Some Other Child

by Buchbinder, Sharon

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I glanced at the paper on the floor. I didn’t touch it. I stepped around it and opened the door. The hall was empty. I even called to let whoever it was know that I was here if they wanted to see me.”

  “But you moved it to your desk. How did you handle it?”

  With a nod toward her friend in purple and red, Sarah said, “Jazmin came along right after this happened to bring me coffee. She got a pair of latex gloves from the Pediatric ER. I thought it would be okay to handle it that way. I didn’t want it to be stepped on.”

  “Good, good.” She made notes. “Anything else you can recall?”

  “Yes, but it’s probably irrelevant.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “There was a smell of perfume right when I opened the door. It’s a scent I recognized, but I can’t place it. I’m not sure how it helps.”

  “It may have been someone passing by wearing heavy perfume, or the person who put this under the door may have been wearing it. It’s like a good jigsaw puzzle. Until we put all the pieces together, we may not see the picture.” Detective O’Grady pulled a plastic evidence bag and a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket, put the gloves on, and slid the paper into the bag.

  “It’s from the Bible.”

  Jazmin spoke for the first time since Detective O’Grady arrived.

  “Parents brought children to Jesus for a blessing and the Disciples told them to go away. Jesus got angry with his followers. He said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the Kingdom of God!’”

  “Jazmin, how’d you remember all that?” Sarah asked. She was lucky she could remember the Twenty-third Psalm, much less anything else from the Bible.

  “I was at the top of my Sunday school class with Pastor Black.”

  “Do you recognize this phrase?” Detective O’Grady flipped through her notebook. “Here it is. ‘Satan pretends to be an angel.’”

  Jazmin looked thoughtful.

  “I don’t recall anything like that. Satan is mostly being told to get behind or out of someone.”

  “Well, it was worth a shot. Thanks.” Detective O’Grady snapped her notebook shut and put it back in her pocket.

  “I’ll be going, then. You okay, Dr. Wright?”

  “I’m fine, Jazmin. Thank you for everything.” Gratitude flooded through her, filling her chest with affection for her friend. “I’d hug you, but I hurt too much.”

  “Don’t worry. I got your back,” Jazmin said.

  Sarah was still smiling after the door closed.

  “What a terrific person. We just never know, do we, Detective?”

  “You’re right about that. By the way, it was a good thing you didn’t touch that paper.”

  “I’ve watched enough CSI to know better.”

  “That’s true. But I was referring to something else.”

  “What?”

  “The words on the last piece of paper were written in human blood,” Detective O’Grady said.

  Sarah nodded. She’d suspected as much when she first saw the note. “I was afraid of that. Does Peter know?”

  “Fortunately, he watched the same TV shows.”

  Relief flooded Sarah. She knew the hepatitis virus could survive at least a week in dried blood. Anyone could be contagious.

  “Well, unless you have something else for me, I’m going to go see doctors Kirby and Lassiter to give them an update.”

  “No, that’s all I can think of right now,” Sarah said.

  “Here’s my card. Think of anything, call me.”

  Almost four o’clock. Sarah needed to get her prescriptions filled, but she had other things she needed to do, too.

  Peter and Marian stared at her with shocked expressions. Marian spoke first.

  “You look terrible. Why did you come in to work?”

  “Sarah, do you need a ride home? I can drive you. I’m not on call,” Peter said.

  “Hold on a minute,” Sarah said. “I’m here because I wanted to be seen in our own ER. Much to my amazement, Jazmin has enormous influence over getting people seen quickly in the Adult ER. I had no idea her twin sister worked downstairs.”

  “Oh, yes. I learned early on when I moved to Baltimore that you never know who’s a relative,” Marian said.

  “What’d they find?” Peter asked.

  “Soft tissue trauma, lots of hematomas, and scratches. No broken bones. Hence, this attractive cervical collar.”

  “When we heard you’d been hit by a van, we thought you’d be in a body cast,” Peter said.

  “My dog jerked me into the trees in the nick of time. The van grazed me.”

  “I hope you gave him extra biscuits,” Marian said, worry creasing her round face.

  “You bet I did.” Tired of being the center of all this unwanted attention, Sarah changed the subject. “I assume Detective O’Grady told you about the latest note?”

  “Yes. I told her we found more recent cases of congenital syphilis connected with the same church. We gave her all the contact information in our records. My concern is that many of these families move three to four times a year.” Marian played with a pen.

  “They get a few months behind in their rent, the sheriff’s deputy shows up, and all their belongings get dumped on the curb. No forwarding address. We might see them here in the clinic once a year or never again. She has her work cut out for her.”

  “She’s going to need an army of investigators to track these people down.” Sarah shifted the weight on her feet, the only parts of her body that weren’t sore. “Do you think they still attend the same church?”

  Marian and Peter stared at Sarah as if she’d sprouted a horn out of the center of her forehead and sang a karaoke song.

  “Why would a family whose daughter was molested by a sexual predator continue to attend the same church?” Peter asked.

  “What if the daughter was afraid to tell them she was molested, much less who molested her? Most sexually abused children know their abuser. Or, what if the daughter told her parents, and they didn’t believe her?”

  “I’m sure Detective O’Grady has a good handle on this. Why don’t we let her do her job, and we’ll do ours. Okay?” Marian asked.

  “I was just thinking out loud. I have no desire to play Nancy Drew.”

  Peter grinned. “I think you’re a little old for Nancy Drew or Harriet the Spy. You’re more like Abby in NCIS with that black collar.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Does that make you Ducky?”

  “Children, that’s enough sassing each other.” Marian shook her head. “Sarah, at the moment you may feel okay, but by tomorrow morning you’ll feel every bump and bruise. Go home, and do not come into work tomorrow. You need to rest and get in a hot bathtub for those muscle spasms. Did you get a prescription for pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go home.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Have a good evening. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Sarah said.

  “Need a ride?” Peter asked.

  “Getting my car back might be a challenge, but I can drive. When last seen, the valets were arguing which lucky fellow was going to have to park it.”

  A short time later, Sarah clutched the steering wheel and looked right and left with care. Onward to visit her mother before it was too late. She recalled seeing a pharmacy at GBMC. With any luck, she could drop off her prescriptions and try to catch up with the social worker about her mother’s nursing home placement.

  She found Dr. Merrill in the ICU Conference Room. Sarah gave the wide-eyed physician an abridged version of her day’s events, and asked how her mother was.

  “Unchanged. She looks good, better than you, in fact. She’s not responsive to anyone or anything. The Social Worker came by today. I told her you were interested in Shady Rest’s coma stimulation program. She’s seeing if they have a bed available. You should expect to get a call from her in the next
day or so.”

  At the bedside, Sarah held her mother’s hand, and spoke in a soft voice.

  “I never got to tell you how much I admire you,” Sarah said brushing a stray hair off her mother’s forehead. “You were so brave, standing up to Aunt Ida’s step-father like that. He could have killed you. My guess is, you didn’t even think twice about it.”

  The monitor beeped steadily overhead, background music to her life now, Sarah realized.

  “You fight for the ones you love, and, yeah, with the ones you love. No one can ever say you don’t care. You do care, very much, under that tough exterior, you love deeply, you hurt greatly, and you never let go, do you, Mom?”

  Sarah picked her mother’s hand up, held her palm to her cheek, and wept.

  “I’m worried about Aunt Ida. I can’t reach her. It’s as if she disappeared. I need you to come back, Mom. I need you here with me, helping me to find Aunt Ida. I know you wouldn’t give up, you wouldn’t give in.”

  Alarm bells went off as the numbers on the heart monitor leaped to over one hundred.

  A nurse ran into the room, glanced at the monitor, and pressed a reset button. She smiled at Sarah. “Power surge.”

  “Power surge, my ass,” Sarah said after the nurse left the room. “Mom, I know you heard me. We just have to find a way to get you awake and back to me.”

  Sarah had to make the dreaded phone call to the Baltimore County Police, but put it off for as long as she could. She tried to think of anything except the idea that Aunt Ida was missing. As she climbed the back steps to her house, rivulets of sweat rolled down her face and into her eyes. The cervical collar was cumbersome and itchy.

  She picked up a box on her back porch and looked at the return address. It was from her sister, and it weighed a ton. Self-help books, she was sure, on how to be less enabling, less co-dependent.

  Opening the back door, she released Winston to the great outdoors and dropped the books on the dining room table. Sarah loved her sister, but she wasn’t interested in getting long distance lectures on how she should be running her life. Not now. Not with everything that was going on in her life now. If Debra and Matt couldn’t support her choices, so be it.

  The cats and dog demanded food.

  “I hear you. Half the neighbors hear you.” Sarah organized their meals, then her own. Eggs and toast were the best she could do at the moment. She sat at the table, and stared at the phone. Should she call Dan? She was avoiding the inevitable. Time to call the police. She sighed, and extracted Officer Mike’s business card from her wallet. The woman who answered the phone told Sarah he was off duty. She asked for the only other person she knew.

  “Detective Engelman.” He sounded tired.

  “This is Sarah Wright. I don’t know if you remember me. You were here the evening my mother fell.”

  “Yes, I remember you. How’s your mother?”

  “Not very well, I’m afraid.” She gave him a quick update.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How are you holding out?”

  “Not bad for someone who was hit by a van this morning.” She gave him the details of the morning hit-and-run. “Suffice it to say I’m feeling sore and paranoid.”

  “I guess you are. You’re having a terrible week. By the way, your aunt owes me a bottle of GHB. The Maryland State Crime Lab is backed up for a month of Sundays, but I still want the second one as soon as possible.”

  “It’s on her kitchen counter. That brings me to the main reason for my call. I can’t find her anywhere. I’m worried sick.”

  “You can’t find who anywhere?”

  “Aunt Ida. She left for Florida early Monday morning and was supposed to call me when she got to her hotel. She can’t drive after dark, so I got worried when she didn’t call. I’ve tried her cell phone but I keep getting her voicemail.”

  “Did you try the hotel?”

  “Yes, and they hadn’t heard from her either. Neither had the area hospitals nor the State Police. This morning, I called every single hotel, hospital, and police authority on her itinerary from North Carolina to Florida. I got zip.”

  “Not good.”

  “I want a Silver Alert issued for my aunt. How do I do it?”

  “You need to call 9-1-1,” the detective said.

  “Can’t I tell you?” Wasn’t he a detective? Wasn’t he supposed to detect crimes? Or find missing people?

  “The procedure is, you call 9-1-1 and you’ll get the current patrol officer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the protocol. If the officer knows the victim, it could be a conflict of interest.”

  Conflict of interest? He’d met her aunt once. How did that qualify for knowing her? “Okay, well, I guess I’d better follow the rules.” Sarah nearly slammed the phone shut, but didn’t want to break her only connection to Aunt Ida. She called 9-1-1.

  * * * *

  The young man in front of Sarah had a crew cut, stood ramrod straight and kept calling her “ma’am.” He reminded Sarah of Joe Friday, “Nothing but the facts, ma’am,” from Dragnet. His nametag said “Officer Pollack.” His gaze swept her from head to toe, and stopped at her cervical collar.

  “Do you need medical attention, Ma’am?”

  Irritation tinged her voice. “I’ve had more than enough today, thank you.”

  He wrote in a little notebook and wore the expression of a person with other things to do, and other people to see. It was ten-thirty in the evening, and Sarah had the impression he was wishing the next shift had gotten this call. She recounted the facts to him.

  “Do you have a recent photograph of her, ma’am?”

  “Yes, this is from last year. It was my birthday. She’s missing my birthday this year.” She handed him a smiling photograph of Aunt Ida with Ethel. “She’s the one on the right. The other one is my mother.” She bit her tongue to cut off her next sentence. She’s in a coma. I know where she is.

  Sarah gave him a description of Aunt Ida’s white Cadillac and license plate, including the “Mah Jong Maven” bumper sticker.

  “Does she have any medical conditions, ma’am?” He looked around her kitchen and his gaze latched onto the clock. He seemed to be counting each tick.

  “Her license is restricted. She’s not supposed to drive after dark.”

  He jotted a note. “Is she senile or physically or mentally disabled, ma’am?”

  “No, she’s very sharp.” Sarah said. “What about a Silver Alert? She’s a senior citizen.”

  “The State of Maryland uses that for people with cognitive disorders.” He glanced at his watch. “Ma’am, did she leave voluntarily?”

  “She goes to her second home in Punta Gorda, Florida, every year. This year, she was actually a bit late in leaving.”

  “Do you have any evidence that her physical safety may be in danger?”

  “She’s not answering her cell phone, and nobody between here and Florida knows where she is,” Sarah said. “It’s completely out of character for her to disappear like this. Isn’t that enough to worry about an accident or an abduction?”

  “Oh, it’s much too soon to be talking about foul play.”

  “When exactly is it okay to talk about ‘foul play’?”

  “It usually takes about a month before Homicide gets involved, ma’am.”

  “A month? What happens in the meantime?”

  “We issue a BOLO, or a Be On the Look Out, to everyone in Baltimore County, and we send this information to the NCIC system, and, we’ll follow up on every shift.”

  “And the NCIC system is what?”

  “The National Crime Information Center, a computerized index of criminal justice information, including missing persons.”

  “And?”

  “And, if we get or need any more information, we’ll call you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She closed the kitchen door behind him and locked the deadbolt. First, her mother was injured and in a coma
, then Sarah was hit by a van and now Aunt Ida was missing. What the hell was going on?

  Chapter Twelve

  In the middle of the night, Sarah sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat, her heart racing. She didn’t need a psychiatric nurse to interpret her nightmare. Aunt Ida was in deep trouble. She grabbed her cell phone.

  “Baltimore County 9-1-1,” a woman said.

  “I need to speak to someone about a kidnapping.”

  “Who was kidnapped, ma’am?”

  “My Aunt, Ida Mae Katz.”

  “Have you received a phone call or a ransom note?”

  “No. I filed a missing person report a few hours ago with Officer Pollack. He said the police would begin a follow-up investigation and report it on every shift. I have additional information that leads me to believe she’s been kidnapped.”

  “Ma’am, did you find blood, evidence of a struggle, or suspicious circumstances that lead you to this conclusion?”

  “No. I told Officer Pollack, the last time I saw Aunt Ida she was driving away in her car, on the way to her home in Florida.”

  “Ma’am, what evidence do you have that a kidnapping has occurred?”

  “I had a dream. She told me she was in grave danger. She was pale and shaking.”

  “Oh, great, a 10-96!” The dispatcher said to someone else. Then, in a loud voice, she said, “Ma’am, have you been drinking or using any mind-altering drugs?”

  “I was hit by a van today. I took one Tylenol with codeine five hours ago.”

  “Ma’am, I think you’d better go back to bed.”

  “You mean you won’t send out an officer?”

  “Ma’am, I’d hate for you to be charged with filing a false report while under the influence of drugs.”

  “I tell you my aunt is missing and might be a kidnapping victim, and you tell me I’m going to be charged with a crime for reporting it? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Ma’am, if you have any substantiation that there’s been a kidnapping, or know where such evidence can be found, then I will send out an officer. In the meantime, I suggest you go back to bed and sleep it off. Thank you for calling Baltimore County 9-1-1.” She hung up on Sarah.