6

 

Ellie could hear the clatter of dishes and yelling before she walked in Caper’s Deli. If one wanted a quiet lunch, Caper’s wasn’t the place to go. Jedimiah Caper was a barrel of a man who roared food orders like a drill sergeant while the cooks and waitresses slung dishes like they were Frisbees. The place was usually packed, and customers wanting conversation resorted to yelling at one another so they could hear over the racket.

She found an empty stool at the counter and squeezed herself between a city fireman and a guy in an expensive business suit. She ordered her usual: a ham and turkey club with spicy mustard, no mayo, an extra pickle, and a large sweet tea.

Jack was wrong. She wasn’t afraid of the press. She was terrified. It was a long time ago but she remembered the cameras and the lights and the microphones jammed in their faces like it was yesterday. To an eleven-year-old, seeing hordes of strangers camped out on your front yard left its mark. Seeing vans with flashy logos and satellite antennae that disappeared high into the night parked end to end in front of the place you called home was as disturbing as a nightmare that left you afraid to close your eyes. It was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. A nightmare that led her mother to disappear into the fortress of her bathroom and chop away at her hair with a straight razor before slicing her wrists open.

Ellie sipped on her tea while she waited for her sandwich, replaying the scene over and over again in her mind as she had done countless times before. The blood, her father’s wailing screams, the sirens, and the throngs of reporters already in place moving into action like a disjointed army.

“Hey. I’ve been thinking about your dead kid and—”

“What?” Ellie stared at Jesse Alvarez as he wedged himself between her and the fireman.

“I’ve been thinking about your dead kid,” he shouted.

The fireman turned and shot him a questionable look. Ellie massaged her forehead with the tips of her fingers and slightly smiled. “Burkesboro PD,” she mouthed to the fireman.

He stared at them a moment then went back to his burger.

“What are you doing here?”

“Jack told me you were at lunch. Caper’s is one of my favorites, so I thought I’d take a chance.” He winked at her then sidled closer. “Anyway, I was thinking about your dead kid—”

“He’s not dead.”

A waitress slammed a sandwich down in front of Ellie, and Jesse helped himself to a homemade chip.

“OK, so he’s not dead. You have sent his picture to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children?”

She huffed. “Did Jack send you?”

“No, Jack didn’t send me. I was just thinking if the center didn’t get a hit, I’ve got a few connections with the FBI, and they’ve got some really cool equipment.”

Ellie pulled a piece of bacon from her sandwich and chewed on one end. “Thanks, but no thanks. I really don’t want the Feds involved.”

Jesse snatched another chip and shook his head. “No black suit with shades is going to swoop in and take your case, Detective Saunders.” He grinned and helped himself to another chip. “I thought we could get them to run his picture through the facial recognition scanner. Maybe we’ll get a hit.”

What was with all the we stuff? The case was complicated enough. The last thing she needed was Jesse involved. She didn’t need a constant reminder of her downward spiral.

“So what do you think? You want to give it a try?” he asked.

Ellie sighed. “We’re going to get a hit on every kid with blond hair and blue eyes. Do you know how many kids have blond hair and blue eyes?”

“No, sweetheart. That’s not how it works. There has to be something like a ninety-eight percent match in characteristics. It’s real technical. It measures the size of the nose, the distance between the eyes, stuff like that. It’s used a lot with missing persons.”

Ellie took a bite of her sandwich then grabbed a chip before they disappeared. “I know what a facial recognition scanner is, Alvarez.”

Jesse rolled his eyes and snagged another chip. “Touchy. Sorry if I insulted your intelligence. But look, if the kid’s been reported missing, he’s somewhere in the system.”

Ellie took a sip of tea and considered what Jesse was saying. “But what if he’s not in the system?”

“He has to be. I mean, he’s a missing kid. People usually report missing kids. Although I do have a couple little maverick nephews I’m not sure their parents would report.” He burst out laughing, and Ellie remembered why she let him come home with her that night.

Jesse was just grungy enough to make a woman swoon without making her wonder if he ever bathed, and he was soft enough to make you want to mother him. He was someone she wouldn’t have minded getting closer to, if she hadn’t fallen in bed with him. How can you want to see someone again when you can’t look them in the eye?

“Earth to Ellie. It’d be worth a shot, don’t you think?”

She pushed her remorse and the thoughts of what could have been from her mind and sighed. “Of course it would. But like I said, I don’t really want the Feds involved.”

“They’re probably going to get involved anyway. Especially if it turns out to be a multi-jurisdictional kidnapping. But for now, we won’t worry about that. All we’re asking them to do is simply run a scan.”

When had Jesse been assigned to this case? Last she heard he was pretending to smoke dope with hookers.

“Look,” he said as he finished off her chips, “all the scan is going to do is give us a possible lead on his identity. It ain’t going to tell you who beat the crap out of him. But once you know who he is and where he came from, you can start narrowing down the how and why. Know what I mean?”

“Is there a cost involved?”

“For you dear, my services are free.”

Ellie couldn’t help but laugh. She shook her head. “I meant is there going to be a cost involved to the department. If so, Jack will have to approve it. Unlike vice, we don’t walk around with wads of department cash in our pockets.”

“No cost. I got connections, baby.” He winked and she laughed again.

Ellie stared at him a moment wondering about those connections. She shook her head then finished off her tea and picked up her ticket. “Why are you so interested in this case? Shouldn’t you be hanging out with dope dealers?”

He shrugged. He watched Jedimiah Caper bark orders to the kitchen while punching numbers into the register at marathon speed. “I was reassigned.”

“To this case? Why would vice work this case?”

“I haven’t been in vice for a month now. Guess you didn’t get the memo.”

If there were such a memo, it was probably lying with the stack of unread faxes.

“They started up a new unit and thought I’d be perfect for it. The pervert beat.” He shrugged again.

Ellie chuckled. “You’re working sex crimes?”

Jesse sighed and rolled his eyes. “Pedophiles in particular. Lovely job. Meet you back at the office.”

 

****

 

Ellie left Caper’s and swung by the hospital. She headed straight for the pediatric floor with her bag of little boy clothes, all decorated with spiders and webs. If he was going to be in the hospital for a while, there was no need in him having to wear those silly little hospital gowns, and there was nothing more comfortable than a good pair of sweats.

She found Deveraux outside Johnny Doe’s room with his nose stuck in a report of some kind. The door to the room was partially closed.

“Hey. How is he?”

Deveraux looked up and smiled. “Good. He’s doing very well. They’re taking some tissue samples.” He bobbed his head toward Johnny Doe’s room.

Ellie’s eyes widened. “Tissue samples? That sounds painful.”

Deveraux shook his head and that comforting smile spread gently across his face. “It’s not. Just a skin scrape, really.”

Ellie let out her breath and relaxed. Although Johnny Doe appeared to be in perfect health and seemed to be suffering no pain, she couldn’t shake the images of his tiny beaten body in that alley. He suffered pain then, and she would do everything in her power to prevent him from suffering more.

“We have some parents coming in this afternoon to take a look at him,” Ellie said.

“So, you’ve got a lead?”

She shrugged. “I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

He smiled that brilliant smile. “Sometimes hope’s all we’ve got.”

Ellie grinned. “I’m not real good with hope.”

He nodded, understanding. “It would probably be best if they observed him in the playroom. It’s one-way glass. They can see him but he won’t be able to see them.”

“I’d like to gauge his reaction, though. Even if it turns out they are his parents, there’s a lot of explaining to do.”

Deveraux nodded again. “I understand. If they make a positive identification, then we’ll invite them to join him in the playroom. A parade of prospective parents could traumatize him. Especially if the parents have questionable intentions.”

Ellie thought about the parents coming up from Avery County. No Amber Alert. No decent picture in the house. Thin shorts and an even thinner t-shirt. There was snow on the ground for goodness sake.

“I don’t want him traumatized any more than he already is.” She pulled one of the sweatshirts out of the bag and held it up for Deveraux’s approval. “He can wear these, can’t he? Maybe I should have asked first, but, I just thought he’d be more comfortable.”

Deveraux smiled. “I’ll make sure he gets them.”

Ellie handed him the bag and nodded. “He likes Spiderman. He told me that down in the morgue when I spoke with him earlier this morning. He told me he liked Spiderman. I’m an Ironman girl myself. I mean, not that I really enjoy any of that…” She chewed on her bottom lip like a nervous school girl. “I need to get down to the basement to pick up some security tapes. I’ll see you around three.”

Deveraux grinned. Ellie figured he was used to women blabbering like idiots in his presence. She felt the heat rise to her face and knew her cheeks were blood red. She took a step or two backwards hoping to put some distance between them. Maybe from a distance, the glow of her cheeks wouldn’t be as obvious.

She smiled through her embarrassment and slowly backed away then walked quickly to the elevator. She tapped her foot impatiently while she waited, afraid to glance back down the hall. Deveraux was probably staring at her wondering what planet she fell off of. Where was that elevator? There were only six floors in this hospital—it couldn’t take that long to call it to a floor. Finally, the doors opened and Ellie rushed in, leaning hard against the back wall.

The hospital’s security room was at the opposite end of the basement from the morgue, which Ellie was glad for. She didn’t want to run into Leon. Her back was still aching from the dancing dip.

She rang the bell, expecting the Great Oz himself to peer through the peephole. The small window slid to the side and she showed her badge and smiled. The door opened and a stocky man in a blue uniform ushered her into the room. He had a seriously thin mustache that looked out of proportion on his seriously fat face. He waddled over to a bay of color monitors and sat in a cheap office chair on wheels. Half a million dollars’ worth of security equipment and the hospital sticks the poor guy with a twenty-nine-dollar chair.

Images of every entrance and exit into and out of the hospital, every elevator, every floor, and the door to the morgue glowed across the bay in living time and in living color. Burkesboro Regional Hospital had a better security system than the county jail.

“I pulled tapes from every camera for the last ten days. They’re date, time, and camera stamped so I made you a reference copy of the camera locations. If you find something, just note the camera stamp on the tape then cross reference that to the sheet.” He spoke in a high, nasally voice.

He picked up a list and pointed to one of the numbers. “See—your reference sheet refers to camera fourteen. You follow along here, and you’ll see camera fourteen is in the east wing, fifth floor.” He pointed to the camera fourteen monitor.

Ellie glanced at the monitor and her heart stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth as she leaned in for a closer look. She stared at Aunt Sissy leaning against the wall outside a patient room, one foot pulled up and propped against the wall. There was no doubt it was Aunt Sissy. She was wearing a flannel shirt with quilted lining over a t-shirt, jeans, and hiking boots—her ‘uniform’ as she called it. “What floor is that?” Ellie asked.

“I just said it was the fifth floor.”

“No, I mean what floor? Cardio, ortho?”

“That’s the oncology floor. Cancer.” He made a tsk-tsk sound and shook his head.

Ellie grabbed the box of tapes and hurried out. Sissy didn’t look like a patient, so why was she here? It had to be Ellie’s father. She thought of all the messages he had left over the last few weeks, messages she had ignored.

She rushed to the elevator, waited forever for it to drop to the basement then hurriedly punched the button for the fifth floor. “Come on, come on….” she said as the carriage slowly rose.

When it settled into a stop, Ellie burst through the door, found the sign pointing out the east wing and hurried in that direction. The wing’s entrance was decorated with pictures of smiling faces and bald heads. Their darkened eyes held the slightest hint of a sparkle. Above the pictures was a colorful banner proclaiming it as the “Wall of Fame,” below the banner, a cartoon picture of a bruised and battered prize fighter with gloved hands raised in the air victoriously and the words “I beat cancer” written in a balloon hanging in cartoon space beside his head.

Ellie glanced down one empty hallway. She turned and headed down the second hallway, and there was Aunt Sissy, still propped against the wall.

“Aunt Sissy…” Ellie bolted down the hallway toward her aunt.

Sissy met her with a long embrace then stepped back and ran a hand over Ellie’s hair. “Hey, sweetie. Your daddy’s going to be so happy you came.” Her smile was as warm as ever.

Sissy carried her seventy years well and had only over the last few years begun to show a wrinkle. She lived alone in a log cabin overlooking a stream where she fished daily for trout and bream. She chopped her own firewood and could handle a hammer and nail as well as a trained carpenter. She had her share of suitors but had never married, saying she wanted to be madly in love with her husband and had yet to find anyone who “tripped her trigger.”

“Guess you got your daddy’s messages?”

Ellie nodded, ashamed to admit she hadn’t actually listened to any of them. “How bad is it?”

Sissy shrugged her shoulders then shook her head. “We thought they had got it all during the surgery, but it looks like it spread.”

“When was the surgery?”

“Right after Christmas. Your daddy thought you’d be home, so he wanted to tell you then.”

Yeah, and Merry Christmas to you, too. Ellie picked at a phantom cuticle, embarrassed to look at Sissy. “Can they operate again? Maybe they can get it all if they operate again.”

Sissy stroked Ellie’s hair. “They can’t sweetie. It’s spread too far. All they can do is make her comfortable.”

Ellie pulled away from her and stared at Sissy. “Her? As in Peggy?”

Sissy cocked her head to the side and scowled at Ellie. “You didn’t listen to the messages, did you?”

“I was going to call him back. It’s just I’ve been real busy. You know, with work.”

Sissy eyed her suspiciously. “Uh-huh.”

Ellie dodged the penetrating stare by glancing at the ceiling, at the nurses’ station, anywhere but at Sissy.

After a moment, Sissy dismissed the lie with a wave of her hand. “Well, anyway, Peggy is very sick, and your daddy could use your support right now.”

Ellie scratched at her neck, still avoiding Sissy’s glaring eyes. “I don’t know, Aunt Sissy.”

“Regardless of the past, she is his wife, and he loves her very much. You need to get over whatever problems you have with her and be there for him.”

“She killed my mother.”

Sissy rolled her eyes. “You do have a flair for the dramatic, don’t you, kid?”

Ellie shifted the box of tapes to her hip; they were growing heavier by the minute. “I really do need to get back to the office, but I’ve got to come back later this afternoon. Tell Daddy I’ll try to see him then.”

Sissy slowly nodded, a hint of suspicion still burning in her eyes.

Ellie sighed. “She’s not going to die like within the next hour, is she?”

“You should get so lucky.” She shook her head. “No, it may be days; it could be another month.”

“Then tell Daddy I’ll see him later today.” She gave Sissy a kiss on the cheek then hurried to the elevators.

The oncology floor was on the east wing of the hospital, and the ER, where she always parked, was on the west. She took the central elevator, figuring it would cut down on her time traipsing through hallways, but when the central elevator doors opened in the main lobby, she wished she hadn’t taken any elevator at all.

The lobby was packed with reporters and cameras and blow-dried evening news anchors clamoring over one another at the main desk. She recognized a few of them from the local network affiliates and a couple from local papers. A wave of sheer panic hit her like a sledgehammer while hot-burning bile churned deep in her stomach.

“Detective Saunders—” Sara Jeffries from the Burkesboro Bulletin pushed her way through the crowd. She pointed a palm-sized digital recorder straight at Ellie as if it were a gun loaded and cocked. “Can you give us an update on Little Lazarus’s condition?”

Ellie jammed her shoulder to the wall and rushed down the hallway. Several of the others took their cue from Jeffries and tailed the moving target.

“Are there any leads in the investigation?”

“What was his condition when he was brought in?”

“Will the FBI be called in?”

Ellie felt like little Joey Tansley, a kid she grew up with who fell in a beehive. She remembered the sound of the angry bees as they swarmed around him, engulfing him in a cacophony of pure horror. She remembered seeing him twisting and turning and knocking at the swarm with his tiny fists as he fought to get away.

Sara Jeffries, the queen bee, was now side-by-side with Ellie, the recorder inches away from her face.

“What steps are you taking to identify the boy?” She took a wide step and planted herself in Ellie’s path.

Ellie had to stop or else run over the woman. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “I’m not at liberty to answer any questions right now. I’m sure the chief will let you know as soon as any information becomes available. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to the office.” She sidestepped around Jeffries and ducked through a door with a sign that read “Emergency Room Personnel Only.”

Her eyes wet with tears, she pressed her back to the door and forced herself to breathe.