might recognize Kiley’s parents. Maybe he was selling to them or had seen them in the usual spots looking to buy. Jake had never seen either one of the Chances, but Diane had mentally added a chit to his account, just for the time he spent studying their mug shots.
Jake the Snake had been popped fourteen times, but because of the chits, he had never taken a conviction.
That track record made him a good informant, but not a good ally. A senior deputy district attorney’s head on a silver platter was some pretty hefty currency in Jake’s trade, much more valuable to him than yet another IOU from her.
She wondered how the office would respond if she were tainted by the whiff of scandal. She’d been with the office for nearly eighteen years; she’d known colleagues who had DUIs, arrests for so-called domestic disturbances, even coke problems. Some had jobs waiting for them after the appropriate amount of rehab. Others got shipped off, their cases referred to the attorney general for investigation.
A year ago, she would have gotten the kid-glove treatment. She’d been a team player. Kept her head down. Put the office first, always.
And then Mark left her. The boy who’d taken her to the high school prom. The guy she’d shacked up with in college. The man she’d married the weekend after graduation. The asshole left her.
When he’d asked her to prom, she was already approaching two hundred pounds. She was nearly at three when he told her there was someone else.
Her weight was never really an issue for him. That’s what she’d thought, at least. He was big too. They both liked to eat. They both said they were happy in their bodies and wished other people would accept them as they were. Instead, they had accepted each other. Now she wondered whether they’d loved each other only because no one else would.
Everything started to change about five years ago. They’d gotten married so young that they just assumed a baby would come along eventually. Before they knew it, their thirties were almost over. The doctors said her weight might be the reason she hadn’t conceived.
She and Mark went on a diet together. They joined the gym. Success came faster to him than to her.
So did pregnancy.
Ironically, it wasn’t until Mark broke the news that he was expecting a child with someone else — Mindy from spin class, naturally — that her own weight finally started to come off. It was as if that one conversation changed her physical makeup. Her metabolism, her glucose levels, her fat cells — all transformed. It was like waking up in someone else’s body.
But by then, the body was too old. She was forty-four. On a government salary, she didn’t have the money for in vitro, private adoption, or a surrogate. She’d always assumed she was lucky to have Mark, even when he’d looked like Jabba the Hutt. Now she couldn’t believe the person she saw in her mirror every day. She was finally the kind of woman who was appealing to men, but to what end?
It wasn’t just her body that changed. So did her determination. Before the weight loss, though she worked in an office filled with athletes and health nuts who viewed physical fitness as a measure of character, she had nevertheless excelled because she was like an uncaged tiger at trial. But the anger and indignation that had propelled her courtroom performances had somehow burned away with all those pounds. She found herself cutting corners. Winging opening statements. Last December, she’d snapped at a rape victim:
She’d barely had the energy to cry after the acquittal.
And so, after climbing the prosecutorial hierarchy for eighteen years, she’d asked for a transfer out of the major-crimes unit, the most coveted job in the office. She knew the rotation out of downtown and into the wasteland of family court was intended as punishment, a message to the rest of the attorneys that they requested changes at their own peril.
But now she realized the move had allowed her to stay in Kiley’s life. Who else would have protected her?
She finally spotted Jake, who looked only in the direction of oncoming traffic on the one-way street before he dashed across Park Avenue. This was the kind of thing a mother noticed.
She rolled down her window halfway.
“Sorry, Light. No dice.”
“You didn’t find him?” According to the social worker, Chance worked janitorial duty at the campus until nine o’clock.
“I found him a’ight. Dude dipped.” Jake’s skin was white as Casper, but not his voice. She once tried getting him to drop the affect for his trial testimony, telling him he sounded like a twenty-first-century minstrel show. He responded by asking what religion had to do with it.
“Are you sure you talked to the right guy?” She hit her overhead light and showed him Chance’s mug shot again. If only Jake had recognized this photo in January. If only he’d had some connection to Kyle and Rachel Chance. Testimony placing the couple together near the time of Kiley’s abuse would have debunked their bogus story that the mother acted alone during a desperate binge brought on by their separation. “This picture’s a year old. He’s put on a little weight since then.”
“I did my thing, you know? Acted like I was working the park blocks. Saw him coming. Sidled up to him. Asked if he was looking for rock. Dude just said no, thanks, and kept on walking.”
“I’m not buying it, Jake.”
“You’re my girl, Light. Liked you better with that junk in your trunk, fo’ sho’, but you know I want to he’p you out. You think I’d cross you? I know better than to get DiLi mad.”
She smiled, remembering the nickname he’d conjured up for her when J.Lo first hit the cultural lexicon, a decade earlier.
“I want to trust you, Jake, but I don’t believe for a second that this guy turned down the opportunity to get high.”
“Hey, whatchu want me to say?”
“That you just sold the man in this picture some dope.”
“Then you send your man in there to frisk him down but he don’t find no rock. That would make me a liar, and you know I only speak the truth. I bathe in the light of honesty, girl. I might sell folks to the law, but only if they did the crime, you know? Hey, don’t get so upset, Light. I never seen you so down. It must be that diet. Get yourself some cheeseburgers and onion rings, you know what I’m saying?”
“You’re
Jake looked back toward the park, but she could tell he was just buying himself time to answer. “If it makes you feel better, I could tell he was craving it. Real tempted, you know? Like pondering and shit. But — I don’t know — maybe I made it seem too easy. I knew you wanted him, so I floated a half ball at a hundred. Price was too low; he probably figured I was po-po. Maybe try again in a few weeks? I’d do anything for DiLi.”
A few weeks was too long. A man like Chance could break Kiley all over again in a few hours.
“No, that’s all right. You want a ride back uptown?”
“Nah, I’m good. Might hang down here for a bit.”
“Dumb question, Jake, but any chance I can persuade you to get into another line of work?”
“You cute, girl. And, seriously, you look good, Light. Maybe a little too
THE NEXT NIGHT, Chance showed up at home close to eleven o’clock. Diane watched Kiley hold his hand as they stepped from the bus onto McLoughlin Boulevard. From the university to the aunt’s house to here should not have taken him the nearly two hours it had. Chance was definitely up to something. Not to mention, what kind of father let a three-year-old stay up that late?
She watched from her car as they walked together, hand in hand, to their apartment complex. She saw Kiley’s bedroom light turn on. Five minutes later, it turned off. She waited another twenty minutes before stepping from her car out into the darkness.
The chill of the night was perfect. Her quilted black hat felt snug on her head. Her neoprene gloves provided just enough compression to make her fingers feel extra alive. She placed her hands in her coat pockets, felt the
