Threshold

by G. M. Ford

  The uniform was writing in his notebook now. Dolan kept talking. “Get those cruisers out of the street so Emergency Services can get down here and then have these guys canvass the neighborhood, see if we can turn up anybody who saw or heard anything.” Dolan turned toward the east and pointed upward. “I can see two CC cameras from here,” he said. “Find out how many cover the immediate area, who they belong to, and roust out whoever it is can show us what’s on the tape.”

  The uniform’s jotting had reached full mouth-breather status. Off in the distance a pair of sirens was howling in two-part harmony.

  Dolan stepped around the scribbling officer and hustled toward the assembled multitude of cops. “Gents,” he shouted. All heads turned his way. “Move the cruisers so the medics can get down here. Let’s go. Hustle.”

  They broke into a group trot. Dolan pointed at the cop with the notebook.

  “See Officer . . .”

  “Oh . . . Yablonski,” the guy said.

  “See Officer Yablonski for assignments.”

  Dolan waited as the sound of slapping soles got fainter and then walked over to the Lexus. Two guys dead in the front seat. Both with their seatbelts on. Blood and brain matter splattered all over the damn place.

  Dolan moved toward the right. The driver’s window was down. He made it a point not to touch anything as he bent to look in the window. Looked like the driver had been shot in the mouth. The passenger just above the right ear. Both small-caliber, low-velocity holes. Something that would bounce around inside the skull like a Ping-Pong ball. Looked like they were hugging.

  He reached into the car and put two fingers on the driver’s carotid artery.

  Not only was there no sign of a pulse, but the skin had begun to cool. He had no doubt. These two wouldn’t be home for lunch.

  As he began to pull back he noticed that the driver’s suit jacket had been folded back by contact with the center console. A dark shadow caught Dolan’s eye. He found a pen in his inside pocket, leaned into the car as far as gravity would permit, and pulled the dead man’s coat back a couple of inches.

  Chrome-plated automatic in a shoulder holster. He was betting the other guy was packing too. Dolan frowned and surveyed the scene again. The Lexus sat tight to the curb, right about in the middle of Wentworth Street, pointed straight at this end of the Yale Street Bridge. It was a good forty yards from the car to either end of the street, so, short of SEAL Team 6 rappelling down and landing on the roof of the car, the perps had somehow managed to walk up to a couple of armed men without raising the slightest suspicion in either of them. Neither guy had popped his seatbelt. Neither had pulled his piece. They had just sat there in their car, calm as could be, while a couple of hitters walked up and shot them in the head. Didn’t make any sense.

  Before Mickey could ponder the matter at any length, the first of three aid cars skidded to a stop. Dolan stepped aside and let the medics do their work. Wasn’t till they pulled the stiffs out of the car and Dolan got a good look at the passenger’s face that he knew where he’d seen these two hummers before.

  The realization sent him reaching for his phone.

  For a couple of terror-filled seconds, Grace teetered on the edge, her mind’s eye picturing herself rocketing downward through the jagged hole in the floor, kicking and screaming as she tumbled into the blackness, in the seconds before being impaled on whatever hundred-year-old, disease-laden debris awaited at the bottom. She saw the rats, too. Gnawing at her mangled, punctured body, even before the final breath had left her.

  Her fingernails raked the edge of a steel I beam. She pressed her back into the wall, as if she were trying to push herself out the other side. She was motionless but panting like a miler. Took her a moment to muster the courage to step one foot back over the other, pirouetting on tiptoe as she made the turn and pressed her chest into the wall for all she was worth.

  She stood there vibrating, her lips pressed to the peeling metal like it was a long-lost lover, while her body struggled to regain some measure of pulmonary composure.

  Wasn’t till the blood had stopped pounding in her ears that she heard the horn.

  The car horn. Somebody was blowing a horn.

  She took several deep breaths and began to sidestep back the way she’d come.

  Took her several minutes to make it back to the door where she’d entered. Her knees were like spaghetti as she hurried toward the elevator. The horn was louder now.

  Cassie was wearing her sugarplum fairy dress, all pink and puffy. Something you’d wear to a five-year-old’s birthday party on a warm Saturday afternoon in July, assuming, of course, that you’d been hired as the entertainment. Standing amid the grimy post-industrial rubble, she looked like she’d been dropped out of a spaceship.

  Gus walked out to meet Grace.

  “Nicky found her,” Gus whispered. “Down by the river. Collecting stones. She says the fairy outfit’s supposed to make the girls feel better,” he said with an icy stare. He cast his eyes in Cassie’s direction. “Scary when you think she’s the best option we got for those girls.”

  “If you knew what their father did to them . . . what he made them do . . .”

  “Tessa told me,” Gus said. He looked away.

  Grace winced as she watched Cassie climb into the back of the van. Watched through the window as she buckled her safety belt and settled back into the seat. A foot and a half of pink fabric dangled from the bottom of the door like Barbie’s signal flag.

  “We’ve got to get her back on those meds,” Grace said. “We can’t be dealing with Tinker Bell day in, day out. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

  “She tries,” Gus said. “Way too damn hard, but she really tries.”

  Grace heaved a sigh. “Let’s go, while the getting’s good,” she said.

  Apparently, Marcus Nilsson was not feeling festive. His driver Robbie threw Mickey Dolan a “watch your ass motherfucker” look as he hustled around to get the door for the Chief of Detectives.

  “This better be damn good,” the C of D growled as he stepped out of the car into the blustery street and started toward Mickey. “I’m supposed to be at a Planning Council meeting.”

  Mickey inclined his head toward a pair of wallets laid out on the hood of the Lexus. “As I’m sure you’ve already heard sir, we’ve got two gunshot victims. Both shot in the head at point blank range. Both heeled. Both still buckled up. Couple of private dicks. Richard Coffee and Gerald Robbins.”

  Nilsson frowned as he ran the names through his brain circuits. “The assholes from yesterday?”

  “Yep. Same two guys.”

  “What the hell were they doing out here?”

  “There was a notebook wedged down next to the driver’s seat. Looks like they were taking notes about who came and went from Coaltown.”

  Nilsson’s face wrinkled. “Why would they be doing that?” he wondered out loud.

  “No idea.”

  The C of D looked around. “So they were sitting there in their car counting garbage trucks.”

  “So it seems.”

  “And somebody—probably more than one somebody—just walks up and shoots both of them in the head. In broad fucking daylight.”

  “That’s what it looks like sir,” Mickey said.

  Nilsson thought it over. “ME give you any idea about time of death?”

  “Thought they’d been down less than an hour.”

  “Why would they let somebody walk right up on them like that?” Nilsson asked. “You know . . . unless it was a kid or an old lady or something.” He stopped talking. Mickey could practically see the light bulb appear above the C of D’s head.

  “Or a cop,” Mickey added with a crooked grin. “One they recognized.”

  Nilsson raised a thick eyebrow. “And you were . . . ?”

  “Packing away breakfast over at Shorty’s,�
�� Dolan said. “Half a dozen people will put me there. Couple of them from the East Precinct.”

  Nilsson stared him down. “Good,” he said finally. “’Cause, once they put it together, Internal Affairs is gonna be all over you like ugly on an ape.”

  “I was thinkin’ . . .” Dolan said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well—yesterday these two were following me around trying to get a lead on the whereabouts of the Royster family.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What if they were still working on the Royster thing?”

  Nilsson looked around. “Here? Why here?”

  “Now I’m just saying . . .” Mickey began, “. . . what if for some reason or other, they think the family is out on the island somewhere?”

  “In Coaltown?”

  “I mean—you know, with all the databases at our disposal these days, unless you’re going to pull a Ted Kaczynski—you know, there’s pretty much nowhere to run. You so much as break wind and we’re going to find you. Hell, they found Ted way out in the middle of East Jesus, Montana someplace. Yet I can’t seem to get a line on any of these damn people. Not the Roysters. Not the Pressman women either. It’s like they don’t exist, or they live in another dimension or something. So I started asking myself—”

  Nilsson cut him off. “A woman and a pair of kids wouldn’t last five minutes in Coaltown.” The C of D waved a dismissive hand. “Hell, I wouldn’t go out there without a vest and a full SWAT team.” He waved the idea off. “Just not possible.”

  “Just a thought,” Mickey said, defensively.

  An insistent beeping pulled their eyes toward the north end of the street, where a city tow truck was backing in their direction. They stepped aside and watched in silence as the driver hooked up the Western Security Lexus. As he began to roll off down the street with the car on his hook, Nilsson said, “Tell you what, Mickey. Royster’s all over the mayor—calls him three, four times a day. First thing His Honor does after Royster hangs up is to get on the blower and ream my ass. Sooooooo, just in case there’s a tie-in somewhere that we’re missing here—something that links these two yahoos to the Royster family . . .”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Why don’t you roll on over to Western Security, give them the bad news. Find out what they were doing out here, other than counting garbage trucks.”

  “Yes sir.”

  A woman stepped around the corner. She began moving in their direction, walking fast, pulling a notebook from her coat pocket as she hustled along.

  The walk that told the tale. Natalie Mendonhal moved like one of those Olympic walkers. Million miles an hour, all ass-wiggles and flying elbows.

  Nilsson groaned. “Oh Christ, it’s Mendonhal,” he said under his breath.

  Natalie Mendonhal had been handling the crime beat for the Morning Standard since the ice receded from this part of the continent. This was a woman who never let a complete lack of information get between her and a story. She could do five columns on how nothing was new today. And often did.

  Back when the TV cabinet was bigger than the screen, Natalie had started out in television. Did the morning news for the local NBC affiliate, back when newswomen looked like Betty Friedan and sportscasters were always four-hundred-pound guys wearing plaid sports jackets.

  When the network replaced her with a cutesy talking head half her age, she’d gone all indignant and sued the station for age discrimination. Made quite a splash. And lost. Bye-bye TV. Hello Morning Standard.

  Marcus Nilsson whistled. His driver quickly hopped into the car and started the engine. “Let me know what you find out from Western,” Nilsson said as he headed for the car at warp speed. As he rounded the trunk he looked back at Mickey. “Give Natalie my regards,” he said with a wicked grin.

  Mickey watched as the C of D’s car rolled up Wentworth, cut between two furniture warehouses, and disappeared from view. When he turned back, Natalie Mendonhal was creeping up on the Lexus, peering in the driver’s window, scribbling in her notebook.

  “That’s an ongoing crime scene, Miz Mendonhal,” Mickey Dolan said, as he started her way. “I’m going to have to ask you to step back, please.”

  “Who got whacked?” she asked.

  “Nobody said anybody got whacked,” Mickey reminded her.

  “Radio did. Two of them.” She pointed at the Lexus. “All that damn blood. You gonna try to tell me that was a shaving accident?”

  “I’m going to try to tell you absolutely nothing,” Mickey said with a grin.

  He used his arm to gently move her away from the car.

  “You touched me,” she complained. She bobbed her eyebrows and leered at Mickey. “I’ll give you half an hour to stop,” she said.

  Mercifully, salvation was at hand. At the north end of the street, a uniformed officer suddenly stepped into view. “Hey,” Mickey shouted.

  The guy turned toward the sound. Mickey gestured for him to come.

  “Little birdy told me Marcus has got you bird-doggin’ the missing Royster family. That true?” Natalie asked as they moved along. “They say the mayor’s sick of Royster bracing him about it. He’s thinking about starting his own task force.”

  Mickey stonefaced it. Kept her moving. “Even if that were true, that’d be an ongoing investigation, and as you know . . .”

  The cop arrived. Mickey said, “Officer, would you please escort Miz Mendonhal back outside the yellow tape? She seems to have lost her way.”

  “Got lots of knowledgeable people saying Royster’s missus got a raw deal in court. Saying the custody thing should have gone the other way . . .”

  Mickey turned and walked away. “Nice seeing you Natalie,” he said.

  Despite all the anxiety, registering the girls at their respective schools had turned out to be a piece of cake. Both girls kept their new names straight. The paperwork passed muster. Cassie had managed to avoid flitting about the room, and other than eliciting a few sideways glances regarding her tooth fairy ensemble, she’d performed rather admirably. She’d signed on the dotted line and then walked each of them to take a peek at her new classroom, with Gus trailing along behind like a doting Uncle Fester.

  On the way to their new apartment in Hardwig, they’d stopped at Burger King for lunch, so as far as the girls were concerned, everything was at least temporarily right with the world.

  Grace watched through the doorway as Cassie and Eve helped the girls unpack. Maddy had magnanimously agreed to let her little sister have the larger of the two bedrooms. Tessa smiled for the first time in a week.

  “So far so good,” Gus rumbled.

  “Went a whole lot better than I thought,” Grace admitted.

  “How long you been doin’ this?” Gus asked.

  “Doing what?”

  “Helping out families.”

  Grace thought about it. “I guess I was sort of born into it.”

  “It’s a good thing you do,” Gus declared. “Anybody who’d abuse his own kids . . .”

  “Hopefully, not anymore,” Grace said, crossing her fingers.

  “I had a little girl once,” Gus said out of the blue. “Me and my wife Hannah.”

  “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “No more,” he said. “Losing Beth kinda tore us apart.”

  Grace wanted to inquire, but didn’t want to intrude. Turned out, Gus had a story to tell, and he was going to tell it.

  “She was four,” he said. “Prettiest thing you ever saw. Looked just like her mama.” He pointed at his own face. “Which was a good thing.”

  Grace laughed.

  “Rode her tricycle out into the street. Got hit by a beer truck.”

  “I’m sorry,” didn’t seem to cover it.

  “Tore me and Hannah apart,” Gus said. “Just too much strain. It was like all of a sudden we didn’t h
ave nothing to say to one another. Like somehow we’d been talking to each other through Beth and when, all of a sudden she wasn’t there . . .” He let it trail off.

  “Like all the good stuff that had ever happened to us suddenly went away, and there wasn’t anything left but the bad stuff, and both of us wishing it had been one of us under that truck instead of her, and feelin’ guilty as hell that we were still alive.”

  Eve came rolling out of Maddy’s bedroom, checking her watch. “We probably better be going,” she said.

  Grace threw an arm around Gus’s massive shoulders and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Take good care of them,” she said.

  “Ain’t nothing bad gonna happen to them as long as I’m standing up.”

  Western Security occupied what had, at one time, been an old laundry and dye works on South Fulton Street. Dolan threw the Police sign on the dashboard, parked in front of a fire hydrant and got out. Here, away from the river, the breeze was little more than a whisper. Must have been ten degrees warmer too. Dolan started across the street.

  He took his time. Having to break bad news was his least favorite part of the job. Always left him feeling as if he were at least partly responsible. Like an after-the-fact accessory to misery or something.

  As Mickey mounted the curb, his phone began to ring. He winced slightly at the sight of Jen’s face on the screen. On several occasions, he’d thought about deleting her picture. Even started to do it a couple of times, but somehow, he never could bring himself to push that final button. “Hey,” he said.

  “I did some asking around about the Roysters.”

  “And?”

  “Rumor has it he’s got a judge in his pocket.”

  “Nalbandian. Family Court.”

  “My source says she lives way beyond her means.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “My source also says that Royster’s children testified in closed court that they’d been sexually abused by their father. Went into graphic detail, from what I’m told. So graphic the court stenographer had to be excused. Everybody figured it was a slam-dunk for the mother. But the judge said she thought they’d been coached and awarded custody back to the father.”