The Reckless Oath We Made(26)

“Oh my god,” she said in a breathy voice, so I knew she hadn’t used her inhaler yet. Her hand was shaking too much. I took the inhaler, put it up to her lips, and gave her a dose.

“Mrs. Trego, I’m here to serve a search warrant for this house. We’re going to need you to go outside, so we can conduct it,” Mansur said. He’d been standing back a few feet, but he came close enough to hand Mom the search warrant.

“You bastard.” Mom hadn’t quite gotten her breath back, but by the time I got her out of her chair and put her robe on over her nightgown, she was saying it in a much louder voice. I knelt down and tied her shoes while Mansur waited, and then I guided her toward the front door. It took a good twenty minutes to get her to the front porch and, when she stepped out into the daylight, where the other cops were waiting, she’d worked up some real venom.

“You bastards,” she told them. And then, as they helped her down the front steps: “You heartless goddamn bastards. Searching my house when my daughter is still missing!”

“You need to get her something to sit on,” I said to one of the uniforms. There was no way Mom could stand outside until they were done. She was already shaky from walking that far, and who knew what was going on with her blood sugar? I didn’t dare ask her, either, or she’d bite my head off about minding my own business.

“I think we’ve got a folding chair,” the cop said.

“Are you stupid? A folding chair won’t hold her.” I didn’t even bother saying it quietly, because Mom wasn’t paying attention to me. She was staring at the front door of her house, moving her lips. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but I guessed it included the word bastard.

We were still standing there ten minutes later, when my cousin Emma pulled up. As she walked around the end of the police van to reach the sidewalk, she acted like it was radioactive, and she was afraid to get close to it.

“Are you okay, Aunt Dot?” she said.

“Oh, sweetie, thank you for coming,” Mom said. “Zhorzha was dropping Marcus off at school; that’s why I couldn’t get ahold of her.”

I took a step back, so Mom and Emma could hug each other, and it was a relief to have someone else holding Mom up for a while.

“What are they doing?” Emma said.

About half a dozen uniformed cops had gone into the house with Mansur and Smith. I wasn’t even sure where they could all be standing, but they’d left one cop on the front porch.

“They have a warrant to search the house,” I said.

“I can’t imagine what they think they’ll find.” Mom sounded annoyed, but I had to purse my lips not to laugh, because I was trying to imagine what they wouldn’t find.

Then I remembered the search warrant. When I reached for it, Mom let me have it. I didn’t understand all the legal crap, but there was a list of items they were searching for, which included the money from the first bank robbery my father and Uncle Alva committed. That didn’t surprise me, even though they’d searched the house for it eighteen years ago. Probably the cops just used that to be sure the judge would give them the warrant. Since the money had never been recovered, it was a perpetual free pass to harass my mother.

What surprised me was the cops were also searching for guns, “correspondence or other communications” between LaReigne, Tague Barnwell, Conrad Ligett, and Molly Verbansky, and “components for improvised explosive devices.”

I was staring at that last line when a cop stepped out the front door carrying three cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another. At some point, I guess they’d decided the air in my mother’s house was too dangerous, because he was wearing a dust mask and rubber gloves. As soon as the first cop cleared the porch, another came out, then another, until all six uniforms had come out. They carried boxes to the edge of the driveway, where the police van was, and lined them up.

“Be careful!” Mom called. “There are valuable collectibles in those boxes!”

A couple cops turned and looked at her. Because of the dust masks I couldn’t tell what kind of look it was, but I guessed contempt. Then they went back into the house and carried out more boxes. Some of it looked like kitchen things.

“I swear, if they damage anything, I’m going to hire a lawyer,” Mom said. “There are a lot of valuable things in there.”

“Just like old times,” I said to nobody in particular, because Mom and Emma weren’t paying attention to me.

Mansur came out of the house, carrying a single cardboard box, and started talking to the cop who was in charge of the van. She was wearing some kind of a paper jumpsuit and writing on a clipboard.

I walked toward them, but Mansur shook his head and gestured for me to stop.

“What is this?” I held up the search warrant.

“Miss Trego, I do need you to stay back.”

“Will you tell them to be careful, Zhorzha?” Mom yelled.

Mansur walked back toward the house before I could say anything else. The cop in the paper suit started rubbing something that looked like gauze pads on the boxes that were lined up.

It went on for another hour at least, like watching ants evacuate a den. I stayed where Mansur had stopped me, no closer, no farther. When the sun came up over the roofline I was still in the shade, but it hit Mom and Emma full in the face. I walked back to them, planning to ask Mom how she was doing, but it was a stupid question. She was standing in front of her house in her bathrobe, watching the police drag all of her shit out on the front lawn.