4

 

Ellie left the hospital and headed to the Burkesboro Police Department. Rush hour traffic along Main Street had died down, but the everyday traffic was still pretty heavy. The morning sun was glaring through the windshield, blinding her to the color of the light at the intersection of Main and Baker Street. A horn honked behind her, and the woman driver gave her an exasperated look, hands spread wide, mouth hanging open. Ellie slowly pressed the gas and crawled forward then offered the woman a smile as she jerked around Ellie and sped by in the other lane. Ellie threw her hand up in a mock wave.

She fished her sunglasses from the glove compartment and wondered about Johnny Doe’s colorless sunshine. Was it an indication of a sun-less world, or had he simply forgotten to color it? And what was with the little gray house? Prisons were made of cinderblock, not homes.

Ellie turned into the department’s parking lot and pulled around to the back. The morning shift had already checked in and headed out, while a few of the night shift’s squad cars were still lingering, taking up valuable parking spaces. There was an empty spot between the Crime Lab van and Jesse Alvarez’s red Camaro, and one at the far end of the lot. She opted for the one at the end of the lot. Walking a little farther would be less painful than an encounter with Jesse Alvarez.

He must be behind in his paperwork, she thought as she locked up her car. Working vice, his appearances at the station were few and far between. Probably just as well. Jesse had been a one-night stand during a bout of reckless abandon a few years back. He’d been the only one she wished had called back, but when he didn’t and started ducking behind corners whenever they were within a hundred feet of each other at the office, she pretty much knew where she stood. Just as well, he was different now. She was different.

The Burkesboro Police Department was a sprawling, six-story building of black-paned glass and chrome, and looked terribly out of place among the older, more traditional buildings jammed up around it. Over the years, Burkesboro’s population had spiraled upward with new residents coming in who longed for a “small town” atmosphere but weren’t quite desperate enough to make a total escape of city life and head to the mountains proper. With all the new residents, the small town atmosphere had blossomed into a busy little city.

That was fine with Ellie. She liked the convenience of having a Starbucks around the corner and a movie complex that showed first-run movies. The community where she grew up was nestled in a valley tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains about fifty miles west of Burkesboro and opened its first movie theatre when she was well into her teens. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if it had been built earlier, anyway, as her father was a preacher and didn’t approve of too many movies. She was twenty-three before she saw the Wizard of Oz. She liked the scarecrow best and still had nightmares about the flying monkeys.

Ellie slid her ID card into the electronic card reader at the back door then sprinted up the first three flights of stairs. Next, she took the elevator to the fifth floor. Three flights were all she could do without breaking a major sweat and having everyone in the office wonder if she ever showered. Her New Year’s Resolution had been all five flights, and she had conquered three. It was mid-March, so she figured she was doing pretty good.

The elevator doors jerked opened and as Ellie was stepping out, Jesse was stepping in. He had a three-day growth of beard and was wearing a ragged flannel shirt and jeans torn at the knees. His black eyes were rimmed with red. Six months ago, Ellie would have been tempted to step back in the elevator with him. Now, she just wanted to run and hide.

“Hey,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah. Been pretty busy. You know how it is.” She rocked from one foot to the other, anxious to get to her desk and away from Jesse and away from her past.

“Yeah, I heard about the dead kid. Something, ain’t it?”

She nodded in a jerky motion. “Yeah. It’s ah…really something.”

He smiled slightly. “Well, good luck with it.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Look, uh, I’ve got to get. You know, got to check in then get back up to the hospital.”

“Yeah.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Well, good seeing you again. I’ll see you around.” He stepped into the elevator, and Ellie didn’t wait for the doors to close. She was already at her desk by the time the elevator and Jesse disappeared.

See you around, yeah right. That’s what he said the morning he stumbled out of her house. Jerk. If he just wasn’t so good looking. And charming. And man, he had a smile that could light up a room! Jerk. She didn’t know if she was mad at him, or angry with herself for having been so weak. She still was. It was a constant struggle. The memories of her father’s sermons were fading like an old photograph.

The Criminal Investigation Department was located in the south-side corner of the fifth floor, lackluster in appearance and cluttered with too many desks jammed into too small of an area. Half of the CID’s designated real estate was occupied by a seldom-used conference room big enough to hold a United Nations meeting. The room was designed for detectives to use as an interview room, but Ellie often wondered who the builder thought they were supposed to be interviewing in a room that size. An entire football team? Jack’s hole-in-the-wall was at the back of the office area, which consisted of eight desks, separated into two rows. The four lining the outside wall were blessed with a window overlooking the drab parking lot while the other four, including Ellie’s, were pushed against the inside wall. A fake ficus tree that shimmered with dust was the lone decoration.

Ellie removed the ladybug picture from her pocket and pinned it to the corkboard on the wall beside her desk. Five investigators were at their desks, on the phone, transcribing notes into the computer, or, in Mike Allistar’s case, surfing the Internet.

“Heard about the dead kid,” Chip Craven said. He stopped typing and referred to his scribbled notes. “Anything new?” He resumed his pecking at the keyboard.

“They did a bunch of tests this morning. It’ll be awhile before we get the results, though.”

“Anyone mention testing Leon?” He looked at Ellie and half grinned.

“I thought about that, but…I mean, certainly he wouldn’t while he’s on duty, would he?”

Both Craven and Allistar burst out laughing. Craven shook his head, still laughing. “Did the room smell like rose air freshener?”

Ellie closed her eyes and massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “Really? I thought he used it to cover the smell of the chemicals.”

Craven’s laugh finally settled into a crusty cough. “Run a drug test on Leon. It could explain a lot.”

Ellie fell into her chair and shook her head. Even if the kid’s “rebirth” could be explained by Leon’s high, it didn’t explain who nearly beat the kid to death. She powered up her computer then checked her voicemail. She had three messages: one from Mrs. Hilda Thompson, a B & E victim with additional information; one from her dentist reminding her of a three o’clock appointment; and one from her dad.

He’d called her at work? She erased the message, grabbed her mug with the Burkesboro PD emblem and headed for the coffee pot.

Why was her dad calling her at work? Why was he calling her at home, for that matter? She hadn’t talked to him since Christmas, and that was fine with her. The conversation had been brief and strained as usual.

“Merry Christmas to you, too, Dad. No, I can’t make it home. I’m tied up at work. Tell Aunt Sissy I said hello. I’ve got to go now, but I’ll call later.”

She never did. She spent Christmas day in her little drafty house watching a light snow brush the ground then watched It’s a Wonderful Life and cried herself to sleep.

Ellie set her coffee on her desk then pulled the missing persons binder from the department bookshelf. She carried it back to her desk and called Hilda Thompson.

“I’ve been making a list of other things that’s come up missing, just like you told me to do,” Hilda said, her voice creaky with age. “I can’t find my remote. You think they took it when they took the TV?”

Ellie took a sip of coffee. “It’s possible, but not likely. They’d probably have no use for a remote and besides, most televisions now days work with those universal remotes.”

“So you’re not going to add it to the list?”

“I’ll add it, Mrs. Thompson, but in the meantime you continue to look around the house for it, OK? Call me if you find it.” Ellie wished her a good day then told the woman goodbye and hung up.

“Ten dollars says it’s underneath the couch,” Allistar said. His beak-like nose was buried deep in NASCAR collectibles offered on an online auction site.

“I found mine one time in the john. Who takes the remote to the john?” Craven spit out a laugh then coughed again.

Ellie flipped open the binder and turned to the children’s section. There were only two in Burkesboro: a twelve year-old Hispanic runaway, and a little red-headed girl abducted by her father. The Feds had taken over the abduction.

She picked up the phone and dialed the Tolson County Sheriff’s Department’s Detective Division.

Carson Fink answered. He rattled off a string of pleasantries and invited Ellie to go skiing with him at Beech Mountain next weekend.

She politely declined. In part, because he was married, and she did have standards, and also because his breath smelled worse than goat cheese. “Hey—we’ve got a kid, no ID, found in an alley. You have any reports of missing children around the area?”

“None in Tolson, but I think Avery County’s got one. Got the bulletin yesterday.”

Ellie’s ears perked up. “Male or female?”

“Male I think. Hold on a sec and let me go pull the bulletin.” He returned a moment later and read the description. “Eight-year-old male. Fifty pounds. Blond, blue. Went missing from the Mountain View community two days ago.”

Ellie’s breath caught in her throat. “Does it have a picture?”

“Yeah. It’s a photo copy so it’s kinda grainy.”

Ellie’s mind raced with a thousand questions. “What’s he wearing?”

There was hesitation on the line then Fink finally answered. “Ummm—it’s hard to tell. I can’t say for sure.”

“OK, never mind. Can you fax me the bulletin?”

“Sure. No problem. I can’t believe y’all didn’t receive it in the first place.”

Ellie rolled her eyes, willing to bet it was lying in a heap of other unread faxes at the machine. When it came to faxes, every man, or woman, was on their own. “Why wasn’t an Amber Alert issued?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to check with Avery County on that.”

Ellie thanked Fink, hung up and raced over to the fax machine. She didn’t know whether she was going to shoot herself or jump for joy if the fax was there, if it had been lying there the whole time. And what if the missing Avery County kid was her Johnny Doe? Could she get that lucky?

She separated the faxes and found the bulletin near the bottom of the pile. Fink was right. The picture was really grainy. She stared at it, brought it closer to her face, held it at arm’s length, but in the end didn’t think it was him. Her heart sank to her toes as she let out a long, slow breath.

She carried the bulletin back to her desk and continued to stare at it, willing her eyes to see something she didn’t think was there.

Craven peered over her shoulder. “Is that him?”

Ellie shook her head. “I can’t tell from the picture. The description matches, though. You can’t tell me this is the best picture the parents have of their child.”

“Probably has older siblings,” Craven said. “You know, the second-child syndrome. There’s never as many pictures of the second kid as there is of the first.”

Ellie continued to stare at the picture and sighed. “There still should be a better picture.”

“Get Avery to email you the original.”

She was just about to pick up the phone when Jack came sprinting by on his way to his office. “Ellie—my office. And bring a picture of the kid.”

He was already behind his desk and comfortable in his chair by the time she got in there. “I’ve got a lead from Avery County. I was—”

“Chief wants it on the news.” He held his hand out for the photo.

Ellie handed it over, sighed, and plopped into the chair in front of Jack’s desk. “Can we wait until I check on this Avery County lead? It could pan out, and we wouldn’t have to notify anyone of anything.” She was hoping. Her experience with the media had been a long time ago. She was a kid at the time, and the lights and microphones and probing questions had left a scar she couldn’t gloss over. The exposure, the humiliation had driven her mother to….

Johnny Doe had the potential to be a major headline, and Ellie was already dreading it. “Can’t we wait until tomorrow?” she asked softly.

Jack slowly shook his head. “The sooner we get it out there, the sooner we can find out who he belongs to. He wants it on the noon news.”

“But I’ve got a good lead. We could wrap it up this afternoon.”

“If it pans out. And whether it does or not, we’ve still got a major investigation on our hands, Ellie. That little boy was beaten and left for dead.”

She wanted to correct him and say that little boy was dead. He was as dead as dead is.

Ellie’s stomach churned until bile burned her throat. “Jack, the whole Lazarus thing. The media’s going to have a feeding frenzy.”

“The Lazarus angle may actually help us. Whoever beat that kid, left him for dead. If they hear the kid survived, they may panic thinking the kid can tell us something. There’ll be some movement somewhere.” He leaned back in the chair and rested his hands behind his head. “What’d you find out this morning?”

“Deveraux’s got a child psychologist coming in this afternoon.” She filled him in on the Avery County lead and threw in a gripe about the faxes piling up.

Jack nodded and Ellie knew it was more an acknowledgment of the possible lead than the fax situation. Nothing would change there. “Keep me posted on Avery County, and in the meantime, get his picture to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.”

Ellie’s eyes widened. “You want to go national? If the national media picks this up, it’ll be a nightmare, Jack.” Her voice rose as high as her brows were raised.

“You’ll look good on Oprah. Now get outta here and get over to the alley where he was found. There has to be someone who saw something.”

Ellie rose and started out then stopped. “Why would an agency not post an Amber Alert for a missing kid?”

Jack shrugged. “Different reasons, I suppose. Could be they suspect foul play right off the bat and have a person of interest nearby.”

Foul play. There was definitely foul play involved with her little Johnny Doe. She wasn’t sure about the poor kid in Avery County. Could they really be one and the same?

 

****

 

The alley where Johnny Doe was found was a narrow cut-through between a dilapidated wholesale fish market and a dive called Marisol’s that reeked worse than the fish place. On the other side of the fish market was an abandoned three-story building, its front door and windows boarded up. The alley was littered with grease-stained food wrappers and used hypodermics and smelled of urine, courtesy of the drunks stumbling out of Marisol’s. The area was mostly industrial with a few small office buildings housing questionable small-time insurance agents and smaller-time lawyers who paid the rent with fees from petty crooks and frivolous lawsuits. It was a forgotten area, a blip on the Burkesboro planning map that had been continually overlooked each budget year when the city doled out funding for what they liked to call economic development.

The sleazy insurance agents and small-time lawyers didn’t care; their clients felt at home among the muck and stink.

Ellie parked in front of the fish place. She gathered her notepad and the photos of Johnny Doe. The wind whipped up the stench and dropped the temperature ten degrees. Ellie buttoned her blazer and hurried inside, anxious to escape both.

“Hello?” She yelled into the seemingly empty warehouse.

“Be right there,” a slight voice yelled from the back of the building.

The dull metal coolers against the walls were the length of coffins and lined end to end. Condensation gathered along their outsides and dropped splatters of water on the concrete floor. A cheap partition near the back separated a small office from the dead fish. A tiny man wearing a blaze orange jumpsuit and a toboggan with fluffy fur surrounding his prune-like face emerged from behind the partition. He removed a fat glove and offered his hand to Ellie.

“Shorty McCorkle. What can I do for you?” He stared at Ellie and sniffled against the cold.

His firm handshake made up for the slight size of his hand. “Detective Ellie Saunders, Burkesboro PD.”

He eyed her up and down then nodded approvingly. “Cops sure didn’t look like you back in my days.” He chuckled, and it was a mouse-like sound.

Ellie slightly smiled. “Are you the owner?”

“Owner, marketing manager, and chief bottle washer. That’s me.” He put the glove back on his wrinkled hand then pushed a clump of toboggan fur from in front of his face.

“A small child was found Tuesday night in the alley, and I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Dwayne said he thought the kid was dead.”

“Dwayne?” Ellie took out her pen and opened her notepad.

“Dwayne Andrews. Comes in around three. Helps me out a little.”

“So you weren’t here when the child was found?”

McCorkle shook his head, and the fur swished back and forth. “Left about five to grab a burger.”

“Did you return at any time that day?”

He shook his head again. “Dwayne closed up about eight. Called me when he got home to tell me all about it. He’s a bit of a gossip, you know—loves drama. Gets real excited when he sees blue lights.” He chuckled then sniffled again.

“Is Dwayne working this afternoon?”

“As far as I know. He should be in around three if you want to check back.”

Ellie nodded and said she would. She showed McCorkle one of the pictures of Johnny Doe, one where he was sitting on the gray metal desk in Leon’s office, smiling and full of life. “Have you ever seen him around here?”

McCorkle studied the picture then shook his head. “Nope. Cute kid. So he wasn’t dead?”

Ellie didn’t quite know how to answer. “Obviously not.”

McCorkle looked as confused as Ellie had been feeling since discovering Johnny Doe. He pushed fur out of his eyes and frowned.

“Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary Tuesday?”

McCorkle pursed his lips as though he was in deep concentration then shook his head.

“What about your customers? Did you have many come in on Tuesday?”

He laughed then sniffled again. “I can count on one hand. Mostly regulars, two or three new ones looking for trout. Made me wonder what was up with the trout, you know? I mean three in one day, what’s up with that? Something you might want to look into.” He blinked away a stray piece of fur.

“Do you have a log of customers? Credit card receipts perhaps?”

“Yeah, sure. They’re back here in the office.”

Ellie followed him to the back where McCorkle ducked behind the partitioned wall. A cheap wooden desk was littered with various generic store-bought inventory sheets and sales receipts. McCorkle thumbed through a scattered pile of papers then handed them to Ellie. “I haven’t posted those yet so you can’t take them with you but I can make you copies.”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble that would be helpful.”

He removed his gloves then powered up an ancient copier that sounded more like a lawn tractor than an office machine. McCorkle blew a breath into his balled fists while he waited for the copier to awake from its hibernation.

Ellie scanned through the receipts, studying one in particular, a delivery receipt from an outfit near Boone. “What about this delivery? Are they local?”

McCorkle glanced at the receipt. “Bekley’s? Naw, they’re not from around here. Up around Avery County I think.”

Ellie raised a brow and stared at McCorkle. “Been dealing with them long?”

He shrugged. “Couple years. Home office is down along the Mississippi. They bring up most of my gulf water fish.”

She looked over the receipt for a delivery driver’s name. When she didn’t find one, she asked.

“It was a new guy. I didn’t catch his name. Big fella.”

To McCorkle, that could be anyone over five-foot-six. Ellie handed him the receipts and waited for the copies. McCorkle stuffed them in the machine then punched a button. He blew air into his hands again while they waited.

Afterward, Ellie put the copies in the car then headed into Marisol’s. The walls were dark-paneled with lopsided dart boards hanging on for dear life every few feet. The numbers around the circles were worn and unreadable, some punctuated with holes big enough to drive a truck through. Green-covered lights hung from the low ceiling and cast an eerie glow over the few scattered tables and wooden bar that had lost its sheen a long time ago.

A woman with a masculine haircut and biceps bigger than McCorkle’s body was stocking bottles of whiskey behind the bar. “Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing Ellie suspiciously.

Ellie navigated around discarded peanut hulls and sticky-looking liquid spotting the floor and approached the bar. “Ellie Saunders, Burkesboro PD.” She offered her hand but the woman stared at it as if it were spurting blood.

She continued with her restocking. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“And I’m not here to offer any. A little boy was found in the alley Tuesday night, and I’d like to ask you a couple questions if that’s OK.”

The woman put up the last bottle of liquor then busied herself wiping down the bar. Ellie held the picture of Johnny Doe in front of the woman. The woman squinted against the dim light for a better look then shook her head. “We don’t get too many kids around here. It’s not exactly a family-friendly neighborhood.”

“Were you working Tuesday night?”

The woman continued wiping away at the bar, removing spots apparently only she could see. “Yeah, I was here. I’m here all the time.”

“And your name is?”

The woman eyed Ellie then after a moment offered her name. “Marisol Bowman.”

Ellie jotted down the name. “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

Marisol snickered. “Honey, ain’t anything around here normal. It’s a full-time job just keeping some of these yokels straight. Know what I mean?”

“Some of the clientele’s a little rough around the edges?”

She laughed then shook her head. “A little rough? They make longshoremen look like sissies.”

“Think any of them are capable of—“

“Hurting a kid?” She shook her head again, thin lips drawn together tight. “They’re a bunch of brutes but hurting a kid…naw. Kids, dogs, and mommas are off limits.”

“The 911 call came in around six from a pre-paid cell phone registered to….” She referred to her notes, raised her eyebrow then sighed. “It was registered to a Mickey Mouse.” Of course the name was bogus, so she hadn’t made any effort to remember it.

Marisol grinned. “Mickey. He’s a regular. He’ll be in later if you want to talk to him.”

Ellie stared at her. She couldn’t be serious. “Mickey Mouse?”

“His name’s Mickey Makowski.”

Ellie had interviewed several gawkers standing around that night, but no one saw anything, heard anything, or knew anything, and no one owned up to having placed the 911 call. She’d bet money Mickey was standing in the crowd, probably one of the gawkers who hadn’t seen or heard anything, either. “What time does Mickey usually roll in?”

“Three thirty, four.”

“What time did he leave that night?”

She shrugged. “He was here at last call so that was around midnight.”

“And he didn’t say anything about finding a kid in the alley? Seems like that would be a topic of conversation.”

Marisol shook her head. “You’ve got to know Mickey. Been coming here five years, and we ain’t figured out if he’s a genius or just plain stupid.”

Wonderful. So far, the only witness was either a freaking genius or an idiot. Ellie handed Marisol a contact card and asked her to call if she heard of anything.

As she was leaving, Marisol called out. “Hey, the kid—was he dead?”

Ellie gnawed on her bottom lip a moment then finally answered. “He was pretty close.”

Marisol slowly shook her head. “What a shame.”

Ellie nodded her agreement. “Yeah.”

She spent the rest of the morning hoofing it between grungy insurance salesmen and pudgy lawyers wearing cheap ties and cheaper shoes. No one saw anything. No one heard anything, and no one knew anything. An insurance salesman, Stan Kellum, said he saw the blue lights and the ambulance and figured there had been a pretty good bar fight and didn’t want to get involved. One of the lawyers, a bulky guy named Alvin B. Kepler, III, said his last client, a girl with a habit of writing bad checks, left around three then he closed up shop and headed to the gym. Guy’s got to keep in shape, you know. Wink, wink.

Around eleven, Ellie headed back to the office. She had one more stop to make and turned into the Market Street Plaza. She found a spot in front of Wal-Mart, went in, and headed straight for the clothing department. She couldn’t decide between the blue, red, or black, so she grabbed all three and marched to the checkout line.

The cashier grinned as she scanned the items. “Guess your little guy likes Spiderman, huh?”

Ellie smiled.