Into the Breach

by Lottie M. Hancock

  "Yeah, I did, thanks. I was just about to come talk to you."

  "Great, what's up?" Macinah poured a second cup and offered it to Sam.

  "Need someone to show me around."

  "First time in Boston?" Sam nodded. "Yeah, the station can be a maze if you’re not used to it. I will show you your desk first."

  Sam followed the officer past a crowded area of desks to a larger desk toward the center. "This is where you will set up shop. Normally someone else would have shown you around but Smitty is up to his eyeballs in paperwork."

  "Smitty? He's a good kid."

  "Oh, you met him already? The guy is all over the place. Not saying he is unorganized. I mean, he loves knowing which piece of the puzzle is where in the box. Pretty thorough."

  "I noticed." Sam looked at the picture display that covered the wall closest to him. There were photos of chiefs and captains with a section dedicated to those who lost their lives. There was a blank space where the current chief's portrait belonged. "Where's the chief's pic?" Sam indicated the blank space above the bronze placard labeling it Police Chief Andrew Shafer.

  "Yeah, Chief Shafer is an interesting one. He took his photo down last night and put it in his office. Said it was part of a game plan. I don't know what it was about but he was pretty smug about it. Like the cat who swallowed the canary."

  "And where is our cat now?"

  "He had to go haggle with the mayor about something today. I don't know if he will be in or not." Macinah didn’t seem too worried about the absence of their chief, so Sam simply blew it off. He remembered Monroe having to do the political dance on occasion and the more he thought about it, the more he figured, Better him than me.

  Senator Brandt's coffee had gone cold. She refused to leave her daughter's room, even to speak to the doctor. Whatever he had to say could be said in front of Sally. They were still waiting for the rest of the blood tests. During the last report, she was told that her daughter was resting without any obvious pain.

  Stephanie had held her daughter's hand and talked softly to her ever since they were brought into ICU. Sally was not the type to get sick. She ate right, ran two miles a day, at least she did when she was at home. It killed Stephanie that all she could do now was sit and wait.

  "Senator Brandt?" Stephanie looked up at the doctor standing just inside the doorway.

  "Yes." The doctor stepped up to the foot of Sally's bed with a file and clipboard in his hand. He was young, maybe in his thirties, with russet colored hair. This doctor was new to her, however.

  "Senator, my name is Doctor Thomas Mathers. I am an Infectious Disease Specialist for Massachusetts General. If you are up to it, I need to ask you a few questions about your daughter before I can proceed with her care. Is that alright?" Stephanie nodded and sat up straighter. "First thing I need to know, Senator, is if your daughter did any recreational drugs, or if she drank alcohol that you know of."

  "Of course not," Stephanie snapped. "She is pre-law at Stanford. She would not risk it with foolish choices."

  "Alright, I understand. Can you tell me if she ate anything or what her activities were this morning?"

  "She flew into Boston on the ten o'clock. She went to my home to freshen up. I wasn't there. I had a meeting this morning. I know she said she slept through the flight."

  "Is that normal for her?" Dr. Mathers scribbled on his clipboard.

  "Yes," replied Stephanie. "ever since she was a little girl she slept on the plane."

  "Are there any medical problems we need to address?"

  "No, she is perfectly healthy. I went over all of this with the last doctor. Where is he?" Stephanie’s defenses were on edge. She had no tolerance for bureaucrats and this was beginning to sound just like one.

  "Ma'am, I understand, but I have to ask these things. Sometimes it helps to jog one’s memory. We can't always think clearly when a loved one is in danger. And as for Dr. Wallace, he asked me to take care of your daughter. He felt the specialization would speed her recovery."

  Dr. Mathers stood silently while he waited for the senator's response. He had watched many who couldn’t face the unknown crumble at times like these.

  "I don't know what to do," Stephanie said, staring at her daughter. "She is all I have left."

  "We will do everything we can."

  "I know," Stephanie nodded through her tears.

  Faith was terrified. It was not the dark she was afraid of. It was what she could, or could not, see within it. Another nightmare left her awake and staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars she had splayed over her ceiling. She loved astronomy. She was saving her allowance for a constellation projector to replace the plastic above her. The universe was her playground and when she couldn’t sleep, she would think about the planets she wanted to explore. Anything was possible. She had heard on the news that civilians were being flown up to the space station. Someday, she would be one of them. Until then, she would simply be the frightened twelve-year-old, hiding from her boogie man.

  The darkness in her room was nothing compared to what she saw in her nightmares.

  She was walking through Christopher Columbus Park toward the pier. The darks were everywhere. That is what she called them. She had nothing else that emphasized the evil she felt when she looked upon them. The darks. There were more of them than there were people. She could see them darting around some passersby, while others would taunt people by tipping their hats off their heads or tripping someone as they were walking. She saw all of them. Of course, the citizens didn’t see a thing. If they only knew the mischief going on around them, they would run in terror. People were toys to them.

  Faith thought she had heard voices coming from outside her room and cautiously got out of bed. Opening her door a crack, she heard her mother’s faint voice and someone talking desperately. She quietly stepped up to the banister to the stairway leading down to the living area of her home and ducked down, both so she wouldn’t be seen and to eavesdrop. Her fear of the unknown made her less inclined for niceties, especially when no one would know.

  "She is so young," her mother’s heavy Scottish trill filtered up the staircase.

  "The Lord chooses the young at times, Mrs. Sullivan." Faith recognized the voice, although, at her angle, she could not see the face. It was Father Donovan from their church.

  "I know, Father, but there has to be a way to stop it!" Her mother sobbed. Then she saw Father Donovan step in her view. He had moved over to the couch where Mrs. Sullivan was sitting and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. "She will be in danger?"

  "I am afraid so," answered the priest. "but God would not put her in this situation if he did not feel she could defend herself."

  "She sees them. I know she does," Mrs. Sullivan told the priest fervently. "When she thinks I don't notice. I am her mother. I see the fear in her eyes. They attack her. She does not need to be black and blue or bleeding for me to know this."

  "I know." Faith felt tears trail down her freckled cheeks. She knew what they were talking about, but she didn’t know that her mother knew her secret.

  "What can be done?" Mrs. Sullivan pleaded.

  Faith gasped and sat straight up in bed. She looked at her hands, which shook like the leaves outside her window. But at least they were an adult’s hands and not the little ones in her dreams. Cursing herself for reliving the unlivable, she allowed herself to lay back against the comforting pillows as she stared at her bare ceiling. Twenty years did not change anything. The nightmares came as naturally as death, both then and now. Nightmares within nightmares…how is it that she never went mad? Tears flowed as she cried herself back to sleep. She was meeting her new partner in the morning, after all.

  5

  S am sat in the Boston PD chief's office waiting on the man to show himself. Sam was called in too early for him to make his coffee, so he had to weather the lukewarm attributes of the muck in his cup, compliments of an under-zealous clerk trying to just get through the morning. The clerk showed him i
nto the office and quickly left to grab the coffee he was studying so intently. He yawned, running his hand down his face.

  First week in Boston and he was already wondering if he had made the right decision to transfer here to Massachusetts. He had never lived outside of the Bronx unless one counted the six years abroad with the Army. Fighting in Desert Storm had made a man out of him, but New York taught him so much more. He knew the streets, the neighborhoods, the people. Hell, he even knew some of the local thugs since they were in diapers.

  Boston, on the other hand, was a whole new ballpark. The way the city moved was different. The local dialect confused him. Some things were the same, however. The people, although nicer in public, were just as frantic about getting to where they were going.

  Police stations were always the same. It was a common territory that comforted him. It was the unknown that worried him. He loved a good mystery, just not one that slapped him in the face like Boston’s culture shock.

  Sam's jaw dropped as the head of Boston's finest walked through the blind-shrouded glass door of the office.

  "What the Hell?" Wearing a smirk befit a cat with the location of all the mice in town, Police Chief Drew Shafer stood in front of the detective in his crisp blue suit. Sam laughed when he saw the same auburn hair and steel gray eyes of his old high school quarterback. It was no wonder, now, as to how he had gotten approved for his transfer so quickly.

  "How 'ya doin', Sammy?" Although it had been more than thirty years since they last saw each other, Drew didn’t look much different; he had refrained from acquiring the middle-age paunch at the belt line along with the graying hair. His smile was still youthful and his eyes looked just as mischievous as they did back in the day. Sam realized that calling him Baby Face so much in school had just charmed him to eternal youth.

  "You tell me," Sam replied. "Man, what are you doing here?"

  "Same as always, getting ready to boss you around." Drew walked around his desk, glancing at a yellow memo before he sat back in his overstuffed swivel-chair.

  "This isn't the old days."

  "True, but whether it’s the football field or the streets," Drew's smile widened as he taunted his friend. "I'm still the boss man." Sam raised his hands in the air in surrender.

  "You got me," Sam acquiesced.

  "And that alone was a feat in itself."

  "I don't understand."

  "I've been trying to get Chief Monroe to talk you into coming down here for over a year."

  "Monroe gets greedy about his cops, I guess." Sam couldn’t hide his surprise or the confusion but quickly hid it. Chief Brian Monroe had been police chief in his New York precinct for over five years but had not once mentioned any communications from Boston about him.

  "Cops, nothin', it's his best detectives that he holds onto with iron claws. Surprised he finally talked you into it."

  "Well," began Sam sheepishly. "He didn't. I didn't even know you were here, much less that you were a cop, too."

  "Then how?" Drew sat back in his brown leather seat with his hands resting on the arms, like he was on his throne. Drew was never arrogant, at least never more than his position allowed him to be, but he truly looked in his element now.

  "I needed a change, Drew. Something just didn't feel right anymore. I was heading for burn out."

  "You've been detective how long? Ten years? Some don't make it past five without feeling the itch. I did at three."

  "And what did you do to scratch it?"

  "Ran for police chief." Drew smiled wide again, showing all his thirty-two perfectly white plates.

  Sam looked across the desk at his old friend and new chief with new admiration. He was crafty. When Sam had seen the file for his new assignment, he didn't make the connection that the Chief Andrew Shafer was the same Drew Shafer he went to high school with but apparently Drew had known for some time. Always the planner, Drew would outwit most of the boys on the team, including Sam. This was just like old times.

  "So now what?" Sam got straight to the point. Drew picked up a file from a neat stack on his desk and slid it across to him. Opening it, a picture of a young woman, petite but attractive, stared back at him. This was paper-clipped to a series of character profiles, achievement recommendations, and career histories, among other standard police career records. "Okay, what's this girl have to do with me?"

  "She's your new partner." Drew raised his eyebrow in anticipation of Sam's protest. He knew Sam was used to working alone. However, Sam surprised his chief by just nodding and reading.

  "She was a clerk for the department before the police academy?" Sam began his analysis as he would have any case. In this case, however, he was feeling like the victim. Showing how he felt to Drew, however, was unthinkable. He would just have to play this one out. "Says here that she tried for detective twice."

  "Yeah, but nailed it the second try. She is top notch."

  "And why isn't she here if she is top notch?

  "She is getting her marksmanship up this morning."

  "I hope you aren't trying to get me on with something permanent. I don't partner well anymore, Drew."

  "I know, but she will be good for you. Especially on this case."

  "Case? What's up?" Chief Shafer handed him a stack of thin files. "All of these? What is it? A serial?"

  "We are not sure," the chief said slowly. His brow wrinkled as he stared at the files in Sam's hands. "I will get more into it when Sullivan shows."

  Sam winced as he heard a crash and a prolonged shuffling in the squad room behind him. Standing up, Drew walked over and raised the blinds covering one partial wall of his office, exposing a circus of sorts beyond. There, in jeans and BPD t-shirt, was the one and only Faith Sullivan trying to hold onto a stack of files that continually escaped her grasp to the floor. Some tried to help her corral the mess and help her save face, while others just shuffled to the side.

  "You have got to be kidding me." Sam stared in disbelief at the spectacle unraveling in the next room. Drew had to be pulling his leg. "Did I borrow money I didn't pay back or somethin'? Did I steal your girl in tenth grade? What did I do?"

  Drew laughed lightly, "You? Steal my girl? You wished. Nope, this isn't a punishment, trust me."

  "Trust you?" Sam turned back around in his chair, looking like he was about to jump up and run. "That is my new partner? I'll get killed!"

  "No, Sam," Drew answered somberly. "She will keep you alive. And she is the best choice for you. Especially with this. Give it a chance." Sam sat back in resignation. What had he gotten himself into?

  A soft knock on the door proceeded with the chief calling for Sullivan to enter. Sullivan stuck her unruly crop of red hair into the office and glanced over at Sam, who looked none too pleased to be there, but she had expected that. She walked to the chief's desk and handed him the ruffled stack of files.

  "Are these the medical files?" Drew asked.

  "Yeah," she replied. "Along with med history for the past five years for each of them." Sam heard the lilt in the detective's voice but couldn’t determine if she was Scottish or Irish. Sullivan looked over at Sam with a worried look.

  "Detective Faith Sullivan, meet your new partner, Detective Samuel D. Wesson." They shook hands silently, both cautious of the stranger before them. Sullivan carefully stepped over Sam's feet to cross to the chair beside him. Her confidence in such a simple movement seemed lacking, but she finally sat down and the chief became all business. "We will get to the getting acquainted part later. For now, Sullivan fill us in on what you found out at the hospital."

  Detective Sullivan was thin compared to the size of the chair she sat in. Her pale skin showcased a spattering of freckles across her forehead and cheekbones, which highlighted her light pink lip gloss against a makeup-free face. Her hair was pulled back, bunched in the back like an overly-gathered bundle of wheat. Sullivan looked like she had just got out of high school rather than detective training. She looked anxiously over to Sam and back again to the chief before
she began.

  "Six cases over a period of 16 months. All had a sudden onset of a coma that none of the doctors could identify the cause of. They each had different backgrounds, financial positions, family types, but what they all had in common was that they suddenly dropped with no warning and within five days were dead from organ failure."

  "Some kind of illness? Like an epidemic?" Shafer asked.

  "Not that the doctors could identify. They called the CDC in after the third case but with no pathogens in the blood or tissues, external bacteria were ruled out and they called off their part of the investigation."

  "All six are dead?" queried Sam.

  "Six of them are. When I said six cases, I meant six that ended up terminal. There were two that weren't, but started the same way." Shafer nodded to Sullivan and she handed Sam the two files.

  "What do we have to do with medical mysteries? Isn't that someone else's playing field?" Sam asked before opening the files.

  "At first, that was the collective idea, Sam," Shafer began. "but there is more to their cases than that." The chief motioned toward the files in Sam's hand.

  The first file was labeled, "Stephens, Adam." There was a photo of a man with dark hair and darker eyes, well-tanned with chiseled features. This was attached to a medical record dated six months ago.

  "Okay, so Stephens and his wife were tourists," Sam began his analysis methodically. "On the third day in Boston, Stephens's wife couldn't wake him up when she awoke in their B & B. Doctors said there was nothing wrong with him. Do I get the gist of it so far?"

  Shafer nodded then added, "Two days later Stephens woke up as mysteriously as he went out."

  "What's wrong with that?" Sam asked.

  "The doctors had him listed as being in a comatose state. No brain activity whatsoever. Again, there was no bacteria or toxin that would have caused it in his system. He just took a serious nap for two days."

  Sam moved the file under the next one and began studying it. "Peters, Agnes. Says Peters collapsed while doing the family shopping. Same symptoms?" Shafer nodded.