The Hunting Ground (Deuce Mora Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jean Heller

“Let’s try again in the morning,” he said laying a hand on my shoulder. “It might take repetitive visits to break through, if a breakthrough is even possible.”

  “I have another idea,” I said.

  Although it was Sunday, both Phyllis Metzler and Jessanna Barbier, responded to my urgent plea to come to the hospital. Barbier had planned to come anyway to check on the injured child. Metzler responded to my argument that the trip could be very worthwhile.

  When they heard my idea, Barbier agreed at once. Metzler was a harder sell but finally agreed on the grounds that, “it couldn’t hurt.”

  Metzler left and returned two hours later with Charles. He looked great. He gave me a big smile. But his eyes remained sad.

  “They said you didn’t find Joey yet,” he said to me without accusation.

  “No, but we’re looking all day, every day,” I said. “We’ll find him.”

  I turned to Metzler. “I’d like to talk to Charles alone.”

  “There’s a corner of the commissary where you can have some privacy,” Barbier said. “We’ll escort you down there then wait on the other side of the room.”

  When I was settled in with my tenth cup of tea and Charles with a Coke, I asked him how he was getting along.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Sometimes I get so mad thinking about Joey, worrying about him, ya know, that I want to scream at people. But at the school, they understand how I feel. They help me work stuff out. I’m learning how to kick box. You probably don’t like that, but it’s better for me to punch and kick a heavy bag than other kids.”

  “Much better,” I said. “I’m proud of you. You like the school?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  He paused, waiting for me to say something.

  “Did anybody tell you why they brought you here?”

  “No,” he said.

  Without going into the gory details, I told him the police had busted a place where kidnapped children were held. I told him I found a boy, maybe a year younger than Charles himself, who had been beaten and starved.

  “Not Joey?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Not Joey.” I saw raw disappointment in Charles’s eyes. “This boy was really scared, and really hurt by some bad people. Because of that—how can I explain this?—it’s as if his mind has run away to hide. He won’t look at anybody. He won’t talk to anybody. He won’t, or can’t, even tell us his name.”

  “So whadda you want me to do?”

  “Try talking to him,” I said. “Softly. Friendly. See if you can get him to look at you. Make eye contact. Maybe you can help bring him back. When he sees that you’re strong and healthy and when you tell him you want him to be strong and healthy too, maybe he’ll believe you. Maybe he’ll tell you his name and where he lives. Then maybe we can reunite him with his family and help him get well.”

  “Unless his family sold him,” Charles said.

  I felt sick that a child would even think that. It must have shown in my face.

  “You surprised?” he asked. “Happens a lot. People need money. They don’t need a kid to feed. So they sell him. Happened to a friend of mine.”

  “Did anybody ever find him?”

  “Yeah. Dead.”

  “Oh, Charles, I’m so sorry. Maybe if you can help this little boy, it will help make up for the loss of your friend.”

  Charles gave me one of his one-shoulder shrugs.

  “Sure,” he said. “I can try.

  I don’t think I will forget the next five minutes for as long as I live.

  As Charles and I approached the injured boy’s room, Charles stopped outside the open door and stared at the spectacle in front of him. The boy’s face was still turned away from the door, and he looked pitiably small in the big bed surrounded by the machines of hospital business. I felt Charles’s grip tighten around my hand.

  “Are you ready to go in?” I asked. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  He stepped over the threshold, pulling me behind him. We were tethered to one another in sadness and uncertainty. We stood beside the bed. When I looked at Charles’s face, tears were streaming over his cheeks, dripping onto his gray t-shirt.

  “How b-b-bad is he h-hurt?” Charles stammered through his tears.

  “The doctors don’t really know yet,” I said. “They have to run a lot of tests, but first he has to respond to us, to be able to answer some questions.”

  Charles dropped my hand and ran around to the far side of the bed. He began to sob. Then, before anyone could stop him, he was on the bed, his arms wrapped gently around the child, tears soaking into the little patient’s hospital gown.

  “He gonna be okay,” Charles said, lifting his eyes to me. “I’ll take care of him. He gonna be okay.”

  I was confused by Charles’s certainty, by his overwhelming emotion. Not what I would have expected from a hardened street kid.

  “You found him,” Charles said. “You said you would, and you did.”

  “Did what, Charles?”

  “You found Joey.”

  At first no one believed it. Joey Russell was six. We all thought the boy in the cabinet was at least two years older. Dr. Raji came back to the hospital, though it was his day off, to talk with Dr. Barbier and devise a new course of physical and psychological treatment for the boy. Joey was their first concern. The impact on Charles was their second.

  Mark left to take care of our collective animals and then to head out on an arson call in the Roseland neighborhood deep on the city’s South Side. He promised to call later.

  When the rest of us had settled in with coffee, Raji began to explain why the injured child’s identity came as such a surprise.

  “The dehydration, starvation, and torture changed his appearance markedly,” he said. “He appeared deflated, wizened like a little old man. His skin appeared darker. I’ve seen your picture of Joey Russell, Ms. Mora, and if you’d showed it to me when he first came in, I never would have made the connection.”

  I agreed. “I look at Joey now, and I think I see a resemblance, but it still isn’t clear. Uh, it worries me a little that Charles might be seeing what he wants to see. The boy in the cabinet looks a little like Joey, but are we sure he is Joey?”

  “It’s all the weight loss,” Raji replied. “His eyes and his cheeks are sunken, his skin fits differently on his bones. Frankly, I’m surprised his own brother recognized him. To answer your question, we took DNA from both of them. I’m told the two boys had different fathers, so it wasn’t an exact match. But there were a sufficient number of markers in common. The boys are definitely brothers. Half brothers.”

  I said, “That was fast.”

  Raji smiled. “Not for this. It’s not a complex match to make.”

  “Has the boy’s foster mother been notified?” I asked.

  “Dr. Barbier is letting DCFS know,” Raji said. “They’ll handle it.”

  “Is Joey responding to his brother?”

  Raji nodded. “A little, yes. It’s encouraging.”

  Phyllis Metzler spoke up.

  “The older boy can’t stay here,” she said. “I told the school I’d have him back tonight. I don’t have court permission to have him off-campus.”

  Raji thought about that. He didn’t like it.

  “If the brother suddenly disappears, it could set my patient back physically and psychologically. We have to find a way to keep them together for at least part of every day.”

  I suggested, “Maybe we could get permission to keep them together here for a few days. When Joey’s stronger, transfer him to a hospital near Faulker Academy.”

  Raji thought about it. “It might work,” he said. “I think the boy needs his brother more than he needs any particular hospital.”

  Metzler agreed to leave Charles at Stroger Hospital overnight under my supervision while she sought permission for the plan.

  Raji said he would arrange for Charles and me to stay the night in a hospital room. There was a double room open on the same f
loor.

  I didn’t say so, but I suspected nothing would pry Charles out of Joey’s bed that night, which perhaps was best for both of them.

  57

  I left the hospital early the next morning after stopping by to say goodbye to Charles and check on Joey. I had spent several hours in surprisingly good sleep in an empty room down the hall, but I had to leave. It was Monday, the day the Saudis were scheduled to land in Washington, D.C., two days from their arrival in Chicago.

  When I walked into Joey’s room, I saw the boys in the same general positions they had assumed the night before—Joey on his back with his head turned away from the door and toward his older brother—Charles lying on his right side facing Joey with his arm thrown protectively over the younger boy’s abdomen. Someone had covered Charles with his own blanket during the night.

  Charles raised his head and smiled.

  “He’s gonna be okay,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  “And how are you going to be?” I asked.

  “I’m better now. But I don’t wanna go back to school. I wanna stay with Joey.”

  “The doctors and the lady from juvenile court are trying to figure out a way you can do both. They think it would do Joey a lot of good if you could spend some of every day with him. But you have to go to school, too.”

  “Why can’t teachers come here to teach me? Why don’t you teach me?”

  “I have to go to work, Charles, and besides, I’m not a certified teacher.”

  It sounded lame. But I certainly didn’t want to try to explain the Saudi situation to a nine-year-old who was lying in the same bed with a victim of their abuse. I told Charles I would try to come back later in the day.

  He put his head down again and began to caress Joey’s cheek.

  When I got to my car, I called Mark to check in. He asked for an update on Joey and Charles and reported that my cats were fine but missing me.

  He added, “I know how they feel.”

  “All this should be over in a couple of days,” I said.

  I had just ended that call when my phone rang. It was Eric Ryland.

  “Well, this is the week, Deuce,” he said. “What are the plans?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I’ll keep checking in.”

  “Don’t worry about your column this week,” he said. “Focus on this.”

  “Why are you cutting me loose now?” I asked. “You refused last week.”

  “Because we’re coming to the end, Deuce, and we don’t want anything to get in the way of this story.”

  “Understood,” I said. “And, oh, by the way, thanks for using the police cover story on the shootout at the machine shop. That should buy us some good will from the feds.”

  I called Carl Cribben to see if he had any updates though I suspected he would have called me if he’d heard anything important.

  “All I know is the targets are on the ground,” Cribben said. “They landed at Dulles around 7 a.m. and headed off to their embassy. I hope they got stuck in rush-hour traffic.”

  “Bitter, are we?” I said.

  “I hate child abusers, ergo, I wish these bastards all the grief they deserve. I don’t believe in the death penalty, but for these pieces of crap I’d be happy to stick needles in their arms myself.”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “Why isn’t the FBI involved in this?”

  “Oh, they are, big time” he said. “They’re the lead investigative agency.”

  “I wonder why I haven’t bumped into them.”

  Cribben chuckled. “You have. In fact, you know the lead Feeb.”

  “I do?”

  “Ron Coulter, an AD right out of the J. Edgar Hoover HQ.”

  “Really? First time I met him he identified himself as a Chicago cop. Lately he’s given me the impression he was NSA, with Mason Cross.”

  “Nope. He’s all Feeb.”

  “He’s a chameleon,” I said.

  “He definitely can be when the situation calls for it.”

  “Does the Secret Service know what’s going on?”

  “Some of it,” Cribben said. “Why?”

  “I wouldn’t think they’d let the Saudis anywhere near the president.”

  “They won’t,” Cribben said. “The Saudis are meeting with White House staff. The president can always get new advisers. They’re expendable.”

  We both laughed without much mirth.

  “Watch yourself, Deuce, please,” Cribben said.

  I headed over to the Saudi mansion on the Near North Side to check things out. The morning rush was over, and traffic was light. It was my intention to drive around the area to gauge the activity, but I found a legal curb space on the edge of the park across the street from the mansion. I left the Explorer and began my snooping on foot.

  Cross hadn’t exaggerated when he said the area had been closed down by People’s Gas service trucks. Judging by all the bodies in jump suits and traffic vests dropping into and popping out of manholes, you’d think there was major utility work going on. I had to look very closely to see the telltale bulges of weapons under their disguises.

  I walked around the block to get the lay of the land. To all outward appearances, it was a normal Monday morning in Chicago.

  As I trudged back toward my car, I felt a hand touch my back.

  A man’s voice said, “Don’t turn around, Ms. Mora. Keep walking to the alley ahead on your right and turn into it.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “And if I don’t?”

  “You will tragically expire here on the street as your friend, Winona Jackson, died on the plaza in front of her office.”

  “And if I take off running?”

  “There are a number of others on the street who would intercept you.”

  “What do you want, if not to slit my throat?”

  I thought I heard a smile in his voice when he replied, “Oh, that might still come to pass. But first I would like to take you on a tour of this home in which you have so much interest. Now, please, if you will, begin walking and turn right ahead.”

  This can’t be happening to me again.

  With rising panic I searched the street for anyone who might help me. I didn’t want to call out to the undercover utility workers. They had no idea who I was. By the time they got to me, I’d be dead, and I’d have blown their whole Saudi operation. Everyone else I saw was either head-bobbing to Smart Phone music or texting on their phones or talking on their phones. No one glanced at me. No one noticed me. I could have made a dash for it, screaming at the top of my lungs, but the sharp, deep prick I felt in my back told me there was a knife, and I wouldn’t get far, especially if any of those nondescript pedestrians were “the others” my captor mentioned.

  I knew, however, that once I was inside the house the odds were against my ever seeing the outside again.

  I had to make my stand here.

  Running was what the man with the knife expected me to do. I had to do something he wasn’t expecting.

  I took a long stride forward as if to begin walking. Then before he could match my gait, I spun on the ball of my foot to face him. Fortunately, he was wearing a T-shirt, exposing the area I wanted to target. For a moment he looked surprised, then he stepped forward to thrust his knife into me. Before he could accomplish that, I hit him in the throat as hard as I could with the index and middle fingers of my right hand. My bull’s-eye was the soft hollow at the base of the throat where the left and right collarbones met. The force of my blow and the man’s own forward momentum combined to make the maneuver work. He collapsed, falling straight backward onto the sidewalk. I heard a loud, hollow thunk when the back of his head hit the concrete.

  I didn’t know it then, but he would never move again under his own power.

  I kept spinning, looking for other assailants. I screamed for someone to call the police. I could have done that myself. My cell phone was in my pocket. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off the strangers around me.

  Seve
ral of the “utility workers” glanced my way, but none broke cover. They were only following their training.

  I began to feel marginally safe when several pedestrians ran over and surrounded me, asking what happened and whether I was all right. One kid, who appeared to be a banger wannabe, reached down to pick up the knife lying on the concrete next to my victim.

  I shouted at him, “Don’t touch that or I’ll rip your head off. And then the cops will arrest what’s left of you.”

  He looked alarmed and backed away.

  An older man stepped close to me. Not knowing his identity or his intentions, I took a step back.

  “It’s okay now, Miss,” he said. “I called the police and an ambulance.”

  I could hear sirens in the distance.

  “What happened?” another man asked.

  There was nothing I wanted to say. So I mumbled, “Let’s wait for the police.”

  A woman who said she was a nurse bent down beside the man on the sidewalk and felt for a pulse along his neck, under his ear.

  “I think he’s dead,” she said.

  That didn’t make me feel particularly good, but it didn’t surprise me either. My blow would have collapsed the man’s pharynx and stopped him from breathing. If that weren’t enough, the thud of his skull hitting the sidewalk sounded lethal. The river of blood running from the back of his head down the concrete, pooling in cracks and low spots, seemed to confirm the nurse’s diagnosis.

  Two police units screeched to a stop next to this little knot of people. More followed. And still there were sirens.

  “What happened here?” one cop asked.

  “I’ll talk to you,” I said, “as soon as Ron Coulter and my lawyer get here.”

  58

  Eric Ryland said he would have Jonathan Bruckner come right over, assuming he wasn’t tied up in court. I expected my editor to be furious with me, but he remained calm, and even solicitous. He asked three times if I was okay.

  I might have had to wait for the lawyer, but Ron Colter showed up within minutes. I suspected he’d been in the area.