Come Monday, the Homicide Division was its usual kick-off-the-week self, a dozen overworked dicks sucking caffeine and yapping on phones, checking what snitches might have dredged up over the weekend. Lieutenant Tom Mason, our hound-faced commander, was in his windowed office staring down at the weekend reports. He had his mouth open and was drumming his flues with his fingertips, making music inside his head.
Harry arrived at eight and sat across from me. We worked with desks butted together to converse face to face. Plus it gave us a bigger space to hold about twenty pounds of homicide files and paperwork, though overflow avalanched to the floor daily. Harry was wearing an orange blazer over lime-green pants, his polo shirt was plum, his shoes burgundy. If environmentalists figured how to convert the color wavelengths in Harry’s wardrobe into electricity, the polar bears would be safe forever.
I coughed and sniffed, the summer pollen counts high. Harry shot me the narrow eye. “You breathed down sea water, right? When you were racing the baby to shore?”
Aspirated sea water could lead to some hellacious infections. I shrugged it off, mumbling about something in the air.
Harry said, “You haven’t been looking real healthy the past couple of weeks, Carson. Maybe your resistance is down.”
“I’m fine.”
“The hospital’s a ten-minute drive. You can get a shot or whatever.”
“Earth to Harry: I feel fine.”
Harry sighed and pitched his pencil to the desk. “Come on. We’re going to the hospital. It’s closer and insurance pays, right? We can get you a shot and…” he paused as if having a sudden thought, “see how the kid’s doing, health-wise.”
Harry had segued from the first rationale to the second so smoothly I realized the whole conversation had been an excuse to visit the boat baby. I’d pretty much pushed the incident to the back of my mind, wanting nothing more to do with the kid. The case belonged to the DI police.
“Do you really want to know how it’s doing?” I challenged. “The kid could be terminally ill. Or brain-dead.”
Harry closed his eyes, conflict tightening his face. He sighed.
“I have to know, Carson. I held the kid. I breathed into her.”
Minutes later we were at the hospital. An emergency room resident I knew shot me up with a syringe full of antibiotic and wrote script for some pills. Rolling my sleeve down, I looked for Harry, didn’t see him. I found him on the fourth floor in paediatric intensive care, peering through the window separating the sterile unit from the hall and waiting area.
I walked tentatively to Harry and peeked in the window. Machines and monitors owned the real estate inside the unit. Our rescue was third in a line of five babies in Plexiglas boxes. Two kids were squalling, two were twitching or stretching. Ours was as still as clay. I felt myself staring. But it seemed as if I was watching from a vast distance, like the child was an image on a screen.
I felt my body take a step backward and I bumped into Harry.
“She looks terrible,” Harry groaned, stepping past me to press his hands against the window. “Just terrible.”
“You’re responding to the tubes and wires,” said a cheery voice at our backs. “She’s doing far better than we expected.”
Harry and I turned to see the blonde doc who’d sprinted from the helicopter. A brass badge on her breast said Angela Norlin, MD.
“You’re sure?” Harry asked, skeptical. “She looks like she’s –”
“She’s asleep, that’s all,” the doc said, bright eyes scanning the read-outs on the monitors. “Her temp’s up a bit, but minimal. All in all it’s a very promising report. Surprising, too.”
While Dr Norlin studied the machines, I circumspectly studied her. The slight crinkle of skin at her eyes and across the backs of her hands told me I’d been off a few years in my age estimate, and I now figured her for late thirties. A nicely crafted late thirties.
“Do you specialize in helicopter paediatrics?” I asked.
“When we got word there was a baby in trouble, the medivac folks sent me instead of the regular medic.”
“A smart move on their part, I expect,” Harry said. “Why are you surprised she’s doing so good?”
“Usually by this time we’d have had to flood the victim’s system with high-level antibiotics. There’s a potential for side-effects that can actually hinder progress. Baby Doe has some infection, but it’s low grade, and standard antibiotics are keeping it in check. Her immune system seems in exceptional condition. The power of her immune response is surprising everyone.”
“The little lady must have good genes,” Harry said, scrutinizing the kid. Her skin was tawny, the eyes almond shaped, the dark hair curly.
“What race is it, Doc?” I asked.
Doc Norlin shot me a disapproving glance. “It’s a she. As far as race goes, to me it looks like human.”
I’d never had much interaction with children. They were all its to me until old enough to communicate, at which point they became interesting. But the it, combined with a racial query and what I’d been told was an accent more cracker than cosmopolitan, probably made me sound a tad cartoonish. Not a good cartoon.
“I just mean…an, uh, ethnic identity might give investigators an idea what to look for in the parents.”
“I’m concerned with her health, not her ethnicity.”
I was trying to think of something to say that would make me sound reasonable and intelligent when Harry reached for my sleeve.
“Watch out, Carson!”
Pain stabbed my ankle. I jerked around to a cart at my back, its deck piled with towels and cleaning supplies.
“Jeez, I’m sorry,” said the thirtyish guy pushing the cart, somehow looking more smug than apologetic. “I rolled around the corner and didn’t see you.”
“It’s…all…right,” I grunted, leaning against the wall and rubbing my Achilles tendon. The corner was a dozen feet away; the guy must have been temporarily blind or daydreaming hard.
I set my foot on the ground. Limped a few feet down the hall. Turned and came back. I waited for Doc Norlin to inspect my potentially broken ankle, but she seemed blind to my pain and suffering.
The guy started to roll the cart away, but paused to look at the kids. He tickled his fingers at them and smiled as though greatly pleased, then pushed on. Babies have that effect on some people.
“So you think the kid’ll pull through, Doc?” Harry asked, turning back to the window. He tapped the glass and made an eyes-wide, tongueboinging series of faces through the glass. He cooed and babbled. Harry was one of those people unhinged by babies.
“The prognosis is guarded, Detective Nautilus, but I’m hopeful. Especially with the strong immune response and general good health, given what Baby Doe must have been through.”
Harry’s goofy grin descended into a frown. “Baby Doe? Is that what you’re calling her?”
“Standard procedure. They assign the name in Records.”
Harry studied the child for a long minute. “Can’t you pick more descriptive names?”
“What’s wrong with the temporary designation?” I asked.
My partner stared at me like it was the dumbest question he’d ever heard.
“Baby Doe’s a generic name, Carson. No one should be generic.”