Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“You decide that on your own?”
“Yeah. She found out I was home. Came by a few times. I didn’t want to see her. I ain’t the man I was.”
“Who is? My wife had to put up with a lot with me working through shit, but I couldn’t do it without her.”
“You still together?”
“She passed a few years back. Cancer.”
“Sorry, bro.” Wesley handed over the stainless mess forks for Isaac to dry. “So, who’s helping you through shit?”
“Now? My girls. Have to stay on the narrow path for them.” Isaac dropped the forks onto the pile of mess ware. “Before that, it was Xanax washed down with Maker’s Mark.”
“I was on all that shit before I come up here. I decided my problem was me, and why should I be inflictin’ myself on everyone I gave a shit for? Once I come up here, I felt better after a while. Not having to deal with it. Not having to talk to folks.”
“Still wake up screaming?” Isaac asked, but he was smiling.
“Sometimes, yeah.” Wesley lowered his head and grinned.
“You can’t ever un-see the shit we’ve seen.”
“Can’t un-feel it neither.”
The investigation was being pursuedin two parts now.
Vince Holland took on the hunt for Oscar Cruz’s cousin Richie, who turned out to be Enrique Damian Cruz, an ex-con with a thick file of priors going back ten years and two active county warrants for failure to appear in court on Class III felony possession. He did indeed have a pair of black teardrops inked under his left eye and bore a passing resemblance to the actor who played Ant-Man’s friend.
Richie Cruz swore he didn’t know anyone named Angel. He was lying big time. In truth, he knew so many scumbags named Angel that it took sorting through prints taken from the Cruz Coachman to make a match. Tomas “Angelito” Suarez was arrested coming out of an ABC in Westlawn and was eager to hand over both Cruz cousins in exchange for “a little understanding, you know?”
He had no idea that Oscar Cruz was dead and was dismayed to learn Richie was already in custody. He sweetened his offer by telling them about two brothers he knew who were up to their asses in niños y niñas , selling and buying kids like commodities. They had an apartment over in Darwin Downs. Beto and Angel-yet anotherAngel-Villamonte.
Laura Strand’s path to the truth took her deep into the hell of the foster care system of Madison County with juvenile advocate Betsy Ritter as her chain-smoking Virgil.
All three children were indeed registered in the foster care system, and as Nadine had detailed, they were passed around from one foster home to another. Often, they were placed less than a year in any one home before being moved again. Nadine had been in care from the age of five when her parents died in a house fire. The eleven-year-old boy they had taken from the Coachman was Antony Contrera. He was in his eighth year in the system after his mother had been sentenced to ten years at Tutwiler for a variety of charges involving narcotics. In the third year of her sentence, she’d died of an overdose in the prison infirmary. The youngest, Lacey May Brees, had been found when she was an infant in an abandoned car in the lot of a Super Walmart.
“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job,” Betsy told Laura over breakfast at a Perkins.
“Well then, why don’t you tell me how you do yourjob?” Laura dabbed grease off her turkey bacon strips and white egg scramble with the corner of a napkin. She wondered how the woman seated across from her maintained her bantam weight, given the cheese omelet, hash browns, and biscuits and cream gravy Betsy was wolfing down.
“First thing you have to know is that everyone you talk to will be looking to cover their ass. The social workers, their supervisors, and the foster parents. The system isn’t broken like I said before. It’s on fire. Too many kids and not enough foster parents or volunteers. It’s an environment built for abuse, and the only thing there’s no shortage of is bottom feeders coming in to take advantage.”
“Why aren’t more kids adopted?” Laura said. “These kids were all young when they were orphaned. It seems like they’d be prime candidates.”
“Because most folks can’t afford the fees involved with legal adoption. The lawyers and the courts made sure of that. And the hoops you need to jump through to qualify keep a lot of parents out of the mix.”
“Aren’t there qualifications for taking in foster kids?”
“There are-on paper. But the system’s so overloaded that those rules get worked around. I’ve seen foster parents who can’t take care of themselves caring for five or six kids in their house.”
“Why do they do it?”
“For the county checks. There’s a lot of benefits offered for taking kids in.”
“Is there anyone taking kids just because they want to offer them a home?”
“Sure. Most foster parents do it for the right reasons. But there’s enough bad apples out there to keep me as busy as a one-legged man in a shin-kicking contest.”
“Then how do I approach this? I have the foster homes these kids were last assigned to and the records from the juvenile court. Each one of these kids is technically still in the care of their assigned home. Our best guess, from Nadine and Antony’s information, is that Oscar Cruz took illegal custody of them six to seven months ago and Lacey May somewhere near the end of summer.”
Betsy chewed a mouthful of omelet, waving her empty fork to let Laura know she was working on something.
“I’d let the county bust them,” she said after a long pull of black coffee. “The kids are absent, whereabouts unknown. That’s reckless endangerment and criminal neglect. More than enough to hold them for you until you get some answers.”
“I’m not even sure what questions to ask.”
“You need to look into their care histories and press them on every inconsistency. If they sold kids off once, it figures they’ve done it before. This kind of shit goes round and round.”
“With the help of a federal judge, I can make RICO stand up here.”
“That’s your business,” Betsy said. “But County should pick them up.”
“We let County make the collars, but the marshals should have a presence at the raids.”
“No raids. These houses have at-risk kids in them. You don’t want to put them through that.” Betsy waggled her fork over her plate. “You make these sumbitches come to you.”
“How does that work exactly?”
“Send the fosters letters telling them there’s a problem with their next monthly check. In the letter, you assign them all an appointment at the county courthouse. Bust them there.”
“You have a devious mind, Betsy,” Laura said.
“Whatever gets the job done,” Betsy said and dabbed up the last of the cream gravy with a bit of biscuit.
Justin Hicks hadtwo offices in the Huntsville area. One was a two-room office suite near the county courthouse. The other was in a professional park in Brookhurst.
The county seat office was problematic-too much law enforcement presence. The Family and Children offices in an annex to the courthouse were where the lawyer did most of his business. It was an armed camp with metal detectors and deputies at every entrance, and for good reason. This was the home of Domestic Relations, where divorced couples went to deal with issues such as alimony, child support, and custody. Tempers were high, and often what began as a negotiation, with one wrong word could turn into a fistfight or worse.
Isaac had his own experiences in that building after Arlene passed away and his in-laws tried to take away his visitation rights with Merry. He’d been angry in his time and with good cause, but he’d never felt the kind of white-hot rage that filled him when dealing with the intractable staff who decided who was fit and who was not to see their own child. Every time he read or heard about a shooting incident at a courthouse somewhere, he imagined it took place when some dad finally lost control over a custody order keeping him from his children. More times than not, Isaac was right.