Sammy Keyes and the Kiss Goodbye

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  That was when every cop became a cookie chucker.

  Including Officer Borsch.

  So the lawman had experience. He knew that turning the corner past the curtain that shielded his view of Sammy and stepping through the barrier between imagination and reality was something he couldn’t reverse after he’d done it.

  There was no undo command for what would be hard-written into his memory.

  Still. There was no turning back. No chickening out.

  No not facing what he really didn’t want to face.

  And so he stepped forward.

  And then, there she was.

  His first reaction was one of enormous relief.

  Her face was fine!

  There was a bruise and a scrape, but … he had imagined much worse. And although her arms were wrapped in gauze and her head was wrapped in gauze and there were tubes going into her and wires coming off of her, her face was fine!

  Almost … angelic.

  “Sammy,” he whispered as he moved closer. “It’s your buddy the Borschman.” He grinned. “Yes, I know you call me that.” He stared at her for a long minute before whispering, “Who did this to you?” A lump began forming in his throat as he choked out, “And why?” He took a moment to compose himself, then whispered, “Did you really go there because of some nightie-napper? Who cares who’s stealing nighties! Was it worth this?”

  The lump in the lawman’s throat had grown, and it silenced him until he gave a snort and said, “Just like me to start with an interrogation, huh? What am I, an idiot? That’s what you’re thinkin’, right? Can’t I see you’re not doin’ so hot?” He studied her a little longer, then shook his head. “You should have seen the waiting room earlier. It was packed with kids. I can’t handle a room of teenagers on a good day, you know that. And here I had to go and tolerate it on a day like this?” He forced a laugh. “Thanks a lot, Sammy.”

  He stared at her, lying there while the monitors blipped and machinery softly hummed. “You gotta wake up, you hear me? Just come to and give me a hard time.”

  The lump in his throat was now bigger and badder than ever, so he clammed up and backed away from the bed, nearly colliding with a male orderly.

  “Excuse me!” the orderly said. He was wearing white on white, had narrow, black-rimmed glasses, and (to the Borschman’s immediate and irrational annoyance) had shaggy brown hair.

  “Do you know when a doctor will be by?” Sergeant Borsch asked, composing himself as quickly as he could.

  “Soon, I’m sure,” the orderly said, and after a quick inspection of the area, nodded a good night, and left the room.

  Gil Borsch turned back to Sammy, but after a few more silent minutes willing her to wake up, he turned away and found himself gazing out the window.

  At first, he looked upward. (Perhaps for divine intervention, but even under these circumstances probably not.)

  Then he looked below, at the circular drive to the main entrance. It was empty. No vehicles coming or going. No illegal park jobs. Nothing.

  Then he looked out, across the town, where the lights of Santa Martina twinkled quietly.

  Deceptively.

  There were no sirens, no burning buildings, no alarms clanging. But out there, the lawman knew, swirling between the twinkling lights like toxic vapors, violence and deceit and unspeakable crimes were taking place.

  Out there, someone who’d thrown a fourteen-year-old girl off three flights of stairs was roaming free.

  Gil Borsch turned away from the window, turned away from his thoughts, turned back to Sammy. “Don’t worry. We’ll get whoever did this to you. That’s a promise.”

  Then he sat in a chair next to Sammy’s bed and hunkered down, unaware that in an unoccupied room across the hallway, the shaggy-haired orderly was hiding in the shadows, waiting impatiently for him to leave.

  4—TRACING FOOTSTEPS

  Fortunately, Gil Borsch did not leave Room 411. Instead, he fell asleep in his chair. It was a log-sawing slumber, too. One that could easily be heard in the darkened room across the hallway. One that conveyed a clear and exasperating signal.

  Room 411 would be inaccessible for quite some time.

  Now, I wish I could tell you that Sergeant Borsch was awakened from his log-sawing slumber by Sammy calling, “Hey, Borschhead! Wake up!” but that’s not what happened. Instead, the lawman was rousted from his sleep by a nurse named Joanna who jabbed him in the arm and told him he might want to seek a physician’s help for his condition. “Your snoring’s been shaking the walls since I got on shift,” she said as she checked Sammy’s vitals. “If that didn’t wake this girl, nothing might.”

  “What was that?” Sergeant Borsch asked, because Nurse Joanna had muttered the last part and the lawman was still fighting through the thick, sticky cobwebs of a nightmare in which he was strapped down on an operating table while a man in a ski mask held a scalpel over his heart.

  “Nothing,” Nurse Joanna replied, unwilling to repeat something she shouldn’t have said in the first place.

  But Gil Borsch was still transitioning from one nightmare to another and was having trouble picking up on obvious clues. “Did you say she might not wake up?”

  The nurse fiddled with Sammy’s IV bag. “Aren’t you supposed to be posted outside the room?”

  This did not answer the question, but it did bring the lawman’s questioning to an immediate halt, as it reminded him that he was there under false pretenses. And regardless of how legitimate those false pretenses might seem, since there had been no official watch ordered for Sammy, not only would his deception get him booted from the ICU, it would put him in major hot water at the station.

  “Sleeping on the job’s nice work if you can get it,” the nurse added, tossing him a scowl as she left the room.

  Clearly, Nurse Joanna knew how to deflect and destroy. And although it was only 5:45 a.m., Gil Borsch’s mood was, indeed, destroyed. (Not that he ever woke up chipper, but in addition to the bad dream and the bad news, his bad sleeping posture had given him a bad kink in the neck.)

  He got up and hovered over Sammy. “Wake up, would ya?” he growled, and when there was no response, he reached in and nudged her. “Sammy! Sammy, wake up!”

  He was answered only by the silent blipping of her heart monitor. And the more he stood there, watching, the more the peaceful look on Sammy’s face tortured him. What was with that angelic look? Where was the little hellion he’d grown to love?

  Perhaps it was a form of emotional survival (or maybe just the call of addiction), but after he’d spent another minute searching Sammy’s face for answers, his thoughts turned to coffee. He could feel a headache creeping up on him from behind, and experience had taught him that he needed to take it out before it had a chance to get a stronghold. (Or, in this case, join forces with the kink in his neck, which he also knew from years of experience was a wickedly crippling combination.)

  So he needed coffee.

  Now.

  Unfortunately, he was faced with the complications of his lie. During a legitimate police watch placed on a patient, the attending officer couldn’t just leave his post. One officer would relieve another, round the clock, until the watch was lifted.

  But he needed coffee.

  Now.

  Asking at the nurses’ station seemed like a dead end. Besides, there was the whole shaking-the-walls thing, and Gil Borsch did have a certain level of pride. He did not want to be the butt of jokes at the nurses’ station, but since he most likely already was, he didn’t want his face associated with those jokes.

  Still.

  He needed coffee.

  Now!

  Thinking through his options, he realized he did have a couple of things going in his favor: First, since he’d conducted his “watch” from inside the hospital room, there was the distinct possibility that his absence would go (by and large) unnoticed. And second, just a few yards away at the end of the hall was a door marked EXIT that (according to the door’s graph
ic) accessed a stairwell.

  Together these conditions would provide a surreptitious departure if he could manage to get to the exit door without being seen.

  Now, it did cross his mind that he was a cop.

  One who prided himself in walking the straight and narrow.

  At designated intersections.

  Between the white lines.

  (Which is why jaywalkers sent him into such a tizzy.)

  So casting an eye down the corridor to his left as a deceptive strategy caused a definite pang to shoot through Gil Borsch’s law-abiding conscience (and another one to shoot through his kinked-up neck). But to his relief, the coast was clear, and with a quick hike of his pants and as much casual confidence as he could muster, he set out toward the exit on his right.

  Moments later, he was safely through the door, but as he began hurrying down the steps, a disturbing thought shot through his law-abiding mind:

  He was pulling a Sammy Keyes!

  Sammy had done this exact move (only without the security of an enclosed stairwell) to get in and out of the Senior Highrise every day—even several times a day—for years. After he’d begun to suspect that she was living at the Highrise illegally, he’d staked it out, watching with binoculars (and a full thermos of coffee) from his parked car.

  It had taken weeks, but he’d finally spotted her one morning as she’d slipped through the fifth-floor door and swept down the fire escape like an ethereal cat floating through shadows.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” he’d cried, validated at last.

  And now here he was, doing the same thing. (Only, he noted ruefully as he clomped along, there was nothing remotely catlike about him.)

  Now, having been to the hospital many times on police business, Gil Borsch knew how to find the cafeteria.

  First floor, west wing.

  So when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he did not take the exit door to his left, which would have led him outside the building. Rather, he pushed through the door straight ahead, which left him within easy striking distance of the cafeteria.

  What he did not know—and what caused an audible growl to emerge from the depths of his deprived gut—was the cafeteria’s hours of operation.

  6:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m.

  But outside the closed grating he discovered (to his enormous relief) a vending machine where coffee could be purchased. So after swiping a card and pushing the appropriate buttons he emerged victorious with a coffee-colored cardboard cup. And although the concoction inside it was barely warm (and oddly pasty), at least it was caffeinated.

  On his fourth gulp, his phone rang.

  “Borsch here,” he said with uncharacteristic eagerness.

  But it was not news about Sammy.

  It was his wife, wondering where in the world he was.

  So the lawman fessed up, telling her not only where he was, but where he’d been, and where he was going. And after a weary conversation convincing Deb that he was doing what he was doing because it was the only thing to do, and that if you wanted a job done right you had to do it yourself, and that this job—especially this job—was one that had to be done right, he told her he loved her and would see her later. Then he gulped down the rest of his coffee and walked out of the hospital, focused on a new mission.

  Now, perhaps it was simply because nature abhors a vacuum, or perhaps it was a bit of cosmic good luck, or maybe it was simply that Sammy’s friends and family were really worried about her and willing to break rules and curfews and common sense to visit her, but that chair in Room 411 didn’t stay vacant for very long.

  Billy Pratt hadn’t slept a wink all night and had finally given up trying. He was usually on his way to school before either of his parents was up anyway, so it was easy for him to slip out the front door and hoof it over to the hospital.

  To his surprise, the hospital’s main lobby door was locked. And, afraid of being turned back if he followed the instructions on the placard directing people to the ER, he began looking for other entrances.

  Something he told himself Sammy might do.

  As he made his way along the building’s periphery, he came upon several doors.

  All unmarked.

  All locked.

  And as he turned yet another corner and found himself alone on what appeared to be a dead-end route in the still-shadowy light of early morning, fear began tiptoeing along beside him.

  What was he doing?

  He tried shaking it off.

  Who would be lurking around the side of a hospital?

  And for what?

  He saw another door not far away, so he hurried toward it. But as he approached, fear held on like a cape, pulling at his shoulders, covering him with warning.

  Turn around!

  Which is exactly what he would have done after that one final door had it not been for one little detail.

  The door opened!

  And led to a stairwell!

  Silly Billy, he told himself. What was there to be afraid of?

  Not knowing where he was going (but believing he was at least making progress), he hurried up the stairs, trying the interior doors at each level until he finally found one unlocked on the fourth floor.

  And then, in what seemed to Billy to be a miracle (or maybe an omen, or, at least, a stroke of astounding good luck), he found Sammy inside Room 411.

  “Sammy-keyesta!” he whispered, looking at his gauze-wrapped, tube-strapped friend. And then the boy who always had something to say just stood there, without words.

  “You need to leave,” a voice behind him said.

  Billy turned around and saw a man in green scrubs. And on an ordinary day and under ordinary circumstances, Billy Pratt might have put up a little resistance before complying with the request. But this wasn’t some ordinary day and these weren’t ordinary circumstances, so instead what came from the mouth of Billy Pratt was, “I’m not leaving.”

  “Yes, you are. You need to leave now,” the orderly said.

  But it was a weird, hissy command that came through the teeth.

  Which seemed … odd to Billy. And made him tune in to other things about the orderly. Things like his scruffy hair. And that behind the boxy glasses, there were dark circles under the man’s eyes. And, wow, the cheek stubbles. There were cheek stubbles for miles!

  He wasn’t going to let some scruffy dude with baggy eyes and a hissy voice tell him what to do!

  “I’m stayin’,” Billy said. “And you need to get shavin’.”

  The orderly stared at him, then felt his cheek.

  “You been up all night, or what?” Billy asked. Then he sat down in the chair where Gil Borsch had been and watched (somewhat stupefied) as his defiance (for once) had its desired effect and the orderly turned without another hissy word and left the room.

  After leaving the hospital, Sergeant Borsch had gone directly to the police station, where he had learned (to his frustration) that there were no leads in the Keyes case. Then, after brooding through the dayshift briefing, he convinced his superiors to let him take over the investigation and drove a squad car to the Senior Highrise.

  He did not go inside the lobby.

  Instead, he retraced the steps Holly had described Sammy taking, walking along the sidewalk, ducking behind a tall hedge, making his way past an alcove where the trash chute emptied into a Dumpster, toward the fire escape.

  As he neared the steps, his heart began to pound and sweat began to pour from him, but he really couldn’t understand why. It was daylight and still cool out. He was armed and in no obvious danger. Yet his heart hadn’t pounded this way since … well, since the Psycho Kitty Incident where he’d been duct-taped and thrown in the back of a van, certain (for hours) that he would be murdered (any minute) and dumped on the side of the road.

  In an effort to calm himself, Sergeant Borsch took several deep breaths, then began scouring the scene—the grounds, the bushes, and finally the steps. It bothered him that there was no yellow crime-scene tape
cordoning off the area. Who had determined there was no evidence to be gathered? It had been dark when the crime was committed, and it had only been daylight now for about two hours.

  What was wrong with his department?

  Didn’t they understand how important this was?

  It also bothered him that the area looked as though nothing had happened. Even the bushes appeared to be unscathed, seemingly denying that a girl had crash-landed into them.

  Finally, he began up the fire escape, slowly and meticulously inspecting each level and trying each door to see if entry was possible.

  He found nothing. And at each level the door was latched and locked until the fifth floor, where the door was just as Sammy had rigged it—locked, but not latched.

  With the sigh of a man caught between justice and heartache, Gil Borsch took a last look around, then went inside.

  The Highrise wasn’t a typical tenement building where residents scurried to their corners like guilty rats when a man with a badge appeared. The tenants in this apartment complex were more like mice—nosy and twitchy, curious but wary.

  And although the hallway was quiet, with all the doors closed tight, that changed after Sergeant Borsch knocked at Sammy’s grandmother’s old apartment.

  “She moved,” a voice behind him said, and when he turned toward the sound, he saw a slice of a pale, wrinkled face peering at him through a barely opened door.

  The lawman already knew that Rita had moved, so he couldn’t really say why he’d knocked. Perhaps he was longing to go back in time—longing for Rita to open the door and pretend Sammy wasn’t there, when in fact she was hiding in the closet.

  “No new tenant?” Sergeant Borsch asked.

  The wrinkles moved side to side. “Supposedly this week.”

  “And supposedly a man,” another female voice said through a door that had inched open across the way.