A Name in the Dark Page 5

  Upstairs is a different matter. Family portraits line the wall—images of Elizabeth growing up and professional photographs of Carmen, including some that suggest she used to be a model or an actress. There are portraits of a man I can only assume is—was—her husband.

  There are no candid shots. These are posed portraits, assembled to show a family. Curiously, they don’t show the entire family together. Everyone is there, just in different pictures. Even my dysfunctional family posed for a group photo once in a while.

  One picture strikes me—a man standing in front of a store called Super Tech. It’s not Teddy. “Is this your husband?”

  Carmen nods. “Marcos. The day he opened the first store.” I can tell by Carmen’s tone that we’re back on script.

  I toss some underhanded softballs to see if any useful information can be culled from casual conversation. “Still open?”

  “No. This was taken in 1993. We had to expand years later and closed down the first store.”

  I point at the photo. “That must have been a proud day.”

  “Yes. When Marcos arrived in America, he had only a hundred dollars. He worked and saved up many years to open that store. He was a hardworking man, and it was important to him to prove he could live the American dream.”

  Carmen wipes a tear from her cheek and waits for me to finish admiring the photo. Instead, I think about her delivery. I’ve only taken one acting class, but I can tell she’s totally indicating.

  At this moment, I can’t figure out what bothers me about the whole thing. Unhappy marriage? Business in debt? Loan sharks? My only suspect, Leona?

  I shake it off, and we continue on to Elizabeth’s room. I immediately see her mother’s influence in the decor, though this is the most brightly colored room in the house. Shades of blue and red adorn most every inch of the room. There are fewer pictures of Elizabeth here than in the hall but plenty of pictures of friends. The ones of Elizabeth are from the past few years, as suggested by the red sweater with USC on the chest.

  My phone comes out, and I take photos while Carmen and Leona watch patiently. I capture snapshots of the occasional knickknack that catches my attention. Mostly, I take pictures of pictures.

  Near the bed are two items of note, a crucifix on the wall and a statue of the Virgin Mary on the bedside table. I’m careful not to get too close to them.

  I can’t help but notice how much Elizabeth’s room reminds me of my room when I was younger. A collage of photos above her vanity shows her with friends, just like the one I had. A crucifix hangs above her bed. I had the same thing. Instead of USC cardinal-and-gold pennants, I had blue-and-white pennants. My mother wanted me to be a Nittany Lion, and I was supposed to go to Penn State after high school… before the whole demon thing happened.

  I find what I’m looking for when I locate Elizabeth’s laptop sitting on her bed. It strikes me as curious that a freshman at USC would leave for school in the morning and not bring her laptop. I don’t mention it.

  “She might have a great deal of information on her laptop. I would like to borrow it to see what I can find.”

  At this, Leona says, “I don’t think we can let you do that.”

  I look at Leona then at Carmen. My impression now is that Leona is there to protect Carmen. Possibly from me.

  I wait for an answer but don’t press. Carmen then speaks up. “I’m sure Father Castillo told you about my situation—why I cannot go to the police. I don’t know what my daughter has in her computer, but I simply cannot risk letting it out of my home. If you would like, you may look through it now. While I am here.”

  I can’t say I blame her. If my home and residency were in jeopardy, I might be wary about letting a computer with potentially damaging evidence leave my house. In an effort to assure her, I explain what I’ll be looking for on the computer. Emails. Search history. Social-media profiles. A diary. I open the screen and talk her through my search. As expected, the computer is password protected.

  “Now what?” Carmen asks.

  I restart the computer in safe mode and remove a flash drive from my pocket. Paige created an application for me to use for just such an occasion. I talk Carmen through the task at hand—an attempt at a brute-force attack to crack the password and access the computer. She stares back at me with a confused expression then keeps a worried eye on me while I work. I can only imagine that my explanation reinforces her fears about my taking the computer. But it’s not like I could use Elizabeth’s laptop to access all their personal banking files, steal their private fortune, and collect enough evidence to have them deported.

  Paige could, but I don’t tell Carmen that.

  In about five minutes, I finally have access to Elizabeth’s desktop. I open her emails, and we scan them, looking for communications between her and her friends. As I expected, there’s very little. Most people Elizabeth’s age communicate almost exclusively from their cell phones. Email is too formal.

  I look through her files to see if she keeps a journal. Nope. There are plenty of folders for homework and college classes. Elizabeth seems like a good student.

  Then we hit the browser. I go straight to Facebook and give her timeline a cursory glance. There’s been no activity in the past week. I check her About page. USC student. No relationship status. I scroll her more than three thousand friends—just a bunch of happy teens and young adults in college, too many to research right now.

  When I search through the security settings in her browser, I’m able to reveal many of the passwords she has saved. Without drawing too much attention to my actions, I quickly export the passwords from the browser and onto the USB drive. I search for other accounts and social media but find nothing on her laptop. Like other teens, she accesses most of her accounts through apps on her phone, so the laptop doesn’t offer much. I scour her search history. There’s nothing atypical—no weekend getaways, remote locations, or How to Disappear without a Trace—so I close the laptop and retrieve the USB stick.

  This anonymous boyfriend makes one suspect—two if I still count Leona. I agree to help Carmen take the case. She’s appreciative and offers a hug as thanks. I propose a fee—more than my usual—and Carmen accepts without a hassle. Leona produces a signed check that Carmen fills out.

  Before I leave, Carmen insists I take some more paella. I don’t want to be rude, so I accept two large containers. I’m beginning to like Carmen.

  Leona walks me to the gate, and who should I pass while I’m leaving but Hugo—Mr. Library himself. He emerges from the cab of a delivery van for Super Tech and glares at me when we catch each other’s eye. I smile and nod. He counters with a sneer and marches into the house.

  Leona watches our silent exchange. “What was that about?”

  “We’re in a book club together.”

  * * *

  My Spidey senses tell me not to trust Hugo. I’m also not sure of his role in this whole thing. The fact that he was driving a Super Tech van suggests he works directly for the electronics chain—the business—and not Carmen personally. But his appearance at the library and then Carmen’s home tells me he’s more closely involved with Carmen than just on a professional level. When I combine that with the tough-guy attitude, I decide to add him to my list of suspects.

  I wonder if that was what bothered me about the Super Tech photo and Carmen’s Razzie performance in the hall. What’s the personal connection? Is he her boyfriend?

  It’s weird for me to think about a grown woman having a boyfriend. The term sounds so juvenile. Then I remind myself that I’m an adult, and I don’t have a boyfriend. Now I feel like a loser.

  Chapter 6

  ____◊____

  WHEN I GET HOME, OUR living room is spotless. There is no sign of the boxes, and the papers that had once littered the floor are gone. Paige looks up from her spot at our dining room table as she slurps up leftover noodles.

  “What happened to—”

  “Don’t ask,” s
he says. That pretty much tells me all I need to know. After yet another attempt to glean new information from the mountain of documents, she has achieved nothing. She changes the subject. “How did your meeting go?”

  I can tell Paige is looking for an opportunity to take her mind off her search, and I’m happy to oblige. After putting away the paella for later, I take a seat at the table across from Paige, grab some chopsticks, and dig into a box of dumplings. “Can you run some background research on a Carmen Viramontes?”

  “Who’s Carmen Viramontes?” Paige asks, setting her noodles on the table next to me.

  “Widow in Pasadena who owns a chain of electronics stores. Husband was Marcos Viramontes. Her daughter, Elizabeth, is missing.”

  “Runaway?”

  “TBD. The mom is undocumented, so I don’t know how much you’ll be able to find online with a cursory search. You might have to be creative.”

  Paige smiles. Creative is my way of saying she may have to bend the laws just a bit. Paige loves being creative. Whenever I get a job, I bring Paige in for some black-hat help and give her a cut. Not that it matters. We share so many costs at this point that we should just open a joint bank account and become common-law partners.

  As we eat, Paige shows me what she is able to uncover—a lot of reviews about the Super Tech chain, which has seven locations in all. Some online reviews mention Teddy, the proxy for the franchise. No one mentions Carmen or Marcos. The Viramontes have done a pretty good job of staying out of the public eye.

  Using the passwords I captured on the USB stick, we log into Elizabeth’s Facebook account. We each scroll through Elizabeth’s profile and begin the task of researching the timeline, friends, and photos of Elizabeth Viramontes. In reverse chronological order, we begin detailing the days, weeks, and months before her disappearance—attending a football game with friends, checking into bars in downtown LA, sharing posts from celebrities and news sites.

  After about an hour, I recognize one face that keeps popping up. It’s a young man in his early twenties with angular features and a pointed goatee that makes his whole head look like a triangle. In some posts, he’s tagged as Sebastian Gallo. We open his profile and begin scanning his page. Scrolling down, we find more pictures of him and Elizabeth—posing at a concert, hugging on the beach, holding hands at the mall, kissing at the park.

  “I think we found the boyfriend,” I say.

  The amount of information at this stage is limited. There’s no evidence that he’s a student at USC or any other college. There’s no indication of his job. What is clear, however, is that he likes to “party.”

  Judging by the requests on his wall, he’s also the source of the party. There are numerous posts of people asking, “Can you hook me up?” Others are looking for “T,” and some are flat-out placing volume orders for cocaine. Sebastian Gallo is a drug dealer.

  “This guy is a real winner,” Paige remarks. “Why would she date him?”

  I shoot her a look. Pot. Kettle. Black.

  “Shut up,” she says, glaring at me out of the corner of her eye. “How do you want to proceed?”

  “Let’s use Tiffany.”

  Tiffany Maddox is a catfish profile we created on another case. She’s a young woman who works at Hooters to put herself through school at a fashion college. Tiffany has a Facebook profile, a Twitter account, several dating accounts, and a blog dedicated to fashion. Most of the content was my handiwork. The images are all of Paige. It took some convincing, but I needed someone superhot, and Paige’s body has often been described as “redonculous.” After we launched the various online profiles, Tiffany soon gathered thousands of friends and followers of people she’d never met in real life. Paige and I both later admitted to being jealous of Tiffany’s online popularity.

  Paige logs into Tiffany’s Facebook account and sends a friend request to Sebastian. Five minutes later, we get the alert that Sebastian has accepted our request. Of course he has. Thank you, Tiffany Maddox.

  Now that we’re connected, we can view even more of his photos, check-ins, and likes. It’s like getting an engraved invitation to invade someone’s privacy. All it takes is an attractive profile picture and a man’s desperate need for sexual validation.

  We scroll through his albums and find more photos of Elizabeth and him. He has many pictures of them at dinner, at clubs, and at the beach. I also notice pictures of them with a group of mostly guys, none of whom I recognize from my glance at Elizabeth’s friend list or the photos on her walls. A lot of these guys are heavily tattooed. I presume they are friends of his.

  “Look at this,” Paige says, pointing at the screen. It’s a check-in to La Lucha, a bar in Lincoln Heights, eight days ago. Paige brings up Elizabeth’s Facebook page on another tab. She scrolls down and points to a check-in to La Lucha from the same day.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” I say. Good catch, Paige.

  While we continue to search, we get a message from Sebastian: S’up?

  Paige groans. “Here we go. A well-orchestrated attempt to sound cool and casual.”

  I take over the keyboard and write: Oh nothing. S’up with you?

  He responds: Just chillin like a villain.

  I accelerate the process: I’m looking for a party. You look like someone I need to know.

  Sebastian responds: You no it girl.

  The typo kills me, but I keep going: What’s fun?

  He answers: Rave tomorow.

  When I meet this guy, I promise myself I will buy him a dictionary. I accept the invitation, and he sends me the address.

  “Raves are never a good idea,” Paige says. “Maybe we shouldn’t go.”

  I review the invitation. Underground party on the outskirts of town at the invitation of my prime suspect? Oh yeah, this is going to end well.

  Chapter 7

  ____◊____

  MY MINI COOPER SPEEDS along the 210 freeway late in the evening. Paige rides shotgun, navigating from her phone while I drive. To our left is the entire San Fernando Valley—a blanket of warm lights spread out in a grid that goes on forever.

  I exit the freeway and proceed up a canyon highway. Within five minutes, we’ve left Los Angeles and are winding our way up a forgotten rural road. As we make our way up the hill, the ranch houses are spread farther and farther apart until they eventually disappear. There’s not a single car or street lamp in sight. The cityscape has long since disappeared from my rearview mirror. My headlights, the only source of light, illuminate a cracked and patched stretch of asphalt with a curtain of darkness on either side.

  “Keep going for another mile,” Paige says.

  I think about Paige’s search. I know the impasse is causing more pain than she cares to admit, so I can’t stop thinking about how to help her. The wheels in my mind keep turning. “You know the weird thing about all your documents?”

  “What?”

  “Everything such a secret. Not just your information but even the judge’s information.”

  Paige considers this. “‘Judges’, like, multiple judges? Or ‘judge’s,’ like one judge?”

  I shoot her a smile. “Good question. Seems strange, though, that they keep omitting that name, don’t you think? I wonder if it’s the same judge on all those forms.” My stomach gurgles.

  Paige turns to me. “That was loud. Did you eat something you shouldn’t have?”

  I didn’t eat anything unusual, but I’m feeling suddenly ill. I’m queasy, and I can feel myself warming up more than usual.

  “You don’t look so good,” she says.

  We’re too close to turn back now. “I’m fine,” I lie. Deep down inside, I hope someone at this rave had the presence of mind to order portable toilets.

  “Okay,” she says, not sounding convinced. “Make the next left.”

  I’m feeling more nauseous the farther we drive, so I accelerate to get there faster. I make the left turn. Then I slam on the brakes. My tires screech as t
hey skid across the road.

  Paige lurches forward, her phone flying out of her hands and her hair shrouding her face. “What the hell?” she cries, wiping the hair from her face.

  “Do you see that?” I yell.

  She looks through the windshield. “What?”

  Just as I feared. I whip the Mini into reverse and peel out backward. My rear tires run off the road and rise up an embankment. The car stops, and a cloud of dust rises around us.

  “What are you doing?” Paige says.

  “Cemetery.”

  “Oh.”

  Once the dust settles, I get a better look at what lies before us. Three figures stand in the road, staring at our car. One is an older woman, probably in her sixties, dressed in a floral print dress, her brunette hair puffed up in a bouffant.

  Beside her are two children, a boy and a girl. They are roughly the same age, nine or ten. The girl is wearing a gingham dress, and the boy is dressed in a blazer and shorts, with an old schoolboy cap.

  “What do you see?” Paige asks. She can’t see them. The reason she can’t see them is because they’re ghosts.

  It suddenly becomes clear why I’ve been feeling so uneasy. We’ve been driving alongside a cemetery. The moment I turned and saw those three figures, I knew what they were. They’re not transparent like the ghosts from stories or reality shows about ghost hunters. They appear as tangible as any other person—at least to me. To Paige and most everyone else, they are invisible.

  The ability to see the undead roaming the earth is one of those perks of being possessed by a demon. The first time it happened, it scared the bejesus out of me. After I was shunned in Malbrook, I got a room in an old hotel in Philadelphia. The first night there, I was trying to get some sleep when I discovered that the sliding glass door to the balcony was open. I got up to close the door and noticed movement outside. I slowly stepped out, and on the adjacent balcony, I saw a woman trying to push her child over the railing three floors up.