Page 20 of Playing for Keeps

The video would be worse.

“Wait, go back.” Butterman’s voice cut through, sounding as though he was speaking around food. I didn’t bother looking at the screen with his face, just scrolled backward through the file. “There.”

I stopped, and Ford groaned.

“Is he shooting her up?” Angel asked as he leaned toward the screen, the camera picking up the electric blue eyeshadow and ruby red lipstick painted on his olive-colored skin.

“Yeah. PI said the pimp was buying coke an hour before.”

“How many people did you have following her, Arthur?” Ford mumbled in my ear. I looked at his screen, saw him holding his face in his hands, his mouth covered by his slim, dark fingers. His deep brown eyes looked haunted, the whites more red than I’d seen them in years.

“Don't worry about it, Ford.” I shifted in my seat, my bare back sticking to the warm leather of my chair. “I told you I'd take care of you. This will get you what you need to get custody.”

“The pictures are grainy,” Thatcher replied. “She could fight it, say he’s not doing what he’s doing, throw enough doubt on the case.”

“That won't happen.”

“You don't know that.”

Leaning my head back against my chair, I looked up at the ceiling. A droplet of water ran down the side of my face, curving around my temple to the corner of my eye, hanging there for a second before trailing down my cheek like a tear.

Fitting, for the way I felt.

But this wasn’t about me. We were here for Ford, just like they’d all been there for me. And what I had to show them would change everything.

I hit a button on my keyboard to move Ford’s face from the left screen to the middle. So the camera picking up my face would show me looking at him, not some place off to the side. I caught myself chewing on my bottom lip. They all saw it, I knew they did, before I could stop myself. And they sat there, watching me, waiting for me to speak.

“You’re not going to like this,” I told him. The others stayed silent, and Ford rocked in his seat. “I was following the kid. Keeping an eye on him, just in case. She’s involved with some bad people, and I wanted to see if any of them were bothering him.”

Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard at the bile creeping up my throat. This was exactly what Ford needed to get full custody of his child. I just wished I wasn’t the one showing him, wished it hadn’t happened, wished that the kid wouldn’t have had this happen while he sat not five feet away.

“Just tell me.” Ford’s voice trembled as he whispered across the line.

My teeth closed down on my lip again, and I didn’t bother stopping it this time. I pulled up the video I shot two days ago. My finger hesitated over the button on my mouse, and when I hit it, I turned away. Seeing it in person was bad enough. I didn’t want to see it again.

But every second of the video replayed through my mind as if I was seeing it for the first time. The pimp and Ford’s ex, standing at the back of the vehicle in the corner of the top level of a crowded mall parking garage. He pulled out the syringe, holding it in his teeth as he took her outstretched arm and searched for a vein. Injected the foul liquid into her and her body slumped against the car. When he was done, he threw the syringe on the ground at their feet—the same syringe I collected from the corner of the lot before I left there that day. The pimp spun the woman around and pulled up her short skirt as he slammed her into the trunk of the car. He fiddled with his pants and shoved himself inside.

The voices were too much. The grunting, moaning, and yelling of the man and woman as they fucked. The crying of the little boy, just eight years old, sitting in the back seat of that very same car, the windows rolled down in the sweltering summer heat.

I wanted to vomit when I recorded it two days ago. I wanted to puke every time I thought of that horrible sight on my way back across the country to my home. I want to throw up everything inside of me, the urge growing stronger as I heard one of the guys retching in the background.

“Enough,” Thatcher barked.

But it was followed quickly by a pleading, “No.” I forced my eyes back to Ford’s screen. Tears seeped from his eyes, his lower face still covered by his fingers. “I need to see...”

Thatcher’s face disappeared from his screen, followed soon after by a sickly-looking Angel. Butterman just sat there, mouth hanging open, eyes wide as he watched the train wreck in front of him.

When the video ended ten minutes later, Butterman closed his mouth and tore his eyes away from his screen. He wiped a heavy hand across his mouth before getting up and disappearing from view, leaving only me and Ford left in the game.

“I feel sick,” he whispered, tears and snot pouring down his face. “This is my son, my baby. And she did that...”

“I know.” I closed the video screen and pulled up other documents the PI found on the ex. Eviction notices, notes from the landlord telling the woman to pay up “one way or another.” Even long range photos through their dirty apartment windows, of the woman selling her body to a host of men while the boy sat in the other room. There were bank and credit card statements pulled from the trash, photos of drug paraphernalia pulled from their garbage bins along with the DNA testing showing it belonged to her. I explained in detail each item that we’d uncovered, never once being interrupted even as Butterman, Angel, and Thatcher came back onto the screens.

I ended with the one detail I knew would affect Ford the most. It was the one thing I expected the most kickback from him on, but one thing I was adamant about.

“I’ve sent everything to my lawyer in New York. He’ll be contacting you tomorrow morning with the next steps.”

“I can’t pay for a lawyer,” Ford said, his lip trembling. “I’ve given every last dime I have to that woman to take care of my kid.”