The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,43
came by his rudeness and anger honestly. I hadn’t really expected them to help me haul their son off to jail, but I wasn’t prepared for them to be so utterly vile. They did share some thoughts on their daughter-in-law, and when I sifted through all the expletives, it was the words whore and slut that surfaced again and again, apparently favorites of theirs. It crossed my mind that LaBrecque probably called Darya these things while he beat her. I did learn that LaBrecque met his wife in Germany while hospitalized on an American military base during his last year of service. A hero, his parents called him. Right. He had found Darya on the Internet, one of those cyber-bride websites. She went to Germany for the meeting; they fell in love and came to the United States together seven years ago. I knew a few things his parents had omitted. The police had responded to three domestic violence calls at the LaBrecque home in the last year and a half. They had once arrested Darya even though she was bleeding and bruised, because LaBrecque met them at the door and told them she’d started the fight in a jealous rage and he’d simply defended himself. Gender does not guarantee the cops will be on your side. Child protective services had sent a social worker to the hospital once after a doctor reported suspicious bruising and broken bones on the boy. Darya finally filed a restraining order, which had done absolutely nothing to protect her.
There wasn’t a lot in LaBrecque’s folder to point me in the right direction. His parents gave me nothing. He didn’t have friends, but I figured his wife would know where he’d hide, so I started calling and leaving messages at women’s shelters all over the metro Atlanta area. No one at them volunteered any information, of course. Women’s shelters do everything within their power to protect the anonymity of their residents. But when my cell rang and the number showed up as restricted, my gut told me it was Darya.
I walked up the empty driveway toward the rambling white Victorian with the lacy peach-colored shutters. A motorized iron gate was closed and locked and I assumed staff cars and resident vehicles were parked behind the house and out of sight. I saw sections of a privacy fence surrounding the backyard, nicely painted to match the house. A security camera, barely noticeable in the upper-right corner of the enormous front porch, watched me while a tiny light under the camera lens blinked green. Traffic on the Midtown street, one of the city’s busy one-ways, was sparse this time of day. At rush hour all lanes would be crawling bumper-to-bumper.
“I’m Keye Street,” I told the woman standing behind the screen. “Darya called me.”
“Hey,” she said, and with just one word, I heard Louisiana in her accent. She pushed open the door for me. “I’m Adele. I work with CADV.”
“What’s CADV?” I asked as she ushered me inside. She was thirty, perhaps, lanky with spiky hair and bright blue-green eyes. An elaborate stained-glass tattoo ran down one bare arm. In the background, I heard women’s voices, children, a television.
“Coalition Against Domestic Violence,” Adele answered. “I’m one of the social workers on rotation here. Another brick in the wall,” she added, smiling.
She led me down the foyer past a bedroom that had been turned into an office. I saw two desks, a woman at one talking into a headset. “We have a twenty-four-hour crisis line in there,” Adele explained. “We all take turns. It’s brutal.” I looked again and noticed three security monitors, with views of the front porch, back porch, and driveway.
We turned a corner and stepped into the main living area, where several kids played on the floor and a row of women on a couch barely looked up from The Jerry Springer Show. The furniture was used Salvation Army, mismatched, long out of date. A couple of folding card tables added to the mix.
“Donated funds don’t care about decorating,” Adele said. We walked past several bedrooms with lines of single beds and cots, and through the kitchen, where two women played cards. Adele pointed to the door. “Darya’s on the back porch.”
She might have been pretty before LaBrecque went to work on her with his fists, but it was hard to tell now. Darya was smoking a cigarette, her face so bruised and misshapen that her lips wouldn’t close completely around the filter. There was a