November 17, one year ago
"I just landed and I'm going to pick up my bag now. I'm in Terminal 3."
The bright-eyed, widely-smiling college student walked quickly down the concourse in the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Her complexion suggested that she spent considerable time outdoors, but the parka she held over one arm stated otherwise. As she finished her call and shoved her cell phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she flipped her hair to the other side of her head and ran a hand through the hair at her crown. Dark curls cascaded over one shoulder and across her back. She'd flown over two thousand miles that afternoon and her hair definitely showed it.
When a car pulled up by the Terminal 3 exit doors, she was greeted enthusiastically by a middle-aged man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, cut-off jeans, and flip flops.
"What, no socks to complete the outfit?" she asked jokingly.
Her father grinned at her. "I knew I was forgetting something."
She groaned.
"Welcome home, sweetie," he said. "I hope you're hungry. I made some of my famous chili for dinner."
The girl sighed happily. "I forgot how much I missed Southwestern food! New England is great and all, but they really don't know how to make Mexican."
As they drove home, she regaled her father with stories about school, telling him all about her classes that semester, her friends' complicated relationship disasters, and that one time Professor MacSuain threw a stapler during lecture.
"Sounds like you've had an exciting semester," her father said as he pulled into the driveway.
"Where's Mamá?" she asked, noticing her mother's car was absent from the garage.
"She had some extra work to do this weekend at the bank. She'll pick up Julie on her way home. Which reminds me of something."
He turned to her with a wicked smile she recognized from her childhood.
"You've got something up your sleeve, haven't you?" Tayja asked, returning his smile with a knowing one.
"How'd you like to get back at your hermanita for that little prank she pulled on you last summer?"
"The prank mi hermanita pulled on me? More like the prank mi papi pulled on me."
His smile lost none of its gleam. "Trivial detail. We still have some leftover decorations from Julie's Halloween party last month. Wouldn't it be satisfying to see the terror on her face when a ghoul jumps out at her in the front hallway?"
"Dad, you're positively malicious. I'm ashamed to be related to you."
"But you'll do it?"
"No!"
He looked disappointed.
"Fine. But I'm not going to scare her, just surprise her. Mom wanted my visit home to be a surprise for Julie, not an opportunity to scare the living daylights out of her."
This seemed to appease him.
"But right now I'm going to put my bags away. You figure out where I should hide."
When she returned from unpacking her bags, her father was eyeing the large cabinet in the living room with a speculative look.
"Do you remember when you used to hide in here?"
"You mean, when I was five?" she asked, incredulously.
"You haven't grown too much since then."
Tayja rolled her eyes at him.
"Really, Dad? A height joke? Look who's talking."
"Oh, my pride," he said, pressing a hand to his chest. "You've wounded me."
She laughed. "I've missed you, Papi." She turned back to the cabinet. "I suppose I am a little curious myself."
She opened the cabinet door and wedged herself into the small space. She fit, if she held her knees tightly against her chest, pulled her head down at an awkward angle, and only took shallow breaths.
"A perfect fit!" her father exclaimed.
"Perfect fit? Are you kidding me?"
"I think we can even shut the door all the way," he said, swinging it shut.
"If you lock me in here, I'm going to steal your car," she threatened.
"You can't steal a car if you're locked in a cabinet," he pointed out.
"Dad!"
He opened the door. "Just kidding. I think this will work. The door closes all the way and you can't tell anyone's in there."
Tayja crawled out of the confined space and brushed the dust off of her arms and legs. "Julie better be ecstatic."
"I'm gonna check on the chili. Mamá and Julita will be home soon, so don't go far."
"I won't," she said, giving him some impressive side-eye. "It smells amazing, by the way."
"Of course it does. They don't call it Clarence's Famous Chili for nothing."
"Oh really? Name three people who call it that."
Her father stepped back into the living room and held up a fist, raising his fingers as he counted. "Me, myself, and I."
"Ugh," she said in mock disgust.
They both turned at the sound of the garage door opening.
"Hide quick," her father said, stepping back into the kitchen to play it cool.
Tayja crawled back into her hiding spot, fumbling with the cabinet door. "Dad! The door won't close!" she called in a stage whisper. Footsteps rushed over and the door's weak magnetic catch clicked as the door was pushed back into place.
Just then, the garage door opened.
"We're home!" Tayja's mother called.
Tayja reached forward with one finger and scratched at the painted-over glass pane. The piece of furniture was second-hand, a piece they'd picked up at a garage sale years earlier. There was already a small spot where the paint had come off of the glass. Tayja made it just a tiny bit bigger so she could see out.
A shriek came from the garage and Tayja smiled to herself, wondering if her father had decided to scare Julie with a ghoul costume after all. Then she heard two unfamiliar voices and the room quickly came violently alive.
Two men walked into the house through the garage door, one holding Julie. The teenager fought, but the man's grip only grew tighter.
"Let go of my daughter," Mr. Clarence said, all the levity gone from his voice.
"Where's the money?" the older man growled, holding a gun in his hand that he quickly pointed at Tajya's father.
"I'll answer any questions you have when you LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER," he said in a voice edged with danger.
The man holding Julie pulled a gun from his side. He rested the barrel against her temple and sneered. "We call the shots around here, not you. You keep your voice down and you," he said, turning to Mrs. Clarence, "answer the question."
"Wha-what?" she asked.
"The money, stupid cow. We know you found the money. All we want to know is what you did with it, then your sweet little girl here can keep her brains inside her head."
"It - it's at the bank. I don't have your money."
The man holding Julie struck her across the face violently and she screamed.
"Stop!" her mother cried.
"Lie to me again, and your daughter loses an eye," said the man pointing a gun at Mr. Clarence.
"We know it's not at the bank. The security box is empty and you were seen opening it, now tell us where you hid the money!"
"I promise you, I didn't take it anywhere! It's still at the bank, I-"
A gunshot ripped through the tension in the living room. Mrs. Clarence screamed and her husband leaped at the man holding Julie's now limp body.
Inside the cabinet, Tayja bit back a scream of her own. She couldn't see through the cabinet especially well, but she could hear everything that was happening in perfect clarity. She shivered and tried not to cry as she watched her sister's body collapse.
Another gunshot sounded and Mrs. Clarence screamed again. Her husband lay on the floor beside their daughter, blood pooling on the tile.
The older man let out a string of curses. "Shit, man, you weren't supposed to kill them before she talked! How do you expect to get information out of her now that you've killed our only bargaining chips and alerted half the city that we're here?"
"My finger slipped!"
"Twice?"
"He was coming at me, man. What was I supposed to do?"
"You weren't supposed to shoot him in the head!"
Mrs. Clarence was oblivious to the argument. She crawled on hands and knees toward the bodies of her husband and her daughter, weeping. In the cabinet, Tayja struggled to keep her sobs silent.
"We gotta go. The cops will be here any minute."
"What do we do with her?"
Both men looked down at the woman who was cradling the body of her youngest child. The older man raised his gun.
A third gunshot rang out, and Mrs. Clarence collapsed, never to rise again. Tayja couldn't hold back a little noise of horror, and both men twisted to look at her hiding place.
"Did you hear that?"
"Is there someone else here?"
"We watched the place for days. There's just the one daughter that lives with them. The other one moved out."
Terror coursed through her as they both stepped nearer, looking for the source of the sound. The little chip in the paint offered her a clear view of the faces of her family's murderers. If they'd kept advancing, they might have seen her too. At that moment, sirens could be heard wailing in the distance.
"Let's get out of here," the younger man said. They both fled out through the garage door, leaving Tayja's world destroyed in their wake.
Even though she knew they were gone, Tayja didn't move from her hiding spot for a very long time. She didn't make another sound. Her throat constricted and she wanted to weep. But the thought of those men coming back and finding her stopped her from anything more than a constant stream of tears down her face.
When the police entered, she was still too scared to say anything or to move. When a man began to cover the bodies of her family with white sheets, she realized they were truly gone. That was when she started to cry.
Tayja didn't remember the face of the police officer who found her hiding in the cabinet. She didn't remember the faces of the officers who spoke to her in the house, or drove her to the station. She didn't remember the face of the detective who began to ask her what had happened. But she remembered the faces she'd seen through the little scratch in the paint. Those faces would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her days.