by Alex Gates
My heart sunk.
Or she might have returned to any of the apartments that surrounded the store.
Shadyside was a popular Pittsburgh neighborhood, and I could count three residential complexes adjacent to the shopping center. I hoped to God the woman had the sense to head to UPMC Hospital up the block.
But why not bring the baby?
I hated to wish that the mother was sick—stricken with some sort of illness that impacted her judgement and behavior—but I wasn’t that optimistic.
She’d wanted to leave the baby. The woman didn’t want to be found.
“This way!” Larry shouted from outside the bathroom. The door burst open, and two paramedics rushed inside.
I recognized one—the man. Kevin. A former combat medic who’d traded his camo for a blue EMT uniform. Still kept his hair buzzed army style, but I didn’t know what was worse—treating soldiers in Iraq…or taking a cold, silent baby from my arms.
“What the hell did you get yourself into now, McKenna?” Kevin handed the infant to his partner and helped to wrap her in a Mylar blanket. “Can’t you stay out of trouble?”
It was a question my boyfriend, my sergeant, and half of the department kept asking. I didn’t have an answer for any of them.
“I don’t know how long she was here before I found her.” I stood, wiping the wet and sticky from my hands. “Minutes. Maybe an hour? No sign of the mother.”
“She left her?”
“Looks like it.”
“Heartless fucking monster.” Kevin busied himself with the girl, helping his partner take vitals. “You following us to the hospital?”
I’d be no more use there than I would be trying to cuddle the baby in her own afterbirth. “No. I’m going to search for the mother. You take her. I’ll check in.”
“Good luck.”
Kevin wasted no time, lingering only long enough to curse the woman for leaving her child.
How the hell was I going to find her?
My adrenaline didn’t just crash, it had a bad habit of exploding. My head throbbed. My back ached. The exhaustion parked an elephant on my chest who gloated as I struggled to breathe. Par for the course, a long day made longer by rampant abuse, cruelty, and a frustrating mystery guaranteed to keep me up all goddamned night while I worried about both mother and child.
I groaned as I stood, my legs twisting in a dire need to still use the bathroom. I raced for the cleanest stall, clear of most afterbirth, fluids, and blood.
I didn’t get to sit. I slammed the door and stared into a folded piece of notebook paper, meticulously creased and hung from the purse hook.
I reached for the note, the crinkling of the paper prickling the hair on my neck. The words were scrawled fast, desperate and pained. A stain of crimson streaked the bottom of the note.
Six words.
Not an apology, but a plea. Terrified. Panicked.
Tearful.
I couldn’t let them take her.
2
“Why am I doing this?
I bet that question eats you up from the inside.”
-Him
The mother must have been in danger if her only option was to abandon her newborn child.
I’d already saved the baby. Now I had to save her.
I dropped the note onto my desk and collapsed in my chair. The Missing Persons department quieted after nine o’clock unless someone was working on an active, high-risk case. Never felt right going home to a warm bed, bag of Doritos, and a Netflix binge when a Missing was out there, potentially cold, lost, and hungry on the streets.
Or worse.
I’d seen too much worse lately.
And I’d give up my entire night and more if I could help the woman who gave birth to that baby. Something had frightened her into committing an unthinkable crime. But who had that sort of control over a woman? Who could terrify her enough to overwhelm her most basic instinct?
And what would they do to the child if they found her?
I checked my cell. Only one text. If nothing else, James and I had a thriving, productive relationship with each other’s cell phones. He hadn’t mastered nor even attempted emojis yet, but the texts were usually entertaining, even if they were for the wrong reasons.
Working Late? Text when you find some cover. Call if you need backup.
Knowing James? He’d bring the whole FBI with him if I asked. He’d been overprotective ever since the day we met—probably before, when he took the case of a young college girl kidnapped off the street in broad daylight by the killer he’d spent years profiling. Not that he didn’t have reason to worry these days. I’d barely escaped the past winter, dodging more gunfights, explosions, and shallow graves than most in the department usually encountered.
Ever encountered.
Solving a big case generally meant accolades and recognition, meet-and-greets with commanding officers while we nibbled stale cookies and drank weak punch.
I didn’t even get a ribbon. Instead, they slapped a new label on me.
Trouble.
And this case was only going to cause more.
James answered on the second ring, but I wasn’t the only one working late. The speaker phone echoed in our home office. The keyboard clacked as he typed. The doctors had warned he wasn’t supposed to be on the computer after nine—bad for his eyesight, worse for our relationship as I nagged the ever-loving shit out of him. Every hour on the computer shaved days off his career, but at least the profiles and reports had the potential to save a victim.
Men as smart, strong, and capable as James didn’t retire at forty. They were dragged out of the field and into offices, then forced from the bureau when the time came…and that day was coming sooner than either of us had expected.
“Let me guess…” His smile warmed through his voice. The good smile—the kind that charmed the shirt, bra, and panties off me. “Our anniversary date is cancelled?”
I checked the time—another practical reason to receive a watch and not an engagement ring for my birthday. A diamond couldn’t tell time, but it sure as hell tethered me to a biological clock—the one that ticked like a damn time bomb. I could snip those wires, but I’d rather face an explosion than my mother’s fury.
“It’s getting late anyway,” I said. “We wouldn’t have had much time to eat.”
“I didn’t care so much about the dinner, London. I wanted what comes after.”
“Dishes?”
“One of us will get wet.”
The excited, damnable giggle fluttered out of me before I could groan at the pun. I wasn’t used to being this normal. Flirting with my live-in boyfriend? Hell, I was almost conventional at this point. It took some…adjustment. James made me feel like the only woman in the world, but that was the problem.
I’d been the center of someone’s universe before, and it had ended in bloodshed, skin grafts, and good, old-fashioned PTSD.
Couldn’t really look forward to a future with James when I still had to check every shadow behind me. But what we had worked. The calls when we’d be late to dinner. Catching James when he lied about being late to said dinner so he could sneak a cheeseburger instead of my vegetarian options. Sharing a bed. Hell, sharing a damn toothbrush when his vision was too poor to differentiate the two in the dim morning light.
I tapped a pencil against my notepad, doodling dizzying circles. “Something came up.”
“You okay?”
“I’m not scarred for life.”
“Always a cause to celebrate with you.”
I sighed. “I found an abandoned baby at the grocery store.”
“I hope you used a coupon.”
I smirked. Only James could coax a smile from me. Always possessed that superpower, even when I had so little to make me happy. “Be glad it wasn’t a BOGO.”
“Huh…was it the baby from the news?”
My chair creaked. I planted my feet, but it fell backward anyway. “The what?”
“Story on WTAE.
A baby found in a Giant Eagle bathroom.”
“Son of a—”
James hummed. “And that would explain why a statement from the police was forthcoming.”
“Goddamn it—”
And that was the cue. The department’s doors swung open, crashing against the wall. Sergeant Bruce Adamski pointed a thick finger at me. Unless the coat, tie, and cummerbund were his regular attire after hours at home, it looked like I’d saved him from a stuffy and formal fundraiser.
“James, I gotta go. Bruce is in dress shoes and pissed.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Don’t wait up for me.”
“Love you.”
I hung up before answering. Wasn’t used to saying it. Hearing it.
Believing it.
Maybe by our third anniversary I’d be more comfortable whispering my reply in public.
“McKenna.” Adamski’s cheeks flushed the red of a man irritated, uncomfortable, and hungry. “Allow me to paint you a picture of my evening.”
“Bruce—”
“It begins at a white-collar dinner that cost fifteen hundred dollars a ticket for me and my wife. Imagine me, dining with Lieutenant Clark, Assistant Chief Esposto, and Chief Graziani.”
That sort of bureaucracy caused indigestion. He should have thanked me. He rubbed his fingers, prematurely arthritic thanks to his rheumatoid. At least the discomfort and formal tux prevented him from hiking his pants high in his usual indignation. Maybe the suspenders would tide his fury.
“Imagine my surprise when the Lieutenant gets a call from his contact at the Post-Gazette,” Adamski said. “Seems one of my detectives not only rescued a baby tonight, but is now a local hero on social media. Pictures of her and the victim are circulating on Facegram and Instabook!”
The mispronunciations baited me into entering the argument, but this little guppy stayed quiet. At fifty-seven and loaded with champagne, Adamski didn’t have the energy to waste on arguing. Instead, I silently cursed the teenage clerk. She must have snapped pictures at the store. Never should have trusted a girl with lipstick as black as her iPhone.
“You realize what this mistake cost me?” Adamski asked. “Tonight, I had to play politics. I had to choke down a fifteen-hundred-dollar overdone steak while kissing the asses of my commanding officers and schmoozing the new jagoff state senator just so I could be considered for a promotion. Know what that is, McKenna? No? Good. Cause you’re not getting a promotion for a long damn time.”
Adamski pitched his jacket onto my desk. Didn’t have the heart to tell him about the smear of A-1 sauce dotted between his straining buttons.
I leaned forward, fatigue eating through my patience. “Tomorrow we’re gonna have this talk again. Then you can shower me with praise for saving that baby’s life.”
“I’ll have the city throw you a ticker-tape parade—shred up all the newspapers covering this goddamned story.”
“I didn’t know a picture was circulating,” I said. “James just told me it was on the news.”
“And does Doctor Novak know how to silence the media when they’re absolutely foaming at the mouth to report this sort of scandal? Abandoned babies. Heartless mothers. They live for this shit.”
“And the baby nearly died because of it. Show some damn compassion.”
“I need some good news, London. I got two newspapers looking for headlines tomorrow and three television stations that want to use this as their lead in for their eleven o’clock.” He popped a roll of Tums from his pocket and chewed two. “Plus, I got one do-gooder senator in Grant Harding who glued himself to me when this story broke. He’s already got a platform built on the state’s children. After tonight, he’s got himself a prop baby to use while he goes around preaching family values.”
“The baby’s alive.” It was the best and only news I had. “She’s at the hospital.”
“Think she’ll make it?”
“Seems a waste of amniotic fluid to give up now.”
Adamski struggled to unhook his cufflinks and made a beeline for the coffee pot.
Empty. He swore.
“I’ve been choking down champagne and wine all goddamned night. Paying fifteen hundred dollars to some pretty boy senator for a burnt steak and a hot salad. Charred, you believe it? They cooked the salad greens.”
I picked at a piece of gum stuck to my jeans from the bathroom floor. “Sounds rough.”
“The police union backed Harding this past election, but after a shitty dinner like that? Hell, they might flip on him. This is what happens when those goddamned lobbying groups park some up-and-coming asshole before the union and promise that he’ll represent the real interests of the force.” He ripped the coffee grounds completely open, spilling caffeinated dust on the floor. He kicked the bag away and opened a new one. “It’s always the same bull-shitter wrapped in the same designer suit with his handlers serving the same mediocre food, all to pluck your wallet dry. But you gotta play the game if you wanna get ahead. Hear me, London?” His bushy eyebrows nearly popped up to his hairline. “Eat their terrible steak and shake the politicians’ hands. Only way to survive in this career anymore.”
He slammed the coffee grounds into the machine but forgot to add water when he threw the switch. His profanity echoed through the office. Given the late hour and the straining waistband of his rented tux, I almost forgave his irritability.
Almost.
“You realize I’m the one covered in afterbirth, right?” I held my arms out, away from my soiled t-shirt and jeans. “But I’m sorry. You were saying? The champagne was a shit year compared to the bottle they served at your last gala?”
Adamski sighed and offered to make me a cup of coffee too. Apology accepted.
“How the hell did you, of all people, find a baby?” he asked.
“Had to pee at the right place at the right time.”
“Better gild that bladder, girl. It’s lucky.”
My eighth-grade slumber party fiasco begged to differ. Adamski relaxed as the coffee began to trickle. He finally unhooked his cufflinks and clip-on tie.
“So, what the hell happened? Where’s the mother?”
The thought curdled my stomach. “I have no idea. I called UPMC, West Penn, Allegheny General, and McGee hospital on my way in. No women were admitted with symptoms that matched a recent birth. I have a couple more places to check, but dispatch has ears out for any 911 calls.”
“So, you think Momma popped out the kid and then walked home?”
If only. “No, I think Momma might be bleeding to death in a dark and dirty alley.”
“Serves her right.”
“Bruce, for Christ’s sake—”
He pulled the kid card and shook his head. “As a father, I can’t imagine the type of woman who would give birth and immediately abandon her child.”
“You’re already demonizing her.”
“London, you’re one of the few people who actually knows what evil looks like.”
And no one would let me forget it. “There’s a difference between a mother in trouble and a serial killer plotting his next kill.”
Adamski poured his coffee, muttering into the cup. “And meal.”
I ignored the implication. Easier than ignoring memories. “The mother could be sick, hurt, or dying. Who knows why she did this, but she’s obviously afraid of someone harming her or the baby.”
I passed him the evidence bag with the note tucked inside. The words twisted a shiver down my spine.
Adamski frowned. “I couldn’t let them take her?”
“We need to find this woman. Now.”
“You’re goddamned right,” he said. “We’ve gotta arrest her.”
“Or get her help.”
“Plenty of help in prison.”
He and I both knew that wasn’t true. “She had the baby in secret, Bruce. Alone and scared and in an immeasurable amount of pain. She left this note to…tell us something. To explain.”
“Then why didn’t
she take the time to write ‘I’m running from my abusive ex’ or ‘she’s an alien baby and the Martians are coming for her’?”
“Because she just gave birth in a grocery store bathroom? Come on, Bruce. Drop the attitude or I’ll call your wife right now. Maybe then you can lecture the mother of four about why women act the way they do when they give birth.”
“Fair enough.” He offered me my cup—too many sugars and enough milk to turn it tan, just how I liked it. “But let’s be practical. What’s more likely—a woman on the run who feels a grimy bathroom floor is safer for her baby than her own arms…or the deluded ramblings of a paranoid whack job so crazy she gave birth in a grocery store?”
“Maybe she was so desperate she gave birth in the first place she could find.” Something about the case unsettled my stomach more than the reaction to the abandonment. I checked the time. I’d lost too many precious minutes between leaving the scene and waiting for the surveillance footage to arrive at the station. “There’s a reason she didn’t go to the hospital, and it’s the same reason she left this note. She’s terrified.”
Adamski guzzled his coffee as if the bottom of the cup could offer the insight needed to properly condescend to me. “For someone who has seen the darkest parts of this world, you have a lot of faith in this woman.”
“I’ve seen some good in it too. It’s just harder to recognize.”
“We don’t know why she did this.” He played it too cautious. “She could be young. She could be mentally ill. She could be a monster.”
“Or she could be in trouble.”
“And it’s your job to find her,” he said. “But I guarantee she’s not some Virgin Mary who used the produce section for a manger.”
The doors opened, and a haggard officer jogged in, tossing me a manila envelope with three DVDs tucked inside. My security footage from the store. He gave me a grin.
“If my wife hears you can get babies from Giant Eagle, I’m screwed,” he said.
Adamski snorted. “But at those prices, you’re better off getting your kids from Wal-Mart.”
I thanked the officer and removed the DVD from the envelope, waving it at Adamski. “You want to make the popcorn or should I?”