There came the sound of a car approaching. She could see it through the doorway as it turned. Unlike most of the cars that came to this place, this one was new. It looked like one of those German cars, and the chrome on its wheels was spotless. The engine growled briefly as it came to a stop. She saw doors opening, front and back. Wallace said something that she could not hear, and Lowe tossed his cigarette on the ground, his other hand already reaching behind his back to where the butt of the big Colt emerged from his jeans. Before he could grasp it, his shoulders exploded in a red cloud that billowed briefly in the sunlight, then fell wetly to the floor. Somehow he remained standing, and she saw his hands clutch at the doorframe, holding himself upright. Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside, then the second shot came, and part of Lowe’s head disappeared. His hands relinquished their grip, and he fell to the ground.

Alice stood frozen, rooted to the spot. Outside, she could hear Wallace pleading for his life. He was backing toward the hut, and she could see his body grow larger and larger as he neared the window. There were more shots, and the glass shattered into hundreds of pieces, the remaining shards in the frames edged with blood. Now she could hear the other girls responding. To her right, Rowlene was screaming repeatedly. She was a big girl, and Alice could almost picture her on her bed, her sheet pulled up to her chest, her eyes drowsy and flecked with red as she tried to make herself small in the corner of her bunk. To her left, she could hear Pria, who was half-Asian, strike the wall as she struggled to clear her head and find her clothes. Pria had partied with two johns the night before, and they had shared some of their buy with her. She was probably still high.

The figure of a man appeared in the doorframe. Alice briefly glimpsed his face as he entered, and the sight gave her the impetus she needed. She allowed the blanket to fall gently, then climbed on her bunk and pushed at the window. At first it would not move, even as she heard the man moving through the hut, coming closer to the whores’ quarters. She hit the frame with the base of her palm, and it swung out with barely a sound. Alice pulled herself up and squeezed herself through the gap, even as the next shot came from the stall beside her own and splinters burst from the wall. Rowena was gone. She would be next. Behind her, a hand grasped the blanket and pulled it to the floor as gravity took hold and Alice tumbled to the ground. She felt something snap in her hand as she fell awkwardly, then she was running for the cover of the trees, fallen branches snapping beneath her feet as she ducked and weaved into the forest. The shotgun roared again, and an alder disintegrated barely inches from her right foot.

She kept running, even though her feet were cut by stones and her clothing torn by briars and thorns. She did not stop until the pain in her side was so great that she felt as though she were being ripped in half. She lay against a tree and thought that she heard, distantly, the sounds of men. She knew the face of the man at the door. He was one of those who had taken Pria the night before. She did not know why he had returned, or what had led him to do what he did. All that she knew was that she had to get away from this place, for they knew who she was. They had seen her, and they would find her. Alice called her mother from a phone at a gas station, the pumps locked and the station closed, for it was still early on Sunday morning. Her mother came with clothing, and what money she had, and Alice left that afternoon and did not ever return to the state in which she was born. She called in the years that followed, mostly with requests for money. She called twice each week, and sometimes more often than that. It was Alice’s one unfailing concession to her mother, and even at her lowest she always tried to keep the older woman from worrying more than she already did. There were other small kindnesses too: birthday gifts that arrived early, or more often late, but arrived nonetheless; cards at Christmas, a little cash included in the early years, but later only a signature and a scrawled greeting; and, very occasionally, a letter, the quality of the script and the color of the ink varying in accordance with the lengthy process of the missive’s completion. Her mother cherished them all, but mostly she was grateful for the calls. They let her know that her daughter was still alive.

Then the calls ceased.

Martha sat on the couch in my office, Louis standing to one side of her, Angel seated quietly in my chair. I was by the fireplace. Rachel had looked in on us briefly, then left.

“You should have looked out for her,” Martha again told Louis.

“I tried,” he said. He looked old and tired. “She didn’t want help, not the kind I could offer her.”

Martha’s eyes ignited.

“How can you say that? She was lost. She was a lost soul. She needed someone to bring her back. That should have been you.”

This time, Louis said nothing.

“You went to Hunts Point?” I asked.

“Last time we spoke, she said that was where she was at, so that was where I went.”

“Is that where you got hurt?”

She lowered her head.

“A man hit me.”

“What was his name?” asked Louis.

“Why?” she said. “You gonna do for him like you done for others? You think that will find your cousin? You just want to feel like a big man, now it’s too late to do what a good man would have done. Well, that don’t wash with me.”

I intervened. The recriminations would get us nowhere.

“Why did you go to him?”

“Because Alice done told me she was working for him now. The other one, the one she was with before, he died. She said this new one was gonna take care of her, that he was going to find wealthy men for her. Wealthy men! What man would want her after all she’d done? What man…?”

She started to cry again.

I went to her and handed her a clean tissue, then slowly knelt before her.

“We’ll need his name if we’re to start looking for her,” I said quietly.

“G-Mack,” she said at last. “He calls himself G-Mack. There was a young white girl too. She said she remembered Alice, but she was calling herself LaShan on the street. She didn’t know where she’d gone to.”

“G-Mack,” said Louis.

“Ring any bells?”

“No. Last I heard she was with a pimp called Free Billy.”

“Looks like things changed.”

Louis stood and helped Martha from her chair.

“We need to get you something to eat. You need to rest up now.”

She took his hand and gripped it tightly in her own.

“You find her for me. She’s in trouble. I can feel it. You find her, and bring her back to me”

The fat man stood at the lip of the bathtub. His name was Brightwell, and he was very, very old, far older than he seemed. Sometimes he acted like a man who had recently woken from a deep sleep, but the Mexican, whose name was Garcia, knew better than to question him about his origins. He recognized only that Brightwell was a thing to be obeyed, and to be feared. He had seen what the man had done to the woman, had watched through the glass as Brightwell’s mouth closed on hers. It had seemed to him that some grave knowledge had shown itself in the woman’s eyes at that moment, even as she weakened and died, as though she realized what was about to occur as her body failed her at last. How many others had he taken in this way? Garcia wondered, his lips against theirs as he waited for their essence to pass from them. And even if what Garcia suspected of Brightwell was not true, what kind of man would believe such a thing of himself?

The stench was terrible as the chemicals worked on the remains, but Brightwell made no attempt to cover his face. The Mexican stood behind him, the lower half of his face concealed by a white mask.