by Fern Michaels; Marie Bostwick; Janna McMahan; Rosalind Noonan
“Thank God you remember, because Mack is drawing a blank. The weirdest thing is going on. The kid’s father called us again this morning. Only Mack says it’s not the second time. He says it never happened yesterday.”
“What?” Sheila sprinkles green jimmies onto a tree cookie. “Did Mack fall and hit his head or something?”
“Nah. He got engaged last night.”
“Well, that could explain it. I’ll bet Nayasia is thrilled.”
“Sounds that way, though I don’t know why. She’s going to spend the rest of her life with Mack.”
Some sort of comment passes from Mack—the wry kidding that always goes on between those two. Sheila moves away from Katie. “Really, honey. The kid who died yesterday…What’s the deal with that?”
“I don’t know. I’m still scratching my head.”
“Is the kid still alive?”
“How could he be?”
Joe’s question hangs in the space between them.
Sheila draws a cautious breath. “Joe, this is insane. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Shee. Right now we’re headed back to the precinct to look up yesterday’s paperwork, figure out who’s got this right.”
“Sounds like an episode of Lost.”
He switches gears. “How are the kids?”
“Absolutely fine, though I got my own little mystery going here. Did you play elf last night and sneak some presents under the tree?”
A tired sigh comes over the line. “No, Shee.”
“Well, that’s weird, because, suddenly, there are some gifts here that…” She looks around to see if Katie is listening. Hard to tell. “There are some things that I didn’t put there. Must be from Santa.” She steps into the living room, lowers her voice. “Are you telling me the truth, Joe? One of the packages is for me. Did you buy me something?”
“We had a deal—no gifts. I kept up my end of the bargain.”
“Then where did this stuff come from?” she asks.
“Did you talk to your sister?”
Jen? Sheila bites her lower lip. “That must be it. The little sneak. I’ve got to call her.”
“That solves your mystery,” Joe says flatly.
“Except that I can’t find the…” A quick glance tells her Katie is watching. “I can’t find the thing I threw in the closet after you broke it. The item of contention.” She spells it out. “The p-o-l-i-c-e c-a-r?”
“Geez, you’re challenging my verbal skills. I can’t read and stay on the road at the same time.” He pauses. “That toy police car?”
“Did you take it?” Suddenly she can visualize the toy in the trash out back.
“Nope.” Behind his voice the radio crackles—the central dispatcher. “Shee, I gotta go.”
“Okay, honey. I love you…” But suddenly the connection is lost, and Sheila can only hope he heard her last words.
Chapter 17
The Aided Call is a welcome distraction from the surreal morning.
Auburndale House, an assisted-living facility, is a regular port-of-call in their sector. Joe and Mack are the first responders on the scene. As Joe pulls into the building’s narrow driveway he spots Coral Winfield, the buttoned-down black administrator who always reminds him of a school principal.
Coral marches right up to them. “Good morning, officers. Mrs. Persichetti lost her balance and went down. I got an ambulance on the way, but she says she’s not going to the hospital.”
“Can’t blame her for that,” Mack says as they follow Coral into the building’s lobby, where the woman is seated in a wheelchair, surrounded by a handful of people.
“I don’t know what all the commotion is about. Flashing lights out there, and look…the police. Really, it’s not necessary. I’m going to my son’s house for Christmas dinner, that’s all.” Mrs. Persichetti has the gravelly voice of a lifetime smoker and the jewelry collection of a queen. From all the bling on her hands, it’s a wonder she can lift them at all. She pats the blood pressure cuff on her arm, her watery blue eyes on the cops. “Officers, really, you shouldn’t have come. I’m just fine. Had a little spill, is all. That’s all.”
Joe moves closer and leans down so that he is eye-level with the woman. “What happened, ma’am?”
“Well, you see I was trying to get something out of my bag when it caught on my coat. The clasp, right there, it got caught.” Her withered hands tremble slightly as she touches the metal clasp of her purse. “You see? I paused to work it loose and it threw me off balance.”
“Were you dizzy?” Joe asks.
“No, no, none of that. And I’ll thank you to call off the ambulance, officer. It’s Christmas Day and my son David is taking me to his house for Christmas.” The man in the leather jacket she calls David looks to be in his seventies, though David’s son seems hearty.
“We’ll get you there, Ma,” says David. “Just let the paramedics check you over, make sure you didn’t break anything.”
Mrs. Persichetti rolls her eyes. “I did not break anything. I would know.” She frowns at her son. “Broke my hip last year. I knew it then, didn’t I?”
“Your son is right, ma’am,” Joe says politely. “No one wants you to spend your Christmas in the emergency room, but if you can wait a few minutes, I’d feel much better if we could have our paramedics take a look, give you the green light.”
“Well.” She smacks the armrests of the wheelchair. “I suppose I can wait a few minutes, but I’m moving to a real chair. The indignity of this thing, like a bicycle with no steering mechanism.”
Joe straightens and smiles, feeling a certain sense of rightness in the outcome here. This is a job he can handle. He knows how to talk to people. Maybe there are still a few aspects of this job he doesn’t hate.
While they wait for the ambulance, Joe keeps Mrs. Persichetti engaged in conversation. For a ninety-three year old, the woman is sharp as a tack.
The ambulance arrives with a blast of whooping siren and flashing lights. Mrs. Persichetti groans. “So much fuss.” When Todd comes into the lobby carrying an emergency kit, the elderly woman extends her left arm. “Here we go again. You can take my blood pressure and fuss over me all you want, young man, but I’m not going to the hospital.”
Todd crouches down beside her. “That’s about the best offer I’ve had all day.”
While Todd takes her vitals, Joe heads outside to find Dolly. Seeing Todd, Joe realized they don’t need to get the paperwork back at the station; Dolly and Todd can corroborate the story on Armand Boghosian.
The rear doors of the ambulance are flung open, Dolly’s dark blue legs stretching out to the pavement. She’s leaning in, unlatching a backboard.
“I don’t think you’re going to need that,” Joe tells her.
“Yeah, you got a livewire in there.” Mack joins them.
“Glad to hear it.” Dolly pushes the orange board back into the van. “Last job we had was a cardiac arrest. CPR in front of the whole family huddled around watching in their jammies. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Speaking of jobs—” Joe jumps right in. “We followed up on that kid who OD’d yesterday. Found his father to identify the body. That was a sad one.”
“Yesterday.” Her eyes flash on Joe intently as she reaches back, yanks a clip from her blond hair, then twists it around and clips it again. “You must be talking about last week or something, Joe. Yesterday was my day off.”
No…it can’t be. Joe feels his resolve fading fast.
Mack smacks his elbow. “See? Told ya.”
“No, no.” Joe steps away from his partner, rubs his elbow. “I mean Christmas Eve, Doll. You remember. The kid in the apartment off Main Street? Asian girlfriend?”
Dolly’s bright eyes flicker over to Mack. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No, I—”
“Exactly,” Mack steps in on him, shutting him up with a lethal look. He’s just trying to keep Joe from stepping in it deeper, but it pisses Joe off. “Just a s
tupid joke,” Mack says.
But it’s not a joke to Joe. It’s a cold, hard fact that isn’t matching up to reality. His world is off kilter, totally warped.
“Yeah, well, Merry Christmas to you guys,” Dolly says. “But don’t jump the gun. April Fools’ Day is a ways off yet.”
Chapter 18
“Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but it’s okay. You know?” Mack steps on the brakes, a little too hard, and he and Joe swing forward slightly. It’s unusual for Mack to be driving, but Joe wants to focus; he’s got a lot to think about.
“It’s the holidays,” Mack goes on. “People get stressed and off the frizzle and whatnot. I know how it is, man. When we get off today, you’ll go home and be with your family. Kick back and forget any of this ever happened.”
“Just keep driving,” Joe mutters. Holding one of Garo Boghosian’s notes in each hand, he tries to ignore Mack’s poor driving skills so that he can piece it together. This is a bizarre situation, a mystery more puzzling than any case he’s ever sent upstairs to the detectives.
No one else seems to remember the kid who died yesterday, but it happened.
He saw Armand Boghosian’s dead body being rocked in his father’s arms.
Damn it, he saw the kid’s body.
Why doesn’t anyone else remember that?
He stares at the notes in his hands, the curved swirl of Garo Boghosian’s script catching his eye. Mr. Boghosian was so unaffected this morning, as if the trauma of his son’s death never happened.
“Don’t these notes prove anything?” Joe says aloud.
Mack beeps the siren to ease ahead of traffic on Main Street. “Okay, man, the two notes are spooky. But what’s the point? Why are you trying so hard to prove that Boghosian’s son is dead when everything says it’s not true.”
Why? Joe’s heartbeat accelerates. “That’s a good question. Why am I letting this make me crazy? Because maybe he’s not dead. Maybe we still have time to find him alive.” He flips the siren on, stuffs the notes back into his pocket and gives Mack the address of Wendy Min’s apartment. “Get there, forthwith.”
Adrenaline pushes him up the stairs, one flight, two…three. He pounds on the door of Wendy Min’s apartment, identifies himself as the police, then waits.
No answer.
“What’s going on?” Mack asks, catching up.
Joe lets out a breath—relief. “We’re in time, I think. They probably didn’t get back from the after-hours place yet.” He’s already striding down the hall, headed back to the stairs. “We’ll wait in the car, catch the kid before he comes in downstairs.”
“You mind telling me what the hell you’re babbling about?” Mack calls from behind.
“We’re trying to save a life.” Joe’s voice thunders through the stairwell.
“Something tells me your methods are not really in line with department policy.”
“You got that right,” Joe says as the soles of his boots clatter down another flight of stairs.
Outside the patrol car is parked a few yards from the building’s front entrance, next to a fire hydrant. Close enough, Joe thinks as he slides into the passenger seat and closes the door.
Mack gets in beside him. “Okay, this is weirding me out, like you know the future or something.”
“Nah, I don’t. Just one kid’s future.” Or maybe one kid’s destiny if he doesn’t intervene? The scene from A Christmas Carol flashes in his mind, Scrooge asking the third ghost if this is a vision of what might be or what will be…
But the Scrooge in Joe’s head is played by the cartoon version of Mr. Magoo, and if he tries to explain this to Mack, his partner’s going to lose all confidence in him.
“I just have this feeling we can do something positive today,” Joe says. “That maybe we can save a life.”
Mack bites his lower lip, nods. “Okay, that’d be cool.” He tosses his memo book on the dashboard and adjusts the driver’s seat. “I’m up for that. We got the Superman costumes on; might as well be heroes.”
“Yeah, I wish it was that easy.”
Just ahead of them an old Dodge pulls up and double-parks.
“That’s a bonehead move,” Joe says. “Right in front of us.”
Mack picks up his memo book. “Should I write him?”
Joe waves it off. “Let it go. There’s an old lady in the back. It’d be like you were writing your grandmother.”
Mack flips on the radio, tunes into a station. “All Christmas carols, all the time,” he says with a grin.
“Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains…” Mack hums along. “Here goes that Gloria song again. What the hell does she have to do with Christmas?”
Before Joe can answer his eyes alight on a couple staggering up the street, coming from the direction of the subway. The lanky kid wearing a black North Face jacket leans heavily on the girl, a petite kid who needs to take three or four steps for every one of his. Joe flashes on that jacket, remembers searching it, finding baggies of pills in the pockets.
“That’s got to be them.” He pops out of the cruiser, leaves the door open as he lunges over to the doorway. Yeah, it’s them. He recognizes Wendy Min’s exotic almond-shaped eyes and red-streaked hair. The line of studs on Armand’s ear stand out from here. Joe can barely believe he’s seeing the kid with his own eyes—Armand Boghosian, walking and breathing and very much alive.
Nothing short of a miracle.
Joe is tempted to stand there gaping in awe at the amazing thing—a young life—but he’s got to do something to preserve it. He plants himself between the kids and the door to the apartment house. Off to his left, Mack moves cautiously, not quite sure what’s going on. Joe isn’t so sure, either, except…
Except that he’s got to stop Armand Boghosian from going up to Wendy’s apartment.
The kids approach the door, Armand talking a mile a minute like a raving auctioneer. His hands flit through the air in empty gestures. His dark eyes are bloodshot and glassy.
High as a kite. Probably cocaine, Joe suspects. Maybe some prescription drugs.
Stepping into their path, he calls to them. “You two better stop right there.”
Panic crosses Wendy’s face. She braces, holding Armand upright as she takes in the two cops closing on either side. “Is there a problem, officers?”
Joe isn’t exactly sure what he’s going to do until the words slide out. “We’re here for Armand. His father wants to see him. He’s got a few questions about some money Armand borrowed last night.”
Expecting resistance, Joe is squarely planted, his senses on alert.
But there is only defeat as Wendy glares up at her boyfriend. “Did you take that money from your father?”
“The money isn’t a problem. It was all right there, a bundle of money. Rolling like a snowball. You know, how it rolls? The way the world is a snowball? See how it rolls?”
“Armand…” She climbs out from under his arm, presses her hands into his chest to boost him up. “You’re not making any sense. You told me—you promised—you swore that money wasn’t stolen. Armand, how can I ever trust you?”
“You don’t get it. You gotta get it.” The kid is babbling, deranged. “See how it’s all white? It’s a sugar day, you know what I mean? You have to get out and roll along.”
“Oh, my God.” Wendy presses her hands to her panicked face. Her voice cracks with emotion. “I can’t do this anymore. You have to go. Go and get straight. I can’t help you, Armand. I thought I could, but I was wrong. I can’t do it.”
Armand is draped over her, a marionette in storage. She straightens and pushes him away, and he teeters back on his heels. Twitching. Unsteady.
“You’re coming with us.” Joe closes the space quickly, takes the kid by the shoulders. “Get down,” he instructs briskly. “Down on your knees.” Better to have the kid closer to the ground if he collapses, which seems likely in Armand’s altered state.
Armand sinks
down and, within seconds, Mack is on the kid, patting him down, snapping on cuffs, pulling small plastic bags of drugs from Armand’s pockets. “What do we have here? Looks like a good amount of drugs.”
“Oh, my God!” Wendy presses spidery hands to her face, pale fingertips peeking through black fingerless gloves. “What are you doing to him?”
“He’s under arrest,” Mack says.
“Oh, my God! Are you taking him to jail?”
“That’s where you go when you get arrested,” Mack tells her as he finishes patting the kid down. “You have the right to remain silent…”
But Joe waves him off. “Don’t Mirandize him. We’re not arresting him.”
“We’re not?” Mack squints at Joe as if he’s gone crazy. “I got the cuffs on him.” Police procedure prescribes that you don’t put cuffs on them unless you are arresting a person. A civil liberties thing.
“That’s okay. Let’s get him in the car,” Joe says. “I’ll take the complaint for this one if it hits the fan.”
“Cody, you are stark raving out of your mind today.”
“And you know what? I’m starting to feel really good about it,” Joe says as he and Mack help the kid to his feet and guide him to the patrol car.
“Don’t hurt him!” Wendy sobs.
“He’s gonna be okay,” Joe tells her as Mack guides the kid’s head safely under the roof of the vehicle. “We’re taking him to get some help. Rehab.”
“I know, I know. He’s an addict, but—” She presses her fists to her eyes. “He’s a really good guy. I know he needs help, but please, please don’t hurt him.”
“We won’t.” Joe opens the passenger door, anxious to get rolling. So far they’ve broken a few dozen procedural rules, and he wants to get the hell out of here before he can think about how it might all come crashing down on their heads. “He’ll need your help when he gets out,” he tells the girl.
She nods. “I’ll do everything I can. He’s a good guy, he just…”