Shoeless Child

by J. A. Schneider

  “Killer’s too damn smart.” Kerri joined in.

  “He already asked me that,” the cop guarding said, rising to his feet. His name was Terrell.

  The psychiatrist dropped his head. Either sorrow, relief or avoiding Terrell’s glare, they couldn’t tell. Then his gaze lifted and went back to the half-open door. “And her little boy? Is he…?”

  “Traumatized. Remembers nothing,” Alex said curtly.

  Burke exhaled, then launched into something long and scholarly about trauma, and how it can distort or repress memory even in adults much less children…but they had already turned and were quietly entering the room.

  It was a semi-darkness of small night lights. Rachel lay, her head averted and facing Charlie. A cot had been brought in for him. He looked tiny curled up under his blanket.

  On the side table between them, Kerri left her note, Rachel’s phone and the crayons. Another thought came and, bending in the dim light, she wrote, “Love from the peanut butter lady.”

  “Cute,” Alex whispered.

  “Mph?”

  Rachel’s eyes fluttered, then opened and saw them. “Hey,” she said faintly.

  “Sleep,” Kerri whispered. She reached and tapped the side table. “We just left some things.”

  Rachel turned her head, peering where Kerri had pointed. “Crayons,” she whispered in feeble excitement. “Thank you. Just in time, too.”

  They looked at her.

  “At suppertime Charlie was back to scribbling. In bed here.” She touched next to her. “He was frustrated because his black crayon’s worn down.” The remembered urgency had her coming awake, raising up on an elbow.

  “He was trying to draw the bad guy,” she whispered. “Needed black for his mask. A nurse gave him her black ballpoint and he cried. Wanted his crayon.”

  “Did he use words?” Kerri’s heart clenched.

  “No.” Rachel let out a pained breath. “Just kept banging his fist at a picture he’d drawn…” She pointed. “It’s over there. On the chair.”

  Alex picked it up and held it to Kerri.

  Better than a stick drawing: Charlie had used gouging dark green for a figure that resembled the Wrestler bop bag. Same bulging arms sticking out, same fierce mouth, same red pants bottoming into a round shape. He must have used the last little stub of his old red crayon.

  But he’d run out of black for the mask. He’d been fighting his way out of his prison, trying to communicate.

  “I’d like to have this copied,” Alex said.

  “Sure.”

  He left for the nurses’ station.

  Kerri touched Rachel’s shoulder, her mind still seeing Charlie’s drawing, every scrawled detail. “He tried to work on the face mostly.”

  “When he wasn’t banging it. His frustration almost had me crying. I held it in.”

  “Brave Mama. When he wakes tomorrow, he’ll have his black crayon. And a whole bunch of new ones.”

  “Thank you…so much,” Rachel murmured emotionally.

  A question pushed its way up. “Frank Wheat,” Kerri asked. “Did he ever bother you? Seem too friendly?”

  In the dim light Rachel’s brow furrowed. “Not too friendly, and no, he never bothered me. He helped when he saw me carrying stuff, patted Charlie’s head, told him how big and smart he was getting.” She paused, remembering. “Just once he yelled at Charlie for fooling around with a fire extinguisher. Charlie cried and he was sorry, insisted he liked Charlie. That’s when he started helping me more.”

  “How would he know about Charlie’s smarts?”

  “He was in the apartment sometimes. Fixing the radiator, the drain under the sink, the ceiling light. Funny, how that light kept going on the fritz. Anyway, the floor was covered with Charlie’s books and drawings. He admired Charlie’s Little Scientist book.”

  Insisted he liked Charlie…oh really? Kerri remembered the scorn in Wheat’s voice, What about Rachel’s kid?

  He could have seen Scott Mullin going up to Rachel’s door. She’d also met dates at neighborhood cafes, other near places.

  “Did you ever spot Frank Wheat when you were just…out? Walking the streets, meeting people?”

  “No. I only saw Mr. Wheat at the apartment building.”

  “Mister Wheat? That’s what you called him?”

  “Yes. To keep things…formal. One time he did stand too close…”

  Alex was back with copies of Charlie’s drawing. “Three,” he showed Kerri; and to Rachel: “Want the original back on that chair?”

  Rachel did. The chair was in the corner, near where Charlie could reach it.

  They told her good-night, hoping she could get back to sleep okay; also mentioned that the case was going to have them swamped but they’d be back.

  “Around noon I can run over,” Kerri said. “Sound good? That will give Charlie time to draw.”

  34

  “You’re late,” said a woman with a painted face.

  Gina apologized, and rushed to an empty chair. Beside her, the woman was almost finished, adding more adhesive to her second fake lash and popping it on.

  Sam, her name was. Short for Samantha. Her name used to be Jane, but she changed it to sound more like an exotic dancer.

  “Wish I could do that.” Gina dug nervously through her makeup bag.

  “Do what?”

  “The lashes fast, like you do it.”

  Sam smiled into the wide mirror before them, applying face powder, fluffing her blond hair. “It gets easy, like everything, ha. Hey, so hustle.” She got up and turned, checking her butt in the mirror. Her fake breasts bounced. Her barely there panties were just a slit up her slit.

  Muttering about their “second shift, guys get antsy,” Sam hurried out, then stuck her face back in. “You still gonna wear your modest-girl panties?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay alone with guys, it’s just…crowds.”

  “No one’s complaining. The modest-girl thing’s a tease, too.”

  The door closed, and Gina took a deep breath, deeper than she’d been able to breathe in hours. Here, before the mirror lined by glamour bulbs, was another world: soft light, vodka bottles in ice buckets, fancy boxes holding tissues, face powders, lipsticks. The music from just outside throbbed. Gina took a long pull of vodka, closed her eyes waiting for the hit, then pulled off her sweater – nothing underneath - and got to work.

  Curl the lashes first, brush on the mascara. Gina’s hand shook a little; she slugged more vodka and checked. Lashes curling up nicely, to support the weight of the fake ones. The adhesive was usually her enemy, but this time it went onto the fakes more smoothly. They alighted, under her fingers, like black doves on her real lashes.

  Done. The music outside throbbed louder. From the booze or the pleasurable ringing in her ears?

  This excited her, it really did.

  Rouge, lipstick, twirl the dark hair up, then let it fall to the shoulders. Perfect. She’d learned that from one of the other girls.

  Then she stood and pulled down her yoga pants. Underneath, the modest-girl panties she’d donned at home. Turquoise-colored, reaching to three inches below her hips. Management was okay with that. She didn’t like showing her crotch naked here, there were women who grabbed. They were really into the bisex thing…

  Silver, strappy shoes went on next, and in the mirror she admired the job she’d done covering her bruises. She’d really lathered on the skin stick.

  For moments, a frantic feeling engulfed her. Then the beautiful girl staring back in the mirror helped push it down. Her breasts were perfect. The men loved to try to touch. They’d beg if she had to move through their sweaty crowd, but she always ducked. “Just to look, boys,” she’d say teasingly as if she didn’t really mean it. If anyone really bothered her the bouncers would be there in a flash.

  So life really was better, don’t cry, have to stop all that crying. She’d found herself a job that paid double what any crap job would pay, woo hoo. Suddenly she wanted to pat herself on
the shoulder, and did, smiling at herself, loving how pretty she looked. Auditions lately were going better. She’d learned her lines, she’d been making it up to three call backs, she’d been teaching herself acting in her room for God’s sake, so yippee there was improvement there! They were starting to like her. Soon she was going to make it…

  The music pulsed right into her. She was so feeling it that she practically danced out the door, down the short hall and onto the bright stage. Spotlights swept. She found her pole, grasped it one-handed, and swooned onto it. She lifted her sparkling, silver foot, dropped and twirled. Two men at her feet went wide-eyed, bellied closer to the bar with “Hey, gorgeous!” and “Ooh, baby.”

  She smiled her smile, shimmied her breasts for them. More men crowded to her feet, leering, roaring.

  She felt loved here. The music blasted and throbbed. She twirled again, shimmying…

  Thirty blocks away, in a cold car that smelled of burgers, Ricky Betts watched the house on Greenwich Street. Almost three hours and still nothing. He sighed, hating this. What had he been thinking? I’m sick of these walls - had he really said that? Well, it would have been orders anyway. Call in if you see anything. Don’t be a hero alone. Just watch…

  Nothing, that’s what he was watching. The gloomy front of the building had shown no activity, except for some woman leaving and a pair of drunks going in. The drunks didn’t even live there; the woman held the door for them. Nice security, just great. The whole street was probably like that. The neighborhood was even more depressing in the dark.

  Ricky let out a breath. Slouched behind the wheel, he could see both the front and the service alley exit, on the far side of the building. Alex had emailed him pictures of Frank Wheat, courtesy of photographers crowding the entrance when he came out once. Also on Ricky’s phone was Wheat’s license plate, and another picture, courtesy of the DMV.

  Time check: ten after ten. Bored, Ricky started gnawing on the rim of his empty Starbucks cup. He wished he had another, steaming and oh so spirit-lifting when…he blinked…a dark shape started nosing out of the service alley.

  He slouched lower; raised his night vision binoculars, and checked.

  It was Frank Wheat’s ten-year-old Honda Civic…pausing, as if unsure whether or not to pull out.

  And then it did. Ricky squinted and saw Wheat’s face, angry in infrared, before he headed north on Greenwich.

  Ricky speed-dialed Alex as he pulled out.

  “Guess who’s on the move.”

  35

  Alex nervously shoved some files aside. “Gee, wonder where to, so late.”

  “I’m following,” Ricky said tightly. “He just turned east on Spring Street.”

  “Good catch. Call for backup if anything.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Kerri felt a surge ripple through her. “Wouldn’t it be something…”

  Driving back, they’d talked about Wheat’s being so nice to Rachel, helping with groceries, finding things that needed fixing too often in her apartment. Kerri recounted how Rachel called Wheat Mister to keep him at a distance. A creep could see that as rejection, right?

  Alex had grunted agreement, but as soon as they got back to the station he’d also asked Connor to take time from scanning CCTVs to research James Burke. Zienuc couldn’t; he’d gone up to the crib to nurse “an exploding head,” Connor said.

  Burke bothered Kerri, too. The shrink’s affect had been pure avoidance. That pulling away from them on his hospital bench, hand to his mouth, the too much information about a patient trying to kill herself but still craving privacy…

  “Plus asking Terrell how the case was going,” Alex had said disbelievingly. “Is he stupid?”

  Burke maybe hoped that the hour would have Charlie asleep or at least out of it, they agreed; and Kerri had snickered, “He never counted on running into us. Think we shook him?”

  Frustration still tore at her. Unhappily, she pulled Charlie’s drawing closer on her desk, breathing shallowly, trying to think.

  Burke, Jed Stefan, Frank Wheat - which? And what if it was none of them - and the killer was some as yet unknown stalker?

  Welcome to Homicide. The awful feeling of being in a race, reaching a multiple fork in the road not knowing which way to go…

  Plus sleep deprivation, double shifts, and facing a ton of files waiting to be processed. Blue files, red files, lab reports reporting nothing. More fibers ID’d at the Mullin crime scene, nylon-Spandex like everyone wore; blood belatedly found on a branch that turned out to be Mullin’s; another partial shoe print from the sidewalk matching one found on the carpet near where Rachel had been shot – but size ten in a common trainer sneaker.

  “Whole lotta nothing,” Kerri said in disgust, flipping a file away.

  Alex looked over to Connor at his desk. “Anything else on Burke?”

  “Only what I already sent you.” Tom looked wearily from his screen of flickering security tapes. “State Medical Board says he’s been a well-behaved little nasty ever since.”

  Kerri picked up Tom’s report and re-skimmed it.

  Burke had dropped out of his psych residency because of drug and alcohol problems, then had come back after two years to finish. He’d been married briefly, there’d been police reports of domestic abuse, then a divorce citing infidelity - coinciding with his getting disciplined by the New York Medical Board for entering a sexual relationship with one of his patients. He’d left her “damaged,” alleged her lawsuit. He had countersued, alleging that she was nuts, and the case settled out of court.

  Burke had been wiped out having to pay the woman off. Lots of rage there? He was still “disciplined” by the State Board, but since nothing had been proven, his medical license hadn’t been revoked.

  “Shrinks are the worst,” Alex muttered. “They work alone with emotional wrecks, their crap winds up being he said-she said, and they get away with it.”

  “Maybe not entirely, in their minds.” Kerri toyed unhappily with her ballpoint. “Disciplined is disciplined. Add that to his residency dropout, a guy living under the shadow of a brilliant but cold mother who was hugely successful, a famed analyst…”

  Alex’s brows went up. “Ah. Hatred of mom? All women?”

  “Hatred of anyone who reminds Burke he’s a lousy psychiatrist - which Jed Stefan did while seeming to close in on Rachel. A tangled web we have here…”

  Kerri got up fitfully to pace. She stopped by the whiteboard, brooding before tacked photos of Scott Mullin and Lauren Huff. They were horrific. Charlie had seen Lauren and his mom like that…

  Something came roaring back.

  “Jed Stefan…” Kerri turned back to Alex.

  “What?” He’d been rubbing his eyes.

  “He said he was going to tell the media, ha, remember?” She started wildly punching at her phone.

  “Oh boy,” she said, staring at it, then bringing it for him to see. “Stefan’s been tweeting love notes about us. Fascist cops have nothing, tried to entrap me!” she read. “Lots of retweets, agreeing about us being so nice. And look, he’s using us to promote his play – Show your solidarity. Come to our opening!”

  Alex looked; smirked tiredly. “Impressive Twitter following.”

  “Let’s arrest him.”

  “Actually the dear boy’s working for us, saying we have nothing. Isn’t Twitter great? Some jerk invents something and suddenly it’s Fact.”

  He handed Kerri’s phone back just as his own rang. He put it on speaker.

  Ricky. Trying to keep his voice low over music throbbing.

  “I’m at Ruby’s on West Twenty-first.” He sounded disappointed. “Frank Wheat’s here, in the back watching his daughter perform. Looks like he’s at a funeral.”

  That was Wheat’s nighttime outing?

  Kerri sank miserably to her chair. Alex’s speaker boomed “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” by Def Leppard. It made her grit her teeth.

  “So…he looks mainly depressed?” Alex asked Ricky.
r />   “Definitely. Some drunk bashed into him and was hostile to him, like it was his fault. He just sat there, looking beaten; didn’t even answer.”

  “No aggression at all?”

  “None that I see. Want me to stay on him?” Ricky asked over the music.

  Alex said yes. “Find out where he goes when he leaves. Someone depressed may still be ready to blow. Maybe comparing Gina to wholesome Rachel who rejected him has him silently freaking out.”

  Ricky sighed okay. The women were cute. He’d had worse stakeouts.

  Alex inhaled and started to stack files. “It’s almost eleven,” he said quietly, leaning across his desk. “We have to sleep.”

  “Agreed.” Kerri was drooping.

  “And since last night was at my place,” he whispered with a hint of a tease, “now you’re going to say Gummy’s lonely.”

  “She is. I feel guilty.”

  “I miss her too. Think you could get your cat to move in with me permanently?”

  They gathered up a few files and Charlie’s drawing, told Connor good-night, and headed out.

  36

  Home was the second floor in a sweet old brownstone, just four floors, with alcoves in each overlooking the leafy street. Kerri was limp with fatigue so Alex keyed open her door and was first to greet Gummy.

  “See? She likes me better,” he said, crouching to nuzzle the tabby who pressed her purring face to his, then curled around his legs when he stood.

  Kerri’s whole body ached. She’d been strung tight for two long, horrible days, and her mind kept flashing images like some awful, old-time film sequence. The bloodied scene at Rachel’s apartment, Scott Mullin’s face after the rats, traumatized Charlie curled tight and terrified under his blanket…

  She followed Alex into her kitchen, dropped into a center island chair craving sleep…just as he decided to cook.

  Hugs and cooking were his therapy, he’d say with a grin when they were better rested – cooking being, of course, a way distant second. So he was off, getting out eggs, cracking them into a bowl before her, tossing away the shells – “Hey, you haven’t been recycling” – getting out cheese and bacon. Gummy jumped up to Kerri’s lap and they nuzzled. Alex scrambled the eggs, and in a separate pan started the bacon. That got their attention.