While Everyone Was Sleeping

by Donald Collins

  “Not if I can help it,” TFW answered.

  Different doctor, different hospital and different patient,” Matthew grumbled. But the diagnosis was the same as before - DKA. He just hoped the results would be different this time.

  “You said he plays sports,” TFW said.

  “Yes,” Matthew answered. “Soccer.”

  “Good, that’s something in his favor,” TFW said. “Hopefully his athleticism will play a big part in his recovery.”

  Audrey and Matthew sat quietly in the waiting room for several minutes without speaking. “The doctor said Jason has a fighter’s chance,” Matthew said finally. “He said patients that are not physically active run the risk of an insulin imbalance in their bodies.”

  Audrey closed her eyes and let her head fall against his shoulder. “That’s exactly what they said last time.”

  Matthew squeezed her hand.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Just after midnight Danski got a call from a radio-car team in the Flushing Precinct telling him the van he had transmitted a BOLO on was spotted in the parking lot outside Hillsdale Hospital.

  “We’ll stay here and keep an eye on it until you get here,” the officer said. “Do you want us to detain the driver if he comes out?”

  “Ten-four,” Danski responded. “Absolutely.”

  He called Litchfield immediately. After picking him up at home, they proceeded to Parsons Boulevard. When they got to Hillsdale Hospital, one of the officers pointed out the white F150 nestled between a Chevy Silverado and a Ford Transit Connect, parked in a dimly lit area of the small parking lot.

  “No one’s been near the van since we called you,” the officer told him as a patrol supervisor pulled in behind them.

  “Good work,” Danski told the officers. “Thanks for your help.”

  “We’re really short-handed out there tonight,” the sergeant told Danski. “Central’s holding jobs and we’ve got cars handling two and three sectors at a time. Will you need my guys any further?”

  “I guess not,” Danski responded. “My partner and I can take it from here. You guys can resume patrol.”

  “Call us if you need us, and we’ll come back,” one of the officers said.

  ***

  Sitting in the waiting room, Matthew ran his open hand across his mouth as he watched the detectives get off the elevator and head across the hallway to the nurses’ station. It had taken them five years, but they had finally caught up with him, he thought glumly. He realized it was a mistake bringing Jake to a hospital, but he had no choice. When he registered Jake as Jason, he had to provide information for the records clerk to enter in the computer when she created a medical profile. The profile would include the bare facts of his young life: family history as well as the names of his pediatrician, prior surgeries and treatments, in addition to a list of his prescriptions and allergies. Seeing the detectives there, he assumed the computer had alerted the records clerk that Jason Adams was treated at Hillsdale Hospital five years ago and that he died on the operating room table that night. He assumed that upon seeing this, the clerk contacted the hospital manager who then called the police to report that a fraud was being committed. If that was what happened, it was only a matter of time before a DNA test would be conducted in the course of the investigation and it would show that the patient was Jacob Whitlock, not Jason Adams. He and Audrey would be arrested and Jake would be turned over to his biological mother. That’s if he survived.

  Matthew’s defensive instincts kicked in when he spotted a door to a staircase further down the hallway. It was his last chance to escape and he took it. As he raced down the hallway, he realized he had likely seen Jake and Audrey for the last time. He was sure that once the detectives began questioning Audrey they would see that she lived in a parallel universe and had no involvement in Jake’s kidnap. She would tell them about divine intervention prevailing five years ago when Jason was brought back to her and Matthew after a short hiatus in heaven. He suspected that she would be arrested and charged as an accessory, though she was merely an unwitting accomplice. She would be detained in prison, but after a short time she would be treated and evaluated. He was sure that when their observations were made, they would realize that Audrey was not a threat to herself or others and did not have a role in Jake’s kidnap.

  Matthew reached the main floor in time to see the radio car leave the parking lot. He quickly got to his van and headed back to Far Rockaway. He regretted that he hadn’t handled Jason’s passing better than he did five years ago. He also regretted not being more comfort to Audrey when she needed help. He should have sought professional help and found a psychiatrist that could help her deal with her loss. Instead he stole Susan’s little boy – his little boy, and brought him to their home. Audrey’s state of mind made it easy for him to convince her that Jake was Jason reincarnated. But it was too late to think about any of that now.

  ***

  The detectives were informed at the admitting desk that Jason Adams had been admitted and his condition was not good. “His parents are here,” the nurse said and then pointed to Audrey who was sitting on a metal folding-chair on the other side of the room. Litchfield crossed the floor and took a seat, leaving an empty chair between him and Audrey. “I’m Detective Litchfield,” he said holding up his gold shield. “We’re here for Matthew.”

  Audrey stared back, obviously confused. “What for?”

  “Where is he?” Litchfield demanded, without answering her question.

  Audrey glanced around the room and then shrugged. “He was here a minute ago,” she answered. “I don’t know where he went to. He’s probably over there, in the waiting room.” She pointed across the hallway. “What’s this all about?”

  Litchfield pointed to the door when he got Danski’s attention. “She says he’s across the hall.”

  Litchfield cuffed Audrey to the chair she was sitting in, then quickly fell in behind Danski as he headed across the hall. Finding the waiting room empty, Danski radioed the central dispatcher and had the radio car team sent back to the hospital. The detectives, along with the uniformed officers and the hospital security staff searched the hospital building and the outer grounds for Matthew. They called off the search when one of the officers noticed that the van was no longer in the parking lot where they had seen it earlier.

  “I probably should have had you guys stay here watching the van,” the sergeant told the radio car team.

  “You think?” Danski grimaced.

  Danski and Litchfield returned to the waiting room for Audrey. They put her in the back seat of their cruiser and drove to the Central Booking facility in Forest Hills to process the arrest. Audrey was booked into the system and held over for arraignment at the Criminal Court Building on Queens Boulevard in the morning.

  It was after midnight by the time they completed their paperwork and had a chance to discuss the facts of the case with Assistant District Attorney Alan Roberts. They admitted their case against Audrey was not strong, “She doesn’t seem to understand what this is all about.” Danski said.

  “We’ll see,” Roberts responded.

  A light rain fell as Danski pushed the door to the 112th Precinct open and the detectives crossed the parking lot to their unmarked car after Audrey was processed.

  “She claims she doesn’t know where Matthew went to,” Danski said.

  “Yeah, she doesn’t seem to know much about anything,” Litchfield said.

  “She also claims she had no knowledge that the boy she called Jason is really Jacob Whitlock,” Danski said.

  “I tend to believe her,” Litchfield said. “Obviously, the woman’s not firing on all cylinders.”

  “Our night isn’t over yet,” Danski said, yawning loudly as he pulled the driver’s side door of the cruiser open and got in. “We’ve still got to drive to Manhattan and let Susan know we recovered Jake and that he’s in the hospital suffering from complications from diabetes.”

  “You’re right, we have to
tell her in person,” Gregory said and nodded somberly. “It’s not something you can tell her over the phone. She’s on the fragile side.”

  “It’s a complicated story,” Danski said as he pulled his phone from his pocket and quickly found Susan’s name on his speed dial. She answered on the third ring. Danski could tell that he had woken her from a sound sleep.

  “I hate to call this late,” he told her. “But I have news that can’t wait until morning.”

  “What is it?” Susan pleaded. “Please tell me what it is, now.”

  “We found Jake.”

  “Oh my God!” Susan cried out. “Oh, my God; Oh my God. Where is he?”

  “He’s in Hillsdale Hospital in Flushing. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes and bring you there. I’ll explain everything when I see you.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to give her the news over the phone,” Litchfield said when Danski disconnected.

  Danski shrugged. “I didn’t tell her the whole story.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Far Rockaway, Queens

  Matthew rushed into his house and went directly to his bedroom where he removed a false panel from the back wall of his clothes closet. He pulled out a canvas backpack containing money he’d put aside in case he ever found himself in a position like the one he was in right now. His handyman work was a cash-business that brought in enough money for his small family to maintain a fairly good standard of living. The burglaries, however, raised that standard and allowed him to amass a sizeable amount of cash that Audrey knew nothing about.

  He pulled the zipper back, spread the flaps apart and then sighed contently as he glanced over the money he had salted away over the past few years: thirty-four bundles, each containing five hundred dollars that were secured with rubber bands. The majority of it was in twenty-dollar bills. He pulled ten bundles from the backpack and put them back behind the panel. He planned to call Audrey and let her know the money was there for her to use. He imagined she would need a portion of the money for legal representation. Since she had no criminal involvement, he was certain a half-way-decent public defender would be able to get her released on a low bail, and hopefully have the charges against her dismissed. The remainder of the money she would need for household bills, groceries and other expenses when she returned home.

  The backpack also contained a snub nose .38 caliber Colt revolver he had taken from an elderly customer’s East Side apartment along with his collection of expensive watches. He learned later that the eighty-five-year-old retired banker died of natural causes three months after the burglary and most likely never knew his watches were gone. Knowing this, Matthew’s conscience was clear. He felt the man obviously had no use for the watches. If he did, he wouldn’t have kept the collection in his dresser where no one would ever see and appreciate them.

  Matthew removed the bullets from the revolver and laid them on his bed while he dry-fired several times to be sure the gun worked. When he was satisfied the mechanism was sound, he reloaded, spun the cylinder and then shoved it inside the backpack again. He then pulled clothes from his dresser and closet and shoved them into a large Hefty bag and pulled the red plastic cord. Before leaving, he glanced around the room one last time to be sure he hadn’t forgotten anything and then slung the backpack over his shoulder and grabbed hold of the Hefty bag. When he reached the driveway, he slid the side door of his van open, but then suddenly remembered that the police would be on alert for the F150. He decided to take Audrey’s three-year-old Toyota Corolla instead. The police wouldn’t be looking for it. He assumed they wouldn’t even know she had a car until he was long gone.

  After removing his toolbox and a few other items from his van and putting them in the trunk of the Toyota, he pulled the van into the garage and closed the overhead door. It would now be out of sight if the police came looking for him there.

  “Stay calm,” he told himself as he got behind the wheel of the Toyota and turned the key. After adjusting the seat and rearview mirror he took in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Be smart,” he whispered as he put the Corolla in gear and took off for parts unknown. “Don’t speed; don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  He remained in Far Rockaway, believing that the more he traveled, the greater the chances were that the police would notice him. He felt comfortable in Far Rockaway, but the list of people who would take him in at a time like this was short. The list of people who would take him in and not ask questions was even shorter. He called his mother and asked if his old bedroom was available for a few days. He said he would explain things when he got there. On his way there he called Hillsdale Hospital and was told Jason’s condition hadn’t changed. He thought of calling Audrey, but assumed she was already in police custody. He pictured her in an interrogation room surrounded by detectives who were hammering her with questions. If she still had her phone the detectives were probably monitoring her calls or listening in. He texted her a one-word message instead: SORRY.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Fourth Division Burglary Unit

  A cat-burglar who made apartments on the Upper East Side his playground during the past two years had veteran detectives assigned to the Fourth Division Burglary Unit stymied. They had followed every step in the burglary investigation handbook and had even called in other specialized squads to help, but after a dogged, relentless investigation they had nothing to show for their efforts. Upper-middle class residents in Manhattan North called the chief’s office constantly to complain about the lack of progress but the chief had no answer for them. His detectives had tried every tactic in the book and they had failed to capture the elusive burglar.

  Lead Detective Chris McQuade called the Crime Scene Unit and learned that the latent prints found in Marsha Banks’ bedroom were a perfect match with those found at eleven other burglary scenes on the Upper East Side over the past two years. The problem was the prints weren’t in the system.

  “This guy’s a ghost,” McQuade told his partner Jeff Rider.

  Rider shook his head. “He’s just been lucky.”

  “No, Jeff. He’s more than just lucky. He’s so sure we’re not gonna catch him that he doesn’t even wear gloves when he goes into these places. We’ve got dozens of samples of his prints, but we can’t match them to anyone because he’s not in the system.”

  McQuade nodded. “He’s taking a big chance by not wearing gloves. How does he know he’s not gonna get picked up on some minor charge one of these days – like disorderly conduct, or public intox, or maybe he gets into a beef with some jerk on the subway, or out on the highway with some road-rage nut and they start throwing punches, and he finally winds up getting printed?”

  “I’ll tell you what happens,” Rider said. “BOOM! we get a call to come talk with him about all these burglaries?

  “Dream on,” McQuade said.

  “Hey, it could happen.”

  “Yeah, it could happen, and I could pass the sergeant’s test, but I wouldn’t hold my breath,” McQuade groaned. “We ran his prints through our own data base and then the tri-state area system and came up with nothing. Then we broadened the search and went national and still got nothing.”

  “Yeah, I know. And it took a week to get the results back in each case. Obviously, this guy’s never been printed anywhere. Hey, wait a second. I’ll tell you one place he would have been printed if he disposes of the property he steals the conventional way.”

  “You mean pawn shops, right?”

  Rider nodded. “Exactly.”.

  “But we’ve already talked with the Pawn Shop detail. Every day those guys get a list of the property that every pawn shop in the five boroughs takes in, and none of the items any of the people reported stolen were ever on any of the lists,” McQuade said. “How do you explain that?”

  Rider shrugged. “I can’t explain how that happened.”

  “The pawn shops fingerprint everyone who pawns anything, but if nobody identified any of the things the shops took in
, there’s no reason for the detectives in the Pawn Shop detail to examine the shops’ fingerprint cards.”

  “You’re right on that point,” Rider said. “It makes me think he’s got someone pawning the merchandise for him, a homeless guy, maybe. You know what I’m saying, right?”

  “Yeah, I hear ya,” McQuade said.

  “He gives the guy a couple of bucks to bring the swag into the shops for him, not much, but enough to buy a bottle of hooch, anyway. Not bad money for a couple of minutes work. I’m thinking that if our boy didn’t wear gloves when he went into these apartments and rifled through dressers and closets, chances are he didn’t wipe his prints off the stuff before he turned them over to whoever he sends into the pawn shops.”

  “You’re saying what?”

  “I’m saying we need to have the crime-scene guys hit all the pawn shops in the metropolitan area and have them look over everything that’s in their glass cases.”

  McQuade twisted his mouth. “Are you serious? That could take forever.”

  “Okay, I’ll amend that. We should have them concentrate on rare and high-end jewelry items.”

  ***

  Eight days later McQuade got a call from Frank Martin, a detective assigned to the Pawn Shop detail. “I’ve got good news for you,” Martin said. “None of the items the CSU investigators came across were reported stolen.”

  “How’s that good news?” McQuade wanted to know.

  “Let me finish. None of the items we came across were reported stolen, however, several items were handled by the man who left his fingerprints at the apartments that were burgled – partial prints, anyway.”

  “Wait a second,” McQuade said. “So maybe some of the victims didn’t realize their property was missing until long after it was pawned.”

  “It looks that way,” Martin said. “In some cases, a lot of them still don’t know their things are missing. The bad news is the prints they found on the jewelry items don’t match the prints on the information cards the customer filled out when he brought the merchandise to the shop. That means this guy apparently had someone bring the stolen merchandise to these shops and unload it for him.”