Goran raises an index finger. “One—and I know you know this, Boyle—we can’t assume that this Brian Little guy is our perp, so we can’t even think about warrants yet. You and your impulsive streak are gonna get us both sent out to Property Crimes.” He grins. He knows full well that my impulsive streak is a perfect match for his overly cautious, methodical nature.
I roll my eyes. “We’d get sent back to one of the districts before Property Crimes. And I know you know this, Goran.”
He chuckles and holds up two fingers. “And two, I can’t figure out why you and Becker can’t just get along.”
I get to my feet and grab my coffee. “You know why. Because she’s an uptight, arrogant asshole, and the way she behaved on the O’Rourke case was way out of line.” She yelled at me in front of my entire squad for bagging evidence that was in plain sight but wasn’t in the warrant. And the evidence that I got broke the case wide open.
He shakes his head. “You have too much in common.”
I scoop the Nerf football off my desk and toss it at him. It bounces off his shoulder. “Too slow,” I say. “We need to work on those old-man reflexes.”
He makes one hand into a crank and uses it to raise his middle finger at me.
My phone vibrates. I pull it out and check the screen.
Christopher: I need to talk to you.
I decide to ignore it. He should have answered his phone last night, when I wasn’t working and had time to chat about the weather or his money problems or whatever catastrophe is on his menu today. I shove my phone back into my pocket. Seeing the picture of Ivan on my desk, I make a mental note to buy cat food before he starts the eat-the-plants-and-puke-on-the-bed cycle of feline anger.
I pull on my jacket and grab the pack of cigarettes from my desk drawer so I can take Anthony outside to smoke before I get his statement. I hope the food and sleep have sobered him up enough to give me something. But when I get to the interview room, I glance through the one-way mirror and see only burger wrappers and a Coke can. I push open the door. The room is empty.
I jog down the hall, looking into all of the interview rooms. No Anthony. I yank open the men’s room door.
“Hey!” a uniform says, shielding himself behind the urinal.
“Don’t flatter yourself. You see a guy in here? Little taller than me, African-American, kind of smelly? Long hair and beard?”
He keeps his crotch covered. “Nope, not in here.”
I turn to leave and catch a glimpse of Colby coming out of the file room down the hall. “Hey! Where the hell is my witness?”
The male uniform edges past me and moves a few feet down the hallway. He stands there with his back against the wall.
Colby looks as if I’ve slapped her, and I kind of want to. “Um, what?” she asks, almost in a whisper. “What do you mean?”
“Come over here. Now.” I resist the urge to grab her and shove her into the empty interview room.
She tips her head down and takes a few steps toward me. She stops before she’s in reach.
I jab a finger in the direction of the interview room. “Do you see him in there?” My anger is under control but simmering beneath the surface and creeping up into the base of my skull. “He was a witness in a fucking child murder case, Officer Colby. Child murder, maybe rape. Abuse. He’s homeless. Are we going to find him now?” I enunciate clearly, wanting her to hear every syllable, every letter of my words.
“I-I’m sorry. I-I don’t—”
The blood rushes to my head and face and pounds there. “Why didn’t you lock the door?” It’s not a question. When she doesn’t reply, I add, “Did you get a prelim?” That’s not a question, either.
She shakes her head. “I’ll go find—”
“Yes, you will go find him. Take your friend here”—I stop and squint at his name badge—“Jones. Take your friend Jones and find my witness.”
Colby and Jones slink toward the squad room. I lean against the wall and wait for the blood to drain from my cheeks and neck. My heartbeat returns to somewhere in the healthy range as I breathe. They’ll find him, I tell myself.
Goran comes around the corner as I’m straightening. “Whoa, Liz, what was that about? You scared the shit out of those rookies!” He chuckles. “They looked like a couple of little kids rushing out of here.”
I run my hands through my hair at the temples and squeeze.
“Wonder Woman doesn’t lose her cool, Liz.” He attempts a smile, but that weird concerned look of his appears again. He punches my shoulder. “There’s no time for a meltdown. Watson called and said he thinks he has an ID. Safe-T-Kids.”
“What, that fingerprint program?” Safe-T-Kids lets parents fingerprint their children to have the prints entered into local and federal databases. As its name suggests, the goal is to find them if they’re abducted. The cynic in me thinks the printing provides a false sense of security—for the program to work, the kid has to be found, and a lot of abducted kids aren’t—but it can also be helpful in terrible situations such as this one.
“Yeah. We need to talk to the kid’s parents. They live about twenty minutes from here.” He gestures at his rumpled clothes. “I figured we might want to get cleaned up first.”
“Okay, I’ll call them after I shower. Plan to head over to Brian Little’s house afterward.”
“Take your time. I’m gonna find us some real coffee and something to eat after I change clothes.”
My phone buzzes again, undoubtedly another text message from my brother. I don’t bother to look. Some of us have real problems, Christopher.
Chapter Four
Our newish unmarked car, a black Dodge Charger, is idling in the parking lot. We’d almost had to fight Domislaw and Roberts for it, until Goran pulled rank.
“We’ve been here longer,” he said. “We have special detail.” They had no argument for that. In fact, none of the other cops in Homicide did, either. In retrospect, this is strange. Maybe they figure we deserve it since we catch the creepy cases that nobody else even wants to think about.
The sun has been up for about an hour, and it feels as though it might warm up a little bit today. I saunter—some would say strut, and Goran calls it “the Boyle walk”—over to the car and yank the passenger door open. “Hey.”
“Feeling better yet, Boyle? That shower help?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I climb in and yank the door shut behind me.
“Good.” He hands me a cup of coffee and gestures at a bagel on the console.
“Thanks.”
Goran pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main street. I munch on the bagel, washing down bites with sips of coffee, and gaze out the window. People are starting to wake up, move around, get going for the day.
“Traffic on Mayfield is going to be a bitch,” I say.
Goran nods and makes a right so we’re heading east. “The parents at home?”
“Yeah. I’m guessing they know this isn’t a good visit.” I flick a piece of lint from my pants and gaze over at his profile. He shaved and changed his clothes, so he’s looking presentable.
Goran slams on the brakes to avoid rear-ending a garbage truck.
“Jesus,” I say. “Keep us in one piece, okay?”
“I did! I stopped!”
I pull out my notebook. “Kevin Whittle. Age five. Been missing since last Saturday. Parents have called their precinct ten-plus times a day since then. Citywide alert went out Monday morning.”
He glances at me. “Parents have gotta be going crazy. What’s their story? You get anything?”
“They’re both professors at Cleveland State. He’s in history, she’s—Christ, Tom,” I say as he almost rams the garbage truck again. “Do you want me to drive?”
He rolls his eyes. “Eat your bagel.”
I shake my head. “She’s in sociology.”
<
br /> He swerves to avoid a white Mercedes trying to make an illegal right turn. “So a possible connection to Sean Miller.”
“I know her. The mom,” I tell him after a pause. One of my degrees from CSU is in criminal sociology. “Teresa Whittle. I had a couple of seminars with her.” She encouraged me to go to law school, even offered to write a letter of recommendation. That didn’t quite happen. I’m more of a learn-on-the-job kind of gal. She, along with a list of other people, was a little disappointed, maybe even disheartened, when I told her I was going to the police academy instead.
“You and your degrees.” He pops a piece of Doublemint into his mouth. “Some of us had to go to night school.” He’s smiling, but he harasses me all the time about having a college education. He’s from the good old days when cops didn’t need more than an associate’s degree or a few years in the military to get hired. Over beers, he’s admitted that he’s always wanted more, maybe even law school. I’ve told him to go for it, that life’s too short to feel stuck in place. “It’s too late now,” he said last time we talked about it. “I got a wife and kids.”
“What do you think of the missing hand?” he asks. “Creepy.”
“Too early to tell. My guess is that the blow to the head is what killed him, though, not exsanguination.” I imagine the kind of force that would make a mark like that in a skull. Rage could provoke that. But the missing hand adds a level of detail that we don’t usually see in rage killings. It’s a more specific MO that I hope isn’t the start of some serial thing.
We pull up outside a well-kept house in Forest Hills, out on the far East Side.
Goran parks the car behind a red Toyota Prius. It has a green CSU sticker on it, and I wonder if it’s theirs. There are no other cars in the driveway, nor is there one in the open garage. One of those Little Tikes play sets sits in the side yard, and three bikes—two adult-sized, one much smaller—lean in the garage.
I unfasten my seat belt and open the door. “Let me break the news to Teresa, okay? There’s no way she did this. I used to know her decently well.”
“What, no way she killed her kid and lopped off his hand with some kind of garden tool?”
I ignore him and step out of the car. He rounds the car and walks with me toward the porch.
Before we get there, someone peeks out from behind the curtains on the front window, then the front door opens. “Detectives,” a man calls in a nasally voice. “Please come in.” He looks as if he gets about as much sleep as I do.
“Hi, Dr. Whittle,” I say when we reach him. I show him my badge. “I’m Detective Boyle, and this is Detective Goran. We’re here to talk with you about your son.”
“Thank God,” he replies. “And please, call me Peter.” He’s about four inches shorter than I am and slight, with bony shoulders, small wire-rim glasses, and a receding hairline. His salt-and-pepper beard is relatively well kept, given that his son has been missing for a week. “We’re losing our minds. I’m glad they sent you to talk to us.” He gestures for us to come inside, and we follow him into the living room. “Please have a seat. I’ll go get my wife.” He heads up a carpeted stairway.
An overstuffed hunter-green sofa sits against the front window, and two easy chairs are across from it. In between is a cherrywood coffee table. Tan carpet covers the floor, and the room is decorated with a couple of big potted plants and, on the walls, some British-looking hunting prints with shiny horses, guys in red jackets, and dogs. It’s not my taste, but it’s tasteful. Next to the front door is an umbrella stand with three umbrellas, two adult-sized ones and one for a kid. Next to that sits a pair of little kid’s brown Wellington boots.
Family pictures line the mantel. I walk over to take a look, but I avoid the ones with Kevin’s smiling face in them. An older couple in one, based on the resemblance, must be Peter Whittle’s parents. The man looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him.
Teresa Whittle appears in a doorway that I assume leads to the kitchen. I recognize her immediately—same shoulder-length dirty-blond hair, tortoiseshell glasses, and slacks-and-sweater combo she wore in my senior seminar. She’s gained a little weight, probably pregnancy pounds she never lost. Her face looks different, drawn, her large features hollow.
“Hello, Dr. Whittle,” I say. When she looks confused, I say, “It’s Elizabeth, Elizabeth Boyle.”
Recognition flickers across her face, and she rushes toward me, beginning to cry. “Elizabeth! What happened? Please tell me what’s happened. Did you find him?”
Peter Whittle comes down the stairs. “I’m not… oh, there you are, Teresa. I was just looking for you.”
“Why don’t you two have a seat?” With a light touch on her arm, I guide her to one of the chairs, and her husband takes a seat on the couch. Goran perches on the edge of the other chair, but I remain standing.
“Did you find him, Elizabeth?” Teresa asks again as she sits. “Please tell me you—”
“Dr. Whittle, we did find Kevin.” I say it as gently as I can.
She’s making strong eye contact with me, something she always did, but now I see that concern and pain has replaced the confidence, the cool arrogance of old. Goran has his eye on Peter, who’s removed his glasses and is squeezing the bridge of his nose.
“And I’m sorry to have to tell you that—”
“No!” she shrieks. “No. Please tell me he’s not gone. Please tell me he’s okay. His birthday…” She begins to sob. Her husband stands up and goes to her. He takes her into his arms and starts to cry, too. “We’re having a party,” she whimpers.
I glance at Goran. He looks about as nauseated as I feel. Notifying families has always been my least favorite part of the job. I’d rather watch an autopsy, dig through rotten garbage, or get grilled on the witness stand by a hostile defense attorney. I know how the Whittles feel, and I know there’s nothing I can do or say to take away their pain.
Peter looks up, his eyes red. “How do you know?” he whispers.
“We were able to identify him because of the Safe-T-Kids fingerprints you submitted last year,” Goran says in a kind voice. “I’m so sorry.”
Teresa falls to the floor, screaming, “No, no, no, no, no! Please, not Kevin, please tell me this isn’t happening.” She buries her face in the carpet. Her husband just stands there, looking helpless. “I knew we should have never let him stay there,” she wails after about five uncomfortable minutes of sobbing.
“Where did he stay?” Goran asks Peter.
“With my parents,” the man replies in a monotone voice. “We called the police as soon as we knew he was missing.”
“When was that?” Goran asks.
“Saturday. We called on Saturday.”
So the kid went missing from the grandparents’ house. We’ll have to check that out.
I stand up and maneuver around the coffee table. Kneeling, I put my hand on Teresa Whittle’s back. “I promise we’ll find whoever did this.” It’s not enough, but there’s nothing else to say.
She raises her head. Her face is puffy and red. She twists her body and slaps at my hand. Snot drips from her nose, tears from her eyes. I feel something swelling in my chest, pressing out into my ribs.
“Mr. Whittle,” Goran says, “I’m sorry, but we need you to make an identification. We can do it now with a photograph, or we can take you down to the morgue and—”
“No!” Teresa bellows.
I embrace her, and she lets it all go, sputtering and moaning into my shoulder. I’m on my knees, my spine pressing into the corner of the coffee table. I’m grateful for the pressure, the physical discomfort, because it keeps me present, in the moment.
“Please, Elizabeth. Why did you let this happen?”
I say nothing. I just squeeze her tighter. Hugging people isn’t a daily occurrence in my line of work, or in my life, really, but she obviously needs it.
&nbs
p; “Mr. Whittle?” Goran holds the photograph in front of Peter.
The man turns his head, tears flowing down his face and into his beard. “I can’t. I can’t look at it.”
Teresa jumps up and snatches the photograph from Goran’s hand. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “My little boy.” She repeats this several times. It rings in my head.
It’s exactly what my mother said once, only my dad had to go to the morgue to identify my little sister’s body. There were no caring detectives with a photograph at our house, trying to save us from horrific details. When he got home and told her what happened, my mother said, “Oh my God, my little girl.” She repeated it all night, all the next day, for the rest of her life, really, until she found vodka and Vicodin.
My brother and I were listening from the top of the creaky stairs in our old house. I feel transported back to that moment, everything indelibly imprinted on my brain: the sobs of my mother, the smell of something burning in the oven, seeing my father break down and cry, feeling my little brother weeping next to me on the landing and putting my arm around him, bringing him to me, my own eyes disturbingly dry.
I stand and move toward Teresa, but she backs away. Shock is setting in—I can see it on her face—so I reach out and take her hand. “Teresa, sit down,” I say in my witness voice. “Please.”
She lets me guide her over to sit next to her husband, who has fallen back onto the couch. Both of them are stiff and robotic, as if a switch has been shut off inside them.
Goran looks back and forth between their glassy eyes. “Did anything odd happen in the days before your son’s disappearance?” Goran asks. “Anything at all, no matter if it seemed insignificant at the time?”
“No, nothing,” Peter replies. “It was all completely normal.”
“Can you give us a sense of Kevin’s typical routine?” Goran asks.
Teresa stiffens as her face turns red, which used to be a sign of passionate anger back when she was my professor. “We already said all of this. How many times are we going to have to answer the same questions?” Anger isn’t uncommon for people who are in shock. Sometimes the stages of grief happen all at once.
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