The Tough Guy and the Toddler

by Diane Pershing

  When he opened the door, bright sunlight hit him like a bombshell, making him wince. Jordan barreled past him. It was obvious that she was furious, over-the-top pissed off. He hadn’t a clue why. As he closed the door behind her, she whipped around to face him.

  “What in God’s name have you done?”

  His brain could hardly take in her words. Rubbing his eyes, he walked to the sofa and sank onto the cushion. He scratched his head, yawned. “What?”

  “He called me!”

  “Who called you?”

  “wally. Walter Kaczmarak.” Rubbing her hands in agitation, she began to pace in front of the small fireplace the way she had the other night. “It’s off, the deal’s off, he said. Because a certain cop paid him a visit this morning, and he’s seen that certain cop at the shop where I work, has seen that certain cop with me, several times.”

  She stopped pacing, turned and faced him, hands outstretched. “He’s been watching me. Did you know that?” Jordan walked toward him. “Did you happen to observe the fact that we were under surveillance? Apparently not. But now, Wally’s called his sister and told her to take my son and make a run for it. Did you know that?”

  She stood looking at him, hands propped on her hips, sarcasm, rage and pain in her expression. “Oh, I can see by the look on your face that this is all news to you. Didn’t you get my message? I put it on your machine right after you left last night. I got another note, I told you. We had to be more careful than ever, I said. Didn’t you pay any attention, or is my opinion not important here just because I’m not part of your stupid lawman fraternity?”

  He shook his head, mumbled, “I didn’t listen to my machine.”

  “Well, let me tell you, Detective, you blew it. You blew it, do you hear me?”

  With tears of rage streaming down her face, she came at him, falling to her knees and punching him several times in the chest before he grabbed hold of her clenched fists to restrain her. “Jordan, stop. Please, stop.”

  She continued to struggle for a few moments, then sagged against him, weeping. He tried to put his arms around her, to hold her, but she shook him off. Cutting off all physical contact, she turned her back to him and curled up in a ball of despair.

  As Dom stared at Jordan, his brain finally cleared. All she’d said to him, and all it meant, registered. That morning, Wally had known who he was. That was the reason for the look of hostility in his eyes, the reason for his smugness. The son of a bitch had made him, and Dom had walked into it completely ignorant.

  Resting his elbows on his knees, he covered his face with his hands as self-loathing filled every part of him. How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn’t he taken more precautions, thought it through? He’d had a hunch about Chatsworth, had rushed over there like a rookie, like some hotshot recruit instead of a seasoned professional.

  Everything Jordan said about him was right on the money. He’d blown it big-time, and he had no excuse except that he’d failed to honor the line between professional and personal business. His thinking had been fuzzy. He hadn’t considered all the angles from a detached viewpoint. As a result, Jordan was enraged at him, for which he didn’t blame her. He was a washout, both as a cop and a man.

  Lowering his hands from his face, he stared at the top of her head, misery sitting in his gut like an undigested meal. Weary, he rose to his feet. “Give me five minutes.”

  She looked up at him, her pain-ravaged face beautiful even in despair. “For what?”

  “I need to shower. Then we’re going down to the bureau.”

  He reached out a hand to help her up, then drew it back and let his arm fall to his side. She didn’t want him touching her. Hell, she’d probably never let him touch her again. “I swear to you, Jordan, on my wife’s grave, that if Michael is still alive, we’ll find him. If it’s the last thing I ever do.”

  She continued to gaze at him, doubt and hopelessness in her expression. Then she shrugged listlessly and leaned her head against the couch cushion. “What choice do I have?”

  As they walked through the detectives’ room, one of the others called out, “Hey, D’Annunzio, I thought you were on sick leave.”

  “I am on sick leave,” he replied. “This is what sick leave looks like.”

  The detective’s gaze shifted to Jordan, and he seemed about to follow up with another remark. However, the look on Dom’s face made him shut his mouth.

  They’d better keep their mouths shut, he thought, all of them. It wasn’t common for a civilian to be here, much less a looker like Jordan, but damn it, if any of them said word one, he’d rearrange their face.

  Dom was angry. At himself, for sure, but that didn’t matter. Anger could be a kind of fuel, and he would use it to propel him through whatever barriers were put in his way.

  When he reached his desk, he pulled up an empty chair, indicated that Jordan should sit, then pushed away the pile of crap on his desk as he lowered himself into his chair. He’d been waiting for an unofficial favor from State Prison Records, but he no longer had time to wait.

  He picked up the phone, punched in the number for the state prison. When the operator came on, he requested records. A woman answered, and he identified himself. “I got an emergency here,” he said. “I need you to pull up a file, and it’s not on computer.”

  When she started asking him things like case numbers and authorization codes, he barked, “I’ll fax it all to you ASAP. Right now it’s a kid’s life we’re talking about.” He gave her Wally’s name, spelled it for her, told her he needed the parents’ home address and phone number, and no, he would not wait for her to call him back, he would hold on.

  He kept his gaze averted from Jordan, who sat still and unsmiling next to him, her hands folded in her lap. His threatening tone seemed to have the desired effect, because the lady from records was back on the line in three minutes. The Kaczmaraks were listed as living in Buttonhollow, a tiny town in central California, no phone number given.

  Dom slammed down the phone, rose and went to Santos’s desk. The young Hispanic detective eyed Dom’s approach with a mixture of awe and trepidation.

  “Santos, I need you to do me a favor. Steve usually does the computer stuff because I suck at it, but he’s not here. Will you look something up for me?”

  Santos let out a relieved breath. “Sure, Dom.”

  “Check out the name Kaczmarak in Buttonhollow, see if they’re still there.” He spelled it for him.

  “Sure, Dom,” the young detective said again, then swiveled his chair so it faced his computer screen and pressed a lot of keys. In the two minutes, he had the information. “George Kaczmarak, 529 Whetstone Lane. No phone.”

  “What the hell kind of people don’t have a phone?” Dom muttered, then remembered to thank the kid, saying he owed him one. At least the address was the same one as in the state prison file. At least they still lived there.

  He walked to Jordan and offered his hand. She looked at it, then at him without taking it. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To Buttonhollow.”

  “But Wally told me he contacted Myra and told her to run. He said—”

  “I know what Wally said, Jordan. And maybe he meant it. But maybe he lied. Whatever. But we got to start somewhere. Coming?”

  Chapter 12

  On the road again, Jordan thought. The seemingly never-ending journey, searching for her son.

  She and Dom didn’t speak much on the trip to Buttonhollow. They’d decided to take the Rover, which was in much better shape than Dom’s car, but he drove while Jordan studied the scenery. They took the coast route up to Santa Barbara, then inland along a two-lane highway through farm country. Groves of fruit trees, acres of crops stretched as far as the eye could see.

  An hour went by. Two. Dom’s mouth was set in a hard, firm line. He wore his wraparound sunglasses and stared straight ahead, never at her, only shifting his gaze to pass another car. For herself, Jordan wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her anxi
ety level had been cranked up to new heights. Every muscle in her body felt tight, her stomach was filled with acid, the expression “jumping out of your skin” made more sense to her than it ever had.

  None of this was helped by the barrier between her and Dom. She had unloaded on him because she’d had no option. She had been livid, more filled with rage than she ever remembered feeling in her entire life.

  Had she vented her anger disproportionately? Had he deserved to be yelled at that way? Was it really his fault that Wally had gotten so bitter and cut off contact?

  Jordan had no idea whose fault it was. Maybe hers. Maybe no one’s. What she did know was that she was so wound up, she had no objectivity left. Her brain seemed incapable of rational thinking.

  Maybe it was her fault for not making sure Dom got her message about the new note demanding ten thousand dollars. Maybe she should have known that she was being followed. But shouldn’t Dom have known it? Wasn’t that his job?

  And was she expecting too much of one person so he couldn’t help but fail?

  If she kept this up, Jordan knew, she would crack. Instead, she decided to break the silence. “How did you find him?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Wally. This morning—how did you know where to look?”

  Dom scratched his cheek. “He was at his previous address, in Chatsworth, which is often a good place to start. SOP. Standard operating procedure.”

  “I see. And what did you say to him?” It came out like an accusation. She heard it, but couldn’t seem to help it. Her anger had yet to dissipate.

  Predictably, Dom bristled, and she saw his jaw muscles working a few times before he responded. “Nothing about you, nothing at all. A parole violation, I told him. It wasn’t that big a deal, most parolees are used to it. I didn’t know he’d made me. If I had I would never have gone there in person, would have sent someone else.”

  She nodded. He hadn’t known, of course he hadn’t. Still, she couldn’t apologize for her anger, couldn’t make it all right between them. Not yet. She was still too wound up.

  She wanted to urge him to drive faster, but when she glanced at the speedometer, she noticed it hovered between eight-five and ninety. More than fast enough. Dom’s face remained a hard, taut mask. Again, she had to ask herself if she’d expected too much of him. Should she have brought him in in the first place, and would it have turned out differently if she hadn’t?

  Had she? Should she? Would it?

  All the self-doubts, crowding around her like a circling chorus of taunters. Stop, please, Jordan begged the old tapes. Give me a break. She closed her eyes, felt the rocking motion of the car, let it soothe her. Lord, how she needed soothing.

  Somewhere in there, she fell asleep and had a dream, the same one she’d had for several months after the car crash. Michael, his face staring at her from the rear window of a car, saying something, his lips moving, but she can’t make out what it is. Then somehow, the window widening to show Michael’s arms raised, as though asking to be picked up. She can’t move toward him, but he doesn’t get any closer either. The two of them remain like that, suspended, for a time. Then he disappears, poof! Just like that. Gone.

  Jordan awoke with a start, her heart pounding, her mouth foul-tasting. She looked around wildly until she remembered where she was.

  “You okay?” Dom asked.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Oh.” She ran her tongue over her teeth, then her eye was caught by a movement. Dom was holding out a piece of his wintergreen gum, of which he had an apparently endless supply in his pocket.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking it and unwrapping it and putting it into her mouth. It tasted delicious, its flavor almost too sharply sweet. But it did the trick.

  That last image before the poof—Michael with his arms raised. It had been one of his signature gestures. Michael had been slow to talk but had managed a small vocabulary by eighteen months. “Mommy, hug,” had been two of his words. He would say them in that sweet-little-boy voice of his while he raised his arms. Whenever he did, she would always scoop him up and say, “Michael, hug.” She would cradle him in her arms while he rested his head on her shoulder, one small hand around her neck. Then she would growl into his neck and he would giggle, then squirm to be let down. That happened once or twice a day—it had been their little ritual, their special moment.

  On that first day of Michael’s life, when she looked at him, her heart had been so full it hurt. That sense of closeness had never really diminished. The dream was about the last day of his life. Or so she’d thought.

  “You okay?”

  Dom’s voice startled her. She’d almost forgotten where she was and why she was there, so lost had she been in memory. She glanced at him. His face was still set in the same harsh lines, but she detected a slight undercurrent of concern for her that he might not admit, but she knew he felt. “Yes.”

  He nodded, then returned to concentrating on the drive.

  Was she still angry at him? No. In the deep five-minute sleep, her rage at him had disappeared. The incident with Wally hadn’t been his fault. Any one of a number of things could have gone wrong.

  “Dom?” She angled her head to face him.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. I was out of line.”

  He glanced at her. His sunglasses made his expression hard to read. Then he returned his attention to the road and shrugged. “No you weren’t. It’s okay.”

  She stared at him a while longer, but it was plain he didn’t want to talk, which was fine with her.

  No, Jordan would not punish Dom any more. As she admitted that to herself, another strong image came to mind. Yesterday—had it been just yesterday? No, this morning—she had realized she was falling in love with this man. Even now, in her rage at him, warranted or not, even in the middle of her anxiety about Michael, that feeling of love was still there.

  Strange, she thought. Blossoming love in the midst of a nightmare.

  The town of Buttonhollow was a small one. Farms dotted the outskirts, then closer in, modest homes took over. The business district consisted of three square blocks of two-story buildings, storefronts on the first floor, offices or apartments upstairs. It was a community that was large enough to have a convenience store and a grocery store plus two gas stations, but there was no chain supermarket, no franchised fast food.

  The place reminded Jordan of the nearby town of her Wyoming childhood. A tired place, not yet quaint or on the verge of becoming gentrified. Just old. It had come into existence post World War Two, and hadn’t changed much since.

  Whetstone Lane was part of the business district, and 529 turned out to be K’s Laundromat, just on the edge of town before the paved sidewalk ended. The laundromat had twenty machines and dryers. The Kaczmaraks, the owners, lived above.

  As Jordan followed Dom up the outside staircase, she was aware of constant vibrations from the machinery below. “I’ll bet that goes on all the time,” Jordan told Dom.

  “During the day, yeah.”

  Dom knocked, and a woman opened the door. Her face was broad, and her small eyes seemed lost in the surrounding flesh. She was a big woman, almost as tall as Jordan, and she probably weighed twice as much. She wore a velour sweat suit that had seen repeated washings. Her faded blond hair was streaked with gray and was pulled off her face in an unflattering ponytail. She was probably not yet fifty, Jordan thought, but had long ago stopped fighting the aging process.

  Dom flashed his badge and ID. “Mrs. Kaczmarak?”

  Considering her bulkiness, it was a surprise when the woman spoke in a girlish, high-pitched voice. “What do you want?”

  “Are you Mrs. George Kaczmaraks?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Sergeant Dominic D’Annunzio, a detective with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. May we come in?”

  Flustered, she said in that incongruous little-girl v
oice, “Of course, yes, of course. My husband’s in the living room.”

  They followed her through an old but clean kitchen. On the wall above the table hung an embroidered homily that read There are no shortcuts to God.

  The living room was claustrophobic, with old furniture way too large for the room’s dimensions. A couple of narrow windows, their blinds drawn against the fading afternoon sun, faced the street. Doilies covered the back and arms of a faded couch. There were two overstuffed armchairs, one positioned in front of a TV. A man sat in it, glued to the set.

  “George, turn it off,” the woman said.

  “It’s the last quarter,” he grunted.

  “These people are from the police.”

  Jordan didn’t bother to correct the woman’s impression, nor, she was glad to see, did Dom. It was better that they think she worked with him rather than discover her identity as a woman who had come to take their grandson away from them. If she felt a small twinge of guilt at the thought, she quickly brushed it away.

  The man reached for the remote, turned off the TV, then stood. He was four or five inches shorter than his wife, and small-boned. Jordan recognized Wally in his father, but as Mr. Kaczmarak had thirty years or so on his son, his face had hardened into a look of perpetual suspicion. “Police, huh?”

  Again, Dom brought out his badge and ID. The man studied it longer than his wife had. Then he nodded. “What do you want?”

  “Would you like to sit?” the woman asked.

  “We’d like to talk to your daughter,” Dom said.

  “She’s not here.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Kaczmarak said.

  “I see. Then, yes, I guess we will sit.”

  The man nodded, indicating that Dom and Jordan should take the armchairs while he and his wife sat on the couch. After they were settled, Dom began. “We’re making routine inquiries about your daughter, Myra Foster.”