Between Love and Duty. Janice Johnson Kay

Upstairs she rapped firmly on the door displaying an upright metal 2, a listing 0 and a 3 that hung upside down.

      “Venga,” a voice called, and after only a momentary hesitation Jane opened the door to find herself in a cramped living room.

       Two young, black-haired children sat in front of the television, on which a small green dragon seemed to be trying to puff dandelion seeds but was, to his frustration, setting them on fire. Both children turned to stare at Jane. The girl stuck her thumb in her mouth. An ironing board was set up in the narrow space between a stained sofa and the wall. A Formica table with four chairs and a high chair was wedged into the remaining space. The spicy smell of cooking issued from the kitchen.

       Jane raised her voice enough to be heard in the kitchen. “Hola. Me llamo Jane Brooks.”

       A woman appeared, wiping her hands on a dish towel and looking flustered. “Sí, sí. I forgot you were coming. Perdone.” In a flurry of Spanish too fast for Jane, she spoke to the children, then gestured Jane into the kitchen. She was cooking, she explained, and couldn’t leave dinner unattended.

       She did speak English, but not well; Jane made a mental note that living in a non-English-speaking household probably wasn’t helping Tito’s school performance. Jane and the boy’s sister continued to speak in Spanish.

       Jane was urged to sit at a very small table with two chairs while her hostess continued to bustle around the kitchen.

       “You’re Lupe?” she asked, for confirmation, and the young woman nodded.

       Like the pregnant teenager downstairs, she had warm brown skin, long black hair and eyes the color of chocolate. She was pretty, but beginning to look worn. Plump around the middle, and moving as though her feet hurt.

       Jane knew from the paperwork that Lupe was twenty-three. There had been other children born between Lupe, the oldest, and Tito, the youngest, but they were either on their own and unable to help with Tito or were in Mexico with their mother. Tito, Lupe explained, had stayed with his father because Mama thought as a boy he needed a man.

       She shrugged expressively. “Then, one year after Mama returns to Mexico, Papa is arrested. So stupid! I called Mama, but she is living with an uncle and it is very crowded. So she begged me to keep Tito. Which I’ve done.”

       As if this household wasn’t crowded. “You have children of your own,” Jane said, with what she thought was some restraint.

       “Sí, three. The little one is napping.” She stirred the black bean concoction on the stove. “My husband, he left me.” She sounded defeated.“I work at La Fiesta and a neighbor watches the children. I can’t depend on Tito. Maybe if he was a girl.” She shrugged again.

       “Do you visit your father at the prison?” The Monroe correctional institute was nearly an hour’s drive away.

       “Sometimes.” Lupe sent her a shamed glance. “The money for gas… You know how it is. And my children have to come, too. I take Tito when I can, but it upsets him, so maybe it is good that we don’t go often.”

       Jane nodded. Having a parent in prison was difficult for a child of any age, but for a middle schooler it must be especially traumatic. He wouldn’t be the only kid in the school with an incarcerated parent, but he probably felt like he was.

       “Is Tito any trouble to you?” she asked, and got a guarded response.

       No, no, he was such a good boy, Lupe assured her, but then admitted that she didn’t see much of him. She worked most evenings; tonight was a rare night when she was home with her children, and she didn’t know where Tito was. With a friend, she felt sure. Would he be home for dinner? She didn’t know, but doubted it.

       They talked for half an hour, until Lupe was ready to put dinner on the table and Jane realized she was in the way. She declined a polite invitation to join them and told Lupe she’d be in touch.

       She was almost out the door when Lupe said, “Oh! I forgot to tell you about the nice policeman who has been spending time with Tito. Do you think you’d like to talk to him?”

       Oh, yeah. She was definitely interested in hearing from him. Unless he was the father of a boy Tito’s age, Jane had to wonder how he’d gotten acquainted with Tito at all.

       “His name is Don…Can Mack…Lack…Land.” Lupe tried to sound it out carefully, but grimaced. “That isn’t right. I have it written down. Un momentito, por favor.”

       She returned with a scrap of paper on which a bold hand had written “Duncan MacLachlan” along with a phone number. With a small shock, Jane recognized the name. Captain MacLachlan was regularly in the news. He was the unlikeliest of all mentors for a twelve-year-old boy.

       Jane copied the phone number and thanked Lupe, then, thoughtful, made her way to her car. Aside from the intriguing and possibly worrisome involvement of Captain MacLachlan, she wasn’t surprised by the visit, but she was dismayed. Clearly Tito couldn’t stay long-term with his sister. He might have been better placed in a foster home while his father was behind bars, but there were never enough good foster homes, and he’d been lucky to have a family member willing to take him. Lupe’s husband had probably still been around, too. Jane could understand why the placement had been approved, probably with a sigh of relief and a firmly closed file.

       She drove a couple of blocks, then pulled over to make notes while her impressions were fresh. She jotted questions and directions to herself, too. What about the other siblings—perhaps one of them was now in a better position to offer a home to Tito? Find out what friends he was spending so much time with. Imperative to talk to teachers. Did he go to the Boys & Girls Club? After-school programs? Probably not at his age. Any other community organizations? She had no record that he’d been in trouble with the law, but she’d find out. Reading between the lines of what Lupe had said, Tito was ripe for exactly that. MacLachlan? she wrote in the margin. Was Tito in a juvenile court-ordered program of which the family court remained unaware?

       The father’s release date was only two weeks away, and Jane wanted to have a good sense of other possibilities for the boy before then. And, of course, she would make the trip to Monroe to speak with Hector Ortez. She had to do all of this around running her own business, however.

       Lucky, she thought wryly, she had no social life to speak of.

       Driving home, she tried to recall what she knew about Duncan MacLachlan. She’d never read or heard anything to make her think he was “nice.” Although that wasn’t fair.

       In the department, he was only one step below the police chief. He was exceptionally young to be in that position, still in his thirties, Jane had read. He looked older, she’d thought when she saw his picture in the paper or brief segments from press conferences on the local news. That might only be because he was invariably stern. If he ever smiled, the press had yet to capture the moment.

       She was a little disconcerted by how easily she recalled his face. She did remember staring at a front page photo of him in the local daily. She’d left that section of the newspaper lying out on her table for several days for reasons she hadn’t examined but had to admit, in retrospect, had involved a spark of sexual interest. Not that she would have pursued it even if she’d met the guy in person—he was so not the kind of man she would consider dating even though courthouse gossip said he was unmarried. But that face…

       The photo wasn’t from one of his staged appearances; she suspected it had been taken with a telephoto lens, as he strode away from a crime scene. He was listening to something another man beside him was saying. His head was cocked slightly and he’d been frowning, more as if he was concentrating than annoyed. His face was…harsh. It might be the seemingly permanent furrows between his dark eyebrows and on his forehead that aged him. She’d had the probably silly idea that he could have been a seventeenth-century Calvinist minister—unbending, judgmental, yet unswervingly conscious of right and wrong.

       Those Calvinist ministers probably hadn’t had shoulders like his, though, or the leashed physical power that his well-cut suits didn’t disguise.