South Of Hell

Louis picked up a second slice of pizza. “She say anything more about Brandt?”

Joe shook her head. “Nothing important. She didn’t remember us being at the farmhouse or that she had even spoken to me before.”

Shockey scratched his chin. “That doesn’t sound normal to me,” he said.

“I know it sounds strange,” Joe said, “but what if she has some medical condition that causes her to have waking blackouts?”

“Easy enough to check out,” Shockey said. “I’ve worked with a lot of doctors in town. I’ll find her one.”

“Yeah,” Louis said, “but not tonight. It’s late. Let her sleep.”

Shockey glanced at Louis. Joe suspected the topic of what to do with Amy had been discussed already.

“Look, Louis,” Shockey said, “it was everything I could do to stop my lieutenant from calling Family Services this afternoon. He agreed to wait until I got a chance to evaluate the girl myself. But we have to call them. You know we do.”

“It’s midnight,” Louis said.

“They get calls at midnight all the time. It’s their job.”

Louis tossed the slice of pizza back into the box, walked to the bedroom door, and opened it. Joe could tell by the subtle stiffening of his shoulders that he was looking at Amy curled up on the floor.

“Is there any way they would give us temporary custody of her?” Louis asked as he quietly closed the door.

“Us?” Joe asked.

Louis looked to her. “Yes.”

“Louis, I have a job to go back to,” she said. “I’m supposed to be there tomorrow. I can’t stay here to babysit this girl because you can’t stand the idea of her going into the system.”

“But what about Brandt?” Louis asked. “Eventually, they’ll have to notify him, and he’ll get custody. What then?”

“Me staying here a few more days won’t stop that,” Joe said. “That’s a fight for family court. And as much as neither of us likes it, it’s a fight you’ll probably lose.”

“I know a pretty good children’s rights lawyer,” Shockey offered. “I could ask him if-”

“Forget it,” Louis said, shaking his head and moving away.

Joe went to the desk to get the list she had made earlier. Someone needed to make a run to the store, and maybe this was a good time to send Louis out and let him get some air.

“Amy needs some things,” she said, holding out the paper. “There’s a convenience store open down the road. Would you mind getting these things?”

Louis looked up at Joe. “I don’t mean to be rude, Joe, but we’ve just spent five hours on the road.”

“Well, I can’t go,” Joe said. “If she wakes up, she’ll be terrified to find two strange men here. Please.”

Shockey held out a hand. “Give it to me. I’ll go.”

Joe gave him the list, and he scanned it. His eyes came up with a question. “Ah, number four here,” he said, his cheeks reddening. “What color is the box? I only know those things by the color.”

Joe hid her smile. The man couldn’t even say the word Kotex. “It’s pink, if I remember right.”

Shockey nodded and left.

Louis didn’t look as if he had even heard the conversation. He was picking pepperoni off the pizza. Joe turned to look inside the box Louis had brought from Aunt Geneva’s.

There were some clothes, but they were all in terrible shape, a print blouse missing most of its buttons, a pink sweater with holes, some faded T-shirts, two pairs of threadbare slacks, a dirty parka that looked like it belonged to a girl half Amy’s age. There was a cheap plastic bead bracelet, a tangle of ribbons, and three books.

“Is this all you found?” Joe asked, picking through the meager offerings.

“Those were the only clothes that looked good enough to bring back,” Louis said.

“Did you find a toy rabbit?” Joe asked. “With one ear?”

Louis shook his head. “No toys. Just those books.”

Joe picked up the three books. Gone with the Wind, Little Women, and a children’s book called The Hundred Dresses. She took Little Women with her to the sofa. The room was quiet as Louis ate his cold pizza and Joe skimmed the book. She had never read Little Women before and was surprised to find out that one of the sisters in the book was named Amy, another Jo. It was a curious coincidence that Amy would have both names. Joe wondered if Amy’s mother, Jean, had selected the combination intentionally.

“Why did you bring the books back?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. Just a feeling that they might mean something to her and she’d want to have them.”

He picked up the copy of Gone with the Wind. “I tried to read this one once. Just couldn’t seem to get into it for some strange reason,” he said, tossing it back onto the table with a wry smile.

“Did you read a lot when you were a kid?” Joe asked.

Louis nodded. “Especially when I was being bounced around between homes.”

Joe kept her head down. “What was your favorite story?”

“Things like Treasure Island. Gulliver’s Travels,” he said. “I stole books from the library. And I bet that’s stolen, too.”

Joe looked inside the back of the book. It was from the Hudson Public Library, taken out in 1986.

She picked up The Hundred Dresses. The copy on the back said it was about a little girl who was so poor she wore the same tattered blue dress to school every day, and when she was teased, she told the other girls that she had a hundred other beautiful dresses at home.

She felt Louis’s eyes on her and looked up.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” he said. “I’ve been a bastard for two days.”

“Apology accepted,” she said softly, tossing the book aside.

He sighed and pushed off the sofa to take his empty bottle to the kitchen.

A cry drifted from the bedroom. Louis looked quickly at Joe. “What was that?”

She hurried to the bedroom. In the darkness, she dropped to her knees next to Amy. She was writhing in the tangles of her blanket. Her breathing was labored, and she was whimpering.

“Amy. Wake up,” Joe said.

“Stop, stop… stop. Don’t-”

“Amy!” Joe said sharply.

Amy’s eyes opened. Wide but unfocused. She was instantly still. When she finally recognized Joe, she scrambled to a sitting position, her chest heaving as she struggled to pull in a breath.

“Amy, what’s the matter?”

The girl was pale from the effort of trying to breathe. The wheezing made an awful sound. “I can’t…”

Joe’s eyes shot up to Louis at the door. “She can’t breathe!”

“It sounds like an asthma attack, Joe,” Louis said. “Ben gets them. Try to get her to calm down.”

“Amy,” Joe said, putting her arm around her. “Try to slow down.”

“I saw it. I saw it.” Amy gasped.

“Saw what, Amy?”

“The ropes. The ropes on the hook in the barn. There was screaming. So much screaming.”

“Slow down,” Joe said. “Just try to breathe.”

“The ropes… oh… they hurt. They hurt so much.”

Amy’s eyes filled with tears, as if she could feel the pain herself. “And he was digging… digging a hole in the dirt. It was dark. So dark and so cold.”

Amy was making no sense, and Joe didn’t know if she was in a state similar to the one she had experienced at the farmhouse or simply reliving a nightmare. She had to be sure.

“Louis, turn the light on.”

The room brightened.

Amy blinked and looked immediately to Louis. “You have to go! You have to go now. Run!”

Louis put up his hands. “Okay. I’m going.”

He left the bedroom. Amy watched him, staring at the door even after he disappeared. Joe touched her cheek