Live to Tell

by Lisa Gardner

  “Tika and Ozzie,” I stated, looking at Karen. “Ask Sergeant Warren about Tika and Ozzie.”

  D.D. explained. Karen went chalky white.

  “But … but … that doesn’t make any sense,” she protested feebly. “We can’t be the common denominator between two murdered families. We don’t make home visits. We work with the child, but hardly know anything about the family. Where they live, what they do … that’s not us….”

  “But you have that information,” Sergeant Warren said. A statement, not a question.

  “In the files, yes.”

  “And didn’t I see some poster in the lobby about an open-door policy? Parents can visit the floor anytime they want?”

  “Parents are invited to visit their child whenever they want. That still doesn’t mean we know them. Their time on the floor is a small slice of their overall universe, assuming they visit at all. Most of them don’t.”

  “The Harringtons?” Sergeant Warren pressed.

  Karen fidgeted with her glasses, adjusting and readjusting them on her face. “Ozzie’s parents, right? The mother, she came several times. Stayed over in the beginning, then came once or twice a week after that.”

  “What about the rest of the family?”

  “I have no memory of them. A shame, too. Parents seem to feel they’ll traumatize their other children by bringing them to an acute-care unit, when really, it’s good for all the children to see one another and reaffirm that each is doing okay.”

  D.D.’s eyes narrowed. “And Tika’s family?”

  Karen shook her head, bewildered. “Greg?” she asked.

  He’d just returned with a tray bearing four cups of water. He handed me one, then Karen, then offered one to Sergeant Warren, who passed.

  “Tika?” he repeated. “Little girl, ’bout a year ago? Cutter?”

  “That’s the one,” Warren assured him. “I understand you worked with her.”

  He nodded. “Cute little thing. Had a wicked sense of humor if you could get her to open up. But yeah, she had some self-esteem issues, depression, anxiety. Maybe even suffered sexual abuse, though she never disclosed.”

  “What was her family like?” Sergeant Warren wanted to know.

  “Never visited.”

  “Never?”

  “Never. Tika’s file described the mother as ‘disengaged.’ We never experienced anything different.”

  “And our records show them living in Mattapan,” I spoke up, remembering the exchange between Sergeant Warren and the George Clooney detective. “We wouldn’t know they’d moved; our involvement was over and done.”

  “Not so hard to look up,” Sergeant Warren said with a shrug.

  “But why? We’re caretakers. We don’t hurt children. We help them.”

  “Tell that to Lucy.”

  “Fuck you!” I exploded.

  “Eighteen minutes,” the sergeant shot back. “Gym Coach here just fetched four cups of water in a fraction of that time. Explain eighteen minutes.”

  “Easy,” Karen interjected, ever the manager. “Let’s just take a deep breath here.”

  “Lucy wouldn’t just wander into a radiology room,” I insisted hotly. “And where would she find the rope?”

  “Like you said, someone must have helped her.”

  “Lucy didn’t trust anyone. Had limited social skills, limited speech skills. Hell, we don’t even know that she had the dexterity required to tie knots. Whatever happened, it was done to her, not by her.”

  “By someone she trusted,” the sergeant reiterated, staring at me, then the little string ball I held in my left hand.

  “I wasn’t gone that long!”

  “Maybe hanging a troubled kid is quick work.”

  “Sergeant!” Karen protested.

  As I heard myself say: “Dammit, I loved Lucy.”

  “She attacked you.”

  “It was nothing personal—”

  “Looks like she tried to wring your neck.”

  “It’s part of the job!”

  “Does the rest of the staff have any bruises?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like here. We’re the last line of defense these kids have. If we can’t help them, nobody can.”

  “Really?” The sergeant’s voice turned thoughtful. “I remember now. In your own words, not much hope for a child like Lucy. Missed too many development stages. Doomed to be institutionalized the rest of her life. Some might say she was better off dead.”

  Karen gasped.

  I heard myself scream: “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up!”

  Lucy, dancing in the moonlight. Lucy, swinging from the ceiling.

  My mother with the single hole in the middle of her forehead.

  “I’ll take care of this, Danny. Go to bed. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”

  My knees gave way. The rage wasn’t enough to stave off the pain after all. Lucy, who never got a chance. My mother, who I loved so much and who still didn’t save me. Natalie and Johnny, stuck forever as stone angels.

  Blood and cordite. Singing and screaming. Love and hate.

  Vaguely, I was aware of Karen bending over me, ordering me to place my head between my knees. Then Karen’s voice louder, directed at the sergeant.

  “You shouldn’t be pressuring her like this. Not so close to the anniversary of what happened to her family.”

  “Her family?”

  Greg’s voice, angry, protective. “Are you arresting her?”

  “Do you think I should?”

  “You need to leave now,” Karen was saying. “You’ve done enough damage for one night.”

  “Two families connected to this unit are dead and one of your patients was just found hanging from the ceiling. Frankly, I think the damage is just beginning.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” Greg snapped.

  Greg and Karen closed in around me, a protective shield. My second family, the unit I’d probably fail just as badly as the first. I squeezed my eyes shut, wished it would all go away.

  As if reading my mind, the sergeant announced crisply, “This time tomorrow, I’ll know everything there is to know about every single one of you. So you might as well get used to my charm, people. From here on out, you belong to me.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Despite D.D.’s big words, she and her team departed shortly after five a.m. The four of them had been up for thirty-six hours. Given the location of the crime scene and the sheer number of people to now question, they faced a grueling stretch of days. Might as well grab four or five hours of sleep before returning to the trenches.

  As the crime-scene guru, Alex had spent the evening working in radiology. Unfortunately, the room had yielded scant physical evidence—no blood, no signs of struggle, no unexplained scuffs, dents, debris. They had the hangman’s knot from the rope, and that was about it.

  Neil, who’d taken a break from flirting with the ME in order to interview every janitor in the joint, reported similar results. Yes, a janitor had caught sight of a small figure in green surgical scrubs rounding a corner. Yes, the janitor happened to notice she was trailing a rope behind her. Yes, he happened to think that was odd. No, he didn’t pursue the matter; he had other work to do.

  Cameras would’ve been great, except, as Phil learned from security, the hospital used them mostly for the main-level entrances and exits, plus maternity. Radiology didn’t make the cut.

  Which left them with a crime scene that, four hours later, might or might not be a crime scene.

  D.D. arranged for a fresh homicide squad to take over canvassing for witnesses. She also got the hospital to agree to a twenty-four-hour security guard for the psych ward. Then she made it down to the hospital lobby before her shoulders sagged and her steps faltered from fatigue.

  She took a minute in the parking lot stairwell, pinching the bridge of her nose and waiting for the worst of it to pass. She didn’t care what anyone
said—the death of a kid never got any easier, and the second it did, she was quitting her job. Apparently, she didn’t have to retire just yet.

  The night had sucked. She wanted to go home, take a long hot shower, then pass out on top of her bed.

  Instead, her pager went off. She checked the number. Couldn’t place it. Then, given the early-morning hour and sheer curiosity, she entered the number on her cell phone and pressed Send.

  “I’m worried about you.” A man’s voice immediately filled her ear.

  “Who is this?”

  “Andrew Lightfoot.”

  “How’d you get this number?”

  “You gave it to me, on your card.”

  D.D. paused, searched her mental banks, and remembered that at the end of the interview, she’d handed Andrew Lightfoot her business card. Routine protocol—she’d already forgotten all about it.

  “Little early to be calling, don’t you think?” She leaned against the stairwell wall, giving the conversation her full attention.

  “I knew you were up. I dreamed of you.”

  Lotta things D.D. could say to that. Given her shitty night, and her instinctive distrust of anyone who called himself a spiritual guru, she didn’t. “Why’re you calling, Lightfoot?”

  “Please call me Andrew.”

  “Please tell me why you’re calling.”

  Hesitation. She found that interesting.

  “There’s something wrong,” he said at last. “I don’t know how to explain it. At least not in terms you would understand.”

  “A disturbance in the fabric of the cosmos?” she asked dryly.

  “Exactly.”

  I’ll be damned. “You talk,” D.D. decided. “I’ll listen.”

  “The negative energies are building. When I visited the interplanes earlier tonight, I found entire pockets of dark, roiling rage. I could feel a hum, like a vibration of great evil. The light had fled. I’ve never seen so many shadows.”

  “The negative forces are winning the war?”

  “Tonight, I would say yes.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “I’ve never encountered such a thing. Sometimes, when I’m leading group meditation, I’ll stumble across a particularly malevolent force. But the collective strength of the group, the exponential power of the light, enables me to confront such negativity and force it back into its small and insignificant space. Tonight … it’s as if the inverse has happened. Dark calling to dark. Feeding, growing, exploding. Alone and unprepared, there was nothing I could do.”

  “You got your ass kicked on the spiritual superhighway?”

  “I wouldn’t laugh about this, D.D.”

  “And I don’t have jurisdiction over evil energies. What the hell do you want from me?”

  Andrew’s voice changed. “You’re tired. You’ve suffered tonight. I apologize.”

  Instantly, she was on edge. “What do you know of my suffering?”

  “I’m a healer. I can feel it. Your aura, bright white when we first met, has turned to blue. You’re not comfortable with blue. You do better with red, though I prefer white.”

  D.D. pinched the bridge of her nose again. “Why are you calling, Andrew?”

  “Something is coming.”

  “Evil wants to take over the universe.”

  “Evil always wants to take over the universe. I’m telling you that this time, it’s winning.”

  “How?”

  “It has a purpose, I think. The purpose has given it power.”

  “What’s its purpose?”

  “It wants something.”

  “All right,” she said wearily. “What does it want?”

  No immediate answer. Maybe Andrew had gone back to the interplanes. In the silence, it occurred to her to ask: “How’s Tika doing?”

  “Tika?” Andrew echoed back. Good answer.

  “Danielle Burton thought you knew her,” D.D. fished again. “You know, from the Boston psych ward.”

  “She’s angry with me.”

  “Tika?”

  “Danielle. I want her to heal more than she wants to heal. Forgiving is hard work. It’s easier for her to hate me.”

  “So you two know each other. Spend much time on the psych ward, Andrew?”

  “Don’t be angry with Danielle,” he continued. “Without the children, she would be lost. Without their love, the darkness would consume her completely.”

  “Why do you say that, Andrew?”

  “Her story to tell.”

  “But you want her to heal. Tell me, and I’ll help.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?” he said abruptly, and there was an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before. “I lived in your world, Sergeant Warren, playing hardball with the best of them. I know a skeptic when I meet her. And I recognize bullshit when it’s shoveled at me. You’re a cop. You have no interest in healing. Your job is to judge. And you are extremely good at your job.”

  In spite of herself, D.D. felt her hackles rising. “Hey, now—”

  “She hurts,” he continued. “I feel Danielle’s pain and it calls to me, only because it’s so unnecessary. But not everyone wants to heal. I accept her choice, just as I accept that you will never truly believe what I say until it’s too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Something’s coming. It’s powerful. It has purpose.”

  “Tell me what you want, Andrew.”

  “I want you to be careful, Sergeant Warren. Spirits don’t want something. They always want someone.”

  Andrew clicked off the phone. Apparently, she’d pissed him off enough. Which was just as well, given that he’d confused her enough.

  Negative energies, forces of evil, dark tidings.

  D.D. thought of tonight’s scene, a nine-year-old girl’s forlorn body, swaying from a noose. D.D. didn’t need to be policing the spiritual interplanes. She had her hands full enough on this one.

  She finally made it down the stairwell. She pushed open the heavy door, worked her away across the nearly empty space. She decided there was no sound quite as lonely as a single set of footsteps echoing through a vacant parking garage.

  She was tired. She did hurt. Lightfoot had been right about some things.

  She rounded a broad support pillar and discovered Alex Wilson waiting beside her vehicle. She stopped walking. They eyed each other. He had shadows under his eyes. Stubble across his cheeks. Wrinkles in his once crisp white dress shirt.

  “Before … I was wrong,” D.D. said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometimes, I do need a man to take care of me.”

  He nodded. “That’s okay; sometimes, I do need a woman to stroke my ego.”

  “You look like hell,” she told him.

  “Compliment enough for me. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  She followed him to his car, leaving her vehicle to be retrieved later.

  He drove the first five minutes in silence. It gave her a chance to lean her head against the warm window glass and close her eyes. Morning would be coming. Maybe it was already here. She could open her eyes and look for the sun, but she wasn’t ready yet. She needed this moment, dark and contained, inside herself.

  “Andrew Lightfoot called,” she said presently, eyes still shut.

  “What did he want?”

  “To warn me that something wicked this way comes.”

  “Can it fashion a noose and does it have an address?”

  D.D. opened her eyes, sat up. “Excellent questions, if only I’d thought to ask them.” She sighed, rearranged herself in the seat. “I dropped Tika Solis’s name, but he didn’t bite. He definitely knows nurse Danielle, however. He requested that we not be too hard on her. Healing’s not for everyone.”

  “Easy for a healer to say. Means he can charge twice his going rate.”

  “Ah, but it’s a gift….”

  Alex finally smiled. He drove toward the North End. “Homicide or suicide?” he asked at last.

  “You’re
the expert; you tell me.”

  “Lack of physical evidence,” he said.

  “Yeah, I got that message. Crime scene has nothing, janitor saw nothing. Sucky all the way around.”

  “No, I mean lack of physical evidence. As in no latent prints. As in door handle, office chair, light switch—none of them bore prints small enough to be a nine-year-old’s. Tricky, if you think about it—a girl opening a door, turning on the light, setting up a chair, yet never leaving behind a single fingerprint.”

  “Fuck,” D.D. said, a world of exhaustion behind that one word.

  Alex reached over, squeezed her shoulder. “Not what you were expecting this evening—from executing routine search warrants to processing a dead body.”

  “Not what I was expecting,” D.D. agreed. Alex’s hand returned to the steering wheel; she felt its loss. “I don’t … I mean … Hell. One moment I’m on a date, next I’m at a house with five dead bodies. And that leads to another house with six dead, which leads us to a psych ward where a nine-year-old child escapes and hangs herself while we’re on the property. What are the odds of that?”

  “A date?” Alex asked.

  “Nothing serious. Never even made it through the entrée,” she assured him.

  “You gonna try again?”

  “Nah. Bachelor number one’s kind of faded by the wayside.”

  “Good to know. Please continue.”

  “So we got five dead, plus six dead, plus one hanged. They’re connected somehow. Gotta be connected. Only thing that makes sense, except, of course, none of it makes sense. How do you go from two family annihilations to one hanged child?”

  Alex didn’t say anything, just touched her shoulder again.

  “Fuck,” D.D. muttered, and turned to stare out the window, where the morning sun was staining the sky.

  She’d have to start monitoring her squad for burnout, she thought. Especially Phil. She couldn’t imagine going from scenes like the ones they had to tucking your kids into bed. Phil would stop talking, the first sign he was starting to fail.

  And her? She wasn’t sure of her signs. Seems like she never slept when she was working a hot case and she was cranky during the best of times. Maybe she’d secretly burned out years ago, and now it didn’t matter anymore. God knows she went long periods of time without ever connecting with another human being. No hugs, no morning cuddles, no kisses on the cheek. She didn’t own a dog to walk or have a cat to pet. She didn’t even have a plant to soothe her with its pretty green leaves.