Previously on Without Villains…
October Sky uncovers even more questions than answers as she digs deeper into these cases and is given the opportunity to find answers herself.
Meanwhile, we get to meet Dannika, who is fresh from being released from the Air Force and struggling to figure out what she’s going to do with herself. She goes to see the woman who raised her on her death bed, and receives a phone call from a local youth group leader who wants her help finding missing kids.
Looking at the files and re-reading the reports wasn’t helping to calm my nerves as the driver—a woman, actually, which was cool—said nothing. Which was helpful. And it wasn’t.
What was I doing? This was not the type of person I was. I didn’t get myself involved in things like this. I helped. Sure. Yes. Sure.
Yes.
Yes, I helped but from the back. Not the front. From the back where my stupid cards and I had a non-fighting chance. When your greatest skill is using tarot cards to see into things, you didn’t go to the front lines where stopping to read some cards could get you killed. Or worse.
My cards tugged at me, so I unzipped them and fanned them out inside their large pocket, feeling for the sense of “correct” or some sense of relief to this anxiety.
The Wailing Tree.
What? I needed to say good-bye to things that no longer served me? That I—
Oh. No. This was for the family.
Duh. That made so much more sense.
Okay. So, yes. The Wailing Tree. It was an invitation to regroup, to rest and allow themselves the space to say goodbye. To feel the hurt and loss, to mourn what and who were now gone. And to honor their experience, but to stay with their feelings.
The Wailing Tree.
Yeah. That was the energy I needed to bring.
The apartment we were pulling up in front of.
With my nerves settled, I gathered my backpack, shoving the file back inside and zipping it closed as I walked through the wide and clean courtyard and to the front door. I liked the apartment buildings that were scooped back like this off the street. They were rare, though.
Flor and Paul Nieto had three kids, but their daughter, Sabina, had died of bone cancer. It had been sudden because they couldn’t afford the medical and they were certain it had come from the water. Though, the files didn’t say why.
Taking the stairs up to the third floor, I knocked on their apartment door and waited.
An exhausted woman with dark wavy hair that had been pulled back answered the door, her blue shirt rumpled, her sweat pants twisted, and her feet bare. “¿qué deseas?” What do you want?
My Spanish was a little rusty, but I had enough to muddle through. “Soy Sky Martinez. Trabajo en la alcaldía. ¿Hablas inglés?” I’m Sky Martinez. I work with the mayor. Do you speak English? Having two sur names was a blessing, that I used. Sometimes. When I needed to look more white, I used Blaze. When that wasn’t a shield I needed, I used Martinez.
“Yes, yes.” The woman shook her head with a frown. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for more information about the wrongful death case you filed.”
“We lost that.”
“I know. But I think there might be more here. Can I—” I wasn’t the type of person who was comfortable barging into places I wasn’t wanted. “Can I come in?”
The woman looked like she was going to tell me no, but then she shrugged and took a step back, inviting me into the tight hallway that spilled into a wider space.
The apartment was a mess. Shoes were everywhere. Clothes were left where they’d been removed. Dishes were left on the tables.
And it smelled like rot.
Soul rot.
I followed her into the living room. She made a noise and moved to clear a seat for me. “I’m sorry for the mess. I just…” She trailed off, her brown eyes drooping. She shook her head and sat. “What do you want?”
“I wa—” I stopped myself and took a seat, pulling out the thin folder that was her case. “Are you Flor?”
She nodded.
“And your daughter was Sabina?”
She nodded again, her eyes rimming with red.
“Where is… everyone else?” Surely, she wasn’t living here with her husband and the other two kids.
“Hiding.” Flor shrugged, rocking back and forth slightly. “I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?”
“What’s the point?” She tipped her head and shook it, her eyes dulled with an anger she couldn’t shout. “I have cancer now, too.”
“Oh.” That was important information. “Did you know about that during the case?”
“No. But there were others.”
“Others who had cancer?” I asked, confused because no other names were in the case files.
“Several of the people in the building.”
“That would have made this a much bigger case.
“The lawyer decided to take each of them separately because that would make a bigger noise, he said.”
That didn’t make sense. “I haven’t seen any of these other cases.”
“They’re still gathering evidence.”
“Evidence?” That couldn’t be. “Can you give me their names?”
She spent the next several minutes giving me names and contact numbers and the types of cancer they had. Though, it wasn’t all cancer. There were other things wrong with them as well.
“This is great information.”
“What is the mayor going to do?” Flor asked with a disbelieving frown. “I believe he knows and he’s making money from this.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” She stood to show me to the door. “I don’t know how your world works.”
“It’s not my world.”
“You’re not in mine.” She opened the door. “But what is he going to?”
“It’s not him.” I stood in her doorway, the full weight of what we were doing settling in around me as reality forced its way in. “It’s the rest of us. His chief of staff. The people she’s gathering. She wants to help.”
Flor flicked her eyebrows and shook her head. “I will believe it when I see it.”
I had planned to visit with some of the other people in the other files, but this was a ton of missing information that I couldn’t just walk away from. So, I went from door to door and collected as much information as I could.
When I got to Apartment Four-Twelve, I almost stopped. I knew who lived here. Allan Neal and his son, Evan, was the kid Mateo had punched in the face and who was now missing. This wasn’t the thing I should have been focusing on and I knew that, but… I also couldn’t just turn away. Not now. I felt a lot more comfortable being outside my normal zone. And Mateo had asked me for help.
Allan opened the door, his grey eyes narrowing as he ran a hand through his shaggy light brown hair. “Sky. Mateo isn’t here.”
“I know. I’m here to talk to you about Evan.”
His mouth opened and closed as if he wasn’t sure what to say and he shuffled in place for a minute and then he stepped back and let me enter through the tight hallway.
All the apartments were pretty much laid out the same.
“Can I get you some water?”
I shook my head. “Have you or your family been sick lately?”
“You mean all the cancer and stuff?” He shook his head and took a seat. “We wouldn’t know. We don’t go to the doctors. I make just enough, we don’t get help, so he has insurance. It’s limited, but it’s still too much. And the ERs have been so busy, I’d have to take a full day off work or more. Sometimes, it’s more. And then, when they find out what insurance we have, sometimes we get sent away anyway. I mean, not us. We haven’t. But others?” He nodded and clasped his hands. “Others have, so I just said, ‘You know what? If we can’t afford to fight it, why find out what’s killing us?’ and we just live our life.”
That was a terrible way to live, but it was a story I’d heard a lot.
“What about Evan?”
“I’m actually here to get more information.”
“I gave all of it to the cops.”
“I work at the mayor’s office and Mateo asked me to get involved.”
“The mayor is looking into this?” Hope sparked in him like a brilliant flare.
Oh, no. “I’m going to ask if we can.” I needed to limit his expectations. “I’m just a clerk. I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to help.”
He nodded eagerly, shuttering his expression. “What do you need to know.”
I didn’t know how to ask this delicately. “Mateo said he’d punched Evan the other day.”
Allan held up a hand. “Boys will be boys.”
“Yeah, I get that, but it was to help Evan from ‘wolfing out’. Can you…” What was I asking him? We were in the middle of a war against paras. Was I really going to ask him if his son was the “enemy”?
He looked up at me, holding his breath.
I understood the fight. He was trying to see if he could trust me. I didn’t know how to answer that, but my cards tugged at my gut, so I slid my fingers in and pulled out the card that settled my nerves.
Hollow Bone, which was a card for me, not him. My deck was telling me to stop being the clerk from the mayor’s office and just be me. Get rid of the agenda, stop trying to play some kind of role.
So, I took in a breath and showed him my card, knowing he wouldn’t know what it meant. “My family can see things. Not all of us. We’re…” Was I really telling him this? I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. “We’re seers. Some of my family can see visions right in front of them and—well, when the war started, they started hiding. I guess, me too, but it’s easier for me. I see things through my cards, though it’s not super helpful all the time.”
My cards jabbed energy into my gut.
I ignored them. “I can hide.” Was that a bad thing? Was I betraying them by being able to blend in? “I know that. But it means I understand. Kind of. I don’t think I’ll be caught, but I worry. And so does my cousin.”
“Does he see things?”
I shrugged. “Not yet, at least, not that he’s said. But it should be hitting him soon. With the hormones.”
Allan nodded. “That’s what happened with Evan. They just hit him all of a sudden when out on the field. I was afraid of this, and I was looking for places we could go so he could learn to control that. But—” He shook his head and wrung his hands. “He’s gone and I don’t know how to find him.”
“Are you both wolves?”
He shook his head. “I’m a coyote. His mother was a wolf, but she’s dead. She passed a few months ago. A sudden illness.”
“Cancer?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t do an autopsy. It looked like natural causes and… there have been a lot of dead people in our city lately. So…” He licked his lips. “Do you think my son is dead?”
How the jeeze was I supposed to answer that? “I don’t know.”
“Is the mayor really going to look into this?”
“I don’t know.” But I also didn’t know if I could just stand by and do nothing. “I’m going to ask her, though.”
“The mayor is a man.”
“Right. Yes, but I work for his chief of staff, and she’s the one who sent me out here.”
He nodded. “The Armstrongs have a good name in our circle. Okay. I will spread the word.”
I gave him my card and made my departure, telling him to give me any information if they learned anything.
And as I slipped into the back seat of the black car, I knew, there was no going back. I had to help them. For real. And this was how.
* * *
Victoria needed to gather a special team of people who could investigate things they weren’t supposed to. She didn’t know what Sky had been able to gather yet, but she was hopeful it was enough to move them forward.
She emailed and texted a few of her contacts, looking for contact information on investigators, cyber security officials looking for work. Anyone she could get to help her with this.
But she didn’t want to go to the mayor.
Someone knocked on her door and she looked up to see Sky hugging a lot of papers to her chest, a worried expression on her face. “Come in and shut the door. Do you have information?”
“I do.” Sky carefully closed the door and took a seat, dumping the papers in her lap. “This is so much bigger than the reports I brought to you. I went to see Flor Nieto first.”
“Who is she?”
“The wrongful death suit that was just dismissed last week. Her daughter, Sabina, got bone cancer. Flor and her husband said it was the water.”
“All right.” Victoria waited. “I’m with you.”
“Great. So, when I got there, Flor was a mess and she was all alone—”
“I don’t think we have time for all the details, Sky.”
“Right.” The woman frowned like she wasn’t sure how to tell the story now. “Okay. Well, her husband their remaining two kids are gone.”
“Are they missing?”
Sky shook her head. “They left because they believe it’s the water.”
“And Flor didn’t go because?”
“She already has cancer.”
Victoria leaned back in her chair. “Why wasn’t this brought up?”
“I think the lawyer is working for someone whose trying to cover this up?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are so many other cases, Victoria.” Sky flipped through the papers. “I don’t know how many, but a lot.”
“And we’re just now discovering this why?”
“Two reasons. Most can’t afford to go to the ER.”
“You don’t go to the ER if you have cancer.”
“Unless your insurance tells you to, and theirs does. And so a lot of them aren’t even being seen. And there were a lot of people who said they didn’t want to know because they couldn’t afford treatment anyways. So, there’s that, but the other reason is this lawyer.”
Victoria noted the way the other woman rushed past that argument. “Okay?”
“He says he’s gathering evidence and he’s going to present each case individually to the courts.”
“But you said there were hundreds.”
Sky nodded.
Victoria wasn’t a lawyer, but she did understand it enough. If the one case had been struck down, there was a precedent in place now. “I see why you—”
“Victoria,” Wendell said, opening the door with a bright smile. “I don’t mean to interrupt your meeting, but we really have to go.”
Irritation rattled around Victoria’s center, but she masked it with a smile behind her fingertip. “You’ll knock first.”
“This is my office, and you work for me.”
“And knocking is a sign of respect.” She leaned back in her chair, not willing to stand for the man. “Something you demand, if I’m not mistaken.”
He opened his mouth, his eyes darting to the door and back. He closed his lips with a chagrined smile as if he’d been caught with this hand in the cookie jar and then walked toward the door. “You’re right. You’re always right.” He walked through it and closed it behind him.
Victoria looked at Sky, irritated at the interruption. “Organize this so we have a better understanding of what we have.”
“Okay. But there’s one one more thing.”
Victoria didn’t think there was time for one more thing. Wendell wasn’t going to wait. “Yes? Be quick.”
“What—” Sky licked her lips and leaned forward to whisper. “What do you think of paras?”
Victoria paused, trying to figure out where the other woman was going with this. So, she leaned forward and whispered, “They’re some of the same people I’ve sworn to protect.”
Sky nodded with relief. “Okay. The missing kids. I have more information.”
Wendell knocked on the door.
“One moment,” Victoria called and then returned her attention to Sky. “Gather the information and present it to me.”
“On paper?”
Maybe not. “Let’s schedule another time to talk about it.”
“Okay. Thank you.” Sky stood and went to the door.
“And, Sky?”
The other woman stopped on her way out and looked back.
“Good work today.”
“Thank you.” Looking embarrassed, Sky opened the door for Wendell, stepping aside for him as he swept back into the room.
He waited for the door to close and ran his hand through his hair apologetically. “I get so excited, I forget.”
“Imagine if everyone did that.” Victoria folded her hands on top of her yellow business skirt and waited. “Especially to the men in this office.”
“That’s so uncalled for. You know I respect you and all the women here.”
“I know you say you do.” She leaned forward. “What are you really here for?”
He practically did a wiggle before he claimed the seat Sky had just abandoned, leaning over her cup of paperclips to overtake the real estate of her desk. “I have an opportunity to run for Senator.”
“That’s great.” But Victoria had no wish to follow him into that. She didn’t want to continually be his administrator, running everything while he got all the acclaim.
“I want you to run for mayor.” He studied her like a handsome man who’d caught a prized canary.
She hated that look and hated the excitement flurrying inside her in answer. “You think that’s going to work?”
“Well, not with your current state. You’ll need to annul your ‘marriage’ and find a man to marry.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned this. He didn’t support gay marriage and, while he’d been nice enough to Victoria’s face, he also made his viewpoint very clear on the subject.
“Just for looks, of course. You can keep your girlfriend. She’ll just need to remain very quiet.”
Anger settled over her nerves, but it was a feeling she was well-versed in handling. He’d never supported her marriage and still thought this was some trend she’d get over. “My answer remains the same, Wendell. No.”
“Think about Lisa—”
“Rosa,” Victoria said, masking her irritation.
“Right. Right.” Wendell smiled and sat back with a performed smile. “Think of Rosa. Do you really want to drag her through this? The mainstream media is a shark’s den.”
“Especially now.” With the Para Wars raging in the mid-west, it was open season for hate crimes. Since paras could be anyone, it was even easier to hate the old norm; sex, race, and religion.
He nodded as if she understood him perfectly and had agreed to obey. “Especially now.”
She hated this part of him, but she’d always blown it off before. He was a younger politician who was making ways to create a better world. But better for who?
“Well, excellent,” Wendell said, getting to his feet. “I see I’ve given you something to think about. So, let’s table this for tonight. Dinner. Giavanno’s. Eight. Don’t be late. We have a lot to discuss.”
Victoria watched him walk through the door and close it behind him, excitement and irritation rolling through her.
Victoria’s cell phone buzzed on the desk. She looked at the caller ID and her heart raced a little. Rosa didn’t call often. She texted, giving Victoria the ability to answer back when she had time, which was sometimes on the drive home. Which meant that something needed Victoria’s immediate attention.
She picked up the phone. “Hey, baby. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Rosa said, her voice sounding a little rattled. “Can you come with me today?”
“To the doctor?” Victoria knew exactly where Rosa was, no matter how busy her day might be. “Are you worried?”
“Just… can you come?”
Her heart picked up a beat, but Victoria nodded. “I’m on my way.”
She spent the drive from the office to the hospital trying not to worry, but it was hard. Sky had just told her of “hundreds” of people who had cancer in one apartment building, which were likely only dozens. Some people didn’t know how to count. When the impact was heavy, the emotions inflated the numbers.
Was there something with Rosa she’d missed?
The answer was no, so it was a good chance that her wife was just overreacting to something. Maybe there was a blood sugar scare. Her sister had just come down with Type 2 Diabetes last summer. Or maybe it was her hormone levels. Victoria was almost positive Rosa was experiencing perimenopause, something her wife was in steep denial over, claiming she wasn’t old enough, but Victoria had been going through that for over a year now.
Rosa’s doctor’s office was on the third floor of the medical plaza. When Victoria stepped off the elevator, her heart picked up a pace. Should she expect to see her wife in the waiting room? Should she go to the front desk?
The nurse at the desk looked up with a smile. “Mrs. Armstrong.” She stood, her blue uniform moving naturally with her movements. “Come this way.”
That couldn’t be a good sign. Could it? Not knowing what she was going to hear, Victoria pasted on her winning smile and followed the young nurse to the office in the back. That’s when it hit her. She was being seen to the doctor’s office, not an exam room.
Dr. Johnson stood. Her head barely made it to Victoria’s chest in a combination of the other woman being short and Victoria being tall, even more so in her heels. “Please take a seat,” the woman said, gesturing with her beefy hand before regaining her own chair.
Victoria really only had eyes for her wife. What was she going through? What did she need?
Rosa’s expression was pinched as she kept her gaze rooted firmly on the fountain pen on the doctor’s desk.
Were they pregnant? Victoria vaguely remembered Rosa saying they were going to try again. Her friend had decent genetics and Rosa felt safe with him. Maybe this was a weird guilt—
“Rosa has cancer,” Dr. Johnson said, ripping the worry out of the room like a Band Aid.
It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room. It took Victoria a minute to recover. “She what?”
Dr. Johnson met Victoria’s gaze and held it, offering strength and comfort. “She has cancer. It’s aggressive and we need to start treatments immediately.”
This couldn’t be. “I would have seen the signs,” Victoria said, clenching her fists as anger flared through her. “How did I miss this?”
“I hid it,” Rosa said quietly. “I suspected, and I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry me?” Victoria was livid, not worried. “There are treatments.”
Dr. Johnson nodded. “I’ve contacted a specialist who has a very promising treatment. They’re already helping several others.”
“That’s great,” Victoria said, latching onto the solution like a rope. “What’s his name?”
“Dr.s Young. They’re actually a husband and wife team. I’ll get her on their schedule, but they’re getting busy.”
As doctors often did, but then something clicked that normally wouldn’t have. Sky’s reports of a bunch of people having cancer and a cancer specialist was getting busy—it just connected more dots than Victoria wanted. This was Flint, Michigan all over again, but here. “How many others?”
Dr. Johnson shook her head helplessly. “What?”
“How many others are coming to you with cancer?”
Swallowing, Dr. Johnson bowed her head. “A lot, frankly. All cancers. Various types.”
“Are there any common ties? Same race? Same sex?”
Dr. Johnson shook her head. “No.”
“Same neighborhood?” Victoria needed a connection. “Are they paras?”
Dr. Johnson glanced at Rosa and then back to Victoria, raising her chin in resolution. “I can’t share that with you.”
So, yes. Victoria’s heart picked up the pace. She couldn’t say anything about the water without proof. She was a civil servant and she had a responsibility that she took seriously. “I’m trying to determine what the cause might be.”
“You think it might be environmental?”
“With these numbers? Don’t you?”
Dr. Johnson’s green eyes met Victoria’s as she nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“I need information.”
Dr. Johnson leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk. “Legally, I can’t share a lot.”
Victoria understood that.
Dr. Johnson released a long sigh, looking over at Rosa. “With these numbers, it’s possible that something could be… in food, water? Something everyone eats or ingests that is capable of targeting a particular para gene.”
Victoria flinched hearing it said out loud. “You think that’s possible?”
Closing her eyes, Dr. Johnson opened them again and looked up. “It would make sense. DNA and genetic markers run most of our bodies and there’s a lot we don’t understand about them yet.”
And Rosa would have the para gene, if it existed. “It would make sense that if someone were to attack an area in order to root out paras, they might start at the water.”
Dr. Johnson’s face went pale as she glanced at Rosa. “Everyone ingests that.”
Licking her lips, Rosa nodded. “Tell her assistant whatever they need.”
Victoria’s heart twisted with grief, staring at the woman she loved, but anger fueled her. She’d find a way to protect Rosa because that’s what she did. And if she happened to protect others in her efforts?
All the better.