reidy was the first to die. Five weeks ago, she disappeared from the playground behind our church following mass. One child later said Kim followed a voice into the woods, but the alleged source was never seen. A daylong search in the nearby vicinity came up empty. Later that night, the police found Kim’s body in a weeded lot past a dead-end street two miles from our home. Only minor details regarding her cause of death were relayed to the media, but a witness leaked a cell phone photo showing her corpse. Blood was smeared across the white unicorn of her pink shirt and her left eye was missing.

  * * *

  My social worker, a stiff woman named Clara, grumbles as she navigates her Buick Regal over a deep pothole. She hasn’t said a word to me during the ordeal of peddling me to a new family. I doubt she even knows my name, since she constantly refers me to others as the “older female subject.” Her job is to take me from the group home, deliver me to a charitable family, and go about her business with the two other surviving kids. I feel as though I’m a task to her, and not a cause for concern.

  * * *

  Eleven days after Kim’s body was found, Bryan Nabatova went missing from his bedroom sometime between his eight o’clock bedtime and dawn. The sliced screen on his ground floor window suggested an intruder with specific intentions. Detectives found his carcass, dressed in his favorite fire truck pajamas, stuffed in the steel base of a train trestle and partially covered with lava rocks. As with Kim, clues to the killer’s identity were either unknown or withheld. The police informed the public that they were dealing with someone who had a personal investment in the crimes, as suggested by their high levels of violence. One particular trait tied them to the same culprit; Bryan’s left eye had also been extracted.

  * * *

  My social worker pulls up before my temporary house so abruptly the tires vibrate. The place is white with green shutters. I close my eyes, grasp the gold crucifix charm that hangs from my neck, and whisper a prayer for strength. I assume the door will open for me, and Clara will escort me to my new lodgings, but when I open my eyes I find her standing outside checking her watch.

  I reluctantly step out with my red suitcase, from crisp air conditioning to savage humidity. The butterflies in my stomach are waging war on each other. Clara hurries onto a blacktop driveway that branches off to a concrete stoop. I walk behind her at a much slower pace, happy to notice my right shoelace coming undone. “One second, please,” I say, to which Clara heaves a sigh. I kneel to tie my sneaker and pray for the will to carry on.

  * * *

  The third death that led to the group home’s sudden evacuation occurred within the house itself. Chris Myrow was claimed during the night. I had the displeasure of finding him while rounding up the kids for breakfast. He was hog tied with the same blue jump rope he often got in trouble for using indoors. A Nerf football was stuffed down his mouth and exposed through a slit in his throat. The sheet beneath him, once colorful with blue and orange triangles, had turned various shades of black and red. On the wall beside him, under a tacked up poster of Spider-Man, were the white-jelly remnants of his smeared left eye.

  Once news of Chris’ murder broke, our already tense group home became increasingly hectic. The phone never stopped ringing, spectators hung around on the street day and night, and news reporters set up camp on a neighbor’s lawn to film our home around the clock. Police frequently stopped in to check on us, and even arrested someone who refused to stop taking pictures from the property line.

  Instead of relocating the three survivors to another Catholic group home, our director decided to transfer us to separate foster homes across Long Island. We were picked up with relative ease. Married couples came and went, interacting with us under the watchful eyes of lawyers and social workers. Peter Heffernan and Amanda Czark were chosen on the first day, while I had to wait until the following afternoon. At fifteen, by far the oldest, I didn’t warrant the sympathy showered upon those deemed too young to defend themselves.

  While out in the backyard throwing a baseball against a pitch back, Sister Alice, wearing an old-fashioned skirt suit, called me in to meet a couple who’d come to see me. In the living room, my social worker and a suited lawyer were sitting on our three-cushioned couch. Across from them, on a much smaller love seat, sat Barry and Lori Grantham. Barry looked as though he was smuggling pillows under his shirt and down the legs of his slacks. Lori, on the other hand, was splinter thin. She sat compressed in the tight groove between her husband and the arm of the couch wearing a look of complete displeasure.

  Barry’s face, shrunken in the midst of his cheeks, beamed when he offered his hand to me and said, “You must be Robin.”

  I accepted his damp palm and replied, “Yes, sir. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  He shook my hand a little too hard, which strained my shoulder socket, and tilted his head while staring into my eyes. “Are those contacts? No eyes are that blue.”

  “They’re all mine.”

  I recovered my hand from Barry and offered it to Lori. She touched my palm with the tips of her fingers. Her eyes never rose above the button of my jeans. I uneasily backed into Sister Alice as the lawyer said to her, “We’ll need a moment with you in private, Sister.”

  Sister Alice turned me to the back door and whispered, “I’ll put in some good words.”

  She came outside twenty minutes later and explained that the couple had taken an interest in my high grades and good behavior, but said I shouldn’t get my hopes up since the blessed don’t always get what they deserve. A phone call later that day indicated they had decided to take me in after all. Sister Alice and I packed as much as we could into my meager suitcase, making sure to include my prized possessions: my Bible, wooden crucifix, and baseball mitt.

  * * *

  I rise from tying my sneaker and find Clara twirling her hand to speed me up. When I approach the front door, she steps aside and gives me the nerve-wracking honor of introducing myself to whomever might answer. I walk up the three steps and press a glowing doorbell to summon the first player in my new and remorseless life.

  CHAPTER II

  Worried no one is eager to meet me, I ring the doorbell a second time. As I gear up to knock, a storm door opens. An o
ld man in brown slacks and a blue checkered shirt glances outside. His eyes repeatedly blink as though he just woke up. When he finds me I pay him an apologetic smile.

  The old man opens the screen door outward while saying, “Oh, good, you’re here! Come in out of that heat!” I step inside to the cool air, but Clara follows no closer than the second step. The old man says to her, “Would you like to come in for some lemonade?”

  “Thanks, but no,” Clara replies, and hands him a manila envelope. “Call the numbers provided if you have any problems or questions about her.” Without saying so much as a goodbye or good luck to me, she walks away, adjusting her tight skirt. The old man closes both doors, shutting out everything I’m familiar with.

  I set my suitcase down beside a sofa and clasp my hands over my stomach. My frenzied butterflies are disrupting my bladder. I don’t want to ruin the old man’s first impression of me by having to go to the bathroom, so I try to will the nerves down by taking deep breaths through my nose.

  The old man smiles at me with perfectly white teeth, while his face crinkles upward toward a scalp full of brown spots. “Would you like a glass of lemonade?” he asks. “I’d hate to see it go to waste on a day like this.”

  Running dry, I say, “I’d love some.”

  “Great! Have a seat right over there and I’ll go get us some.” While he shuffles into a kitchen on bowed legs, I approach a wooden chair that’s resting near a green recliner. A small television tucked in a wooden entertainment center is showing a black-and-white documentary about a war. The volume is muted. On a shelf above the TV are an assortment of remote controls, framed pictures of strangers, and the receiver to a child’s monitor. The red light is glowing, but the speaker emits no sounds.

  I sit on the edge of the chair facing a dining room. Beneath a frosted chandelier is a shiny oak table surrounded by five upholstered chairs. A matching hutch with glass doors is filled with china plates, crystal glasses, and wedding trinkets. A door at the far right of the room has a handwritten sign that reads, BEWARE!

  The old man carries in a green plastic tray with a clear pitcher of iced lemonade on one side, and two stacked glasses on the other. His tongue worms out from his mouth as though leading the way. He places the tray on an end table while sliding back a lamp with a flowery shade. After separating the glasses, he lifts the pitcher with a considerable amount of strain and pours them both full. He hands me the first glass with a wobbly hand, and sits down in the recliner with the other glass. Upon landing, one of his hips pops and causes him to groan. He smiles through the pain, and when it’s clear he’s not injured I say, “This is a very nice house, sir.”

  “Please, call me Nathan.” He toasts his glass to me and takes a delicate sip. I down three big swallows, which soothe my parched throat. Nathan watches me with gratification. “Looks like the weather has gotten to you.”

  “Among other things.”

  “Did you know we have a pool?”

  Sister Alice had mentioned as much. She also brought up the two boys who were adopted into the family, and said their ages were close to mine. “Will the other kids mind sharing with me?”

  He leans forward and sternly says, “If those two give you any problems, you come see me.”

  I pat a hand over my crucifix charm to show him I’m protected and say, “I guarantee they won’t bring me down.”

  Nathan laughs so abruptly his upper teeth shift off their brackets and project from his mouth. To pretend I don’t notice, I look over the wall décor, which mainly consists of a large painting of geese flying over a wooded stream at dawn. Strangely, there isn’t a single mark of religion anywhere. I don’t expect every house to live up to the group home’s standards, but most places I’ve visited at least have a cross here or there.

  “You’re pretty secretive in your spiritual beliefs.”

  Nathan bites his dentures back into place, hisses up drool, and says, “I’m afraid those days are long gone. We got rid of God years ago.” My stomach bursts into flames, incinerating my lemonade-coated butterflies. “I’m surprised no one told you.”

  “A lot was left out in the rush.” I had assumed I would go from one Catholic house to another, but understood the importance of leaving an active crime scene regardless of anyone’s association with the Almighty. I loosen my grip on the lemonade glass, so I don’t end up with a handful of wet shards, and force a contented smile.

  “You’ve nothing to worry about. We won’t get in the way of your practices, no matter how purposeless they may be.” Nathan reaches over to the end table for an orange pill box shaped like a seashell, and extracts a white capsule from inside. “As much as I hate to cut our conversation short, the doc’s got me on a tight schedule with these little ditties, and they tend to knock me out cold.” He takes the pill with his lemonade, rubs his larynx with an index finger to will the “ditty” down, and coarsely says, “Not that you wanted to keep an old man company all day.”

  “Is the couple that found me home?”

  “They’ll be back from work around seven.” He stands and pats my head. “Let me show you out back. The sooner you let those boys warm up to you the better.”

  I put my glass down on the tray and follow Nathan into a kitchen that’s carpeted beneath a corner table but tiled everywhere else. He opens a wooden door that leads out to a garage, where gardening and lawn equipment are strewn near a back wall. A workbench is littered with tools, pipes, and multicolored wires. Two BMX bikes lie on the oil spotted concrete.

  A screened storm door on our right leads to the backyard, where I can hear the sounds of a baseball slapping into separate gloves. I think to get mine, but don’t want to make Nathan wait on my account. Not with his tight schedule and all.

  I step outside onto a concrete patio that holds a picnic table, matching benches, and a charcoal grill. To my far right is an above ground pool coupled with an unpainted wooden deck. The surrounding lawn has more crabgrass than regular grass, widespread brown patches, and a ton of anthills. Further back, beyond a long two-post fence, the boys are throwing a baseball back and forth. One boy stands in front of a wire-enclosed garden, the other a homemade swing set where four wooden benches hang on heavy chains.

  I march through the damp heat, passing a white aluminum shed with crooked green doors, and make eye contact with the boy in front of the garden. He’s bony and has dark circles beneath his eyes. I smile at him, but he rolls his eyes away and seems to snarl. I alter my direction toward the other boy, who looks slightly older and has a fuller figure. After catching a fastball that pops into his glove, he notices me and offers a thin smile, though his eyes remain cheerless. I can’t tell if he’s nervous to meet me or agitated that I’m interrupting them, but when I stop at the fence he says in a friendly tone, “Robin, right?”

  “That’s me,” I reply. “Sorry, but I forgot your names.”

  “I’m Dennis. That’s Jeremy.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Jeremy says, “now go back inside and fuck yourself! This isn’t a good month to be seen with any of you zealots from that death trap!”

  Though I’ve had plenty of practice in school dealing with kids not wanting anything to do with me, thanks to my religious background and outdated dresses, Jeremy’s words and their heated tone anger me to the core. The Granthams are supposed to offer compassionate safety, not mindless banter from bullies.

  Dennis taps his mitt on my shoulder. “Don’t listen to a word he says. He doesn’t like anybody who isn’t him.”

  “I brought my own glove,” I say. “Can I play?”

  “Are you any good?”

  I hold out my hand for the ball. Dennis drops it into my palm. I crawl through the fence posts and, after a quick windup, throw heat at Jeremy. In trying too hard to show off my speed, the ball sinks and hits the dirt. Jeremy could have taken a step forward to keep me from looking like a fool, but he lets the ball skip past him and roll against the garden. He issues a demeaning snort and says, “Who taught you how to
throw? An altar boy with a sore bunghole?”

  “Her velocity’s up there,” Dennis says.

  “Big deal! She could have queefed with better location.”

  Nobody on ESPN ever used such a term to describe a pitch, but since it came from Jeremy, I figure it’s best to ignore what he means.

  Dennis steps in front of me, as if to purposely block my view of his adoptive brother. “Did you see your room yet? Barry made me paint it. Not that I minded.”

  “Not yet,” I reply.

  He takes off his glove, looks back at Jeremy who’s facing us in a pitching stance, and tells him, “I’m showing her to her room. If that ball comes near us, you’ll eat it.”

  Jeremy readjusts himself and darts the ball directly into the garden, snapping a wooden post that had been supporting green tomatoes. Unfazed, Dennis heads toward the house as though he’s seen this type of behavior before.

  I follow Dennis through the kitchen and into the dining room, where my suitcase is leaning against the door with the warning sign. Nathan, who’s snoring in his chair, must have placed it there before conking out. Though I was expecting Dennis to show me to a room upstairs, once he opens the door and flips on a light switch, I curiously follow him down a flight of twelve wooden steps. At the bottom is a finished basement where circular lights are embedded in a ceiling of sheet rock. The floor has light blue carpeting, the walls are paneled, and the odor is a blend of fresh paint, stale air, and mildew.

  Across the hall from two closed doors is an open room that Dennis presents to me with open hands. I peek inside with gratification. The area is small but perfectly suitable for a short stay. The furnishings are white, the walls pink, and the carpet matches the hallway. There’s nothing in the way of décor, but I don’t mind because I don’t plan on staying long enough to embellish the space.

  “If you need anything,” Dennis says, “I’m not far.”