Seconds passed, and people passed. With her chin still down she peered up and around to make sure there were no spies from Kettering Capital. There weren’t. Just middle America trudging through today’s pile of woes.
Her hands tore at her moist tissue. “Scott Mullin is gay,” she said softly. “What’s crazy is, he’s trying not to be, and failing, building all kinds of sex confusion and misery.”
She met the two detectives’ gazes, and shook her head. “Hedge funds, banks, finance – it’s pure testosterone, the only world where it’s a career killer to be gay. If you are, you’d better keep it a big huge secret.”
She exhaled, as if relieved to get this off her chest.
“So Scott was making himself miserable?” Alex prompted.
Terry nodded shakily; spoke in a hurried whisper.
“I didn’t know…he was gay. I had no idea, nor did Rachel at first – but it didn’t matter. She liked Scott, was supportive. Then things started to…well, what worried Lauren and me is that he also…felt attracted to Rachel, that’s what he told her and things started feeling weird. What began as a harmless friend…”
Terry looked down at her hands. “Once he tried to come on sexually to her, as if trying to prove it to himself. It didn’t go over. She tried to tell him she wasn’t ready for that with anyone.”
“When was this?” Kerri asked.
“Months ago. He didn’t call for weeks, then did, full of apology…just wanted her friendship, he said. He was needy, needed her to work through this.” Terry gulped air, and hesitated. “That date last night may have been Rachel trying to break it off. She kept saying she was going to. The relationship had gotten unhappy. On the other hand, she felt torn, didn’t want to hurt him.”
“Did he seek psychiatric care?”
“Yes. Years of it.” A shrug. “No help.”
Kerri remembered the guess she’d made in James Burke’s office. “Do you know who his psychiatrist was?”
“No. Rachel may.”
Terry Mercer stood. “I’m sorry I lost it,” she said plaintively, looking back toward Rachel’s room. “Can I please visit my friend? I’ll be good.”
Kerri rose too. “One more thing. What do you know about Rachel’s ex-husband?”
A shrug. “Only that he wrote her two years ago, begging for a reconciliation. Sent letters she ignored. She’d heard his fake promises too many times.”
“How’d he get her address?”
“From some aunt who was mean to her, but she moved anyway.”
“He never came to New York? She never saw him?”
“No, she would have mentioned.”
They took Terry Mercer’s contact info and walked her back, warning that the officer guarding the room would watch her. His name was Tim, Kerri added. “We call him Bear. Your visit will cheer Rachel.”
“Provided you control yourself,” Alex told her sternly. “Five minutes, no tears, no raised voice or you’ll upset Charlie.”
“And Bear will arrest you,” Kerri said, knowing it was b.s. but so what?
Terry bought it.
They stood in the doorway for moments, checking, watching the hugs, the soft, strangled commiserations. Tim the Bear stood watching, too.
“I’m on it,” he told them.
Kerri nodded tightly. “Keep everyone else out. Fakes can cry too.”
23
Ricky Betts sounded hyped.
“Mullin’s nowhere. He’s disappeared except that two nights ago he withdrew three thousand from his ATM. That’s the max his bank allows in a day.”
“He’s a hedge funder and needed three thousand?” Alex peeled north onto Madison and turned up his speaker. “Isn’t that spare change for those guys?”
Silence at the other end. Ricky was still learning.
“What time did he make the withdrawal?”
“Two a.m.”
“Anything withdrawn last night?” Alex glanced at Kerri, who was looking solemn, intense.
“No.”
“Get a surveillance picture from the bank. If they balk, get a warrant.”
“Okay. The lab called, by the way. No DNA on Charlie. The nurses must’ve really scrubbed him.”
Alex turned the air blue. Kerri shook her head.
“So little Charlie’s our only witness.”
“Yes and he’s still in bad shape. Not talking.” A horn blasted as Alex turned east on Forty-second. He swerved a little, because Kerri was suddenly tugging at his sleeve.
“Wait a sec, Rick. What?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Kerri said. “Turn around.”
He barely missed an Audi. Alex could tear through tie-ups like a minnow. “Okay, boss,” said the sergeant who was Kerri’s boss. “Where to?”
She told him, and he went back to his phone. “Still there, Rick?”
“No, I went for lunch at Sardi’s.”
“Plans are changed. We’re not going to Kettering, ask Buck and Jo to go. Ask when Mullin was last seen, general affect, everything.”
“They’re working on his phone logs.”
“Zienuc and Connor, then.”
“They’re reviewing the neighborhood surveillance tapes, like you told them to.”
“Tell them to leave it for now. Go to Kettering.”
“Copy that, ha. Zienuc just loves interviewing bank guys. Has fantasies of throwing them off their landscaped terraces.”
“Diplomacy, diplomacy.”
“I’ll remind him.”
Alex covered another block and peeled a one-eighty south onto Lexington. “This a serious hunch?”
“Very,” Kerri said. “It’s hitting harder.”
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
“Don’t know, but something’s pulling at me, wants me there faster.”
Alex turned on his siren. Eleven minutes later they arrived outside the long, drab apartment building on Greenwich Street. Four floors of gray cement, sad, small windows.
“Surprise, elevator’s still on the fritz,” he said as they entered the foyer, started up the stairs. Kerri stopped in a couple of places, peering at the carpet runner worn to its canvas.
“Crime scene people went over every inch,” she murmured to herself.
“Every centimeter. Found fibers and prints from a ton of people. Rachel’s blood, too. Must have dripped off as Charlie ran down.”
Kerri shuddered.
They passed the second floor door where the party had drowned out Charlie’s cries for help. Every guest’s alibi had checked out. Alex pointed to the cheap, non-turning surveillance cam over the door. It caught everyone entering or leaving, and the door stayed closed during the crime.
“Pity it doesn’t tape more.” Kerri looked up and down the stairwell.
“Just me-surveillance, her own door. She fears harassment from an ex. There’s another cam in back over her fire escape.”
“Useless.”
They climbed another flight.
Rachel’s door was still crossed with yellow crime scene tape. Alex cut through it and they went in.
An unpleasant, pungent odor filled the small room’s air. Blood getting rancid. Red-brown pooled the carpet where Lauren Huff had died. Feet away, Rachel’s blood soaked more carpet. Fingerprint dust covered darkened toys, strewn papers, framed photos, furniture. The place was ghostly.
They pulled on latex gloves to keep their hands clean.
“Any idea what you’re looking for?” Alex peered into the bedroom.
“Kinda.” It was so depressing in here, a child’s whoops and laughter replaced by the silence of a mausoleum. “When Charlie said ‘pomuth…what do you think he meant?”
“He may be scrambling his words.”
Kerri crouched before a small, dark-smeared bookshelf, once painted blue. There’d been such horror and commotion at the murder scene; she’d seen it just peripherally. Now it pulled at her. For what? She didn’t know, but her senses were buzzing. Find me…find me.
“A .38?” said Alex, as if from far away. She listened with just part of her mind.
The killer had been clever; used an old .38 that must have passed through a hundred illegal hands, with bullet markings that would match other cases, other crimes. Forget trying to trace it, clever killer indeed. Alex’s curses were lost as Kerri’s thoughts whirled. Now he was pacing and calling the lab back, requesting more tests, arguing with some tech about the gun going back decades.
She stopped hearing.
Nothing in the blue bookshelf. She started going through Charlie’s things on the floor. Such a smart little kid: his beginner science books, illustrated story books, sketch pads, crayons, bright-colored chalk and Pentel pens and…
There.
As if pulled by gravity, she was drawn to a wide book feet away. A coloring book mostly under another book, looking so loved that its cardboard cover curled. She brushed off a smear of dark dust, and a silly giraffe grinned up at her. The giraffe. This was it, Charlie’s favorite Rachel had described.
It was closed, fortunately, and the inside pages were okay – she pulled off her smeared gloves and flipped - including a zebra whose stripes Charlie had scribbled red, a grinning turtle wearing an added, scrawled top hat, a robin colored blue with a bright yellow sun added to its sky…then a monkey, a camel, other animals he’d spent time on, adding, changing, going outside the lines with exuberant strokes…
Kerri flipped another page, and caught her breath.
Dog-eared, crayoned and scrawled on more than the others, a goofy, grinning hippopotamus. Charlie had given him red pants, a yellow hat sprouting a daisy, and behind him, different shades of thrusting, scrawled green which had to mean jungle. In his excitement Charlie had invented a whole vibrant world for the original drawing. And below the hippo, he’d tried to write a crooked H, then an I, then the letter P, P, P. Over and over, he’d struggled with that letter.
So she knew. Almost smiled, in spite of her racing heart.
“Hello Pomuth,” she said.
What child wouldn’t have trouble with the word, ‘hippopotamus?’
Alex came up behind her. “Find something?”
Her hands shook as she showed him, gathered up crayons and bright ink Pentels.
Alex crouched and drew a breath, staring at the hippo, leafing through the rest. The book’s pages after the hippo were blank. Charlie had stopped there, in love, adding and adding.
“Bring this to him,” Alex said softly. “Now.”
Kerri didn’t answer.
His eyes left the book and looked at her. She was staring at a place on the wall.
“Look,” she breathed, pointing.
She moved closer, studied something maybe two feet off the floor. It was like a child’s scribbled drawing in red ink: a triangle “roof” atop a square “house.” The square contained slanted-down, angry eyes and a turned down, angry mouth.
“Charlie didn’t draw that,” Alex murmured, crouching behind her.
“No. The killer did.” It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Inches from where Lauren lay and behind Nunez going over her body. That’s why we didn’t see it.”
Kerri’s hands shook as she got out her phone and flashed a picture, then another. Alex took pictures too: close-ups and mid distance, showing the cluttered floor, the bloodied stains.
“Creep must’ve been drawing it when Charlie burst out,” Alex muttered.
“It’s like an emoji. An angry emoji.”
“Yep.”
“Don’t show it to Rachel, it would upset her.”
“’Course not.”
They went around for a few other things, then headed back to the hospital.
24
Rachel’s room was empty. Tim the Bear wasn’t there, either.
A rushing resident pointed down the hall, and they headed that way, finding a little procession of Rachel in a wheelchair, Charlie in her lap with his face pressed to her bosom, a physical therapist hovering, and Bear alert, his eyes moving from the hall back down to his two charges.
Rachel looked up from nuzzling Charlie. She looked so pale, a suddenly thinner, frail version of the happy young mom in her pictures. She was wearing a hospital issue robe, colored dreary almost-white. She tried to smile.
“I actually walked,” she greeted them. “A whole ten steps before my knees buckled.”
“It’s a start,” the physical therapist said encouragingly. She was quick to smile, introducing herself as Cassie, but she also meant business. “When we get down to the playroom you have to try to walk more,” she reminded Rachel. “Doctors orders.”
Rachel rolled her eyes. Her gaze conveyed pain with those of an overnight agoraphobic who hadn’t even wanted to leave her room. But there was bravery there, too, fighting its way through trauma.
“I’m still refusing pain meds,” she said. “I want to be clear, able to think.”
Then she noticed what Alex was carrying: a familiar black Adidas duffle. “Oh!”
“Brought some of your things,” he smiled.
“Including your blue robe,” Kerri added. “It’s pretty.”
“Oh gasp, thank you.” Rachel tugged at her hospital ugly. “Can’t wait to get out of this.”
They’d reached the elevator. Cassie pressed the button as Bear eyed a passing, big-shouldered orderly. While they waited, Kerri reached to unzip the duffle Alex held. She slid out, just a bit, the coloring book with the giraffe cover.
Charlie’s face stayed pressed to Rachel, but her face lit. “You found it! Charlie - Kerri and Alex brought Harry Hippo to you.”
“Yeah,” Kerri smiled, opening the book to Harry’s page, holding it to the boy. “Pomuth is here. He misses you.”
They could almost see Charlie stop breathing, his little body stiffen.
The elevator arrived, and as the car dropped, his tousled head turned, just a little. A faint frown touched his face, and he peeked. Kerri again showed him goofy, grinning Harry Hippo.
“Maybe he’s hungry? Draw him some celery?”
Bear and Cassie admired the drawing. “Aw,” Bear said. “He sure looks happy.”
The playroom was wall to wall blue carpet and full of bright colors, toys, balls, and clamoring kids, some of them too thin with spindly limbs. A counselor watched over four of them playing, and a child’s physical therapist was trying to help a little boy in leg casts.
Charlie buried back into Rachel, and her face fell. “Oh-h… normally he would have charged at those balls.”
A little girl, pretty-featured, left a red plastic slide and came to them, looking quizzically at Charlie. “Can he play with me?” She had a bright pink ribbon around her bald head.
Gently, they told her maybe later.
She scampered back to the slide, and Cassie announced that here, really, was the best place for Rachel to exercise. The room was big, perfect to just “easy does it” walk around the periphery.
She meant well but then she overstepped, bending to Charlie with his face still squashed into safety. “Sweetie, don’t you want your mom to get better? She has to start moving for her health” – she tugged at his arm – “which means you have to get off her-”
“No!” he screamed in a thin croak.
Rachel looked near tears again, and Kerri was swift to hug him. “Okay Charlie, whatever you want,” she said sweetly. It was hardly just kids who needed encouragement that they’re in control. “Stay on mommy…I’ll just sit over here with Harry, okay? He looks kinda hungry. Does he like broccoli?”
As Alex and Bear checked out the room – no hardened criminals in attendance – she moved a few feet away and hunkered down with the coloring book, her back to the wall. “Let’s see,” she pretended talking to herself, hunting through the duffle, finding the box of crayons. Most of them were worn way down. “Green, we need a green one for broccoli…”
Charlie was looking up to Rachel, his small face conflicted. She hugged him with her good arm, reassuring that she’d stay close. The boy turned fretfully back to Kerri, just as Alex’s phone buzzed.
She watched him step away to answer, and stole a peek at Charlie. She realized that the way she was sitting with her knees up, he could see her gun strapped to her ankle. But he’d run to the cops rescuing him. Bawled in their uniformed arms. Told them about mommy and pointed.
She tried to guess what this moment had him feeling. Harry Hippo was in danger…of being fed broccoli! And the peanut butter police lady had found the green crayon, was holding it poised above Harry as if ready to push it at him.
Bear, listening to Alex intent on his phone, turned from him and came to Kerri; slid down too and rested his back against the wall. “Feels good to take a load off.”
The broccoli, the broccoli… Those little eyes were watching her.
Shakily, Charlie slid off his mother’s lap. Came to stand over Kerri and said, “No.”
She smiled, feeling her pulse leap. First time he spoke to her. “Oh? Harry doesn’t like it?”
His mouth turned down. His eyes told how much he hated broccoli.
“Okey dokey.” Kerri extended the crayon to him. “What does he like?”
“Pizza, I’ll bet,” Bear said brightly. “Hey Charlie, draw some pizza for Harry?”
The child turned, and his fretful eyes looked back to Rachel. With Cassie supporting her, holding her right arm, she had managed to rise from her chair and start moving. “I’ll be right here, honey,” she managed through pained features.
Kerri’s heart went out to her.
Then Alex was there, bending to her. “They’ve found Scott Mullin,” he said, very low. “What’s left of him.”
She felt herself pale. What’s left of him roared through her mind.
“You go.” She swallowed, indicating Charlie. “I’ll stay.”
Alex nodded. “Better.” He reached to pat Charlie’s shoulder. “Bye for now, buddy. Draw something for me too, okay?”
Stiff-faced, Charlie was accepting a red crayon from Bear, who’d found it in the duffle.
He sat feet away from both of them, back to the wall in little boy isolation, starting to draw.
Shoeless Child Page 8