by Lisa Gardner
Now Aimee was curled up under a table in the fetal position, Jimmy and Benny were running laps around the chairs, and nine-year-old Sampson was standing in front of the closed kitchenette, yelling shrilly for a snack.
I’d been cleared by an intern just in time to chase five-year-old Becca down the hall. Somehow, she’d gotten her hands on a folded game board and she was beating it against any person unfortunate enough to cross her path. Greg was trying to untangle Jorge from Ed, while Cecille was working containment in front of Lucy’s room, because we absolutely, positively couldn’t have Lucy adding to the mix.
Third time by the receptionist’s desk, I managed to hit the buzzer for the cops. I got Candy Land away from Becca about the same time the police entered the unit. The curly blonde took the lead, three dark-suited officers fanning out behind her in the main hall.
“I have a warrant,” the lead detective started.
A book flew down the hall. To give the Boston police some credit, the detectives jumped pretty fast.
“What the hell …” the sergeant muttered, the scene finally registering.
“Whatever you want, it gets to wait,” I informed them crisply. “Keep your back to the wall. Don’t touch anything. Oh, and look out. I think Jorge just got away.”
Sure enough, the wiry six-year-old was bolting down the hall straight toward us, thin arms pumping, blue eyes bulging. He looked like he was racing away from every bad thing that had ever happened to him. I knew the feeling.
I got one arm around Jorge’s waist as he went flying by, and converted his momentum into a graceful little twirl I practiced at least once a week. “Hey, buddy, where’s the fire?” I asked, as if we did this kind of thing every night at one a.m.
“Bad man, bad man, bad man, bad man, bad man!” Jorge yelled.
“Did you have a nightmare, chiquito? Sounds like a doozy. Why don’t you come with me, and I’ll see what I can do to make all those bad men disappear.”
“¡Maldito, maldito, maldito!” Jorge added, as I led him down the hall. Ed and Greg shot me grateful looks. Then they were in the common area, where Aimee needed rescuing, and Jimmy and Benny had to be unwound like clocks, and then there was the care and feeding of Sampson.…
In Jorge’s room, I turned on every light, then went through the motions of checking each nook and cranny. I even shook out his covers to prove no monsters were hiding in his bed. When he remained unconvinced, I went with plan B, moving a mat into the hall and preparing an emergency nest. We lay down, side by side, and I pointed at the silver half globes dotting the ceiling, explaining how their reflective surfaces would allow him to see any bad men coming. “They’re like a personal protection system,” I told him. “They’ll keep you safe.”
Jorge’s shoulders finally relaxed. He snuggled closer to me and I picked up a Dora book. By the halfway mark, his eyes were drooping. The hallway had quieted, the milieu restored.
Just the detectives remained, conspicuous in their dark suits. Greg paused in front of them. They were speaking too low for me to hear. Greg frowned, shook his head, then frowned again. Finally, he pointed toward me and the blonde turned expectantly.
In full view of her gaze, I finished the first book. Then I set it down, picked up a second, and opened the cover.
Whatever she had to say could wait, mostly because I didn’t want to hear it.
“Danny girl,” my father sang inside my head.
I know, I know, I know.
“We have a warrant for all records pertaining to Oswald James Harrington,” Sergeant D.D. Warren explained ten minutes later, stony-faced. “We also have a warrant for all information pertaining to Tika Rain Solis. Detective Phil LeBlanc will oversee the transfer of all information. The rest of us have questions for the staff.”
I stared at Sergeant Warren blankly. She was still holding out several official-looking documents. For lack of anything better to do, I took them from her. They definitely read like warrants.
“I’ll … I’ll have to call Karen Rober, the nurse manager,” I said at last.
“You do that.”
“Are you sure this isn’t something that can wait till morning? We run a lean crew at night, and can’t spare any staff.”
“I’m sure.” She didn’t blink and it occurred to me that the sergeant had planned this one-thirty ambush. Nine-to-five hours would’ve meant dealing with management, not to mention the hospital’s cadre of lawyers. Middle-of-the-night raids, on the other hand …
“You’re going to have to be patient,” I said, feeling frazzled. I’d never been served with a warrant before. How much did one give a detective? The warrant said everything, but what did that mean? The staff wasn’t equipped for this. I wasn’t equipped for this.
I needed to visit Lucy. She’d made it through Jorge’s meltdown. I wondered if that meant she was now curled up and sleeping in a moonbeam.
“We’ll move into the conference room,” Sergeant Warren declared briskly.
“Conference room?”
“You know, the room we used last time.”
“You mean the classroom?”
“Whatever. Don’t worry. We know our way there.” She started striding down the hall, two of the detectives peeling off to follow her. The fourth cop remained standing in front of me. Mid-forties, a little doughy around the middle, he wore a sheepish smile. Good cop, I decided. Anyone who worked with Sergeant Warren would have to be.
“Detective Phil LeBlanc,” he introduced himself. “If you show me where you keep your records, I can take it from there.”
Not that big a dope, I unlocked the door leading to the Admin area and dug through the filing cabinet for the two patients in question: Oswald James Harrington and Tika Rain Solis. I pulled the files, showed Detective LeBlanc the photocopier, then called Karen.
She was half-asleep, but woke up fast enough once she heard the news. “I’ll be right there,” she assured me, which, given where she lived, meant at least an hour.
“Do we need a lawyer? How does this work?”
“Don’t answer any questions you don’t want to answer, and advise the rest of the staff to do the same. Showing up at one-thirty in the morning. Assholes.”
“I think Sergeant Warren considers that a compliment,” I said. As if summoning the Devil, Warren appeared at the end of the hall.
“We’d like to start with you,” she said: a command, not a request.
“No shit,” I muttered.
I hung up the phone. As the most senior person on the floor, I would have to shoulder this load and play nice with the detectives. Lucky me.
“Fine,” I said.
“Good,” Warren returned.
“Just gotta grab a glass of water.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Make yourself comfortable.”
I turned away from the detective and headed for the kitchenette. At the last minute, however, I continued down the hallway to Lucy’s room. I peered in, expecting to see Lucy sleeping in a corner.
Instead, she was dancing.
She moved around the room in graceful circles, swooshing from one moonbeam to the next. The oversized surgical scrub shirt ballooned around her as she twirled, leaping across her mattress, then pirouetting in front of the windows.
She was a cat again, moving in the languid style of a feline. Maybe she was trying to catch moonbeams in her paws. Maybe she simply liked the way it felt to sway to and fro. She hit the windows, placed her hands open-palmed against the glass. Then she stilled, and I knew she saw my reflection.
Was she angry after our last confrontation? Fearful, defiant?
Lucy turned away from the glass. Slowly, she meandered and twirled her way toward me. At the last minute, as I felt myself tense, she held out her hand, pale fingers extended. She dangled a tiny ball of string, something she’d fashioned from rolling together loose carpet fibers. A homemade cat toy.
I hesitated. She jiggled it again.
I accepted her gift, closing my fist ar
ound it as she swooped away, long pale limbs flashing silver in the moonbeams.
I tucked her peace offering into my pocket and returned to Sergeant Warren.
I’d just entered the classroom when I realized I had forgotten my water. I returned to the kitchenette to fetch a glass, and Greg found me. Benny and Jimmy still couldn’t settle. I poured out doses of Benadryl for the two kids. Greg took the Benadryl, then I headed back to the classroom, where the look on Sergeant Warren’s face told me I still didn’t have water.
I returned to the kitchenette again, this time finding a glass and banging on the tap. The other detective, LeBlanc, poked his head out of the Admin area. Copier had run out of paper.
I reloaded the copier, glancing at the records he’d already duplicated. I offered to carry the copies to the classroom, but he refused. I shrugged, and since he appeared done with Tika’s original file, I took that for myself to use as a reference.
I made it all the way to the classroom; then, right outside the door, I realized I’d left my water glass sitting next to the copier. Back to Admin I went, grabbing my water, and making it to the classroom with everything in hand.
Sergeant Warren glanced at her watch as I took a seat. She was flanked on either side by a detective.
“Always take you fifteen minutes to grab a drink?” she asked me.
“Oh, sometimes it takes twenty. Tonight I was lucky; I only got interrupted four or five times. Don’t worry, someone will need something shortly.”
“Crazy night,” the detective on her left commented. I recognized him from the first visit. George Clooney playing the role of a Boston cop.
“Birthday party,” I said. “Does it every time.”
“Birthday party?” he asked.
“Priscilla turned ten. We had a celebration for her after dinner. The kids made cupcakes; we hung streamers, handed out party hats. The kids got very excited, which, for our crowd, has consequences.”
“Then why have the party?” Sergeant Warren asked, with a frown. I could see this woman running the Gestapo. She’d be good at it.
“Because most of these kids have never been to a birthday party,” I explained. “They’re either too poor or too emotionally disturbed or too unloved to ever be so lucky. They’re still kids, though, and kids should get to have a party.”
“Now they’ll be up all night, torturing you and one another?”
I regarded the cops steadily. “Priscilla has brain damage from being shaken as a baby; it impairs her ability to process numbers. Tonight, however, she counted out ten candles and jammed them all onto one cupcake. Speaking for the staff, we don’t care if the kids spend the rest of the night tearing this place apart. It’s worth it for that moment.”
Sergeant Warren studied me. I couldn’t tell if my words had affected her or not. Then again, this was a woman who spent her time rolling over dead bodies so she could note their faces. She probably could take me at poker.
“And Tika Solis? She have a party?”
“I don’t know.” I started to open the file. Sergeant Warren reached across the table and slapped it shut.
“No. Off the top of your head. What do you remember about her?”
“I don’t.”
“What do you mean you don’t?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t. Name’s not ringing any bells.”
“You remembered Ozzie Harrington,” she said crossly.
“I worked with Ozzie one-on-one over the course of many months. Of course I remember him.”
“But not Tika?”
“Can’t even bring her face to mind.”
The sergeant continued to stare at me, as if I were holding something back. “Girl liked to cut herself. That jog your memory?”
I shook my head. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Please, a little girl who self-mutilates? That doesn’t stand out in your mind?”
“We have two of those cases right now, so no, it doesn’t.”
“Two?”
I pulled the file out of her grasp. “Children are direct, Sergeant. Sometimes, they can’t verbalize their emotions, but that doesn’t mean they’re not attempting to communicate. A child who hates the world will act hateful. And a child who hurts inside will externalize that pain, cutting her arms, legs, wrists, in order to show you her ache.”
“Tika was three when she was admitted here. That’s not exactly a teenager brooding over the poems of Sylvia Plath,” the sergeant countered skeptically.
“Three?” Three was young for slicing and dicing. Not unheard-of, but young. My turn to frown. “When was she admitted?”
Sergeant stared at me. “Around the same time as Ozzie Harrington.”
I searched my memory banks, trying to bring a whole cluster of kids into focus. The dynamics of the kids impacted the milieu as much as anything. Who were the kids we’d had with Ozzie? What was the dynamic? We’d been so busy for the past year. More and more kids, each with a case file more horrific than the last … “Wait a second. Tiny little thing? From Mattapan?”
Sergeant Warren flicked a glance at the redhead sitting on her other side. “They moved to Jamaica Plains from Mattapan,” he murmured. The sergeant nodded at me.
“Okay, I remember her,” I admitted. “But I didn’t work with her much. I was busy with Ozzie; besides, Tika didn’t care for women. She responded better to the male MCs.”
“What do you mean, ‘responded’?”
“Wanted a father figure, most likely.” I shrugged. “Tika didn’t have one at home, so she was anxious to find one elsewhere. If Greg or Ed asked her to do something, she did it. If Cecille or I spoke to her, it was all la, la, la, la, la, wind blowing through the trees. We’re acute care—not our job to change that, just our job to work with it. So male counselors it was.”
“You’re saying she worked most closely with the gym coach out there?”
“Gym coach … Greg? Yes. Here, may I?” I gestured to the file. The sergeant finally let me open it. I skimmed through the reports. Sure enough, most of them were written up by Greg, Ed, and Chester. Male MCs indeed. “Greg and Ed are both here tonight,” I commented. “They might be able to help you.”
“Did Tika and Ozzie interact?” the sergeant wanted to know.
“Probably. In the common area, during group, that sort of thing.” There was something obvious I should be understanding. Ozzie and Tika. Tika and Ozzie. Then it came to me. My hands stilled on the file. I stared at the three detectives, horrified.
“Are you saying … Tika’s dead?” Then, a second later, “Oh my God, Jamaica Plains. The family that was murdered last night in Jamaica Plains. That was Tika’s family? Two kids from here, two families …”
I didn’t want to compute the implications of such a connection. Then it came to me, the way the detectives were regarding me. Not as a nurse, supplying background on two patients, but as a suspect. The common denominator between two families that met equal tragedy.
My background. Did they know my background, because if they knew my background …
I couldn’t breathe. White spots appeared in front of my eyes, and I heard my father’s damn voice again: “Danny girl. Oooooh, Danny girl.”
Shut up, shut up, shut up.
A knock on the closed door. I forced myself to turn, stand up, function as a professional. Breathe in. Breathe out. Compartmentalize. Nurses were good at this sort of thing, and psych nurses were the best. I opened the door.
Greg stood on the other side, looking wild-eyed.
“Have you seen her?” he blurted out.
“Seen who?”
“Lucy. Dammit, we’ve been searching everywhere. Lucy’s vanished.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
LUCY
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.
Shadows. Shadows breathe. Shadows move.
And if th
at diamond ring turns brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat.
Shadows. Shadow says, Follow me. I do.
And if that billy goat won’t pull, Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull turn over, Mama’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover.
Shadows. Floating down the hall, slipping through the door. Follow me, follow me. I do.
And if that dog named Rover won’t bark, Mama’s gonna buy you a horse and cart. And if that horse and cart fall down, you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.
Shadows. Pulling, tugging, yanking, wanting. I do, I do.
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Hush, hush, hush …
D.D. watched Danielle with growing suspicion.
“Did you check the solarium?” the nurse was asking the gym-coach MC. “Behind the palm trees?”
“First stop we made.”
“And you’ve done the entire floor? Inside cabinets, behind wardrobes, beneath bathroom sinks?”
“Yes.”
“And how long has Lucy been missing?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes? You kept this to yourself for twenty minutes?”
“Hey, you’re sequestered with a bunch of detectives, and it’s not like we haven’t searched for a kid before. The staff’s been on it. We’ve done this floor, the solarium, and a quick tour through the hospital halls. No dice. It’s time to alert the medical center’s security, so here I am, telling you what you need to know.”
“We’ll help,” D.D. said.
Danielle and the gym coach turned to stare at her. If anything, they both grew more irritated.
“We can handle this,” Danielle said tightly.
“Really? Then where’s the kid?”
Danielle thinned her lips and looked like she wanted to hit something. Preferably, D.D.D.D. spread her hands. “Sounds like you need to launch a search—right?—while also managing the unit. You need bodies. Here’s a news flash: We’re four bodies who all have experience looking for missing people. Don’t be an idiot. Let us help.”