by Lisa Gardner
The cardboard box had contained him.
Now, for all the evil in the world, I had only myself to blame.
“I thought we’d agreed on the buddy system,” Karen was snapping at Greg. It was after four. We were all tired, pale-faced, shocked. Karen had arrived just in time to hear the news of Lucy’s death. She’d stood with us while the ME gently lowered Lucy’s green-shrouded frame onto the waiting gurney. Then the man took Lucy away.
A child is like a snowflake. First thing you learn in pediatric nursing. A child is like a snowflake. Each one unique and original from the one before. Lose one and you have lost too much, because there will never be another quite like her again.
I had my left hand in my pocket, my fingers wrapped around Lucy’s final gift, rolling the little string ball between my fingers again and again.
“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”
“She was with the police,” Greg answered tightly. “I thought that was buddy enough. ’Sides, unit was busy. We had a lot going on.”
“Apparently!”
“Dammit, Karen, you can’t possibly think—”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. In a situation like this, appearance matters as much as reality. Fact is, we had a staff member and a child off radar for at least fifteen minutes. You were in charge of checks, Greg. What the hell were you doing?”
“I checked! Cecille vouched for Lucy; we agreed on twenty-minute intervals for her, so I waited another twenty to check again. As for Danielle, she was with the police. Or so I thought.”
Now all eyes were on me. I didn’t say anything, just rolled the string ball between my fingers.
“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”
“You said you went to fetch a glass of water,” Karen repeated directly to me. “Did you see Lucy tonight? Visit her at all?”
“I saw Lucy. She was dancing in moonbeams. She was happy.”
“When?”
“Before I got water.”
“Danielle, start talking. The hospital will be launching an investigation. The state will be launching an investigation. You need to tell us what happened.”
“I saw Lucy. I got a glass of water. I met with Greg about Jimmy and Benny. Reloaded the copy machine. Met with the detectives. That’s everything I did. All that I did.”
“That doesn’t take twenty minutes,” Sergeant Warren stated.
“But it did.” I finally looked at her. “You were right before. It’d be better if we had security cameras.”
Sergeant Warren asked me to come with her for questioning. I refused. Karen informed me I was on paid leave, effective immediately, and I was not to come to work until the hospital granted permission. I refused.
Not that it mattered. Everyone was asking me questions, but no one was listening to my answers.
“She didn’t kill herself.” I spoke up, my voice louder, edgier. “Lucy wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t.”
Greg and Karen shut up. Sergeant Warren regarded me with fresh interest. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I saw her. She was happy. She was a cat. As long as she was a cat, she was okay.”
“Maybe someone burst her bubble. Or the delusion slipped away. You said she was volatile, dangerously unpredictable.”
“She’d never shown any signs of suicide before.”
“That’s not true,” Karen protested. “She’d already demonstrated a need for self-mutilation, as well as debasement.” She turned to Sergeant Warren. “First day she was here, Lucy cut her arm and used the blood to draw patterns on the wall. The child did terrible things, because terrible things had been done to her. I don’t think we can say with any degree of certainty what she was, or was not, capable of.”
“She didn’t kill herself!” I insisted again, angry now and realizing how much I needed that rage. “She wouldn’t do that. Someone helped her get out. That’s the only way you can explain her getting through two sets of locked doors. Someone helped her. First time was yesterday, maybe as a trial run, then again tonight. Face it, the unit was hopping, we were short-staffed, and then the police suddenly appeared. Plenty of distractions, providing the perfect opportunity for someone to harm her. That’s what happened.”
“Someone,” Sergeant Warren drawled, looking right at me.
“I was only gone five to ten minutes—”
“Eighteen. I timed you.”
“I was with your own detective for part of that—”
“About two minutes, he says.”
“That’s not enough time to smuggle a child out of the unit and get down to radiology and back.”
“But someone did. You just said so.”
“Not me—someone,” I snapped. “Someone else, someone.”
“Really? Because I thought Lucy didn’t trust anyone else but you. So who could that someone-else someone be?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Gave up. Fuck if I knew.
Lucy, dancing in the moonlight. Lucy, swinging from the ceiling.
Then, out of the blue: my mother, with a single bullet hole in the center of her forehead.
“I’ll take care of this, Danny. Go to bed. I will take care of everything.”
“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”
“Do you need to sit down?” Karen asked me gently.
I shook my head.
“How about a glass of water? Greg, fetch Danielle a glass of water.” Karen found my right hand, cradling my fingers between her palms. But I snatched my hand back, held it against my chest. I didn’t want to be touched right now. I wanted to feel the rage, let it flood me like a river.
“Tika and Ozzie,” I stated, looking at Karen. “Ask Sergeant Warren about Tika and Ozzie.”
D.D. explained. Karen went chalky white.
“But … but … that doesn’t make any sense,” she protested feebly. “We can’t be the common denominator between two murdered families. We don’t make home visits. We work with the child, but hardly know anything about the family. Where they live, what they do … that’s not us.…”
“But you have that information,” Sergeant Warren said. A statement, not a question.
“In the files, yes.”
“And didn’t I see some poster in the lobby about an open-door policy? Parents can visit the floor anytime they want?”
“Parents are invited to visit their child whenever they want. That still doesn’t mean we know them. Their time on the floor is a small slice of their overall universe, assuming they visit at all. Most of them don’t.”
“The Harringtons?” Sergeant Warren pressed.
Karen fidgeted with her glasses, adjusting and readjusting them on her face. “Ozzie’s parents, right? The mother, she came several times. Stayed over in the beginning, then came once or twice a week after that.”
“What about the rest of the family?”
“I have no memory of them. A shame, too. Parents seem to feel they’ll traumatize their other children by bringing them to an acute-care unit, when really, it’s good for all the children to see one another and reaffirm that each is doing okay.”
D.D.’s eyes narrowed. “And Tika’s family?”
Karen shook her head, bewildered. “Greg?” she asked.
He’d just returned with a tray bearing four cups of water. He handed me one, then Karen, then offered one to Sergeant Warren, who passed.
“Tika?” he repeated. “Little girl, ’bout a year ago? Cutter?”
“That’s the one,” Warren assured him. “I understand you worked with her.”
He nodded. “Cute little thing. Had a wicked sense of humor if you could get her to open up. But yeah, she had some self-esteem issues, depression, anxiety. Maybe even suffered sexual abuse, though she never disclosed.”
“What was her family like?” Sergeant Warren wanted to know.
“Never visited.”
“Never?”
“Never. Tika’s file described the mothe
r as ‘disengaged.’ We never experienced anything different.”
“And our records show them living in Mattapan,” I spoke up, remembering the exchange between Sergeant Warren and the George Clooney detective. “We wouldn’t know they’d moved; our involvement was over and done.”
“Not so hard to look up,” Sergeant Warren said with a shrug.
“But why? We’re caretakers. We don’t hurt children. We help them.”
“Tell that to Lucy.”
“Fuck you!” I exploded.
“Eighteen minutes,” the sergeant shot back. “Gym Coach here just fetched four cups of water in a fraction of that time. Explain eighteen minutes.”
“Easy,” Karen interjected, ever the manager. “Let’s just take a deep breath here.”
“Lucy wouldn’t just wander into a radiology room,” I insisted hotly. “And where would she find the rope?”
“Like you said, someone must have helped her.”
“Lucy didn’t trust anyone. Had limited social skills, limited speech skills. Hell, we don’t even know that she had the dexterity required to tie knots. Whatever happened, it was done to her, not by her.”
“By someone she trusted,” the sergeant reiterated, staring at me, then the little string ball I held in my left hand.
“I wasn’t gone that long!”
“Maybe hanging a troubled kid is quick work.”
“Sergeant!” Karen protested.
As I heard myself say: “Dammit, I loved Lucy.”
“She attacked you.”
“It was nothing personal—”
“Looks like she tried to wring your neck.”
“It’s part of the job!”
“Does the rest of the staff have any bruises?”
“You don’t know what it’s like here. We’re the last line of defense these kids have. If we can’t help them, nobody can.”
“Really?” The sergeant’s voice turned thoughtful. “I remember now. In your own words, not much hope for a child like Lucy. Missed too many development stages. Doomed to be institutionalized the rest of her life. Some might say she was better off dead.”
Karen gasped.
I heard myself scream: “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up!”
Lucy, dancing in the moonlight. Lucy, swinging from the ceiling.
My mother with the single hole in the middle of her forehead.
“I’ll take care of this, Danny. Go to bed. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl …”
My knees gave way. The rage wasn’t enough to stave off the pain after all. Lucy, who never got a chance. My mother, who I loved so much and who still didn’t save me. Natalie and Johnny, stuck forever as stone angels.
Blood and cordite. Singing and screaming. Love and hate.
Vaguely, I was aware of Karen bending over me, ordering me to place my head between my knees. Then Karen’s voice louder, directed at the sergeant.
“You shouldn’t be pressuring her like this. Not so close to the anniversary of what happened to her family.”
“Her family?”
Greg’s voice, angry, protective. “Are you arresting her?”
“Do you think I should?”
“You need to leave now,” Karen was saying. “You’ve done enough damage for one night.”
“Two families connected to this unit are dead and one of your patients was just found hanging from the ceiling. Frankly, I think the damage is just beginning.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Greg snapped.
Greg and Karen closed in around me, a protective shield. My second family, the unit I’d probably fail just as badly as the first. I squeezed my eyes shut, wished it would all go away.
As if reading my mind, the sergeant announced crisply, “This time tomorrow, I’ll know everything there is to know about every single one of you. So you might as well get used to my charm, people. From here on out, you belong to me.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Despite D.D.’s big words, she and her team departed shortly after five a.m. The four of them had been up for thirty-six hours. Given the location of the crime scene and the sheer number of people to now question, they faced a grueling stretch of days. Might as well grab four or five hours of sleep before returning to the trenches.
As the crime-scene guru, Alex had spent the evening working in radiology. Unfortunately, the room had yielded scant physical evidence—no blood, no signs of struggle, no unexplained scuffs, dents, debris. They had the hangman’s knot from the rope, and that was about it.
Neil, who’d taken a break from flirting with the ME in order to interview every janitor in the joint, reported similar results. Yes, a janitor had caught sight of a small figure in green surgical scrubs rounding a corner. Yes, the janitor happened to notice she was trailing a rope behind her. Yes, he happened to think that was odd. No, he didn’t pursue the matter; he had other work to do.
Cameras would’ve been great, except, as Phil learned from security, the hospital used them mostly for the main-level entrances and exits, plus maternity. Radiology didn’t make the cut.
Which left them with a crime scene that, four hours later, might or might not be a crime scene.
D.D. arranged for a fresh homicide squad to take over canvassing for witnesses. She also got the hospital to agree to a twenty-four-hour security guard for the psych ward. Then she made it down to the hospital lobby before her shoulders sagged and her steps faltered from fatigue.
She took a minute in the parking lot stairwell, pinching the bridge of her nose and waiting for the worst of it to pass. She didn’t care what anyone said—the death of a kid never got any easier, and the second it did, she was quitting her job. Apparently, she didn’t have to retire just yet.
The night had sucked. She wanted to go home, take a long hot shower, then pass out on top of her bed.
Instead, her pager went off. She checked the number. Couldn’t place it. Then, given the early-morning hour and sheer curiosity, she entered the number on her cell phone and pressed Send.
“I’m worried about you.” A man’s voice immediately filled her ear.
“Who is this?”
“Andrew Lightfoot.”
“How’d you get this number?”
“You gave it to me, on your card.”
D.D. paused, searched her mental banks, and remembered that at the end of the interview, she’d handed Andrew Lightfoot her business card. Routine protocol—she’d already forgotten all about it.
“Little early to be calling, don’t you think?” She leaned against the stairwell wall, giving the conversation her full attention.
“I knew you were up. I dreamed of you.”
Lotta things D.D. could say to that. Given her shitty night, and her instinctive distrust of anyone who called himself a spiritual guru, she didn’t. “Why’re you calling, Lightfoot?”
“Please call me Andrew.”
“Please tell me why you’re calling.”
Hesitation. She found that interesting.
“There’s something wrong,” he said at last. “I don’t know how to explain it. At least not in terms you would understand.”
“A disturbance in the fabric of the cosmos?” she asked dryly.
“Exactly.”
I’ll be damned. “You talk,” D.D. decided. “I’ll listen.”
“The negative energies are building. When I visited the interplanes earlier tonight, I found entire pockets of dark, roiling rage. I could feel a hum, like a vibration of great evil. The light had fled. I’ve never seen so many shadows.”
“The negative forces are winning the war?”
“Tonight, I would say yes.”
“Has that happened before?”
“I’ve never encountered such a thing. Sometimes, when I’m leading group meditation, I’ll stumble across a particularly malevolent force. But the collective strength of the group, the exponential power of the light, enables me to con
front such negativity and force it back into its small and insignificant space. Tonight … it’s as if the inverse has happened. Dark calling to dark. Feeding, growing, exploding. Alone and unprepared, there was nothing I could do.”
“You got your ass kicked on the spiritual superhighway?”
“I wouldn’t laugh about this, D.D.”
“And I don’t have jurisdiction over evil energies. What the hell do you want from me?”
Andrew’s voice changed. “You’re tired. You’ve suffered tonight. I apologize.”
Instantly, she was on edge. “What do you know of my suffering?”
“I’m a healer. I can feel it. Your aura, bright white when we first met, has turned to blue. You’re not comfortable with blue. You do better with red, though I prefer white.”
D.D. pinched the bridge of her nose again. “Why are you calling, Andrew?”
“Something is coming.”
“Evil wants to take over the universe.”
“Evil always wants to take over the universe. I’m telling you that this time, it’s winning.”
“How?”
“It has a purpose, I think. The purpose has given it power.”
“What’s its purpose?”
“It wants something.”
“All right,” she said wearily. “What does it want?”
No immediate answer. Maybe Andrew had gone back to the interplanes. In the silence, it occurred to her to ask: “How’s Tika doing?”
“Tika?” Andrew echoed back. Good answer.
“Danielle Burton thought you knew her,” D.D. fished again. “You know, from the Boston psych ward.”
“She’s angry with me.”
“Tika?”
“Danielle. I want her to heal more than she wants to heal. Forgiving is hard work. It’s easier for her to hate me.”
“So you two know each other. Spend much time on the psych ward, Andrew?”
“Don’t be angry with Danielle,” he continued. “Without the children, she would be lost. Without their love, the darkness would consume her completely.”
“Why do you say that, Andrew?”
“Her story to tell.”
“But you want her to heal. Tell me, and I’ll help.”