by Gary Braver
Brendan glanced at the old man. “Okay.” Then he moved to a sink where he studied his scalp in the wall mirror.
“Maybe it’ll knock some sense in him,” Mr. Berryman said to Cindy. “He quit school to work as a waiter, would you believe.”
“That’ll get old fast,” Cindy said, seeing the disappointment in the man’s face. “He’s seems like a smart kid. While we were cleaning him up, he was reciting Shakespeare.”
The old man humpfed. “What he needs is a girlfriend, not Shakespeare.”
“That’ll happen soon enough,” Cindy said.
“Watch out for glass doors,” Cindy said to Brendan. As she handed his grandfather some ointment and a box of gauze pads for the cut, the air was filled with shouting.
The next instant, the double doors burst open with paramedics pushing in a teenage girl on a gurney, trailed by several others including what looked like her parents crying. The girl’s body was covered with blood, and the paramedics were holding a mask on her face and an IV drip to her arm.
Cindy had heard the radio report when she had left for Radiology. Instantly, the ER team was in action. Interns and nurses swarmed around the girl, directing the paramedics where to take her. One tech shook his head at Cindy. The girl was critical. She needed immediate intubation, but somebody shouted that the operating rooms were occupied, they’d have to go to number four where Brendan had been.
While Cindy moved out of the way, she heard Richard say, “Isn’t that Trisha Costello?”
Brendan, who was still at the mirror, glanced at the battered girl on the gurney. “Yes,” he said, momentarily fascinated. Then returned to the mirror and his scalp.
Someplace amid the commotion, an intern shouted for the defibrillator. The girl had gone into cardiac arrest. Nurses were running and shouting as the girl was hooked up. Cindy was not part of the team because she had been working on Brendan when the dispatch came in. But from across the room she could see the electric pads come crashing down on the girl, and the body jolt in place. But a few moments later, another nurse said, “Again … No pulse, no pressure. Nothing … Again … Hang on, Trisha. HANG ON!”
It wasn’t long before Cindy could read the signs from the team around her that the girl was dead.
A wail of horror went up from the mother who was at the bedside with the interns, nurses, and technicians.
Like several of the other nonstaffers, Richard was stunned in place. “I think she died,” he said to Brendan.
Brendan looked over at the clutch of people through the open curtain. “Mmm,” he said. Then he turned to Richard and parted his hair. “Where did I get these?”
“For cryin’ out loud, a girl you know just died and you’re asking about some goddamn scratches on your head.” Richard’s voice was trembling.
Across from them, doctors were trying to comfort the parents who sobbed in grief.
Richard pulled Brendan from the mirror. “I can’t take this,” he said, and they left the emergency room, with Brendan still puzzled and feeling his scalp.
4
SAGAMORE POLICE DEPARTMENT
SAGAMORE, MASSACHUSETTS
The fax report sitting on Detective Greg Zakarian’s desk that morning was to the point:
Greg,Human remains pulled up in scallop net 12 miles off Gloucester 2 months ago. Has similar specs & markings to your case #01–057–4072. Positive ID. I think you might want to take a look.Joe Steiner
Joe Steiner was head pathologist at the medical examiner’s office in Pocasset.
Same specs and markings. Positive ID.
It was the first break in three years. Three long, frustrating years.
Greg sipped his coffee and looked at the two pictures pinned to the corkboard next to his desk: a photo of his wife Lindsay; and a pastel portrait of a young boy.
People no longer asked about Lindsay, because two years ago she was killed in a head-on collision on the Sagamore Bridge by some drunk who swerved into her lane. It had happened a little after midnight. She was returning from a too-long day at the Genevieve Bratton School, a residential treatment center for troubled girls in Plymouth where, for eight years, she had been a social worker. The drunk was returning from a stag party in Barnstable. She died instantly. He walked away with a broken collarbone. Lindsay had been the fundamental condition of Greg’s life, and in a telephone call, she was gone.
But people still asked about the boy in the other picture. Those who didn’t know wondered if he was Greg’s son. He’d say no, which was the literal truth. But to his colleagues in the department—from the dispatchers at the entrance to T.J. Gelford, his supervisor, to Norm Adler, the chief—the boy was his. Greg’s Boy. The Sagamore Boy. His own Boy in the Box.
For the last three years, Greg had tried to determine the child’s identity—ever since his skull was dug up in a sandbar on a local beach. As the responding officer, Greg had worked with CPAC, the state police, DA’s office, the medical examiner, the FBI, and missing children organizations. What they knew from forensic calibrations was that the skull belonged to a six- or seven-year-old white male. But they didn’t know who he was, where he came from, or how he had died. From the condition of the skull, it appeared to have been in the ocean for at least three years, and was probably washed up on the Sagamore Beach by storms. From where, nobody knew.
Two years ago, the state police abandoned the investigation since they had no leads, no tips, no cause of death, no evidence of a crime, no dental matches with anybody in the Missing Children Network’s files, no identity. Today, it was officially a cold case.
But Greg had kept the file open, regularly checking the databases of the Missing Children Network as well as the daily NCIC and CJIS broadcasts of missing persons from law enforcement agencies all over the country. His file was fat with old broadcasts. Because the Sagamore PD had no cold-case unit or funds, Greg did this on his own, in his spare time or at home, often pursuing out-of-town leads out of his own pocket because the department budget could no longer cover him. He had even hired a forensic anthropologist from Northeastern University to do an artistic reconstruction from the skull resulting in the drawing on his wall.
Greg knew that his colleagues saw the case as a private obsession. And that was true, since, from day one, Greg had had a gut feeling that there was something odd about this case: that it wasn’t just some hapless child who had fallen off a raft and gotten swept out to sea. Call it cop instinct, or intuition, or ESP, but Greg sensed something darkly disturbing. And, in spite of the years that had passed, he maintained his solitary investigation against the diminishing odds of resolution. He kept it up in part to take his mind off Lindsay’s death and to rescue himself from bitterness and self-absorption. A shrink would probably say that his obsession was rooted in a quest for his lost family—a need to find closure. Maybe so.
Lindsay was seven months pregnant when she was killed. The little boy she was carrying died with her.
Greg took Joe Steiner’s fax and walked down the hall to the office of Lieutenant Detective T.J. Gelford, his supervisor.
T.J. was on the phone, but he waved Greg in. When he hung up, he said, “That was Frank. He’s at CCMC with a cracked ankle. What else can go wrong?” He looked up at Greg. “What’s up?”
Greg handed T.J. the fax.
Gelford, who was in his late fifties, was not a large man. But he possessed a powerful presence. His hair had been buzz-cut so close to his scalp that it looked like a shadow. He had a roughly hewn rawboned face and gray implacable eyes that could with a microflick go from neutral to withering scorn. Gelford looked at the fax then looked up at Greg. “So?”
“It may be something,” Greg said. “I want to check it out.”
“What’s to check out?”
“He says there are similarities. I want to see what they are.”
Gelford took in a long scraping breath of air and let it out through his teeth in a hiss. “Greg, a dozen times I’ve told you to leave that case alone, there’s n
othing there.”
“I hear you, but it’s the first time we’ve got something on the markings.”
Gelford looked at him with that flat, chastening glare. “Yeah, and what you got is coincidence. Natural coincidence.”
“That’s what I want to check out.”
Gelford leaned forward the way he did when he wanted to press a point. “You have chased after every damn shadow, every nibble, every look-alike. I let you go halfway across the country and back on this—twice. You’ve eaten up my budget, not to mention the assistance funds for those software people to run those photosuperimposition screens. I’m up to here with that damn skull kid. You’re not spending your time correctly on your cases, and frankly that pisses me off.”
“And frankly I’m tired of the shit cases I’ve been assigned—stolen bikes, kids drinking, wallet snatches—they’re not even real crimes or ones that can be solved.”
“Maybe if you did what you’re told and dropped this thing, you wouldn’t be getting shit cases. You aren’t solving the ones you’re supposed to anyway.”
Gelford was right, and although he complained to his face, when Greg got home at night he fessed up. He’d go through the motions of investigating something, but he’d be only half there. “Joe Steiner doesn’t make calls unless he’s got something.”
“And Joe Steiner isn’t short of manpower,” Gelford shot back.
“Two hours, T.J. That’s all I’m asking. Two hours. If it’s nothing, I’ll bury it.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. Just two hours.”
Gelford picked up the A.M. docket from a pile of papers. “Yeah, two hours of wild-goose chasing, while I’m looking at three domestics, an assault and battery, one victim in critical condition. A sniper’s shooting pellets at motorists on Route 3, some asshole kids trashed the high school last night, and vacationers are pouring in by the thousands. You want some real crimes, I’ve got some for you.”
Greg checked his watch. “Back by noon, I promise.” He smiled, hoping to decharge the moment.
But Gelford did not smile back, nor did his manner soften. “This is not what we’re paying you for.”
“T.J., I’ve got a hunch there’s a connection here.”
“That’s what you said the last time and twenty times before that. I’ve had it with your hunches up to here. Get ahold of yourself: The case is closed.”
Greg took a deep breath to center himself. “Someone, somewhere, has lost a kid. Someone, somewhere, still misses him and has his picture hanging up. He’s somebody’s son.”
“Yeah, but not yours.”
Greg felt the sting of that. It was the mind-set of the barracks—that Greg’s tenacity went beyond a professional determination, that it was borderline pathological. “Three years ago I made a promise to myself to find out who that kid was and what happened to him, and I intend to keep that promise.”
“That’s all nice and good, but nobody knows who the kid is, and not from the lack of trying,” Gelford added. “You and two other detectives from the state hunted for the next of kin full-time for eight weeks. You canvassed the schools, day-care centers, pediatricians, and hospitals. Twenty thousand fliers from that reconstruction were distributed Capeside and off. We flooded the Internet, even got a fifteen-grand reward. You scoured all the databases, chased down leads from I don’t know how many families looking for a son the same age. It’s been three years, Greg, three years and nobody’s called your hot line to claim him. What can I say? It’s a fucking dead end.”
He was right again. Given the department budget, they had pulled all the stops. And they had floated plenty of theories on why nobody had claimed the boy. He could have been abducted from out of state, far from the Cape and the publicity blitz; his parents could have died—maybe even with him—perhaps in a boating accident. His parents could be illegal immigrants, afraid to speak with police; or they could have even been the killers; or it could have been a cult murder. One possibility was as good as the next, and they pursued them all. But Greg refused to accept their finality or to let the child remain an unnamed, unclaimed victim of happenstance. Which was why he had taken the case on his own. Which was why after three years, the kid was like family.
“I’d do this after-hours,” Greg said, “but Steiner gets off work before I do. Please.”
Gelford picked up the fax. “I don’t know how to say this without saying it, but this obsession of yours has affected department morale. People are resenting how it’s getting in the way of your real obligations, how you’re not pulling your own weight. And so do I.” He stopped for a moment. “Frankly, Greg, it’s become something of a bad joke. They’re saying stuff like how you should stop whacking your stick on this skull—and how you should get a wife.”
Greg felt the blood rise in his face. He knew that he had distanced himself from the others, even dropping off the department softball team, and bowing out of picnics, and fishing jaunts. He was even aware that other investigators were refusing to work on cases with him, including his onetime partner, Steve Powers. But the thought that he had become a department joke was mortifying. Suddenly he saw himself as a pathetic fool chasing his own tail.
Get a wife.
“This may be my hang-up, but I have not compromised my duties here.”
“That’s arguable,” Gelford said. “But you’ve been at this for three years, and you’re batting a dead mouse.” He handed back the fax.
Greg nodded, but said nothing.
“I think you might want to take a look,” Steiner had written.
Gelford studied Greg’s face. “Noon, and not a minute over,” Gelford said. “But if this does not pan out—as I expect it won’t—you’ll bury it for good. Otherwise … you know the rest.” Gelford then picked up the phone to say that the conversation was over.
Greg folded the fax and put it in his shirt pocket.
“Similar markings.”
“Thanks,” Greg said and left, his mind humming to get over to the ME’s office.
5
“Are you all right?” Martin asked.
“I’m fine,” Rachel said.
“Well, you don’t look it.”
“Don’t start.”
“Don’t start what? You look like you’re about to go to your own funeral.”
“I said I’m fine.”
They were in the kitchen, and Rachel was making pancakes. She was still in her bathrobe, hunched over the stove, pressing chocolate chips into the frying batter. Dylan loved chocolate-chip pancakes, and she made them for him at least once a week. Martin was dressed and ready to go to work.
The bouquet of roses he had bought last night sat in a vase on the dining room table. They had never made it to the Blue Heron. Rachel said she wasn’t up for it.
“You want pancakes?” she asked, her voice void of inflection. Her face was ashen and the flesh under her eyes was puffy. Her hair was disheveled and stuck back by a couple of hasty bobby pins. She looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.
“I’ll just have some orange juice,” he said and poured a glass. “I’ve got a breakfast meeting with Charlie O’Neill on the road.”
She nodded woodenly. He hated it when she got in these moods. Upstairs Dylan could be heard singing while getting dressed. He liked show tunes, and at the moment he was wailing “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.”
Martin studied Rachel while he drank his juice. She looked miserable, standing there hunched over like an old woman, her feet stuffed into a pair of old slippers, her face looking as if it had been shaped out of bread dough. “So, there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
“I said I’m fine,” she snapped.
“Then how come we haven’t made love for over three weeks?”
Her body slumped in annoyance, but she didn’t answer.
“How come you’ve been avoiding me like I’m the goddamn Ebola virus?”
Without looking up from the pan she said, “I haven’t been avoiding you. And s
top swearing, he’ll hear you.”
“You have been avoiding me. For weeks I’ve suggested we go out to dinner together, or a movie or something nice and romantic, but you’re too tired. You don’t feel up to it. You’ve got a headache. You go to bed early. Except for bumping into me, I don’t think you’ve physically touched me in weeks. Something’s wrong, and I want to know what the hell it is.”
Rachel continued staring into the pan, then slowly she turned her head toward him. She seemed just about to respond but then laid the spatula down and went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to Dylan that breakfast was ready.
When she returned, Martin said, “I don’t know what the problem is, but you’ve been moping around here like you’ve got some goddamn—”
Suddenly she let out a scream, shaking her hand. She had burned the tip of her finger pressing chocolate chips into the batter.
Martin ran to her and put his arm around her shoulder. She was not just whimpering in discomfort. She was outright screaming, as if in outrage that the pan had done this to her. Then, she burst into tears.
Martin walked her to the sink and turned on the cold water and held her hand under it. With one arm around her shoulder, the other hand holding hers under the water, he could feel her shaking as she stood there, deep wracking sobs rising from a place that had nothing to do with burnt fingers.
“Mommy! What happened?” Dylan ran into the kitchen and instantly froze in place at the tableau of Martin holding Rachel’s finger under the streaming water and Rachel crying, tears pouring freely from her eyes and her nose running.
“Mommy just burned her finger,” Martin said. “She’s going to be fine.”
“Mommeee.” Dylan ran over to her and hugged her about the middle and buried his face into her bathrobe, then he began to cry.
“It’s burning!” Rachel shouted through her tears. “Turn it off.”
On the stove smoke billowed up from the frying pan.