A Step Backwards

by Lois RH Balzer

  Forward again. His shaking fingers struggled to release the latches of the window. Why so many latches? Was the window big enough for him to get out? It was so small.

  The windowpane lifted finally with a scraping creak. Beyond were voices. Music. Guitars and singing.

  "England swings like a pendulum do..."

  Blair leaned forward to see who was singing and he fell out the window.

  * * *

  Part Two

  "Huh? Wha--?"

  Ellison woke abruptly, ears straining to catch some faint sound just beyond his hearing. He rolled to one side, opening his eyes long enough to register the time, then rolled back to lie sprawled on the bed. 3:30 a.m.

  It was damn cold in the loft, even for him.

  October was quickly moving from mild summer evenings into the autumn frost outside. He wondered if Sandburg was okay in the room below him. His partner had a new multi-layered quilt, one that should be keeping him warm. Should be more than adequate even on a cool October night. Should be.

  Besides, the furnace was on a timer to automatically come on at 5:30, so it would warm up significantly by the time Sandburg's sleep-tousled head emerged from beneath his quilt.

  And as for what he'd heard . . .

  He listened again. There were no unusual sounds in the loft. He could hear the usual building creaks and groans, and his guide's breathing, still rough. Ellison had woken and listened a few times in the night -- once he'd even gone into Sandburg's room to look at him -- but Sandburg's lungs remained clear, sparing them both a trip to the hospital. For the moment.

  Ellison scratched his beard-rough chin as he went back to the temperature problem. Maybe if he went downstairs and turned up the heat now, he'd be able to sleep a while longer. It was too early to get up or have a shower; Sandburg was sleeping fitfully at the moment and would probably awaken at the slightest sound of someone moving around.

  Ellison had heard him get up twice in the night, the doors to his bedroom and the bathroom opening and closing, the deep rumble of his cough. Sandburg's persistent cold had probably stepped up a notch, a low-grade fever added to his roommate's illness.

  He sighed, rolled over to his side and readjusted his pillow.

  August was supposed to have been a rest month for Sandburg, relaxing after the insanity of the previous three months, but instead, Sandburg had spent it at the university, preparing for his September courses. He'd missed out on the previous semester -- the two courses he had been teaching during the May-July session had been handed to someone else when he had . . . well, died.

  Then Sandburg had traveled to Mexico, following as Ellison had tracked . . . her.

  No sooner had they returned to Cascade, and Sandburg had been kidnaped, held for long days, and treated inhumanely before Ellison had found him.

  The Black Widow had emerged weeks later, the case sending Sandburg to the hospital, his fragile lungs straining from carbon monoxide poisoning.

  And now it was October, with its hit-and-miss weather and all the 'beginning of the semester' rushing about that seemed to take hold. Add to that, a series of murders tied into the Emerald Theater's Jazz Festival. One for each concert, with the next concert of the season in three days -- well in two days now. There was a pattern somewhere -- even Sandburg, who had missed the task force meetings while at his university classes, was striving to figure the links between the three murders, working longer hours than he should with his poor health.

  And this damned chilly weather wouldn't help things at all, not when the cold threatened his partner's sensitive lungs.

  It was certainly chilly in the loft. Should he--?

  With a last effort to make a decision of whether to get up or not, Ellison fell back asleep.

  * * * * *

  The alarm woke him next, and he leaned over to switch it off.

  6:30 a.m. Still cold. Colder. He frowned. It should be warming up now. The heater should have kicked in.

  Ellison extended his hearing, listening for a moment to the shallow breathing of the man downstairs. He sat up. Odd. It didn't quite sound right. He listened closer. Sandburg's lungs were clear, but still not . . . quite . . . right. The heartbeat, too quick, but not labored. Just . . . not quite right. Didn't sound like Sandburg at all.

  Probably one of those strange sleep phases. RAMs or REMs or whatever.

  Wide awake now, the temperature bothered him enough to lure him from his bed and into a pair of sweats. He padded down the stairs and checked the furnace, but it was humming nicely, warm air issuing from the vents. It would warm up eventually.

  Ellison poured himself some juice from the fridge and smiled at the signs of Sandburg up in the middle of the night. Pills on the counter. The sink dripping from the water tap not turned off completely. A glass on the stove top.

  Some things never changed, despite his best efforts.

  He thought back to Blair's comments the day before. His guide had complained about being edgy, "out of sorts". They had discussed it briefly, but Sandburg had no words to describe his feeling and nothing to tie it to. Ellison had tried drawing the subject out, had even tried suggesting his partner call Harvey Leek -- anything to answer the lingering uneasiness. But Sandburg hadn't been able to trace what the problem was, so they had let it go, knowing if it was important, if it was something they needed to deal with, the feeling would be back, intensified.

  The only case they were working on was the Emerald Theater Jazz Festival murders. Ellison had watched Sandburg go through the file, staring at the crime scene photos. He would read the file, discard it, pick it up and go through it again, only to set it down once more with a shrug. Ten minutes later, the file would again be open on Sandburg's desk, but whatever was bothering his partner about the file remained unanswered, or at least, unsaid.

  A pen and crumpled piece of paper on the counter drew Ellison's attention. It was a scribbled note in his partner's worst scrawl. It took a few minutes for Ellison to make out the words, but he finally understood it to be the refrain of an old song, and he whistled the tune almost silently. "The pendulum swings like a . . . " No, that's not right.

  Oh, that's what Sandburg meant last night. "England swings." Sandburg had mumbled that to him yesterday. Smiling, Ellison made the correction on the paper from "the pendulum swings" to "England swings like a pendulum". He could just picture his partner standing here staring at the words trying to figure them out, instead of staying in bed like he was supposed to.

  As Ellison passed toward the bathroom, a cool stream of air from under Sandburg's bedroom door made him pause. It felt like there was a draft, as though the outside window was open. That seemed unlikely, considering his partner's intense dislike of anything cold, but the draft was there. He listened, and the sounds of the neighborhood attacked his sensitive hearing.

  Ellison unlatched the door, pushing it open further when he saw the window was wide open. "Sandburg? What are you trying to--?"

  He choked the words off, frozen in place.

  What the--?

  Sandburg wasn't in his bed. The blankets were a jumble in the middle of the mattress, the new quilt crumpled at the foot of the bed.

  What on earth--?

  Muttering angrily under his breath, Ellison knelt on the bed and reached over to shut the window when something on the bed caught his eye. Something that was out of place. Something that made absolutely no sense.

  A tiny hand. A child's hand.

  Ellison moved his knee carefully, staring at the hand poking out from under the blanket. It looked real. What kind of sick joke was this?

  He flicked back the edge of the blanket.

  A small child lay curled into a ball in the middle of the bed under the mound of blankets. Without disturbing him, Ellison pushed down the window, still staring at the sleeping, oblivious toddler whose dirt-smudged face was mostly hidden under a tangled mop of curls, a little thumb firmly held between pursed lips.

  A child.

  He stayed motionless for
a moment and listened intently for other sounds in the loft, but he was alone. With a sleeping child. Who was in Sandburg's bed . . .

  His hand trembling slightly, Ellison shut the window, covered the kid and backed out of the room, closing the door. Feeling like he was in some off-kilter movie, he took three steps toward the living room and stopped. Two steps toward the kitchen and stopped. Turned and stared at the bedroom door. Turned and took several steps toward the front door.

  He had no idea what to do.

  The phone. His hand hovered over the cordless phone, but he didn't pick it up. Who was he going to call?

  "Sandburg? Mind explaining this?" he asked, although there was no one to hear him.

  A quick check confirmed that Sandburg's shoes, jacket, keys, wallet, and backpack were all where they were supposed to be, or close enough to where they were supposed to be that he was willing to overlook it this once. So where would Blair go? Barefoot, without his jacket, without his house keys.

  The Volvo.

  Ellison crossed the loft to the balcony doors, pushing them open and stepping out into the early morning dampness. The Volvo was still parked in the diagonal slot across the street, next to his own Ford truck.

  Now what? Ellison glanced at the clock. It was too early to phone . . . Phone . . . He'd call Sandburg's cellphone. He had his hand on the telephone before he stopped again; no use phoning the cell when it was sitting on the counter beside the telephone. Next to Blair's pager.

  What to do . . . He made some coffee. Cats licked themselves when they couldn't figure out what to do next; Ellison made coffee.

  Mug in hand, he quietly opened the bedroom door again, but the child was still there. Damn. But then, what would he have done if the child had suddenly disappeared into thin air? Like Sandburg had.

  Ellison checked out the room silently, staying clear of the child, but could find no hint of what had happened. He listened again to the heart rate, the breathing, and everything sounded normal for a toddler. The familiar heartbeat he wanted, though, was noticeably absent.

  Ellison moved back to the kitchen and leaned against the counter. Sandburg's scribbled notes once again caught his attention and he pounced on them, trying to decipher the words into some sort of explanation for this madness.

  The rosy red cheeks of the little children.

  He closed his eyes. "Damn it, Sandburg, this isn't like you," he whispered. "Where are you? What are you doing?" Does this mean something? This old song? "Little children . . . Are you trying to tell me something here?"

  When 8:00 a.m. rolled around, without a sign of his partner, Ellison picked up the phone and dialed. "Simon?"

  "Hey, Jim. I was just heading out the door. What's up?"

  "I've got a problem."

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Ellison had nothing more to go on. He had called the university as soon as it had opened, but no one there knew where Sandburg was. Ellison phoned him in sick, then called the station and checked in again with Simon.

  "Still no sign of him?"

  "None. I've tried calling everyone I know. Well, everyone I know that he knows."

  "Any idea who the child is?"

  "No. He's still sleeping and I don't want to wake him. Or her, I suppose. It's hard to tell. Too young to answer my questions, anyway."

  "What can I do?" the captain asked.

  Ellison smiled. It was times like this that reinforced his respect for Simon Banks. "I've no idea. Sandburg must have had some reason for taking off in the middle of the night and leaving this kid here."

  "Let me know as soon as you find out anything. I'll cover for you here."

  "Thanks."

  He circled the loft several times, then made another pot of coffee.

  Think. Think.

  Sandburg must have known about the child. Something must have happened. A friend maybe -- someone from the university needed help and Sandburg had left to help. Yeah, that sounded like him, like something he would do.

  No. Absolutely not. Not without letting Jim know where he was going, or giving him a heads up about the kid. Blair was not that irresponsible.

  Ellison stared at the French doors. He should have immediately woken the child for information, but the kid was so tiny, that it probably couldn't talk. It. He couldn't talk. Or she couldn't talk. Whatever.

  Come on, Sandburg. Call. Call . . .

  With a faint skip of Ellison's heart rate, the inevitable happened. The child asleep in Sandburg's bed stirred, made a little sigh, and woke up.

  Ellison put down his coffee mug. He was no good with kids. It wasn't that he had anything against them, but he just had no experience with them. They were small. Looked fragile. They cried a lot. They smelled. He scared them. And quite frankly, they scared him.

  He could hear blankets pushed back, the futon shifting slightly. A little rumble of puzzlement escaped the child's throat. Tiny feet padded on the floor, the French door handle rattled, then creaked open, and a little person stood staring at him.

  The child was oddly dressed, clad only in a small pair of brown shorts, and he was covered in a layer (or more) of dust, a Band-Aid that needed changing on one knee. Around his neck was a worn strip of leather with several deep blue beads knotted in place. Each wrist had a tattered woven bracelet. Ellison had no way of judging ages, but the child had no diapers, so he was probably over two. Thumb in mouth. Possibly Caucasian. Too much hair, growing straight up in a tangled, matted mess. Needed a bath. Tiny. Scrawny. The perfect model for a Third World foster child poster.

  The phone rang, and Ellison pounced on it. "Sandburg?"

  "Pardon me? Well, yes." It was Naomi. "Good morning, Jim. Is Blair there?"

  "Good question. I'm not sure where he is."

  "Damn. Is everything okay?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Charlie said I should call you. Actually he said I should fly up and see you. I'm at the airport; my flight leaves in a few minutes."

  "Why?"

  "Charlie just said you need some help. He's right, isn't he?"

  Ellison stared at the solemn child looking up at him. "Charlie's batting average just went up."

  "Jim?"

  "Sorry, Naomi," he mumbled. "Listen, I don't know where Blair is at the moment. He wasn't here when I woke up this morning."

  "That's odd."

  "Tell me about it," Ellison muttered under his breath.

  "I'll be there as soon as I can." Naomi waited for him to mumble a response, then she hung up.

  Ellison put down the cordless phone, then crouched lower. "Uh, hi."

  No response. Thumb still in mouth.

  "What's your name?"

  The thumb came out for a moment. "Name?"

  Ellison smiled, hoping he looked non-threatening. "That's right. What's your name? My name is Jim."

  "Name." Thumb went back in mouth and was then withdrawn. "Mama?" The tiny child padded around the island, eyes wide, looking for his mother. "Mama?" Through the living room, stopping to touch an apple in the basket on the coffee table, then over to the balcony windows. "Mama?" He turned and looked back at Ellison, still crouched by the dining room table. His head tilted to one side. "Mama?"

  "Sorry, don't know where she is."

  The blue eyes filled with tears. The thumb was sucked back into his mouth and he suckled it nervously, looking around the room. Again he took it out. "Mama?"

  "Sorry." Ellison got up and ventured into the living room, worried about spooking the child, but the tot stayed where he was by the planter. "What's your name, son?"

  "Name."

  "Right. What's your name?"

  "Baby."

  "Baby? Is that your name?"

  "Mama."

  Okay, this was going nowhere fast. "So, what do you think? Should I phone social services and have them come get you? But if Blair was taking care of you for a friend as an emergency, I wouldn't want to get them in trouble. Do you know Blair?"

  "Bear."

  "Right. Well,
close. Do you know him?"

  "Mama."

  "Do you know Blair?"

  "Mama?"

  Great. He had a headache. "Are you hungry?"

  The round eyes glanced to the kitchen area, then back at Ellison cautiously. "Ba-ba?"

  "Sorry, don't know what ba-ba means."

  "Ba-ba. Baby ba-ba."