Shoeless Child

by J. A. Schneider

  “Aww, sweet.”

  “Lots of retweets. Also more pictures of his play and lurid scenery – surprise, tonight’s their opening. That explains his PR visit to Rachel. ’Come join and support us!’” Kerri read.

  Then frowned and looked up. “I’d still like to see the play’s painted backdrop. It has to be acrylic.”

  “Let’s check out backstage after the show’s over, see their stuff including brushes.”

  “Perfect. That gives us time to research Frank Wheat.”

  They drove back and got to work. The squad room was mostly quiet. Others were busy, but qualms about Gilbey’s arrest holding had them holding their breath.

  Two hours later, they found surprises. Frank Wheat’s ex-wife still lived in the city, in Queens, and was remarried to a construction contractor. Her name was now Reggie Savich, she’d had another daughter, and she’d filed harassment charges against Frank.

  “’Defendant makes repeated, angry phone calls and has come to our home, physically threatened me and my daughter,’” Alex read from one complaint. “That was three years ago. Frank got into a fight with Reggie’s husband, was charged with misdemeanor assault and ordered into anger management.”

  “Nothing since?” Kerri was scrolling through different research.

  “No. He’s been quiet, probably nursing his bitterness which explains his abuse of Gina. He’s a volcano.”

  “And maybe a killer. Here’s more.”

  Kerri read off a police report, also from that three-years-ago period. “He had a different job then. Maintenance man at the Wesley Hotel where he yelled at a female guest and threatened her physically.”

  Kerri sent the report to Alex’s computer, and read on. “He’d just begun his anger management. Completed it, swore he was a changed man, was jobless for months, then got his current job at below wage in exchange for free living quarters.” Kerri shook her head. “No wonder that building’s falling apart.”

  Alex had gone back further in Frank Wheat’s life.

  “Whoa, hear this. Felony child abuse when Gina was twelve. She was covered with bruises and reported continued emotional abuse to a social worker. Wheat entered a plea of no contest. Also begged he wouldn’t do it again, Gina had no one else to care for her, and since it was a first offense – that they caught – his sentence was reduced to probation.”

  “First offense that they caught,” Kerri echoed with disgust. “Happens all the time.”

  “Yep, plus clever Frank’s emphasis that Gina had no one else to care for her. That’s why she never dared open her mouth again.”

  They had a bigger, scarier picture of Frank Wheat. His kind of fury doesn’t go away; it just hides. He was still raging at a wife who left him, and a daughter who shamed him.

  That last thought jogged something.

  “One thing doesn’t fit,” Kerri mused, leaning across her desk to Alex. “Mom Reggie remarried and had another daughter she cares about. You can see it here in her complaint, ‘…physically threatened me and my daughter.’ So why is she estranged from Gina? People get divorced but stay close to their children – even fight for them – but Gina’s emphatic that her mother abandoned both of them.”

  Alex looked up. “Good question. Why don’t you ask?”

  50

  It took three rings for Gina to answer her phone. Kerri was ready to leave a voice mail when a slurred voice said, “Hullo?” In the background loud music, a drunken laugh, and the sound of bar chatter.

  “You sound…are you okay?” Kerri asked.

  “No. I’m shitfaced. Got my head bashed and I’m drowning my sorrows.”

  “What happened?” As if Kerri didn’t know.

  “Daddy Dearest went berserk when we got home, went nuts with the same old accusations. His crappy life was my fault, he never meant it when he pleaded for me to stay, he just wanted my lousy paycheck. So he hit me, bashed my head, my shoulder…” Gina’s voice broke and she sobbed.

  Kerri’s phone was on speaker and Alex was listening. “Listen-”

  “But I’m okay, y’know that? I’m okay and going back to that godforsaken apartment ‘cause that’s where I left my skin stick. I need it to cover the bruises and I’m going to work. Take it all off, yeah, my panties, too. I’m sick of being Little Miss Timid…”

  “You should go to a hospital.”

  “No. This isn’t new…not just this but every other shitload of pain my life’s been. I’ve fought through it all.”

  Kerri drew a breath. “Speaking of pain, there’s no good time to ask this, but I’ve been wondering about your mother.”

  Silence at the other end. Then, after what sounded like a long pull: “Why?”

  “Because something in your father’s background – and yours – doesn’t make sense. Your mother remarried and had a daughter…”

  “Little Miss Perfect. She’s quite pretty. A mother’s dream.”

  “Okay, so there’s…caring there.” Kerri had her hand to her brow, hating what she had to ask next. “Why, then, is your mother estranged from you? Leaving your father was one thing…”

  “Because she gave up on me,” Gina said too loudly, then snapped at someone, “No, you shut up!”

  She came back to the phone, her mouth too close, words slurring. “Ten years ago she left, when I was twelve and already wearing my skirts too short and eye makeup heavy as a whore’s - her words. She couldn’t handle it, was already miserable with Dad the Abuser, so she…split. Didn’t want to hear from either of us. I tried calling her a few times. Pleaded and groveled. She just hung up.”

  “Gina…”

  “Some people have their lives so goddamn perfect. Like that Terry Mercer, another Miss Perfect. She showed up to get some of Rachel and Charlie’s things, put ‘em in storage in the basement cuz she’s going to – ta dah! – take charge, hire people to clean Rachel’s place. I was hurting, crying, but still helped her find things. She said I should call the police and I said you already knew.”

  “We want you to press charges, move out.”

  “I will but Daddy Dearest has flown the coop. Anyway, I really helped Miss Terry Perfect. That makes me a good person, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t I get some credit in this world?”

  “Absolutely. Your father-”

  “The whole time, Terry was in a swoon. Just overwhelmed and gagging at how awful the place was. At least clothes didn’t get fingerprint dust on ‘em cuz they were in drawers. We got boxes down to the basement twice, then she lost it. Put Charlie’s new red jacket and sneakers and stuff into a last box, then announced she was going to faint, would I mind carrying it down? She just left me with it and ran out, poor thing. Gee, did I relock their two trunks? Oops, no. Terry didn’t give me the keys.”

  “Rachel will thank you for your kindness.”

  “At the moment I’m sick of Rachel and her phony friends. Terry swooning around like she was doing Shakespeare…Jed Stefan and his pretentious, bullshit play…”

  “You mentioned Stefan…”

  “Oh yeah. Rachel brought me to auditions for his Crucible play. I tried out, got called back twice, then he cut me cruelly – right in the middle of a really good line I was delivering. He’s a nasty, pretentious son of a bitch.”

  Kerri frowned at one of her chewed ballpoints on her desk. At the other end, another long pull.

  “I gotta go now, cover some pesky bruises so I can dance around my loser-girl pole. Thanks for caring.”

  “Wait. Where’d you father go?”

  “Dunno. He just ran out.”

  “No idea where he is?”

  “No, and I don’t care. He’s gone, and I gotta make strong coffee, sober up - for…show time!” Gina said in a high, carny voice, then a sob at the end. “Thanks again for calling.”

  The line went dead.

  51

  No matter how much police work you do, there’s always something more depressing. They spent a full minute murmuring, “awful, awful,” then a pall fell over them for
the next two hours. Frank Wheat competed for the front of their minds, but the Mitch Gilbey arrest needed more reports written and CSU files to go through.

  What a waste. Around eight a complaint of faulty warrant and Motion to Suppress arrived from Gilbey’s public defender, causing a roomful of obscenities and stomping around. They’d all dreaded the warrant going south.

  Also had to accept that the real killer might still be out there.

  At a little after ten Kerri and Alex got up and grabbed their parkas. “Gotta inspect some paint brushes,” Alex announced. “Then home, get some sleep. You too?”

  General shrugs and agreement. Grab this bleeping lull to rest.

  They parked two blocks from the North Moore Street former warehouse. The ugly square facade was brightly lit, with the first, jeans-clad theatergoers noisily filing out piping about the play and protests and where to party next. A self-involved group who didn’t notice the two detectives going in, weaving the wrong way through the small, crowded foyer, heading down the aisle between emptying-out, folding chairs.

  “I should have a ring in my nose,” Kerri said low.

  Alex sent her a crooked grin, which was good. It made him look less like a tense cop.

  They found the way to three wooden stairs, climbed them, and stepped onto the stage.

  Before them up close, the wide, painted canvas of a scaffold, red setting sun, stark, leafless trees, and hanged women whose long beige smocks absurdly dripped blood.

  Kerri stepped closer, studying the art. “Acrylic, definitely. Wonder who the artist is.”

  “Someone following Stefan’s orders.” Alex touched a red-dripping place near a woman’s throat.

  They went behind the canvas to a darkened backstage of strewn scripts, saws, plywood, and a group of wooden chairs, stiff and armless. Between two ladders, a pole was hung with costumes. And in the rear stretched a long workbench, lined at one end with makeup mirrors and face paint, at the other end with tubes of acrylic paint and palettes.

  Paint brushes, too. Empty coffee cans of brushes with bristle heads ranging from broad to narrow, some pointy enough to paint the most delicate twig, or blood trickling from someone’s throat.

  “Or an emoji,” Kerri whispered, standing over the brushes. Some impulse made her get out her phone and flash a picture. Then another.

  Until a bright, overhead light flicked on, and they saw Jed Stefan standing there.

  “Souvenirs?” he sneered.

  Kerri had read The Crucible, and there he was dressed as Reverend John Hale, the play’s expert in witchcraft. His long cloak was black, his wide-brimmed hat was black, and on his head…a long, black wig.

  She froze, seeing Charlie’s drawing again. Long black hair, he’d insisted on the black crayon. Heavy, darkened eyebrows and a chalky-white face completed Stefan’s Puritan look.

  “Nice wig.” Alex frowned in the glare of the overhead fluorescent.

  “Thanks,” Stefan snapped. He pointed importantly to the long bench to take attention off himself. “That wig over there belongs to Reverend Samuel Parris, whose daughter was one of the hanged women.”

  Alex stared, and Kerri moved closer to the second wig, also long and dark on a Styrofoam wig stand. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  “So?” Stefan asked snidely, stepping toward the workbench. “Did you actually see the play?”

  No answer from either detective. They just stood, arms folded, watching him sit before a mirror, gaze at himself, and start removing his makeup. Facial wipes started to show his face. Hairpins came out and he pulled his wig off; put it on a white, faceless stand next to Reverend Parris’s.

  “Who’s your artist?” Alex asked, indicating the back of the painted canvas.

  “Two of the women who play hanged victims,” Stefan said archly, pointing to a photo of the cast, tapping the faces of two small, thin women hugging each other. “Doubly talented, wouldn’t you say?”

  Kerri was back to going through brushes, touching one after another. Then she turned to Alex with a scowl he understood. They’d seen nothing that could prove or disprove anything, but the feeling was here. Something that connected to the attack witnessed only by a traumatized child.

  Kerri gestured around her. “How’s the security in here? Entrances locked?”

  Jed Stefan laughed, watching himself laugh in the mirror. Then he shifted and started brushing Reverend Hale’s wig. “What security? Good thing this wig is synthetic, the first one got stolen. People come and go at all hours. We’ve found homeless people sleeping in the foyer.”

  He looked up, his expression suddenly fake-friendly and mocking.

  “Seriously, why don’t you two come see the play? We’ll be having a twelve day run. Maybe some of your friends might like to see the forerunner of a police state?”

  Oh, wouldn’t he love to put that picture on social media.

  Kerri said she was sure the play would do well. “What with your online connecting it to the Greenwich Street murder,” she snarked back. “Nice of Rachel to volunteer her sweet smile, not knowing why you really came.”

  They turned to go, leaving Stefan gazing at himself, saying something long and pretentious of which only the phrase, “she’s such a good sport” was understandable.

  52

  The idea started forming the second they left, then came clearer on the drive back to Alex’s. Bed beckoned and Kerri was exhausted, but the thought nagged.

  She gave it time as she perched on a counter stool, watching Alex pull unidentifiable somethings from the microwave, fill wine glasses, sit tiredly next to her.

  “I’m feeling this light bulb going off,” she said, hitting the wine first.

  “Lemme guess,” he exhaled. “Those black wigs at Stefan’s gig.”

  She nodded. “That, plus the lack of security, plus…Gina. She yearns to become an actress. Rachel brought her to auditions with Stefan, and he rejected her.”

  “Cruelly, she said.” Alex forked something brown, scowled at the better-looking meatloaf picture on the box cover.

  “Right, but where I’m going is…Frank Wheat. He followed Gina to where she dances, and Ricky said he looked miserable. So? The theater thing. She must have been excited, talked about it, dreamed out loud of coming up in the world…”

  “Frank might have followed her to the theater too?” Alex turned his glass. “Hopeful, thinking he wouldn’t be ashamed anymore?”

  “Yeah,” Kerri said. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Whoa. Rage when she was rejected. The stolen wig.”

  “Long, scary, and black. Factor in Charlie’s reaction to him. It would have been easy for him to plant that .38 practically under Gilbey’s pillow. They were pals, fighting the landlord who owned both buildings. He was on surveillance going into Gilbey’s.”

  Kerri watched Alex’s jaw tighten. He was quiet for a moment.

  “Devil’s advocate. James Burke’s visit to the hospital was stalker-like. Rachel who’d rebuffed him was likely to be asleep but he wanted to be near her…and maybe he didn’t expect a cop to be there.”

  Kerri frowned in thought. “Right…except how would Burke have known to plant that .38 at Gilbey’s?”

  “Stalkers can be clever.”

  They were silent for a moment, then Kerri straightened, feeling alarm. “Frank hit Gina bad, ran out raging at her. Could she be in more serious danger?”

  Out came her phone and she punched away at it.

  “Waiting…no answer,” she said, then left a voice mail.

  “Gina, where are you?” A glance at Alex. “Your father’s violence – don’t go home. Stay at a friend’s place, seriously.”

  Call over, phone hollow-sounding, so with a hand slightly shaking Kerri searched and called Ruby’s on West 21st.

  At the other end blaring music, hoots and shouts, and an angry male voice. “She never showed up. I’ve had it with her. You tell her enough with the excuses, she’s done!”

  Kerri got up muttering
and started to pace.

  Alex tried to calm.

  “She probably went back home and passed out,” he reasoned, following her to the bathroom. In the shower, she put her head on his shoulder and he held her as the hot water beat down on them. “C’mon, you’re too wound up and it’s after midnight. With sleep we can think better.”

  “She did sound far gone,” Kerri admitted minutes later. “Said Frank just ran out…”

  In bed, Alex turned off the light. “Maybe he got drunk too and they’re both passed out, sleeping it off.” He rolled over to hug Kerri, hold her in the dark. “Not exactly Family of the Year but…”

  “He’s treated her before like a punching bag. Never killed her, that should be reassuring…”

  “Oh you are tired.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Call her tomorrow. See if he turned up.” Alex’s voice was weak with sleep. “We can’t pull him in because a child peed. We’re already in trouble over a lousy warrant.”

  “If you saw Charlie’s face…”

  “He’s sleeping now. He’s safe.”

  Seconds later, Alex was asleep too.

  Kerri lay staring at the wall. Light from the moon cut through the blinds. A siren wailed, and a white wig stand’s red features glared at her, like the emoji.

  The dream didn’t wake her, though.

  53

  An amber light glowed. The room was quiet with sounds of sleep.

  He entered and rounded the bed. The window admitted faint light from a wing running perpendicular, and he could see her features. So pretty, her brown hair curling over her brow. And the child, sleeping tucked close to her. Recuperating, both of them…

  He turned to the cot. Put what he’d brought with him on it, then adjusted the blanket that had drooped and puddled to the floor. He crouched and reached under to neaten the mattress, the second blanket, the pillow. Then he retrieved the teddy bear he’d brought, and put it next to the pillow. From his white coat’s breast pocket, he took his pen light and shone it on the toy.