The Daughter She Used To Be

by Rosalind Noonan

  No ... she couldn’t let her baby die, and he was seriously sick. She was no doctor, but she knew that rotting smell in his shoulder was a very bad thing. Not to mention him sleeping all the time and not eating or drinking a lick in the last two days.

  She turned and paced back to the bedroom. “Peyton? Please, wake up.”

  But he lay there, barely breathing.

  Her baby was dying.

  Her hands shook as she fished her cell phone from the pocket of her sweater and dialed 911.

  “Nine-one-one, is your emergency police, fire, or medical?”

  “Medical! It’s medical. I think my son is dying! We need an ambulance here.” She gave the dispatcher her location and answered a whole list of questions about what was wrong with Peyton. Of course, she didn’t say anything about a bullet, just an infection. She figured that was good enough.

  “Please stay on the line, while I communicate with the other dispatcher,” the woman said.

  Holding the cell phone to one ear, Yvonne shimmied out of her old, pilly green stay-at-home sweater and searched her closet for something nicer. The woven jacket in burnt orange? That brought out the amber in her eyes. She pulled it on and fixed her hair in the mirror. Not to be vain, but her mama had told her no matter what, you needed to look your best to win people over, and she figured she’d have a lot of persuading to do to get her baby treated at the hospital without the police hearing about it.

  “Ma’am, are you still on the line?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here.”

  “I’ve got an ambulance on the way. Can you send someone downstairs to direct the unit to your location?”

  “There’s no one here but me and my son, and he ain’t goin’ nowhere right now.”

  “Okay. Stay there, and the EMTs will find you.”

  “Okay. Are we saying good-bye now?” Yvonne asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay, then. Thank you!” Yvonne clicked off the phone and headed back to check on Peyton. She was just passing the bathroom when there was a knock on the door.

  “Damn, that was fast.” She peeked through the hole and saw a man in uniform, but that didn’t worry her. EMS didn’t want to come into the projects without a police escort, and she didn’t blame them.

  She opened the door and motioned for the cops to follow her in. “Well, that is excellent service, because I just called. But we need the stretcher in here. My son’s unconscious.”

  “Really?”

  The question seemed so out of place that she stopped in the hall and turned back to face them.

  The lead cop, a black man with lines on his forehead and a shine on his head, had his gun drawn.

  That was when she realized all four of the cops had been pointing their guns at her.

  “You gonna shoot me?” Yvonne put her hands up, her mouth suddenly dry with fear. “You all aren’t with the ambulance, are you?”

  “NYPD. We have a warrant for Peyton Curtis.”

  She nodded. “He’s here, but he’s sick. You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

  “We don’t want to. Anyone else here?”

  “No. Just me and my son.”

  The black cop—his nameplate said Russell—put his gun back in his holster. “What’s your son sick from?”

  “An infection?” she said. “At least, that’s what I think.”

  “Step back against the wall, please.” Russell and the woman stayed with her while the other two cops went down the hall to the bedroom. “Is it an infection from a bullet, maybe?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” Her arms were getting tired, and she let them down, daring Russell to say anything.

  “Sarge ...” one of the other cops called down the hall. “It’s him, but he’s in bad shape. We need a bus here.”

  “Okay, Mosley,” Russell shouted. “But I think we might have one on the way already. Did you call an ambulance?” he asked Yvonne.

  “Yes, officer, I did. I was going to take Peyton to the hospital.”

  Russell asked the lady cop to check on the ambulance. “How’d he get so sick?” he asked Yvonne.

  “He said he was walking down the street, minding his own business, when somebody started shooting up a shop, and a bullet came out the store and hit him.”

  “And you believed that?”

  Yvonne crossed her arms over her ample chest. “That’s what he told me.”

  “Sarge,” the woman interrupted, “we’ve got the ambulance downstairs. EMTs are on their way up.”

  “Okay.” Russell stared at Yvonne, rubbing one of his temples like he had a headache. “So you want your son to see a doctor.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And your name is ... ?”

  “Yvonne Curtis. Peyton is my son.”

  “All right, Ms. Curtis. We’re going to get your son some medical attention.”

  “Good.” Yvonne felt a touch of relief, but she wasn’t singing no hallelujah. “What’s the catch?”

  “He’s under arrest. And you’re coming along.” Russell turned to the female cop. “Pat her down and cuff her.”

  “Am I under arrest, too?” Yvonne demanded.

  Big, tall Sergeant Russell shrugged. “Right now, it looks that way.”

  Chapter 31

  The church service was ending as the aggravating buzz began in Keesh’s suit pocket. Amy gave him a look, but he shrugged.

  “At least I put it on vibrate,” he whispered.

  She rolled her eyes as he checked the message.

  It was a text message from his friend Clive in the Queens District Attorney’s office.

  Coffee shop killer suspect in custody at Queens Hospital. Keesh frowned. Freaky timing, but Bernie would want to know.

  He texted back a thanks and asked Clive for more info. Then it was time to rise for another hymn, the last one it seemed, since the pallbearers were rolling the coffin out the door. The priest and the accompanying boys in puffy white blouses stood at the altar as the family filed out, and then the rest of the crowd broke and scattered to different exits.

  Another buzz in his pocket, and he took a quick look at the message.

  “We need to find Bernie,” he said to Amy.

  “No duh.” Amy had always been impatient with idle chatter.

  “No, really. I just heard from my friend at the Queens DA. They’ve got a suspect in custody for the coffee shop killings.”

  Amy blinked. “That’ll be a relief for her. For a lot of people, actually.”

  The overflow crowd dissipated quickly, and the seemingly impossible task of finding Bernie began to seem feasible.

  The stone steps wrapping the front entrance of the church were still cluttered with people, but it was easy to make out faces along the staggered platforms. Bernie was near the bottom, talking with a handful of uniform cops. Young, buff men.

  He tucked his necktie in and buttoned the jacket of his suit, trying to bite back jealousy. They were probably just friends of Brendan.

  He joined the group, listening as one of the cops finished a story about Brendan.

  “He had a wicked sense of humor at times,” Bernie said. She suddenly noticed that she was flanked by Keesh and Amy. “Hey, guys. I saw you there in church.”

  Amy gave her a hug. “It was a very nice tribute,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Bernie nodded, then turned her big brown eyes up at Keesh. “What do you have to say?”

  “A lot, actually.” He reached for her for the perfunctory hug, but she moved up against him and buried her face into his jacket, just under his neck. Her desperation surprised him as she clamped on tight, in front of those young cops and everyone else on the church steps.

  His arms pulled her closer, and for a moment he closed his eyes and pretended this was all okay, in the name of reassuring a friend in grief.

  When she let go and slipped out of his arms, Keesh felt the other people in the circle watching them. Never one to put his personal life out there, he knew it was
time to cut out.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “Can you ride to the restaurant with me?”

  “I’ll just tell them in the limo.” The group of cops began to break up as Bernie gave the message to her older sister Mary Kate.

  “What’s the deal with the movie kiss?” Amy asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

  He swallowed and straightened his tie. “There was no kiss. Just consoling a friend in a time of grief.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Amy fished out her car keys. “I’ll meet you guys at the restaurant.”

  He wanted to argue with Amy, tell her that it wasn’t that way with Bernie anymore, that he had started seeing someone else, but to be honest, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. His relationship with Maro, if you could call it that, had gotten off to a rocky start after he’d had to cancel on her Wednesday. He’d tried to make it up to her with a movie Saturday, but afterward, when they went for dinner, she’d been quiet. He hated making conversation when it was like wading through a marsh.

  Bernie, who could talk all night, was rarely at a loss for words.

  “It was a good send-off, right?” Bernie asked as he guided her to his car, his hand gently touching the back of her coat.

  “Classic and from the heart. Any man would have been proud.” He pointed down a side street, where his car was parked. “Bernie, I got a text toward the end of the service.”

  “Keesh, you gotta turn that thing off. It’s your third arm.”

  “From my friend Clive, with the Queens DA.”

  She stopped walking in the middle of the street. When she turned to him, the shadows seemed to lift from her face.

  “They think they’ve got the Coffee Shop Killer in custody. I’ve just gotten a few texts, but I wanted to let you know.”

  “What are the details? Who is he and why did he do it?”

  He pulled her out of the street as the lights of a car approached, then scrolled to the message on his phone. “Peyton Curtis is his name, and he’s in Queens Hospital with a bullet wound in his arm. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”

  “Did anyone ask him why? What was his motive?” she asked as they reached his car.

  So she wanted answers. He bit his lower lip, restraining from telling her the world would probably never know the answer to “why?” Dramatic deathbed confessions were only scripted for television shows.

  “These are all the messages I have.” He handed her his cell phone and fished out his keys. “And I’m getting my info from an ADA. Your cop friends would probably know more.”

  “That’s true and ...” She stared down at his phone. “Oh, my God, they got him!” She threw her arms around Keesh, bouncing on her feet. “They got the killer.”

  “The suspected killer,” he corrected, taking his phone back before she dropped it on the street.

  She put her hands on his shoulders, her dark eyes flashing. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s go straight to the hospital and see if we can talk to him. We both work for the DA’s office, and you have friends with the Queens DA. You’re going to be on staff there in another week or so.”

  “No, no, and no.” He backed out of her reach, unlocked the car, and put his hands on her shoulders to guide her around the car to the passenger side. “Bad idea, Bernie.”

  “It may not work, but we could try, Keesh. And there’s a good chance the cops guarding him will know my dad.” She opened the car door. “We have a good shot at getting to him, Keesh.”

  “And then what? We interrogate the hell out of him so that the public defender can say that his Miranda rights were violated?”

  She pointed both hands to her chest. “Is this the face of an interrogator?”

  “Give it up and get in the car. It’s a bad idea, and I’m freezing my ass off here.” He got into the car, cranked the heat up full blast, and stared through the windshield at the gleam of streetlights on the other cars parked on the block. He didn’t want to argue with Bernie now, while she was mourning her brother and feeling vulnerable, but there was no way he’d let her do something so crazy.

  “Okay.” She dropped into the seat beside him and closed the door. “Maybe that’s a terrible idea that could get us both fired.”

  “And ruin whatever case they might have against this suspect,” he added.

  “Yeah, yeah, I lost my head there. But can I call Sully and let him know they got a suspect in custody? I didn’t bring my cell to the funeral. Somehow it just didn’t go with my little black dress.”

  “Sure.”

  As he pulled away from the curb, she made the call, but couldn’t get through. “Damn it. He’s not picking up.”

  “Maybe he’s on the phone getting the details from his cop buddies.”

  “But I wanted to be the one to tell him.” She sighed and ended the connection.

  “Keep trying,” he said, thinking that she was truly her father’s daughter, wrapped up in law enforcement even minutes after her brother’s funeral.

  And damned if her obsession wasn’t endearing.

  Chapter 32

  Although there’d been more than enough food served at Monahan and Fitzgerald’s, in the tradition of Queens Irish endings the party moved on to the house in the evening. Peg rushed to set chips and desserts and other food donations from the neighborhood out on the dining room table, while James and Sully set up coolers of beer outside the kitchen door. Bernie heard Sarah tell the girls they weren’t staying long, but then she tucked herself into a chair in the corner of the kitchen and poured herself a glass of cooking sherry. It seemed to be the first time Sarah had really relaxed in days.

  Bernie steered her friends out of the kitchen thronging with “moms” and into the living room, where Conner and his sister, Erin, sat watching television.

  “Hey, guys.” Bernie looked toward the dining room, thinking she’d bring her friends to the table for that rare experience of cop talk, but the room was packed with cops, some James’s age, others retired and gray like Sully, who reigned over all from his spot at the head of the table.

  Keesh and Amy flopped on the couch while she lingered near the dining room archway, listening for the chatter that had always fascinated her.

  “And can you believe he asked Padama for a drink of water?” Sully said. “He gunned down four cops, then asked for water.”

  “The shooter did?” someone asked. Bernie couldn’t identify all the players, but she knew when the conversation came back to Sully.

  “Unbelievable.”

  “They didn’t report that in the paper.”

  “Yeah, well, you know how I feel about journalists,” Sully said. “They got a job to do, but when I worked on the street, I never gave them anything. Nothing. ’Cause they’d print a photo of their own mother dying if they thought it would sell papers.”

  “What was his name again?”

  “Curtis. Peyton Curtis.”

  “You guys know Billy Cahill?” her father asked around the table. “Patrol in the 109. He’s there, standing guard at the hospital. Says this Curtis has a bullet in the shoulder. Infected. That’s the emergency surgery they’re doing right now.”

  “And I wonder how that bullet got there?”

  “Exactly,” Sully said. “Bet you dimes to donuts, they take that slug out and find that it’s the hollow point from Indigo Hilson’s nine millimeter.”

  Her father sounded smug, almost delighted. He’d been revitalized by the news about the suspect in the coffee shop killer case. When Bernie had sought him out at the restaurant, he’d already been in the thick of conversation with his cop friends, his blue eyes glimmering with the possibilities of conviction.

  “Dad, did you hear?” she had asked. “I just wanted to make sure you heard the news.”

  “I did, indeed.” There’d been hope in his smile. “I heard, and I’m celebrating, darlin’. We got the killer. We got him, and this monster is going to fry. Ooh, he’ll fry, and I’ll enjoy it.”

  Bernie’s smile had faded as joy had drained from h
er. She had thought this was something she would celebrate with her father, but suddenly it seemed ghoulish and sick. Besides, they had come to the restaurant for Brendan, to celebrate the hallmarks of his life, right?

  Tired and a little confused, she had backed away from her father’s circle of mirth and returned to her friends, who preferred to hang on the fringes and observe the varied factions that included Lucy’s Ivy League–looking family, the families with little kids from St. Pete’s, the pack of solo male cops, many of whom were half-in-bag, as Sully liked to say, and Sully’s older, more seasoned crew.

  “Who needs drinks?” Bernie asked the living room crowd. Conner and Erin had sodas, but Amy and Keesh wanted seltzer and coffee. Bernie ducked into the kitchen and nearly ran head-on into her sister Lucy.

  “How you holding up, kiddo?” Lucy’s face was lined, but in a healthy way that suggested sleeping under the stars and walks on a windy beach. Lucy had always been the outdoorsy one. On summer days when the rest of the kids were happy to hole up with Popsicles in front of the TV, Lucy headed off for a bike ride in the park or a day of swimming at a friend’s house.

  “I’m okay.”

  “That’s a lie.” She took Bernie’s hand and massaged her forearm, such a mom gesture. Apparently Lucy had learned a thing or two in the suburbs of Wilmington. “You were close to Brendan, don’t think I don’t remember that. He always reached out to you, and you idolized him.”

  “Did I?” That was not exactly Bernie’s perception, but it was far more insightful than she had expected of Lucy. Lucy Sullivan Strasberg was the fish that got away. Of Sully and Peg’s five kids, only Lucy ventured beyond the confines of the New York Metro area, moving to Wilmington, Delaware, where she and her husband had careers. On a global scale it wasn’t that far, but Bernie had learned how distant a family member could become when they were separated by two hours of the Jersey Turnpike.

  “It’s okay to cry,” Lucy said. “We all need to grieve; you just have to let it out. I’ve learned that in therapy. So don’t let Mom tell you to stop crying. I used to hate it when she did that.”