Shoeless Child

by J. A. Schneider

  “Charlie only wants these,” he said, explaining last night’s temporary refusal to eat or drink. “They tried bringing him oatmeal this morning…and he wouldn’t, just wants these.” He put out some spoons too, with a half crooked smile. “It’s going to be peanut butter for a while.”

  Rachel didn’t understand. “He… What?”

  “Wasn’t me who figured it out, it was a terrific police detective. I suspect you’ll be seeing her again.”

  The medication was lifting more. Pain was returning, but at least she could think. “I remember detectives, like a blur…”

  “They’ll be back. They’re good people.” Benton’s warm eyes focused on her. “You’re wincing. Pain returning?”

  “Yes.” Rachel exhaled. Her left shoulder was on fire.

  “I’ll have them give you more.”

  He ripped a page from a small notebook, scribbled, and slid the paper under Rachel’s pillow. His hand brushed her cheek. “I’m in Child Psychiatry, here’s my cell number.” There was a warm calm about him. “I’ll be back too. Lots, and soon.”

  He patted her shoulder, then Charlie’s head, then with a wave he turned for the door. Dale followed, and waved too.

  17

  “What did you think of Mitch Gilbey?”

  “Creepy. His description’s just generic enough with no evidence on a night when everyone was rushing to get in.” Kerri pulled another stack of files to her on her desk. “If I wanted to be cynical – and why would I be cynical, I’m a cop - I’d say this was someone who knew he was taped in the crowd, so wanted to establish he’d seen someone else fleeing the scene.”

  She looked up to Alex leaning over her. “He saw me running into the building? That’s what he said?”

  “Yep.”

  “That means he stayed in the wet, freezing street from nine-thirty to when I got there at ten. Longer, in fact.”

  “The lure of the spectacle?” Alex went back to his desk. “There were plenty of others shivering under umbrellas.”

  “Yeah, it must have been that. Bottom line, his intel’s no better than the other two who came. The walrus mustache was colorful, at least. Comedy relief.”

  The squad room still throbbed with activity. Also headaches. Though the focus was still on the Huff-Sparkes case, last night had brought two murders - hence backed-up case files and reports in blue and red folders piling on desks faster than detectives busy on phones could read them.

  Tom Mackey wasn’t making it easier with his pacing and frustration.

  “Greenwich Street is what scares people,” he groaned. “Two women mowed down in their law-abiding home? There were people in front of Sparkes’s building this morning telling reporters that’s it, they’re moving to the ‘burbs.”

  He stopped like a storm cloud by Kerri’s desk. “Crime scene people find anything?”

  “No,” she said bluntly, spreading files from Al Nunez’s team who had worked all night. She was rushing, and minded the intrusion. “Killer wore a standard hoody with common fibers, trainer shoes size ten like a million guys wear. Amazing they found even that partial print after the mess the EMS left.”

  “The boy. His pajamas give anything?”

  “Same fibers they found in the apartment. No other evidence, the killers must have worn gloves.”

  Mackey was annoyingly reading over her shoulder, as if she’d missed something. To divert him, Kerri looked across her desk to Alex, just disconnecting from a call. “DNA from Charlie’s nail scrapings will take longer, right?”

  Alex nodded; gave Mackey a sad smirk. “Don’t hold your breath. The nurses scrubbed him well, remember.”

  The rotund lieutenant turned away, throwing up his hands. “So we’re nowhere. Two victims and no real proof which was the target.”

  He pivoted stubbornly. “I still like Lauren Huff’s reputed romance with a hedge funder. His name’s Whit Duffy and his outfit’s called Kettering Capital. What do you have there?”

  Kerri gave him a solid stare. “The killer…” she said very slowly, as if re-explaining to a child, “was after Rachel.”

  “Huff was shot first,” he flared back, the confirmed, by-the-book stiff going down his list. When it wasn’t the husband it was the boyfriend, especially if it was some rich guy worried his mistress was going to ruin his marriage, bank account and social standing. Oh, wouldn’t Mackey love that one. He’d started to talk about retiring. What a blaze of glory it would be to bring down some big shot in roaring headlines. Kerri could see him already imagining the press conference, the lights, reporters shouting questions.

  Alex produced another regretful smirk and handed Mackey his phone. “Connor’s notes just came. Have a read.”

  The lieutenant scowled at the small screen.

  Zienuc and Connor had just left Kettering Capital. Last night Whitley Duffy, finance celeb at forty, got dragged by his wife to the Metropolitan for some very boring benefit, his words. He was on the Met’s security tapes logged at the time of the attack. He also insisted there was no way he would dally with assistants; sounded seriously paranoid that the place was crawling with women just waiting to file sex harassment suits.

  Mackey handed Alex’s phone back, sullenly disappointed. “People like that hire for hits.” He started to move away, then turned back to Kerri.

  “You’re still convinced Sparkes was the target because of a kid’s toy? That’s your not even circumstantial hunch?”

  Kerri just glared at him. Oh, how he’d wanted the hedge fund guy.

  Alex, seeing that words were about to erupt between them, reminded with the second likely logic. Why would someone after Lauren Huff wait that long, hang around in the downpour and chance being seen? Especially with the street practically empty?

  “Okay, okay.” Mackey let out a huge pent-up breath and his face sagged. Kerri almost felt sorry for him. He turned to other detectives. “So we focus on Rachel. What do we have on her?”

  A Girl Scout, said the chorus. A sweet straight arrow who had issues with nobody. Ricky Betts said someone described her teaching little Charlie how to plant in the community garden. Buck and Jo reported that Verizon was slow with their phone records warrant, but they’d just gone ahead and called numbers on Rachel’s phone. No one refused to talk.

  “Got lots of tears,” Jo said. “Insistence that Rachel only worked, cared for her child, and studied.”

  “She never complained of stalkers, either,” Buck said. His phone buzzed. He answered, spoke, scribbled and disconnected with raised brows.

  “Doctor James Burke, Rachel’s employer,” he announced. “Someone gave me his name and he just called back. Says he’s willing to talk about Rachel.”

  Buck read off the doctor’s address and Kerri was out of her chair. “Near Bellevue.”

  Alex got up too. “We’ll see Rachel afterward.”

  “And Charlie.” Kerri reached for her parka. “And Lauren and Rachel’s friend Terry Mercer coming at noon.”

  She gave Mackey a pat. She’d had her differences with him, but felt bad to see him looking so miserable.

  “Cheer up,” she told him. “We may come back with something.”

  18

  Burke’s waiting room consisted of an unoccupied reception desk and an oddly empty feeling. The air was almost musty. Alex, speaking low while they waited, wondered if Burke had canceled every patient when he heard about Rachel. Her desk looked forlorn, with a few Charlie photos squeezed to the wall and a chair pushed in too far.

  Kerri made a face, looking around. She hated the room immediately. Three armchairs and a thin, uninviting settee, a depressing painting of a rural landscape in winter with a sad old farmhouse in the distance. “So cold,” she whispered. “No wonder Rachel didn’t like him.”

  “The language of a room, fascinating.” Alex stepped closer to the painting.

  Kerri did too, muttering, “Is he trying to say, Life’s a bitch and then you die but I can help?”

  “Look at the signature. Cec
ile Burke. A relative?”

  The interior door opened, and out came an emotional James Burke, extending his hand.

  He was about five ten, early forties with dark hair and mournful eyes, NYC trendy in a black sweater, black blazer and dark slacks. Introductions were made as he motioned them into his consulting room, explaining nervously how he’d heard about the murder on Greenwich Street, felt vague alarm - but no, how could it involve Rachel? Then again she hadn’t shown up for work, so he’d been just about to call her when he heard from “that other detective.”

  “I still can’t believe this,” Burke said, sinking into a chair behind his desk, clutching his chair’s arm. “It happened in Rachel’s apartment? My God.”

  The chair was a leather swivel, expensive, as was his fine old mahogany desk. The beige carpet was thick, plants rose from blue-and-white ceramic pots, and gold-framed photographs lined the walls along with his diplomas. It was luxurious in here, compared to the cold waiting room.

  They told Burke yes, the murder and attempted murder happened in Rachel’s apartment, which made the police feel that she’d been the target.

  “How is she?” he asked, paling. “Is she okay?”

  Surviving, they said, giving no details.

  He shook his head, couldn’t believe it, couldn’t find words…

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm her?” Alex asked.

  “No….” Burke clasped his hands. “She never mentioned anyone bothering her.”

  “Did you know her well personally?”

  Burke leaned back, clutched his chair arm again and hung on. “Yes…well, up to a point, I guess. She had her own life.”

  Kerri noticed that his nose looked fixed. Its bridge was too narrow, almost pointy, and there was a small scar above his left brow.

  She shifted to an easier question. “Describe her work here, please?” It was a technique she used: get them talking about anything, then move up, watch the body language.

  With his free hand, Burke gestured down the room to the closed door. In between stretched a tweed couch for patients and another fine leather chair facing it. The coffee table between them held an ugly, economy size box of cheap tissues.

  “Wonderful receptionist,” he said, swallowing. “Friendly to patients, a dynamo at handling my billing, fights with Medicaid because they limit psych visits. This works for her because each patient is forty-five minutes. It gives her time to study.”

  “What is she studying?”

  “English Literature. Wants to get a Masters and then teach. She gave a copy of Dickens to one patient, and he got so engrossed in Great Expectations he started forgetting his troubles.” Burke’s smile was shaky.

  “So, a terrific employee.” Alex smiled too, and then pounced. “Describe your personal relationship with her.”

  James Burke slumped lower in his chair. He seemed to brood.

  “Once she said I knew her better than anyone. She’d been through a lot, made some friends but didn’t like to talk about her past. Insisted that not thinking about it helped. She’d wanted to make a new start.”

  Neither detective spoke. Silence prods.

  “I told her you can’t force away bad baggage,” Burke continued in a low voice. “It’s better to talk about it and…I’m a psychiatrist. More than once I found her crying. She finally opened up.”

  Kerri thought, Uh-huh. The cold waiting room, the cheap tissues. Burke didn’t care about his patients, but put effort into getting Rachel to open up. No need to look at Alex to know they both caught Burke’s attraction to her, but they let him talk.

  Out came the story of Rachel’s hard life: both parents dead in a car crash when she was fifteen, shunted off to resentful relatives, left enough money for college where she excelled, did secretarial work part time…then, dying of loneliness, she fell in love with a bum.

  “A bum,” Kerri repeated.

  Burke nodded, shooting a quick glance at Alex. “The usual story. Guy was charming at first, Rachel got pregnant and…was thrilled. A family of her own, she thought. Actually invited the idea of marriage, while he was catching on that there was more money there than he thought. So they married, and he turned controlling, abusive.” A sad shrug. “After calls to the police for domestic abuse, Rachel got her divorce. Brought her child to New York to start a new life.”

  Burke seemed to come back to himself, and his brow furrowed. “What’s the extent of her injuries? Can I visit her?”

  It was the second time he’d asked about Rachel, but not Charlie.

  Alex suggested he call the hospital with his questions.

  Burke’s phone dinged. He checked its screen, and let it go to voice mail. “Patient waiting,” he said. “In bad shape.”

  Then he looked away, out a tall window to a cityscape gray and cold. In the near distance, the looming towers of Bellevue.

  Holding his phone, he got up to close the drapes, block out the world.

  “Can I get you some coffee?” he asked absently, his back still turned, running his thumb and fingers down the drape’s fabric.

  Quite a lapse. Didn’t he have a patient on the ledge or something? They said no thanks, and Kerri leaned forward.

  “What became of her ex?”

  “Rachel doesn’t know.” Burke turned back to them, gripping his phone. “He got hooked on oxy, dropped out of MIT electrical engineering. Last Rachel heard, he was bouncing around from one rehab to another. Physically ill too, from self-neglect.”

  “You care a lot about her, don’t you?” Alex said.

  “Of course.”

  “Anything romantic?”

  Burke surprised them with a wistful shrug. “I wish. The problem was…is…that she feels damaged. Still too scared of a relationship, just wants to concentrate on school and her child. There’s also the fact that I’m her employer. She fears something like that going south, which I understand.”

  “Were you aware that she’d started to date again?” Kerri asked.

  A faint line of anxiety showed between Burke’s brows. “Yes.” His hand gripped his phone harder, substitute for his chair arm. He may also have started to fear that he’d said too much.

  “Just casually,” he tried to say casually. “Warnings up front about no sex, which is usually a deal breaker.” A nervous smile. “Imagine that. Wanting to get to know someone first. Excuse me.”

  He listened again to his phone’s suddenly urgent voice mail. “I’m sorry,” he said, moving toward the door. “I really have to go.”

  He was ahead of them, trying to lead them out, and Alex sent Kerri a look: You’re on.

  What she did he’d once likened to jazz: first she got her psychic baseline, then she improvised and winged it, caught people off guard.

  “Who’s this?” she said, stopping before a group of framed photos on the wall, pointing to one of them. A stern-faced, sixtyish blond woman in pearls gazed out, almost indifferently, at the photographer. She was sitting at her broad desk, and standing over her was a white-haired, also stern-faced man.

  “Oh, that’s my mother. She’s deceased.”

  “Is that your father?”

  “No, my stepfather.” The question made Burke uncomfortable; it also triggered something. “My mother was a famous psychoanalyst,” he said in a rush. “Also an artist. She was incredibly talented.”

  “Ah. Was her name Cecile?”

  He looked surprised, and Kerri smiled, “That painting out front.”

  “Oh, y-you are observant.” He had stammered; now was jerking his phone up to her, like a stop sign. “I have to answer this.”

  “And your desk, that was hers, wasn’t it?” Kerri pointed from Cecile’s desk in the photo to Burke’s desk feet away.

  “Yes. Listen, I really must…” Niceties were suddenly over. Burke practically lunged for his door.

  They followed, offering to see themselves out, but no, Burke hovered, getting angry.

  Kerri stopped at the receptionist’s desk, bend
ing to study Charlie’s pictures. One of him was in a four by six-inch frame, happily tussling with another little boy over a ball. Other photos were in a five-sided Lucite cube: preschool, the playground, Charlie beaming before birthday candles.

  Kerri started to turn the cube, oohing.

  “If you don’t mind.” Burke opened his door to the hall.

  Kerri put the Lucite down and looked hard at him. “You said Rachel was sweet to patients. Any of them seem interested in her? Really interested?”

  It hit home. Burke colored and she knew she’d hit a nerve.

  “Detective,” he snapped. “You know I can’t talk about my patients.”

  She plunged.

  “Especially since there might have been one wanting Rachel, maybe dating her. Did they meet here – oh, how romantic. Did that patient fret to you about his lust for her? Say she was maybe on the point of giving in? You were attracted but couldn’t touch her - how much did that bother you?”

  Burke’s eyes lit with scorn.

  “You’re crazy,” he snarled low, flinging the door open wider. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out.”

  The door slammed, but not before they saw the violence in his eyes.

  19

  “Whoa.” Alex said. And kept saying, in the elevator, on the sidewalk, in the Jeep. “You made it up?”

  “Uh-huh.” Kerri watched them pull into traffic. “I wanted to see his reaction.”

  “I swear, I’m going to sign you up with a carney show.”

  “He didn’t even pretend interest in Charlie, ask if he was injured too. Why do you suppose that was? Because he knew?”

  Alex’s face was tight in thought. He turned left, heading up First Avenue. “Twice he referred to Charlie as Rachel’s son, once as ‘the baby.’ Never said his name.”

  “Knowing he’s Rachel’s life. She must have talked all the time about him, and those pictures on her desk…” Kerri had her phone out and was scrolling, reading about James Burke.

  “His website says he’s been in practice for just three years. Caters to students, actors, writers, takes Medicaid. Wonder what he did before three years ago.”