Anybody else would have given up. After about ten minutes she went around and started knocking on windows, calling Emmy’s name. I never fully believed we were going to find her, but watching June duck under hanging gutters, banging her knuckles on broken casement windows, I saw it was the opposite for her. No other option would fit in her brain. I got a full-body memory of the Undersea Wonders Aquarium, Emmy and June’s standoff over the shark tank, nobody backing down. I’d helped Emmy into the tunnel that day, but I also lied to her. If something scares you, get your ass out of there, I should have said. Everything will not be okay.
The house next door was one of the nicer ones. Painted shutters, one of those whirligig garden things in the dead flowers. A guy was standing on the porch watching June. We hadn’t noticed him until he yelled something like “Hey, lady,” and both Everett and I jumped, and then we saw him. Old guy in a coat and cloth slippers. White ring of hair around his mostly bald brown head. June walked over to his porch and shook his hand. We watched them talk, June nodding, looking back at the grimace house. Touching her eye, asking questions, nodding.
She came back to the car, belted up, didn’t start the engine.
“He said there were some people living there, and they were evicted. Including some young women. One was white. Evicted is not exactly what he said.” She shook her head fast, like trying to clear it. “There was a shooting. And they left.”
“June. We should just go home,” Everett said.
“He thinks they went to a house not too far from here. He doesn’t know the address, but he said it’s a brand-new place. Like maybe just built, with nobody technically living there yet.”
“He’s making shit up to get rid of you,” Everett suggested. “Who’d build a house here?”
“I told him I was looking for my daughter, and he said he understood. He said this new house is a place they’re using right now, I don’t know for what. But she could be there.”
“This is crazy, June. It’s too dangerous.”
“Damn you, Everett. Where’s the gangland tough shit now?”
No answer to that.
She banged her open hands on the steering wheel. “There’s not a damn thing messing people up around here that I’m not seeing in my office ten times a day.” She threw the car into drive, and we drove. Up and down the blocks. The same old man still in his wheelchair, the other one still lying in the road. The leg-pumping had ceased. We didn’t know what we were looking for. Nothing looked remotely new. I was hungry and itchy, moving towards the sweats. Everett kept picking up his piece and putting it down, until June smacked his hand.
Then we saw the house. Like it had dropped out of the freaking sky of newness.
We all three got out of the car. A front yard of fresh bulldozed dirt, factory stickers on the windows. The front door was the modern type with an oval-shaped fake church window in it. June knocked, no answer. A little metal box type thing hung on the doorknob, sprung open, with a key sitting there in plain view. June tried the key in the lock, and then we were in.
It was all new everything: nice wood floors, strong smell of paint, no real furniture. Just a card table with bags and a scale, a white dust of coke. In the corner a guy was slumped on the floor with his back against the wall, head flopped forward. We held our breath, watching. The bill of his oversize black ball cap covered his face, so it was pure guess as to sleeping, dead, or dipped out. I thought number three, based on the splayed legs and open hands.
June touched Everett’s shoulder, then his pistol, and pointed to the guy. Held up her flat hand: Keep him there. She and I moved through the house. A hallway, bedrooms. We made almost no sound, but the place was so empty it echoed anyway. I pushed open a half-closed door and almost pissed myself. Little kids, two of them, on a pile of opened-out cardboard pizza boxes. One was asleep and the other one sitting up, playing with the plastic rings of a six-pack. The awake one looked up at us wide-eyed, like June and I might be just the ticket. June stood with her hand over her mouth. I had to pull her back out the door.
We didn’t check all the rooms, because the next one was where we found Emmy. She and another girl were passed out on a mattress, both half naked. I mean exactly half. Emmy had on a short skirt and snagged black tights and nothing at all on top, while the other girl had a blouse and jewelry, a shiny yellow jacket, and from there down just legs and pussy. Like they’d had to split one outfit, underwear and all. June still had her hand on her mouth and was looking at me, like I knew what the hell to do. Run, I thought. The room smelled ripe, like sex, and the sight of Emmy’s bruised face and pasty skin made me sick. I walked over and scooped her up, more heft to her than Dori but not by much, she was maybe ninety pounds. I’d once been a man to deadlift three times that, easy. The man I was now got us out of there before any eyes opened.