“Tried acting?”
“Not too good at that. Maybe took a few years off to bum around or get out from under his cold mother’s shadow or get off drugs…he can prescribe for himself-”
“We’re there.”
Alex pulled into hospital parking on East Twenty-sixth. Minutes later they were in another elevator, then moving down the hall past busy house staff, gurneys and an empty wheelchair.
Rachel lay, propped on pillows, looking frail under her blanket. Her left arm was in a sling. She was turned away, her face buried in Charlie’s hair turned a lighter brown in the brightness from the window. He looked so tiny, pressed tight to her.
They rounded the bed to the window side.
“Hi,” Kerri said gently. “Remember us?”
Rachel peered up, her reddened eyes swollen, her expression fogged. More pain meds, they figured.
“We saw you in the recovery room,” Alex said, leaning to her with one hand on the rail.
A slow headshake. Rachel’s brown hair curled around her ears and was damp on her brow.
“Blur…” she whispered. Then she blinked; seemed to become less groggy. “Oh…you…they told me.” She peered at Kerri; managed a tremulous smile.
“You saved Charlie from… the IV…being restrained…” Her eyes filled as she hugged her boy, clad in hospital issue pajamas. He was in a rigid fetal position. Kerri saw his fist tighten. He wasn’t asleep.
“How’s he doing?” Alex asked gently. On the side table near them were the Skippy, fresh cans of Coke, and straws.
A tear slid down Rachel’s cheek. “He won’t talk,” she managed, trying to reach her left hand to Charlie’s shoulder, but her sling restrained her. “I try, sing to him…”
“He’s not ready,” Alex said. “Give him time.”
Kerri hated having to upset her, but had to ask, “Do you remember anything from the attack last night? Anything at all?”
“No…” Rachel’s eyes widened piteously as if seeing the nightmare all over again. “Just…the ski mask…” Her soft voice cracked.
This was so awful. Kerri hated every moment of having to press her, and touched her arm. “Why was Lauren Huff there?”
“To babysit, as a friend.” Rachel struggled against her medications, attentive, trying to be brave.
“You’d been planning to go out?”
A slow nod. “…was going to have…a date. He never showed.”
Kerri’s heart clenched.
Alex asked the date’s name.
“Scott. Mullin. I couldn’t understand why I…hadn’t heard from him. Even tried to call him.”
“No answer?”
“No.” In a whisper.
“You leave a voice mail?”
“Yes. Never heard back.”
Charlie squirmed, then turned under Rachel’s arm to Kerri and Alex. His eyes were squeezed shut and the corners of his mouth were down. Kerri remembered the joyous little boy in his photographs, and her soul ached.
She stroked the soft blue of his shoulder. He jerked away, but for the briefest second she thought he’d cracked a peek at her.
Did he remember her from last night? The peanut butter lady who smeared it on his fingers?
Alex was meanwhile asking Rachel about Scott Mullin. She was struggling, trying to focus.
“He’s nice, lives on East Twenty-third…”
Kerri’s pulse kicked higher. A nice guy who ditches his date and doesn’t return her call? East Twenty-third, Alex was already searching Mullin’s number. Then he stepped away, punched at his phone, and waited. Kerri heard him quietly leave the message that he was police; please call back.
She leaned closer to Rachel.
Her face was crumpled, the picture of woe. “When Scott didn’t show…” she whispered. “Lauren stayed anyway. We played with Charlie.”
“Did Lauren know Scott too?”
“Yes…”
Alex stepped back, indicating his phone. “Nothing,” he told Kerri quietly. “Got Ricky and Buck on it.”
This was bad. The double attack on Greenwich Street was all over the media; ditto Rachel’s picture. No way this nice Scott Mullin didn’t know – yet he wasn’t answering Alex’s call? Hadn’t already called the police? Cops this moment were searching him.
“Pomuth.”
They almost didn’t hear it. The tiny sound had them trading looks, then sharing surprise at the source.
It had been the softest little voice imaginable, and it came from Charlie.
20
Rachel’s lips parted. Her traumatized child spoke? In a torrent of relief her free arm hugged him tight. “What did you say, honey?”
No response. His lids had opened just a little. Kerri and Alex bent to him, noting the remote cloudiness in his eyes.
“Pomuth?” Kerri repeated. She held her breath and peered into that remote gaze, trying to connect.
He seemed somehow fixed on a place behind her.
She turned.
Nothing there. Just a wall, four feet of it before the window started.
“Pomuth,” Charlie whispered again, his thousand-yard stare unwavering.
Kerri stared at him, turned back again to the wall. There was only a crack. A zig zag that circled around a barely perceptible punch in the plaster.
She touched the place; looked back to Charlie, pointing.
“Pomuth,” she said encouragingly, as if seeing what he was seeing.
Rachel tried to hoist up on her elbow. Her left arm moved in its sling, and she winced. “It looks like…maybe an animal,” she breathed. “He has a favorite coloring book.”
Charlie licked his dry lips; whispered, “Coke.”
Rapture – out came the bendy straws. Alex popped! open the tab – “Ah, great sound” - and thrust a red bendy into the can which he held to Charlie. “Your favorite color,” he said sweetly.
The child sipped. And sipped some more.
Rachel’s face crumpled with grateful tears. “Red,” she told Charlie. “That is your favorite color, isn’t it?”
“Hey,” came a soft voice from the door.
Jake Benton in navy scrubs came in, his eyes going from Charlie to Rachel to the two detectives. “How’s it going?”
Rachel’s eyes glistened as she told him excitedly that Charlie had spoken, and liked the crack in the wall that maybe reminded him of an animal from a coloring book. Benton’s gaze went to the place and he nodded, mentioned orderlies in a hurry probably trying to move an empty bed around.
“He’s started to respond to his surroundings, that’s good,” he said, bending to touch the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy, want to tell me what’s special about that crack?”
Charlie jerked away and flipped back into his fetal position, pressed into his mother who looked dismayed again. He had broken into a sweat.
Benton shook his head subtly. “We have to get him to exercise too.”
In quiet adult-speak he explained that, even in children, exercise was vital ASAP; helped to prevent blood clots which could be serious. “The same applies to you, Rachel. There’s a children’s playroom on the fourth floor. Swings, slides, tumbling balls - think you can get Charlie interested in it? You can exercise walk down there, too. Take it easy at first.”
Alex was a few steps away back in his phone, frowning and pacing. Kerri raised an alerted brow to him.
Then she asked Rachel where Charlie’s favorite coloring books were.
“His most favorite is in the blue bookcase. Or…” Her face clouded in effort. “I don’t remember. There’s a giraffe on the cover.”
“I’ll find it and bring it.” Kerri reached out and squeezed her hand.
Rachel held on to it, tears brimming. “Thank you, so much…”
“Don’t, don’t,” Kerri whispered. “I’m in awe of your courage.”
She gave the slightest head shake. “I should be grateful we’re both…alive. But I feel…so alone.”
Kerri squeezed her hand tighter.
“I’ve been there too,” she heard herself say. “I still sometimes feel that way.”
Rachel seemed a little comforted.
Kerri leaned and bent to Charlie. “Hey honey.” She pointed back to the wall. “We have to go now, but will you tell me about pomuth when I come back?”
For a second he peered up, and his remote stare seemed almost to focus on her. Then he squeezed his eyes shut again, tucked his chin back to safety. Kerri patted his shoulder, hating having to leave.
Benton followed them, looking troubled, as they went to the door. “You can’t force a kid to exercise. Any suggestions?”
Alex looked across the hall to a parked wheelchair. “Rachel can say she’s going down to the playroom. Put Charlie on her lap, he’ll see other kids playing…”
“Easier said,” Benton exhaled. They stood in the hall. “He might cling to her and scream. Traumatized kids…”
He glanced at the uniformed officer guarding the door and shrugged, looking tired and very sad.
Help Charlie, they told him.
He nodded, standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets. “And you…get the bastard who did this.”
21
The killer stretched out, staring at the photographs he’d looked at a thousand times.
It was her eyes that enraged him…obscenely, unforgivably happy.
How unkind, the way she flaunted her joy. In the playground, the market, the cafés with her friends…leaving him out, of course. No room for him in her life.
But he had her, oh yes. Fifty-one photos of her in his album. Almost a year ago he had started his collection, and had bided his time. Enjoyed it, really. Just the most fun way of owning her as he snapped her leaving the daycare, looking so pretty as she rushed off. Another picture he enjoyed was the one of her laughing, reaching to catch her kid hanging from his monkey bars.
That had been a sweltering day. She’d been hot in her red T-shirt, and with her arms upraised he could see the dark circles of sweat under her arms. Ooh, juicy. He brought his face close and sniffed, as he had so many times. That made her real to him; she was right there before his face with her scent, her closeness.
He had taken that picture with his telephoto from practically the other side of the park, pretending to aim high to the canopy of leaves, then dropping it for his perfect shot.
Ah, that red under her arms, like her blood of what seemed like just short, dark moments ago. His mind lit with the image of the two of them sprawled in that bloodied room. A pity it had to come to that, but she deserved it, right? RIGHT?
He flipped the album page.
At the beach, August, he had written under that photo. He’d been safe from the sun under a big umbrella, as usual pretending to aim his camera one way, then shifting it to capture her. And oh my, capture her he did. She was bending to her little shithead, smoothing lotion on his back and gently scolding him to keep his sunhat on. He hated the hat, was yanking it off, and in the mommy-stress of the moment – whee – her yummy breast had practically popped out, and he caught the shot. In…that…split second, he caught it before she tucked herself back in, and now he had it forever.
But he wasn’t going to kiss her there…not today.
The photo looked slobbered over enough as it was…and he was cured! Didn’t feel the lust anymore.
Except to finish killing her.
He got off his pillows and pulled his body to the mirror. Not bad to look at, all things considered. He had been working out, was looking better in all the right places. Women so infuriated him. They smiled and faked friendship…then they hurt you like that Lauren who’d seen his gun and gaped at him like he was…the devil! Not nice! He had to shoot her first, didn’t he?
“Serves you right!” he snapped at some Lauren pictures he’d printed from online. She’d also almost got him in trouble with her blood shooting all over, landing warm and disgusting on his chest, his shoulder…
Good thing he had the hoody to cover it.
Now he leaned closer to the mirror, touched his fingertips to the scratch under his jaw, studied it furiously.
Not visible but still, chip off the old mommy block, hurting him like that.
Her face had been frozen in terror as he snapped her, and he’d been too thrilled. Then he had to do more in that place; didn’t see her kid running out. Little shithead squirmed and scratched the face; that had thrown him. Little shithead slipped away…he didn’t know which way to turn…then he’d run and stumbled on the stairs.
Stupid, stupid.
The kid had to be dealt with.
I’ll get him too, he thought, and was surprised to find himself suddenly humming, flipping to the next blank page because this was the big moment.
He took a tube of roll-on glue and dabbed on the back of the photo he’d printed out. Then he pressed it onto the page, and gazed at it.
His prize. The best picture of all, her eyes stretched wide in horror, never guessing who was behind the mask.
Maybe it wasn’t so bad that she’d survived…because now the fun could continue. Another chance to get her…show the world what happens to people who hurt him.
She and one more, maybe two, deserved to die. And her kid.
He was pumped…
22
“That call?” Kerri asked.
“Ricky,” Alex said. They’d greeted the officer guarding Rachel’s room and were just heading down the hall. “Scott Mullin’s in the wind. Hasn’t shown up for two days at his office. Complete silence when patrolmen went to his apartment.”
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“No.”
It was visiting hours, and the hall was busy. Whole families clogged traffic; round eyes searched room numbers.
Kerri watched the floor, still seeing Charlie so piteous, locked in his little boy terror. Her heart hurt, her blood boiled.
Then she stopped, peered through a new gaggle of people stepping off an elevator. “It’s twelve-twenty. That friend Terry Mercer was supposed to come. Where is she?”
They saw a troubled-looking, dark-haired young woman emerge from the other direction and approach the officer guarding Rachel’s room. He shook his head, straddled before the door with his broad arms folded. Agitated, she started to argue with him.
He looked over to them and they stepped back.
“Can we help you?” Alex said, introducing himself and Kerri.
She managed to blurt her name, then burst into tears. Just what Rachel and Charlie didn’t need. They hustled Terry Mercer down the hall and sat her on a bench.
“All morning I’ve held it in,” she wept. “You think they let you cry where I work? I still can’t believe it.”
“You’re a close friend of Rachel?” Kerri asked tightly. Terry Mercer seemed more emotional than cautious.
She was nodding, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her gray cashmere sweater. Pearls, a black pencil skirt and expensive high pumps completed the picture.
“Rachel and Lauren,” she grieved shakily. “I still can’t believe it about Lauren. How bad are Rachel’s injuries? How’s Charlie?”
They gave her vague updates, saying little.
More tears, then they pressed her for background. Terry had been Lauren Huff’s friend first, having met as assistants at the same hedge fund. Then Terry met Rachel while dropping off her little nephew at daycare – Terry’s sister was away for vacation – and the two had hit it off. Become close, shared woe about their divorces and fear of re-committing. Even dating had become a drag.
“Lauren not so much.” Terry’s trembling hands dug in her bag for tissues. “She was the opposite, a flirt. Once got involved with a married guy, we tried to talk her out of it.”
“Was that Whit Duffy?”
“No, I was wrong, upset when I talked to that detective. Lauren just had a crush on him.” Terry dabbed at her running mascara. “So Rachel and I were really more alike, even though Rachel didn’t work at a hedge fund and have to dress like this.” Manicured
fingertips went to the pearls. “Rachel would laugh, imagine herself showing up like me at one of her Shakespeare seminars.”
“So you were all different but close,” Alex said.
“Like glue. We had tons in common.” Terry cast a resentful look back at the officer guarding Rachel. He was watching; gave her a bored look back. “Depend on men to screw you one way or the other,” she moaned. “Ruin your life, hold you back.”
But the skirt and sweater were tight. And she’d sought out work in finance? She was hardly the first ambitious woman they’d encountered to send out mixed signals in an alpha male’s world.
Alex asked the name of her employer.
“Kettering Capital,” Terry grimaced, mopping her cheek.
Same place, said the look that passed between Alex and Kerri… who leaned forward.
“So you must know Scott Mullin,” she said. “He works for the same hedge fund.”
An unhappy nod.
“My bad, I set him up with Rachel. He’d seen her coming to get me for lunch a couple of times. I told her he wasn’t like the others. Just a guy who seemed shy who wouldn’t pressure her, and Rachel had just started to date. Really fearful of the whole thing, but I had a party and they hit it off. She agreed that Scott seemed sweet…at first.”
They said nothing, their silence prompting her. It didn’t work. She leaned and craned down the hall, fretting about Charlie. Was he okay? Where was he?
“Scott Mullin,” Alex pressed.
Terry’s face tightened. “He has…issues. I can’t say more.”
“Rachel was going to date him last night.”
“She was just a friend to him. Tried to be supportive with…” Terry looked away, swallowed.
“His issues?” Kerri said. “Understand that anything you tell us is confidential. That’s why you came here, right? To talk to the police away from prying eyes?”
Terry Mercer’s shoulders slumped. She dropped her chin and slowly nodded. “Yes.”
It fit. She could have called. Sent flowers, emotional messages, come after work…
Shoeless Child Page 7