Employee of the Year

Chapter 24 - A Father's Love

She was curled up on the bed, facing a rear window the overlooked the yard. She was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt. The mattress underneath her was bare and I spotted a few metal springs poking through the covering.

                A half-used bag of tan-colored powder sat on the night stand. I’d heard the rich white kids from the suburbs were the biggest customers for heroin nowadays. They preferred to sniff it or smoke it instead of injection. The rush took a little longer, but it left no scars.

                “I know you,” I said. I felt like I was in that part of a dream just before you wake up, the point where everything finally starts to make sense.

Even now, in this sleazy carriage house wearing old hand-me-down clothes, she was just as beautiful as I remembered. An angel always shines, even if she is trapped in hell. I took my time matching every lovely feature to the image burned in my memory: her flowing, golden hair, her pure, porcelain skin, her dazzling emerald eyes, and, of course, the mole on her cheek.

                She was the girl from the photo in Charlie’s office. The girl that Marcus Davis had Charlie searching for. She was Annabelle.

                “Who are you?” she said, grabbing a can of pepper spray hiding in the folds of her sweatshirt.

                “I am not going to hurt you,” I said, stepping away with my hands raised. “My name is Temo McCarthy. I am here to help you.”

                She gave me a mild smile. “I doubt you can help me.”

                “Why don’t you give me a chance?”

“My father sent you.”

                “Nobody sent me.”

                “You’re lying,” she said. “You work for him. I can tell.”

                “I am here on my own.”

                She laughed. “I grew up around liars. You’re not a very good one.”

                Her tone was biting, her voice sharp and self-assured. I figured it would take ten or fifteen minutes for the junk to hit her bloodstream.

                “You don’t need to tell my father where I am,” she said calmly. “I don’t know why he wants to find me now. He never cared about anyone except himself.”

                “Maybe he’s changed.”

                She laughed cynically. “He can’t change. Not of his own volition. He’s too convinced of his own greatness. Look what happened to Napoleon. They put him on an island in the middle of the ocean and he still wouldn’t change his thinking.”

I was trying to remember who Napoleon was. He must have been one of those people that they teach you about at those schools in the suburbs.

“My father won’t change until something defeats him. He has to know what it’s like to feel helpless and humiliated. That’s how we felt.”

                I was intimidated by this girl, with her strange combination of intelligence and despair.

“Why are you here, Annabelle? Why are you doing this to yourself?”

                “I am stuck. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” She laughed cynically.