Jubilee's Journey

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “Does Grandma Olivia know you’re here?” Ethan asked suspiciously.

  “She sure does. She’s the one who said it’d be okay to talk with you.”

  With the look of doubt spreading across his face, Ethan said, “Grandma wants me to tell you about that?”

  “Honest. I was up there a few minutes ago, and she said ‘When Ethan gets home from school you can ask him.’”

  “I don’t know.” Ethan shook his head. “That don’t sound like Grandma Olivia.”

  “You think I’d lie?”

  “I suppose not,” Ethan answered, but the expression on his face argued the point.

  Trying to move back to the questions he had in mind, Mahoney said, “About this girl you brought home. She was just sitting on the bench across from Klaussner’s on the day of the shooting?”

  “You’re sure Grandma Olivia said I’m supposed to talk about this?”

  Mahoney nodded.

  “I ain’t looking to get Jubie in trouble.”

  “Nobody’s in trouble. I’m just trying to get the facts.”

  Ethan shrugged as if he still had some doubt. “I’d feel a lot better about this if we was to check with Grandma first.”

  “Okay,” Mahoney relented, “let’s go upstairs. That way I can talk with Jubilee also.”

  “Who told you her name was Jubilee?” Ethan asked suspiciously.

  “Your grandmother,” Mahoney answered, and the boy smiled.

  When they arrived at the apartment, Clara and Fred McGinty were sitting on the sofa. Clara had a notepad and pencil in her lap, and McGinty had a camera.

  “I have witnesses,” Olivia warned, “and as I said earlier I will not allow you to badger or scare Jubilee. Right now she has no family, and I feel it’s my responsibility to see to her well-being until we locate her aunt.”

  “Agreed.” Detective Mahoney nodded.

  Olivia disappeared into the bedroom and came back with the girl. After introducing her to the detective, she sat Jubilee between Clara and McGinty and told Ethan Allen to squeeze in alongside. Olivia sat in her silk chair, which left only the club chair on the far side of the seating arrangement for Mahoney.

  He knew it would have been better if he could have sat alongside the girl, close up. He could tell when a person was lying, but across the room could be iffy. Mahoney began with cordialities meant to put the girl at ease.

  “That’s a very pretty dress you’re wearing.”

  “I got five more,” Jubilee answered, “and I got panties with—” She stopped when she saw Olivia frown and shake her head. That had been the plan. Jubilee was to watch Olivia—a nod meant it was okay to answer, a shake of the head indicated she shouldn’t answer. So far, so good.

  The first few questions were about the missing aunt, and Olivia nodded for each one. When Mahoney got to the part where he asked how she came to be sitting on the bench, she forgot to look at Olivia first and blurted out, “Paul told me to wait there.”

  Olivia’s head was going back and forth like a tennis ball when Mahoney then asked if Paul was her brother. Jubilee saw Olivia’s head shake, turned to her, and asked, “Why ain’t I supposed to say Paul’s my brother?”

  Rolling her eyes wearily, Olivia was pushed into saying, “Of course you can say Paul’s your brother. You should always tell the truth.”

  “Oh, okay.” Jubilee stopped looking at Olivia’s nods and shakes and answered the rest of the questions. When Detective Mahoney asked if it was a customary thing for Paul to leave her alone that way, Jubie narrowed her eyes and said, “He don’t never leave me alone!”

  “Why do you think he left you alone this time?”

  “He had to do a job so we’d have money.”

  “Were those Paul’s exact words? Did he say he had to do a job?”

  “Yes!” she answered angrily. “He saw the sign!”

  “What did the sign say?”

  “It said working was for a lot of money.” Jubilee’s eyes began to fill with tears. “If you find Paul, tell him not to do working. I don’t want a sleeping room and good food.”

  Ethan Allen spoke up. “If you’re figuring Jubie was in on that robbery, you’re figuring wrong. She didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  Mahoney asked several more questions. By then Olivia had given up trying to steer the conversation one way or the other, so Jubilee told the story pretty much as it happened. As he sat and listened it seemed the girl grew smaller, more vulnerable with each word. Even from clear across the room, he could see she spoke the truth—but he had yet to find out the brother’s intentions.

  By the time Mahoney stood to leave, Clara had scribbled five pages of notes and Fred had used up the entire roll of film. Ignoring both of them Mahoney walked over, knelt down in front of the girl, and lifted her hand into his.

  “Jubilee,” he said, “I’m going to do everything possible to find your brother and your Aunt Anita.”

  Before he left the building, Mahoney knew he had no choice but to keep the promise he’d made to Jubilee Jones. Unfortunately, it probably meant tangling with Hector Gomez again.

  Olivia Doyle

  I should have realized Jubilee is too young to be devious, and Detective Mahoney is too smart to be fooled. I can’t be angry with the child, because all she did was tell the truth. I’ve always believed the truth can’t hurt you, but times like this I find myself doubtful.

  If Jubilee’s brother was involved in the shooting, I’m hoping he’s the one who got away. Seeing a person you love go to prison would shatter the heart of a grownup; I can’t begin to imagine what it would do to a tiny little thing like Jubilee. I think it would be better for her to believe Paul ran off and is safe somewhere else than to know he’s locked up behind bars for shooting a man. I pray before any of this comes to pass Mister Mahoney will find this Aunt Anita so Jubilee can be with her. If a child has someone to love them, a family to call their own, hardships are easier to bear. If not easier, at least they’ve got a caring shoulder to cry on.

  I suppose every nickel has its shiny side, and the shiny side of this one is getting rid of Jim Turner. Unfortunately, there’s also a second side, and right now it’s warning me that people like Jim don’t give up. They make you think they have, but if you could see inside their head you’d discover they’re just thinking of another way to come at you.

  I’d like to believe I can stop worrying he’ll come knocking on my door again, but the sorry truth is that I’d better start worrying about finding Anita so Jubilee will be living with her when Jim finally comes up with something else.

  Verdict Before Trial

  As soon as Mahoney settled himself in the car, Griffin asked how it had gone. Mahoney shrugged and didn’t answer for several minutes.

  “After thinking about this,” he finally said, “I believe we’ve got to get involved.”

  “It’s not in our jurisdiction,” Griffin warned. “We’ve got no authority.”

  “I know.”

  “The kid got to you, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” Mahoney nodded. “But as I said before, there’s a lot going on here.”

  Griffin turned onto the highway and headed for the ferry. Tomorrow was another day.

  That evening Jack Mahoney took his wife and all three kids out for ice cream. After that they stopped down at the dock to do a bit of fishing.

  “You’re being awfully patient with the children this evening,” Christine said. “Did you have an especially good day or something?”

  “On the contrary,” Jack answered and left it at that.

  After the rest of the family had gone to bed, Jack sat on the front porch pushing back and forth in an old rocking chair that had been there when they bought the house. In his mind he lined up his three children with scrubbed clean faces and shiny bright smiles, but before he could save the image a fourth child stepped into the picture: Jubilee Jones, a sad-eyed little girl who seemed as purposeful and determined as Olivia Doyle. No matter how many times h
e pushed her aside, she kept coming back. If he pictured his children reading a book or playing a game Jubilee was there on the sideline, not playing, but watching with melancholy blue eyes.

  At twelve-thirty he tiptoed upstairs to check on the children. In the shadows of a darkened bedroom he thought he saw Jubilee sleeping between Sara and Jessica, but when he moved closer to look it was only Jessica’s brown teddy bear.

  Jack got very little sleep that night, and by morning he had reached a decision. He was at the precinct waiting when Captain Rogers arrived.

  “Got a minute?” Mahoney asked and followed Rogers into his office. Before the captain had time to set his coffee down on the desk, Jack launched into the argument he had spent the night thinking through.

  “I know this is a little out of our jurisdiction, but I have reason to believe the missing woman is from this area.”

  “A little out of jurisdiction?” the captain repeated. “It’s not even in the same county!”

  “I know, but given the extenuating circumstances—”

  “Hannigan is out sick and Peters is on vacation, so I’m already short two men.”

  When it began to look like he was about to get a flat no, Mahoney played his ace. “I think this case might be related to the Doyle murders.”

  “The Doyle murders?”

  Mahoney nodded. “The Doyle file is missing from archives.”

  “Hmm. Nobody signed it out?”

  “Nope,” Mahoney answered. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”

  It was bad enough to have one of their own involved in something like the Doyle murder cover-up. It was even worse to think there might be something else to come. “Okay,” the captain said, “you can go. But until you get something more, work it alone.” He agreed to make a few phone calls so Mahoney would be granted access to whatever the Wyattsville station had.

  “This better not be a crapshoot,” he grumbled as Jack was leaving.

  It was ten-thirty when Mahoney arrived at the Wyattsville station house. Luckily Gomez was nowhere in sight, so he got to talk to Pete Morgan.

  “Captain Rogers called,” Morgan said. “Thought your missing person might be tied to the Klaussner shooting. How so?”

  “It’s possible this woman I’m looking for is the aunt of the kid who got shot.” Mahoney deliberately made no mention of Jubilee Jones.

  “You know the kid’s name?”

  “Not yet, but I’m hoping to talk to him today.”

  “Lots of luck on that. Gomez has been working this for five days. Yesterday he talked to the kid and got nothing.” Morgan lifted a folder from the desk and handed it to Mahoney. “This is all we’ve got right now. Take a look.”

  Mahoney took the folder and lowered himself into the available chair. In all it was only nine pages. It detailed the pitiful life of a small-time crook named Hurt McAdams. Mom left when he was twelve, father a racetrack junkie with ties to several bookies, the kid bounced out of school, spent seven years in a correctional institution. Plenty of disturbances; no visitors.

  Mahoney shook his head sadly. “Guy like this never had a chance.”

  “We’ve got an APB out,” Morgan said, “but my bet is he’s long gone.”

  “What about the kid in hospital? Any prints tie him to scene?”

  “No prints, but Klaussner put a bullet in him.”

  “Ballistics indicate the bullet came from Klaussner’s gun?”

  Morgan nodded. “Gomez said this one is a slam dunk. The kid’s guilty, period.”

  “Klaussner identified him?”

  “No such luck. Klaussner’s still in a coma.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Neighborhood woman, Martha Tillinger. Apparently she was in the back of the store and hid behind some cereal boxes when the shooting started.”

  “So she identified the boy?”

  “She didn’t see the shooter, just heard the shots.”

  Mahoney began rubbing the back of his hand across his chin, the way he did when something was troubling him. “Any chance the kid was a bystander?”

  Morgan chortled. “Not according to Gomez.”

  Mahoney’s next stop was Mercy General Hospital. During the drive he ran through the details of the case. A ballistics match pointed to the kid being guilty; a witness who hadn’t heard the voices was a zero. The prints on the register tagged Hurt McAdams as the guy who grabbed the cash, but was he working alone or working with the kid? There were too many questions and too few answers. Mahoney kept wondering if the kid was with Hurt or simply standing in the line of fire. But the most troubling question, the one that pushed him to pursue answers, was the identity of the kid in the hospital.

  If he was Jubilee’s brother that might tip the scales in his favor, not necessarily showing innocence but making him less likely to team up with someone like Hurt McAdams. The kid wasn’t in the system, which meant he had no priors. Hurt was from Pittsburgh. Jubilee Jones was from Coal Fork, West Virginia, a place so far out in the boonies you had to know it was there to find it. So where was the thread that connected McAdams to this kid? Too many loose ends—way too many.

  When he arrived at the hospital, Mahoney found Gomez had already been there and gone. “I think he’s coming back later,” the duty nurse said. Mahoney saw this as an opportunity. Captain Rogers, true to his word, had called ahead so there was no problem getting in to talk with the boy.

  Mahoney showed his badge, spoke briefly with the officer at the door, then entered the room. A kid with the body of a man and the face of a teenager lay in the bed, his head raised slightly and his eyes staring up at a water-stained ceiling. The television flickered, yet he seemed unaware it was there. The boy was no longer on a respirator, but the bandage on his throat was evidence that he had been.

  “Good morning,” Mahoney said.

  No response. Nothing.

  Mahoney continued. He asked the kind of nebulous questions that answered nothing. “Do you know where you are?” “Do you remember being shot?” “Do you remember walking into Klaussner’s Grocery Store?” Not one of these questions generated even a flicker of the boy’s eyelid. He looked neither right nor left, just continued staring at the faded brown stain that said some time in the near or distant past water had seeped through there.

  Once he’d run through the gamut, Mahoney asked the question he had come to ask.

  “Paul, do you think Jubilee is still sitting on the bench waiting for you?”

  The boy did not respond, turn his head, or speak, but his eyes grew wide and flickered nervously. His heart began racing, and the neon heart monitor flew past 160. It climbed to 190, then jumped to 210. Mahoney saw the reaction and continued. “Your sister needs your help,” he said, but before he could go any further a nurse came running into the room.

  “What going on here?” she asked.

  “Routine questions,” Mahoney answered. He reached across the bed and gave the boy’s leg a comforting pat. “Rest easy, son,” he said. “I’ll stop back later.”

  As Mahoney stood in the hallway waiting for a down elevator, Gomez stepped out of one on its way up. His displeasure was obvious.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t in on the Klaussner case.”

  “I’m not, actually. I just thought there was a chance the kid you had might be related to my missing person.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Gomez sneered. “So what’d you find out?”

  “Like the file indicated, the kid’s non-responsive.” A down arrow flashed green, and Mahoney stepped into the elevator. As the doors were closing he glanced back and thought he saw a look of malice on Gomez’s face.

  With his face turning redder by the second, Gomez rumbled down the hospital corridor, pushed through the intensive care department doors, and headed for the boy’s room. The duty nurse stopped him before he was halfway across the floor.

  “Not now,” she said. “He’s had enough for a while. His heartbeat’s still over two hundred.”

/>   “That last detective who was here,” Gomez said, “what’d he find out?”

  “Ask him,” she answered and turned off in a huff.

  “Damn,” Gomez grumbled.

  Hector Gomez

  Did you ever get a thorn caught under your skin? It hurts like hell, but you can’t get it out. That’s what Mahoney is to me: a thorn under my skin. He shouldn’t even be here. He belongs in Northampton. So why is he sticking his nose in where it don’t belong? Why is he looking to screw up another case for me?

  If not for his meddling, I’d have made detective last June instead of waiting another ten months. Mahoney’s why the Doyle case went south. I could’ve had the kid for the shooting, but then he shows up with this do-gooder attitude and makes me look bad. Justice don’t give a crap about how old a person is; guilty is guilty. And that kid was guilty. I could feel it in my bones.

  You know what I think? I think Mahoney’s got it in for me. Don’t ask why, ‘cause I don’t know. Maybe ‘cause I’m younger or better looking. Who knows? I really don’t care what his reason is. This much I can tell you: he ain’t getting away with it again.

  Klaussner put a bullet in the punk’s head to keep him from robbing the store, and that’s all the proof I need. This kid is guilty, no question.

  If Mahoney thinks I’m gonna roll over on this one, he’s got another think coming.

  Jubilee’s Choice

  When Mahoney left the hospital he was all but certain the boy lying in the hospital bed was Jubilee’s brother. There were no new facts, no spoken word, not even a nod, but the glimmer of recognition was there. Some relationships were so close that the bond of love bypassed locked doors, ignored time, and paid no attention to circumstance.

  He thought back to the day his own dad died. It was June twenty-first, seventeen years ago. Jack was new on the force and working days. That morning as he stood in front of the mirror shaving he felt it: a wrenching pain in his chest. It came sharp and sudden, hammered him for a minute, then passed. Jack gave a sigh of relief and got dressed, but even though the pain was gone the bitterness of acid indigestion continued all day. He gulped down two rolls of Tums, but nothing helped. At four o’clock he got the call: at seven-thirty that morning the man he loved and respected more than any other human on earth had suffered a massive heart attack. For the remainder of the day it had been touch and go, then at three-thirty-seven Jack’s dad passed away.