I park two streets over and walk. The knife is on my belt, jacket covering it, gloves on from the car. The morning is cold and overcast. Nobody on the sidewalk. Nobody in the front yards. The only sound is a dog barking three houses down. Same dog every time. Small. Loud. Annoying as fuck, but not a problem.
The back door has a deadbolt and a knob lock. The knob lock takes four seconds. Kwikset, cheapest hardware store brand, the kind of lock you install when you don't actually believe anyone is coming through your door. The deadbolt takes another six. I'm inside.
Coffee and toast hit me as I walk through the kitchen. There's a plate on the counter with crumbs and a smear of butter. The dishwasher is running. From the living room, a television. Morning news, the anchor's voice bright and artificial.
I move through the kitchen into the hallway. The floorboard near the bathroom door creaks under my weight.
"Lin? That you?"
I step into the living room.
Paul Marino is in a recliner, mug in one hand, remote in his lap. His face cycles through three things in less than a second. Then his skin goes gray and his knuckles go white on the mug and the recognition settles into the kind of fear that empties a man's face of everything except the understanding that he is about to die.
He doesn't know my name, but he knows what I am. Men who work for organizations that traffic children and drug them and report on them make it their business to know what every enforcer on the eastern seaboard looks like. I am not a difficult man to remember.
His hand shoots toward the phone on the side table. Fast for fifty-four, but not fast enough. I cross the room in three strides, grab his wrist and pin it to the armrest. The mug drops, shatters on the hardwood. Coffee spreads in a dark stain under his feet, soaking into his socks.
"Who do you call?" I ask.
Nothing. His eyes are locked on the knife on my belt. I can feel his pulse through his wrist, hammering, skipping beats.
"The handler," I say. "The one you call every month from the back bedroom. Nine minutes. You tell them she's stable, medicated, not asking questions."
"I don't know what you're—"
"Don't."
He stops. His mouth is open, his bottom lip trembling, and there's sweat on his upper lip even though the house is cold.
"Eleven years." I tighten my grip on his wrist until the small bones grind together and he sucks air through his teeth. "You've been drugging a girl for eleven years. Watched her grow up inside a lie you built. Reported on her to the people who sold her. Gave her pills every morning and told her she had anxiety and you knew exactly what those pills were doing."
"We were told she was—"
I pull the knife.
The blade clears the sheath and the sound is small, just leather and steel, but Paul Marino hears it the way a man hears a gunshot. His whole body locks. His bladder releases. The stain spreads down his thigh and onto the recliner cushion. The smell hits the room, and I look at this man who fed pills to a child for eleven years and didn't lose a single night of sleep over it, and now he's pissing himself in his recliner because the bill just came due.
Two motions. The first opens his throat. The blade catches the light from the television on the way across, a flash that's there and gone, and then blood sheets down the front of his shirt and his hands come up to his neck, both of them, fingers trying to hold together what the knife separated. The second motion is insurance. Below the ear, into the soft tissue, angled up.He stops moving. His hands drop. He slumps sideways in the recliner. The television is still on and the news anchor is talking about the weekend forecast and the coffee stain is spreading toward my boots so I step back.
Three seconds standing over him. No change in my feelings. No rage, or satisfaction, sure as fuck no guilt. The rage was in the decision. The decision was made months ago in the apartment across from the restaurant, staring at coded placement records. This is execution. I've done enough of them to know the feeling comes later, or doesn't come at all.
I search the house.
The back bedroom is where they keep the operation. The closet has a lockbox. I break it open. Inside: four pill bottles, three sealed, one open. The labels are printed with a pharmacy name and address I already know is fictitious. Dosage instructions: "one daily, with food or water, for anxiety management." I take all four bottles.
The filing cabinet has three drawers. The bottom one holds the check-in logs. Handwritten, monthly, going back eleven years. Each entry dated and brief.
Asset stable. Medication consistent. No behavioral flags.
Asset started employment at local restaurant. Medication consistent. No flags.
Asset turned 21. Medication consistent. Social contact limited. No concerns.
Eleven years of Grace's life reduced to status reports in a retired municipal worker's handwriting. I take the logs.
The top drawer has the photographs. I pull the folder and open it.
Grace at fourteen. Taken from a distance, from a car, on a street I don't recognize. School uniform, backpack, hair in a ponytail. She's looking at the ground while she walks.
