Page 66 of The Eleventh Hour
“Let’s go visit the house first.”
The drive takes us to the poorest end of Hurricane. Street after street filled with poor, barely livable homes. The rickety old houses, if they can be called that, are full of holes and haven’t seen paint in more decades than I’ve been alive. The roads haven’t even got the snake-like seals of tar to cover the cracks. Even the air smells worse here. No grass grows, flowers don’t exist. The word is sepia and decorated with trash.
We drive slowly until Dane finds the place and parks out front. A blackened wreck, overgrown in insidious weeds and creepers, sits like a monument to the past. The mystery writes itself in my mind in heartbreaking resolution.
I climb out of the car and take two steps towards the mess. Whatever evidence, whatever story could possibly have been gleaned, has been gone a long time. The fire and time has erased everything.
“What do we do now?” I glance up at Dane.
He turns his head, and I follow his gaze to see Rafael on the neighbour’s doorstep.
“We let Rafael do his thing.”
“His thing?”
“You may have noticed I’m not great at speaking to people. Not in any meaningful way. I can pick a girl up easily, but the moment it comes to an actual conversation, I manage to fumble it. Rafael is gold at these situations. If there’s anything to be found out, he will find it. We should get in the car and wait. We look weird, and the woman in that house to the left has checked out her curtain five times.”
I mouth the word five, turn, and climb back into the car. Rafael comes back ten minutes later and climbs in the back seat.
“Drive, Dane.” He looks around and leans forward when Dane doesn’t respond fast enough. “Get us out of here.”
Dane shifts the car into drive and floors it. A bottle crashes against the side of the car, and several people shout and scream, appearing from behind trees and buildings.
“What the fuck?” Dane spits and steers around smashed glass.
I turn in my seat to watch several people group together to stand in the middle of the road.
“What was that?” I ask.
“That was people who don’t like questions defending their homes,” Rafael says quietly.
“How’d you know?”
“Terrance took me home a couple of times. He showed me what to look for.”
That revelation crashes down on me with the force of a wave. “Terrance grew up somewhere like this?” Terrance grew up like Louis? My mind reels from that revelation.
“Worse. His home was worse. His dad was amazing, but his mum took him away, and she was a hot mess. He never saw his father again. He tried to find him, but he couldn’t. Whoops, sorry. My mind took a detour.” Rafael clears his throat. “That was the Banewood house, and after Liam, the father, died from a workplace injury, Daisy struggled with three children. Extreme poverty became the way of life for them. She liked to cook over a camper fire in the lounge room because she couldn’t pay the electric bills. One night, it went up. The only survivor was Lee, and his grandfather came and took him. No one’s seen him since.”
We sit quietly and digest it.
“Are we sure Lee Banewood is Louis Falcon?” I ask. “We need to be sure.”
“Only one way to be certain. We have to find anyone who knew this Cecil.” Rafael presses a button, and a section in the back of the car opens. He pulls out three bottles of water and offers me one. Dane snags his, holds it to the steering wheel, and twists it open.
“Luckily, I know where we need to go.”
Dane turns the car into a nursing home and parks. I take a long drink and put the bottle down on the floor of the car.
“Right, follow me.” Dane leads the way and speaks to the receptionist for a few minutes. She smiles and blushes a lot but eventually stands up and leads us through a maze of connecting doors and open spaces that seem to look absolutely the same to my untrained eye.
I stare at Dane’s back and the way the woman keeps giggling. It’s bizarre.
She points out a lady in the corner and reaches up to kiss his cheek. I think I see her slip a piece of paper into his hand.
Dane smiles and talks to her while Rafael takes my hand and leads me over to the small woman. I glance back twice, strangely unsettled and angry.
Even with her skin hanging over bones, you can tell this woman was attractive in her youth and still holds that shine of beauty now. She turns towards us, and I’m surprised to find a lively spark.