Face to Face

by CJ Lyons

  She dried off, threw the towel over the shower curtain then stopped. Drake liked his towels hung neatly on the rack behind the door. The least she could do, seeing as how she couldn't give him what he really wanted.

  Swallowing her pain, she quickly dressed in a tank top and pair of khaki shorts, then left to spend the evening dissecting the murder of a three-year-old little girl.

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  Drake drove the Mustang with the top down, radio blasting. He took the back roads to avoid the other Friday evening travelers, people rushing to get anywhere but where they were. He understood their need; he often felt that same restlessness. New faces, new thrills, new places. It was one of the things that attracted him to law enforcement.

  He hadn't had those restless feelings as much lately. Not since he'd met Hart. With her he finally felt content to stay where he was. Maybe he'd grown up at last? He always thought he'd be disappointed to see the same face day after day, to be with the same woman this long, but he didn't feel that way at all. At least not until tonight.

  They had plenty of arguments before—her stubbornness and independence assured that. As far as he could tell, he did little to provoke them. Well, maybe that wasn't fair. They were both adults, used to living on their own, doing things their own way. They had both made compromises in this relationship. But he'd never seen her so adamant, unwilling to bend, to address his needs. It made him wonder if he meant as much to Hart as she did to him.

  Drake thought about that as he drove, replaying the argument in his mind. The only lights came from a farmhouse in the distance, the road curving gently between fields of corn. It hadn't really been an argument, he realized. More like a tirade. He hadn't given her much chance to explain her reasons, had he?

  Maybe because he was disappointed she hadn't put his needs first? Hart knew better than anyone how Pamela's suicide had affected him. He didn't need her sympathy—and he certainly didn't want her pity. Maybe this whole situation was a warning, a red flag he had grown too complacent. Expecting Hart to know his needs and wants without him saying anything—wasn't that every man's fantasy? Is that really what he wanted in a woman: a security blanket rather than a partner?

  Drake shook his head, stirring his headache into a fierce primal pounding. Life used to be so much easier. Go out, find a girl, have a few drinks, a few laughs, go home and have sex, part ways in the morning. No ties, no complications. Of course that was what he'd had with Pamela, and look how that ended up.

  Two hours later he pulled into his aunt's driveway. He sat in the car for a few minutes, still thinking hard. Who was he running from? Pamela? Hart? His anonymous stalker? Or himself?

  The door to the two-story cottage opened. Nellie and his mother emerged, smiling to greet him. Drake pushed all thoughts of other women aside as he got out of the car and went to hug them.

  "Remy, it's so good to see you. It's been so long," Muriel Drake gushed, using her pet name for him. "Where's Cassie?"

  Nellie joined them on the driveway as Drake grabbed his overnight bag from the trunk.

  "Think it might rain?" he asked. "Maybe I should put the top up."

  "No rain this weekend," Nellie promised, taking Drake's other arm as they walked into the house. Drake's uncle would be joining them tomorrow. He dropped his bag in the foyer and walked with Nellie and his mother through to the kitchen. The back of the house faced the lake with a deck coming off the dining room and an enclosed porch off the kitchen. There Nellie had a picnic table set with four places.

  "You two go sit," she told Drake and his mother. "I'll get dinner. Muriel made a pasta salad and we have fresh bread. We thought you wouldn't be very hungry with the heat and all." Nellie busied herself in the kitchen while Drake and Muriel went into the sun porch.

  Drake stood at the screen door looking out over the back yard and dock. The lights of other houses and several boats reflected from the water. Further out the lake was dark, but he could hear the sound of the water lapping against the dock. He kept his back turned from his mother but he knew what she was thinking as she removed the extra place setting.

  "We didn't have a fight," he lied, answering her silent question. "She got busy at the Center."

  "Did I ask?" Muriel came up and gave him another hug. "It's so good to have you here."

  Drake kissed her on the cheek. "Hey," he called out to Nellie. "Where's my other best girl?" He moved into the kitchen. "When do we eat around here? A man could die of starvation."

  "You won't get anything until you get out of my kitchen," Nellie waved him back onto the porch. She brought a tray with a loaf of bread, a bowl of pasta salad and three bottles of beer out and joined them at the picnic table.

  "Cheers." Nellie lifted her bottle of beer in a toast before they began to eat.

  They clinked bottles and Drake smiled. His aunt was the only person he knew who could turn drinking a bottle of beer into a refined occasion. That was one of the things he loved most about her, her aptitude for putting people at ease. It was one of the talents that had made her such a good journalist. But that was a long time ago. He looked closely at his mother and aunt and for the first time realized they were growing old. For a moment he felt the cold hand of mortality grip him as well.

  Suddenly he wished more than anything he was back in the city, despite the heat, despite the danger. No, it wasn't the city he missed. It was Hart, plain and simple.

  He took another sip of beer but it tasted bitter in his mouth. The urge to apologize to Hart was so great he excused himself from the table and tried to call her. No answer and when the voice mail came on, he couldn't fumble the right words out. All he could manage was, "I miss you. Please call."

  He hung up, clutching the cell phone like it was a lifeline to Hart. Willing it to ring. It didn't. His mother's laughter called him back to the other room. He forced a smile for their sake, wishing he could do better.

  CHAPTER 13

  "Start at the beginning," Assistant District Attorney Lisa Dimeo instructed Cassie between bites of her Primanti Brothers' Reuben.

  They were in Lisa's tiny office whose only saving grace was that it had a ceiling fan. With a wheezing noise that occasionally grew into a sickly cough, the blades strained against the heavy air.

  Cassie pushed the reams of paper on the desk to one side, making space for her own turkey and prosciutto. "Why? You've read all the reports."

  "Because I think we might lose this one and that thought makes me want to puke, all right? You were there. Maybe there's something I can use, something not in the reports. Don't leave anything out."

  Last thing Cassie wanted to think of was that day. That sun-filled, crisp January day that still haunted her dreams. When Mary Eamon arrived at Three Rivers Medical Center's ER.

  "Med Five en route with a three-year-old." She remembered the dispatcher's impassionate voice sounding over her trauma radio. "ETA two minutes."

  The little girl was tiny for three, and so pale, Cassie had to resist the urge to smear her fingertip against her cheek to see if it was white makeup. One medic forced oxygen into her lungs through a tube inserted into her trachea while the other steered the gurney.

  "Heart rate's still good but we couldn't get a BP even by palp. Color's a little better since we tubed her."

  This was better? We're in deep shit, Cassie thought, as she helped push the gurney around the corner into the resuscitation bay where her team waited.

  "What's the story?" she asked as they moved the patient across to the ER's bed.

  "Mother said she'd been vomiting for two days and complaining of belly pain. She called grandmother for advice this morning when she couldn't wake Mary, that's the girl, up. Grandmother came over, took one look at her and called 911. When we arrived she was unresponsive to deep pain, so we scooped and ran, tubed her on the way in."

  She leaned over her tiny patient, listening to her lung sounds. The nurses were working around little Mary, cutting her clothes off, trying for an IV.

  "Jesus Chris
t!" The exclamation came from one of the paramedics as Mary's nightgown fell open. Linda, the nurse who had cut it off, took a step backwards.

  There was silence in the room for a few heartbeats as they looked at the now naked child. A multitude of bruises covered her body. Her abdomen was grotesquely distended, giving the preschooler the appearance of some kind of obscene pregnancy.

  The paramedic, a seasoned Lieutenant, raised his fists, ready to bolt the room. "That sonofabitch."

  Cassie stopped him. She needed all the help she could get. So did Mary.

  "Get me peds surg stat and have an OR ready," Cassie commanded. "I want trauma labs drawn and two lines. In the meantime get me two units of Oneg on the warmer. Let's get an NG and Foley in her. What's her rhythm on the monitor?"

  "Sinus tach, still no blood pressure even with Dynamap."

  "She's hard to bag," the respiratory tech spoke up.

  Cassie listened once more to her breath sounds. "No pneumo. It's the belly distention. I'm going to relieve the pressure with a paracentesis."

  She grabbed some Betadine and prepped the little girl's belly, trying to focus on her task and ignore the reality of the torture this child had endured. Not only from the beatings but also from the severe pain of a perforated bowel.

  Linda worked beside her, trying to place a Foley catheter into Mary's bladder before Cassie stuck a needle into the belly to relieve the pressure. The nurse dropped the Foley and had to open a new kit.

  "What's the problem?" Cassie asked as she drew on sterile gloves. "We don't have time to waste here."

  "Look for yourself." The nurse had gone a pale shade of green and her hands were trembling. Cassie didn't want to know what made a seasoned ER nurse react like that, but it was her job to know.

  She bent over and looked. Mary had suffered more than just a beating.

  "Christ," she sighed. "Okay, Linda, you're doing fine." Cassie talked her nurse through the procedure in a level voice but she really wanted to scream in frustration. Who could do this to a child? Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the paramedics retch and turn to the scrub sink, hands over his mouth.

  Linda's eyes watered with tears but her hands were steady. "I don't want to hurt her," she whispered.

  "It's okay. She's not feeling anything." Linda was able to thread the Foley catheter and Cassie turned back to the belly. She prepped the abdomen and inserted a catheter to relieve the pressure. As soon as it entered the peritoneal cavity there was a rush of air, like a balloon releasing.

  "I can bag better now," respiratory said.

  "I lost her pulse!"

  "Start chest compressions and keep pushing the fluid. Where's that blood?"

  "It just got here."

  "I want it in as fast it can go. Give her two of epi." Cassie went to the head of the bed and reassessed her patient. No signs of pneumothorax or tamponade; her heart had probably stopped because of the shock and blood loss, which they were working to correct. Thirty long seconds passed.

  "Stop compressions for a pulse check," she commanded as she felt the carotid. She took a deep breath. It was faint but there was definitely a pulse. "I've got one. Where's the surgeon? She needs to be up in the OR."

  "He's on his way."

  Cassie looked at the clock, she'd been working on the girl for less than ten minutes but it seemed an eternity.

  She turned back to the little girl, combing her fingers through Mary's blonde curls. It was frustrating to admit, but there was nothing more she could offer the child. Mary needed to be in surgery.

  In answer to her prayers, Kurtis Waite, the pediatric surgeon appeared. He must have rushed straight from the OR because he still wore his paper cap and shoe covers.

  "What's the story?" he asked, his eyes taking in the girl and her bruises.

  "Three-year-old, found unresponsive, history of vomiting. When she got here she was in sinus tach with no blood pressure, her belly so distended it was interfering with ventilation. We've given her three fluid boluses and she's on her second unit of O-neg."

  He nodded. "How's ventilation after you decompressed the belly?"

  "Better, but then she arrested. We got her back after the third fluid bolus and a dose of epi."

  "Is the OR ready?"

  "They said they'll need another ten minutes."

  "Fuck that, tell them they have two. C'mon, let's roll." Waite pulled on the stretcher, not waiting for help. Cassie nodded to her nurses and they quickly grabbed the monitor and IV pumps, rushing behind him out the door.

  Cassie leaned against the counter in the suddenly quiet critical care room, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. The paramedic still stood there, as if frozen.

  "I've never seen anything like that," he finally said.

  Cassie looked up at him. He was a fifteen-year veteran of the worst the streets of Pittsburgh could offer. She sighed. "Me neither."

  They stood there in silence, mourning Mary's lost innocence, when Cassie's phone rang.

  "The family's here. Dr. Waite asked if you could talk to them," the clerk told Cassie.

  Cassie could imagine just how colorfully Kurtis Waite made that request. He was an excellent surgeon but with little patience for dealing with situations like this.

  "Police and children services notified?"

  "They've been called."

  "Who all are there?" she asked.

  "Gramma, mother, and stepfather."

  She went down to the family area. There she saw a middle-aged woman weeping on the sofa, face in her hands. On the other side of the room was a young couple, the woman in her mid-twenties and the man just slightly older.

  "I'm Dr. Hart, I was taking care of Mary while she was here in the ER." Cassie sat on the ottoman near the door so she could make eye contact with them. "Can anyone tell me how Mary got hurt?"

  The grandmother looked up, shaking her head. "Is she going to be all right? I want to see her."

  "She's in very serious condition and is being operated on right now. There's a chance that she might not live," Cassie said softly.

  The grandmother let out a low moan. "Oh, my baby, my poor baby."

  Cassie looked to the mother and stepfather, both stared at her silently, neither moving to comfort the older woman.

  "You know what happened to Mary, don't you?" she asked in a level voice, not accusing, just stating a fact.

  They looked at each other then nodded.

  "I'm sorry," the stepfather whispered. His body seemed to deflate as he slumped down into the chair. "I'm so sorry." He ran his fingers through his beard, covering his mouth as if ashamed of his words.

  He was an ordinary appearing man. Slightly overweight. Skin a little sallow, like maybe he spent too much time inside watching football on TV, drinking more beer than was good for him. Like so many ordinary men here in Pittsburgh.

  Plain clothes, jeans and a flannel shirt, working man's boots scuffed but with new laces.

  Ordinary, hard-working man who'd just admitted to being a monster.

  Cassie concentrated on finding air to breathe as the room felt smaller as the truth the stepfather admitted filled the space between them.

  "It's important I know when this happened and exactly how Mary got hurt. We need to know what kind of injuries to look for," Cassie continued in that same soft voice. Her stomach churned with nausea and she wanted to run from the room and the evil contained there, but she controlled her feelings and forced herself to make eye contact with the mother.

  Mary's mother perched on the arm of the chair, an arm around her husband. "It wasn't Ron's fault," she said, her voice high pitched like a school girl's. It made Cassie wonder if she was younger than she appeared. "Mary never listened. He told her not to make a fuss about going to bed. He counted to ten. He warned her..."

  "Did this happen last night or the night before?"

  Silence for a moment, then Ron spoke up. "Two nights ago. Cindy was trying to get out the door to go to work so I put the kids to bed. Mary
kept getting back out of bed, wanting a drink, wanting a story, wanting to watch a video, she just wouldn't listen!"

  "Then what happened?"

  "I put her back in bed and told her if she didn't stay put, I would spank her. I went back downstairs, said goodbye to Cin. After that I heard Mary up out of bed again. I grabbed her and carried her back to her bed, and she just started to cry and scream and I lost it—" He shook his head. "I don't know, I just hit her, I wanted her to stop crying, that's all."

  "Ronald, be quiet."

  Cassie turned to the grandmother in surprise. The older woman stood, holding her hands up above her waist like a conductor calling for attention. "Cindy, tell him to be quiet before he gets us all in trouble." The grandmother stepped between Cassie and the couple. "Doctor, we want to know when we can see Mary, will you please go check?"

  Cassie stared at the woman but she held her ground, arms folded across her chest.

  Without a word, Cassie left. Her heart thumped so hard she felt it in her throat, blocking her as she tried to swallow. Those people, what they'd done…She shoved her emotions aside. She still had work to do and wouldn't be any good to anyone, including Mary, if she gave into her anger.

  She stopped at the nurses' station to call up to the OR and tell Kurtis Waite the injuries occurred two days ago. She was surprised when the surgeon came to the phone himself.

  "How's she doing?" she asked, dreading his answer. Only one explanation for him to be available.

  "She just died," he said, confirming her fears. "There was a belly full of blood and several feet of dead gut festering in there. There was nothing I could do."

  The phone was suddenly her only grasp on reality as she broke out in a cold sweat. "Thanks, Kurtis," she whispered. "I'll tell the family."

  She retraced her steps back to the family room, not certain if she could contain the fury growing in her. For the first time in her career, she found herself utterly depleted of compassion for the loved ones of a patient. She didn't want to talk to these people again, didn't want to be in the same room as them, breathe the same air.