Romy, an only child from a long line of only children who have all passed away, mourns her mother who would have slept on the chair by her hospital bed for as long as it took for Romy to recover. She mourns her beloved father who would have babysat and spoiled the children with too much candy.
When they moved to Fenny before Helena’s birth, Romy envisioned girlfriends with babies. She’d imagined play dates, girls’ nights out, home decorating consultations, potluck dinners, and good friends to lean on in times of crisis and sorrow. But she focused on work and family and didn’t notice the lack of female friendships because she had Ben.
The Kiknicky family had Harvey Sam for whom Romy had reserved the seat beside her at the funeral home. Harvey Sam, the best friend Ben trusted. Harvey Sam, a man Romy loved. Because, if she’s being brutally honest, during times of marital discord with Ben, the man Romy fantasized about was Harvey.
Another patient hauling an IV pole arrives to use the phone. “All yours,” Romy says. She hangs up the receiver and wheels herself away. She’s too tired to fight the karma she’s earned.
«63»
As Harvey arrives at the precinct for the remainder of a shift, he tries to shake off the image of a small ravaged body and tangled blond curls. The child was identified as a local six-year-old within minutes of Harvey’s arrival at a neighboring town’s morgue, but not before he’d viewed the accidental drowning victim’s corpse.
He walks towards the precinct, exhausted by a post-morgue whiskey he tossed back at lunch. Everything about his place of work rubs him the wrong way. Why, for instance, has nothing changed since unimaginative contractors built the imposing cement building in the early ‘70s? He dislikes the row of windows on the second floor, one with a mangled blind and another with half-dead hanging plant. He’s disgusted by the empty concrete planter that’s supposed to have flowers in it, not cigarette butts.
He pushes through the heavy glass door that should have been fixed years ago, and remains a source of perpetual complaint for Fenny’s elderly population. Inside smells of stale human and electronic activity. He waves at Verna as the stalwart staffer fields the public’s tedious grievances and questions from inside her box. Next, he passes through the gate to the General Investigation Section office, the place he most feel his disgrace.
Harvey’s desk looks the same as he left it yesterday: cluttered with two dirty hot chocolate mugs, a full in-box and a half-eaten glazed donut on a paper plate. His colleagues’ desks all have tidy in-boxes and one even sports a bouquet of mini sunflowers.
Harvey picks up a clay figurine barely identifiable as a police officer. He’s kept the cherished object on his desk since Effie made it for him in kindergarten, but he drops it into his wastebasket, needing to move on. Today, after work, he won’t make his daily futile attempt to speak with Effie on the phone, knowing Pam will answer. Yesterday, his bitter ex went as far as to accuse him of stalking. If he ever calls again, she’ll make good on her threat to file for a restraining order.
It’s only when the other officer who did overtime to cover his morning absence calls his name that Harvey notices her presence by the fax machine. He steps closer. Even though the transmission isn’t clear, he can see it’s a photo of a horrifically battered, but living child. Adrenaline instantly clears the whiskey fog from his brain.
“These are from a disposable camera that arrived at the Trenton station this morning,” the officer says. “They need help to identify the victim.” She hands Harvey a second image, this time of a painting rather than a photograph. She touches a caption on the bottom: Our Child of Sorrows. “Good lord,” she sighs. Harvey doesn’t need confirmation: The emaciated boy with multiple injuries is Gabriel Wheeler.
Harvey waits for a third image to come through. There are blurry details of a driveway with the corner of a house visible on the right and two parked vehicles. Half of a car’s license plate is obscured by the back-end of a large, brown mutt. But the plate of a van the receiving officer suspects belongs to the sick perp is clear as day.
It’s what Harvey has waited for, the one thing that can lift his depression and restore his self-worth. Finally, he gets the break in the case that could lead to a solve.
¤
Trenton is far enough away from Fenny to have an alien landscape. One of the differences hits Harvey the moment he exits the PacificJet plane to walk across the tarmac. The air is hot, dry and hushed despite all of the activity. It feels as though the intense heat has turned matter sluggish.
Apricots and peaches grow here. In July and August the temperatures are known to get hot enough to melt blacktop. The predators are different too. The grass hides ticks, black widow spiders, and, a rarity for the west, poisonous snakes. And possibly something rare: a female child abductor.
He’s traveled light with his badge, gun, street clothes, toiletries and the fax of Gabriel Wheeler. He also has an empty stomach and a need for hot chocolate to keep his cognition sharp.
Sergeant Janice Barrie met him at Arrivals. Harvey had developed an image of the woman from their conversations that proved wrong. Rather than small and mousy, Janice is middle-aged, thick all over, with masculine facial features. The greatest surprise, however, was her hair; the razor-sharp cut is schizophrenically blond in the front and purple in the back. Harvey thinks she should sue her hairdresser.
Janice loads her ample body into the squad car. “So what’ll it be first,” she says. “Lunch or work?”
“Work,” Harvey says.
She hands him a large coffee, with enough caffeine to knock him out for a week, and a sugary donut that might cancel out the caffeine if he eats it first. “I guessed you’d feel that way.”
Harvey tries to look his grateful best.
Janice peels out of the parking lot. “Alrighty,” she says, “let’s go snag ourselves a fiend.”
«64»
Chase has a stash of booze in the motel room to get her through the last few hours as Gabriel Wheeler’s protector. Her fifth beer is down to warm swill and, as Chase gets up to crack the lid on another, she picks up the morning copy of the Fenny Times. She flips to the Arts and Entertainment page, to the ad that caught her attention at the newsstand where she purchased cigarettes. Elvis “Melvin” Presley will appear at The Star Lounge on Fifth Street for one matinee only. This quality entertainment is slotted from 1:00-3:00 p.m. today.
Things came to a head that morning, so it’s crazy she’s still in Fenny three hours later. When Chase finished with the anti-hangover bath she’d taken, Gabriel was dressed and lying on the bed as rigid as one of Crawley’s freaky statues. He’d cried at some point in the morning; the dried snot on his face was a dead giveaway, not that he’d talk about it. Later, when Radar refused to take his usual morning crap, Chase figured it out. While Chase soaked, against orders the boy paraded his distinctive head of hair and huge blue eyes outside the safety of the motel room.
Chase crumples the Fenny Times. After checking that the boy is still fast asleep, she changes into Starlight Lounge-worthy clothes. All she has to do is track down a hooker with an Elvis fetish, then slip her the address of where she’ll find her missing son. Escaping this gong show will be that easy.
¤
Chase butts out her cigarette, eager to follow Celine Wheeler who is finally on the move. Twice she’s disappeared into the bathroom, likely to score whatever substance she’s riding high on. Now she wobbles out the front door of the Starlight Lounge with a huge silver purse swinging on her skanky arm. The hair she piled up on top of her head has fallen down in places.
Chase follows, practically on Celine’s heels, ready to shove the paper with the motel address and info about Gabriel into her hand before running to her hidden van. Suddenly Celine bats the air in front of her, then staggers to one side. “Git,” she says. “Fucking ghost.”
“You, too,” she says to Chase. “Git.” She thumps down hard on the curb, letting her skirt ride up, revealing a purple bruise on her leg. Celine’s reproach
ful eyes find Chase’s face. She’s a twist on Willard’s paintings, a female Gabriel with insanity instead of submission oozing from her eyes.
Without warning, Celine grasps Chase’s leg at the ankle. Her sharp red nails bite in. When Chase yanks her leg away, Celine says, “Another fucking angry ghost.”
“This isn’t Zombies,” Chase says.
“My man’s an angry ghost. My baby, too. Gabe’s pissed ‘cause I didn’t find him. It’s not like I didn’t try. He should have called. He knew the fucking number.”
“Gabriel isn’t dead,” Chase says.
Any beauty Celine has is lost as her face twists with hatred. “He’d better fucking be,” she says. “If that little bugger’s alive, I’m gonna kill him for haunting me.”
«65»
“We caught a lucky break,” Janice tells Harvey as they surge from her squad car and head towards 675 Balmoral Street. “One of our officers lives a few blocks away. He recognized the suspect’s house in the photo. Got here too late, though. Both the kid and the woman were gone.”
Harvey is introduced to the suspect’s landlord, a small man with a thin mustache standing on the edge of a driveway Janice’s team has secured as a crime scene.
The man’s a speed-talker. “Owning a rental home isn’t worth the hassle, let me tell you,” he complains. “Every single time my renters move, I have to pay for pick-up of all the crap they leave behind. Then there’s the cleaning and repairs. ” The man pauses long enough to swipe a tear from what looks like an infected eye. “The damage deposit barely covers the cost. And now I won’t even be able to rent the place out again until you folks are done.”
Harvey subdues an urge to forcibly shut the imbecile up. He steadies a copy of Gabriel Wheeler’s photograph for his viewing pleasure. “Does this boy look familiar?” he asks.
The man barely scans the paper. “Naw. Those other cops already asked me that.” He dismisses the image with a slap of the back of his hand. “What I did recognize was the room in the picture where the boy is.” He gesticulates towards the far right corner of the house. “Second bedroom. I can tell by the wallpaper. Pink stripes with yellow roses. I’m not surprised my tenant kept a kidnapped kid in the house. She always struck me as a freak. Got my Spidey senses tingling up every time we had dealings.”
Harvey moves past the line of yellow tape used to cordon off the yard. “Next time you have spider trouble,” he says, “do everyone a favor and give us a call.”
¤
An hour later, when Harvey enters the slain woman’s house a few doors down, he can’t say he wasn’t warned; Janice used the words “overripe” and “gruesome” when she described the state of the corpse. Instead of being ushered gently out of this life, eighty-six-year-old Bernice Young was gagged, taped, bound, terrorized, suffocated and robbed. Then she was left to turn into a stinking, leaking mess that will require a HAZMAT team to clean up. The hardwood floors will need replacing and probably the beams beneath them too. Good luck to any surviving family member who tries to sell the house.
As if all of that isn’t bad enough, the murderer left a trail of blueberry muffin crumbs through the kitchen. Dine and dash has taken on a whole new meaning.
Harvey swats his way past a cyclone of flies to join Janice who’s watching her gloved and masked team collect and photograph the evidence. “Coroner’s on her way,” she says. She offers Harvey an embroidered handkerchief wet with floral perfume. The cloying scent is an improvement over the thick stench of rotting flesh and guts, though not by much. He waves the cloth near his nose until Janice demands it back. “Hankies and Avon are in the first bedroom,” she says. “Get your own, but be discreet about tampering with the evidence.”
“I’m good,” Harvey says.
Janice flashes him an amused smile. “Wait ‘til the stink sticks to your skin even after your bath tonight. You won’t be so good then, my friend.”
Harvey watches a young policeman do battle with his gag reflex as he dusts a chair arm for prints. “So tell me what we’ve got here.”
“Looks like a robbery. Car’s gone. We’ve got an officer with the daughter who says her mother didn’t keep cash or valuables in the house. Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to get a late model Ford Tempo with a quarter tank of gas. The daughter kept it deliberately low so her mother could get to the corner store and back, but not get lost in the boonies.” Janice taps her head. “Early signs of dementia. My people are checking the gas stations within radius for a sighting of the car.”
“Think it was Gabriel Wheeler’s abductor?”
“Could be. Trouble is, she drives a van and that’s missing too. This travesty might be coincidence.”
Harvey circles the body to check out the killer’s work from every angle. “Maybe she used the Tempo to move the boy before she ran,” he says.
“We’re all over that. Hope we’re wrong, though. I can’t imagine it’d be good news for the kid if we’re not.”
Harvey crouches down in front of the corpse. Skin shows through the wispy white hair of the slumped head. He can’t see the woman’s face, which is a mercy. He straightens up, hears his spine crack with released tension.
The coroner, a small woman with a Jamaican accent, hustles into the room. She confers with Janice briefly before turning her rapt attention to the corpse. “I’d say we’re two to three days into death,” she says. “I’ll shorten the window for you after my examination.”
“Can’t wait to read the report,” Janice says. She touches Harvey’s elbow, leads him out the door and down a marigold-lined walkway. “We have another house call to make,” she says. “The suspect’s nearest neighbor to the south. The man returned home from abdominal surgery a week ago and hasn’t been seen since. A neighbor reported seeing someone they think was the perp coming out of the house at night while the owner was in hospital. My people did a sweep of the house. No corpse. Doubt he’s vacationing in St. Barts though. We just might have a serial killeress on our hands.”
“There goes the neighborhood,” Harvey says. He follows Janice as she cuts across a lawn strewn with tacky statues. When they reach the door, Janice puts the handkerchief to her face again.
“You said no body.”
“You’ll wish you had a full contamination suit.” Janice swings the door open on a scene straight off of Hoarders. “I planned to redecorate my kitchen in French provincial. Now I’m reconsidering. Early North American hell-hole is quite the look.”
Harvey follows her into a forensic nightmare of grease, dust, crud and clutter. “I smell bleach,” Harvey says.
“Good nose. We found a spot of blood downstairs that would have been useful for DNA testing, if not for the bleach contamination. We sent in a few hairs that had their roots and follicles intact. We also found a cigarette butt, which is interesting because the homeowner, Willard Crawley, didn’t smoke according to his co-workers. The chick next door was a chimney, though.”
Harvey does a circuit of the kitchen. “At some point he locked his kitchen cupboards and the fridge. That’s odd.”
“Probably tetched in the head, as my mother used to say,” Janice says. “My best guess is that the poor soul paid for something his nicotine-craving neighbor didn’t like him seeing.”
“Now here’s something interesting,” Janice waves what Harvey sees by the title is a yellowed property deed. She skims the document as Harvey steps closer to read over her shoulder. “Looks like our missing man holds title to a forty-acre parcel up in the North Country.” She taps an old surveyor’s topographical map. “It’s closer to your stomping grounds. Know the area?”
“It’s mostly unsettled forest,” Harvey says, “not cottage country.”
“The surveyor’s sketch shows a cabin on the property. Can’t say I’d blame him if our Mr. Crawley blew off work to take an impulsive vacation. What d’ya say, Mr. Sam? Care to make a little house call up north?”
“Nothing I’d like better,” Harvey says.
«66»
>
Willard’s non-stop drive has put a strain on his health. The surgical site weeps a mix of blood and pus that’s leaked beyond the edges of his bandages. The skin around the incision is hot to the touch. He needs a stomach full of food and pain-killers, a cozy bed and a good night’s sleep, even though it’s still afternoon.
It’s not just his ill health that makes it hard to be in Fenny. He’s come full circle, back to the place where he made a bad mistake. At least the town looks different in summer; instead of snow there are dry streets and pretty children outside playing. The only familiar things are the school, and Leuvekamp’s Corner Market where he pulls in to shop. The thought stirs up a memory of a tall woman buying treats for her “little sweetheart.” The bragging mother’s words caused Willard’s confusion when he met the faker moments after.
At least he doesn’t have to find a motel. As he drove into town, Willard discovered a secret place to stay. He likes the deserted trailer even though it smells of animal and he can touch a tree branch through a hole in the ceiling. There’s a pile of old Marvel comic books and shag carpet. He feels a sting of disappointment that Terrance isn’t present to share their new home.
He’ll find his little brother soon. When he does, they’ll hunker down here together until Willard finishes off the faker. If the police find him first, Gabriel will ruin the reunited brothers’ future by finking. Willard can’t let that happen.
The old trailer suits their needs and Willard’s shopping trip has solved the problem of comfort. He now has camping supplies, including twin air mattresses that promise a good night’s rest and two sleeping bags. Terrance’s bag has pretty rainbows Willard hopes his brother will like.
All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1) Page 16