“No, you don’t understand. They are all different. Unique designs so they don’t infringe on other patents.”
Wren’s mouth dropped open. “She remembers what it looks like. If she can draw the machine, we might be able to identify the manufacturer.”
I grinned. “Yes. And trace the patients who have bought and rented them. They need maintenance on the regular.”
“Oh, my God... " She pulled out her phone and dialed a number, putting it on speaker phone.
“Detective Haden.”
“Lily, it’s Wren. I’m going to head down to St. Chris to talk to Ellie. We think she might be able to really give us a hand with this. The CPAP is going to be the key.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, I think we’ll be good.”
“You’re not planning a detour with your hot boyfriend, are you?”
I snorted, and Wren turned red from nose to toes. And what an image that was in my head. She coughed. “No, Detective. I was not. This is a major opportunity and I want to get to it and get it down. Also, did you guys figure out she was moved before you busted the ring?”
“Moved? What?”
“The skyline.”
There was a pause and I could almost see her nodding. “Right the skyline was up by Belmont.”
“And the bust was down behind the art museum. Different skyline.”
“Oh, shit how did we miss that?”
“We were all too taken by her drawing. I hope this girl never has to draw anything like this again.”
“You and me both, Doctor Warner. You and me both. Let me know what you got when you’re there.” Haden disconnected the line and Wren pocketed the phone.
We were in the car and on the way to the hospital in minutes. There was the usual Monday afternoon traffic from the precinct house to the garage, and we were up the stairs in minutes.
Holding hands the whole way. It was a huge relief and delight to have her hand back. I had taken it when we got in the car, and when we got out of the car and she sought me out after signing us into the visitor log.
“Andy!” she yelled up the corridor to one of the nurses walking from the station. “Where’s Ellie?”
He stopped and waited for us. “She’s in her new room. You are going to love her progress, Doc. She’s doing really, really well, and we’re going to have to find her a place to stay soon.”
I grinned. “So the drawing was cathartic?”
“A dam burst, more like.” Andy nodded leading us down the hall.
And he was right. I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks, but she really looked amazing. Even though she hadn’t been in a terrible place, she’d been holding something back. She was bright, and her hair was clean and neat and she looked happier and relaxed.
“Hey, Doc, hey, Doc,” she said, smiling as we walked in. “Nurse Rollins, can I get some extra apple juice later?”
“You got it, kiddo.” He looked at us. “You good?”
“We’re good.” Wren nodded.
The nurse trotted out and Wren and I found chairs at the end of the bed.
“Were the drawings helpful, Doc?” she asked quietly.
“Extremely, Detective Haden says thank you.” She leaned forward. “Ellie, we have…a working theory on the CPAP machine. Do you think you could draw us a picture of the exact machine that the creep used? As many details as you can remember, and describe?”
“That’s easy.” She nodded, flipping the page in her sketchbook. “That thing was always on the nightstand, and it was always chugging away. There was a woman who came in and cleaned the machine every day.”
How much did a woman have to be paid to ignore the fact the man who employed her was fucking a fourteen year old girl who was probably chained or tied or restrained in some way?
What the hell was wrong with these people?
“Do you remember her face?” I asked.
Ellie’s hand froze for a moment, then resumed drawing. “I do.”
Wren glanced at me. We had clearly hit on something there, but it wasn’t the time to go after it. I nodded and we sat back.
“How are you doing, Ellie?” she asked, watching the girl skim the pencil across the page.
“I feel better. I know I got a lot going on up here,” she tapped on her head, “and I realize it’s going to attack me when I least expect it, but at least I know that now and I have a chance to get better.”
She looked up briefly then back down at her paper. “You know, I love art. And I don’t know if I can go back to school now because people look at me funny for having been a prostitute and having been sex trafficked. I was thinking about getting my GED and going straight to college. I’m not a stupid girl, I just did stupid things.”
Wren tipped her head to the side. “Have you considered that what you did was smart?”
“Smart? I let guys pay to fuck me—I mean, I let guys pay me for sex. I’m going to be all screwed up about that for years. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to have normal sex.”
“But, was it really stupid?” Wren raised an eyebrow. “Think about it.”
“I needed food for me and Benjamin. I needed a way to pay the rent.” Ellie looked up. “I paid the rent with sex more than once.”
“Not surprising,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. It was disgusting that someone would take that from a fourteen year old, but it really wasn’t surprising.
“So you made people pay for something so you could survive.” Wren reasoned. “Seems more smart to me than anything else. Yeah, maybe your wares weren’t hats and scarves, but you bought food and shelter. I wish there could have been another way to do it, but you survived. And you’re going to keep surviving.”
“Nurse Rollins says he knows a few gallery owners. Says if I can get a dozen or so pieces together, he’ll help me shop them around, maybe take a chance on me.”
“That sounds like a brilliant idea,” Wren said. “Do you want to focus on art?”
“I want to focus on getting better so I can live a normal life,” she answered. “I don’t care if I have to be a bank teller or perfume lady at Macy’s. Just normal. With normal problems. Normal paychecks. Normal friends and normal sex.”
Wren scratched her nose and my phone dinged with a message a moment later. I looked down and it was her.
Wren: She’s fixated on sex. I need to find a therapist for her. That’s not my specialty.
Fischer: That’s not my opinion, Doctor.
Wren: Jesus. Stop. I already can’t keep my hands off you.
Wren: But I’m serious. I need a therapist who can walk her through this mess. Do you know of one?
Fischer: No. But I’ll poke around the hospitals and see if we can find one.
Wren: Thank you. +1 BJ for help.
Fischer: Now who needs to stop?
The sound of paper being torn out of the sketchbook pulled us out of the text exchange. Ellie held out a piece of paper for Wren to grab. “That’s everything I remember about it, on the three sides I could see.”
Wren took the sheet and looked at it. She shook her head. “This is a quick sketch?”
“Yeah, just a rough one.” Ellie nodded.
“Damn,” she whispered and handed the paper to me. I accepted it and was blow away by what Ellie called a rough sketch. Her rough would have been my masterpiece I spent two years on. But it was wonderfully clear and I could see the shape and size, and the lettering she remembered.
“Oh, I almost forgot, the front of the machine was gold. Not like shiny gold, but gold.”
I grinned. “I know exactly what machine this is.”
Wren smiled back. “Think he was stupid enough to pay for it with a card or rent it from a rental store?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “He may have even used insurance.”
Wren
I didn’t want to be here.
I didn’t like this woman.
Smiling, polished, white bread suburban woman who would do anything for the children.
As long as it made her look good.
But I needed her help to navigate this system. Ellie needed special care, and I needed help finding her brother to get him in the same place, or at least put them back in contact with each other.
“Doctor Warner, I’m so glad I can help you. These kids are in such a dangerous and changing place that I’m always worried about them.”
Paige. Fucking. Domingues.
“What can you tell me about Benjamin Matthias Sheehan?” I asked, leaning forward.
She flipped through some papers and tapped on the computer in front of her, scrolling and then tapping again. “Ben Sheehan is in a foster home in the northeast. He’s been there for a year now and the family has a good track record.”
“I want to bring his sister to see him.”
“Oh, no that’s against the rules.”
I stared at her. “What?”
“That’s against the rules. The family doesn’t want her there. They said she’s a bad influence on Ben.”
My finger jammed the desktop. “They never met her. The girl was out of the picture for eighteen months. That is her brother, and she has every right—”
“She doesn’t. She’s a minor. She doesn’t have a lick of rights in this case,” Paige said. “The boy is a ward of the state. The girl is the same. There’s no compulsion by the state to keep them together, at all. If the boy is in a good home that wants him, unless there is a guardianship challenge, we have to abide by the wishes of the foster parent.”
“Even a sister doesn’t get a say?”
Paige sat back in the chair. “I’m going to be painfully honest, Doctor Warner. The girl was a prostitute. I don’t blame them for not wanting her around.”
“She was fourteen years old.” If I could have snapped words off, I would have. “She was left alone on the streets with a little brother to take care of.”
“And she chose to sell her body.”
“Jesus Christ, Paige, are you kidding me!”
“I’m sorry, we have to abide by the wishes of the foster home. Ben is safe there, and he’s well cared for. If there’s no cause to remove, we won’t. And I won’t take her there.”
“You are un-fucking-believable.” I stared at her. “You’re really going to do this?”
“I have to abide by—”
“The wishes of the foster home. Right. Heard you the first three times.” I stood up, and grabbed my purse.
“Wait, what about Elutheria? We need to talk about her placement. She needs a place to stay.” Paige started to flip through the papers on her desk.
“Elutheria will be staying with me.”
Well, fuck. Now I’d done it.
“You’re…you’re not qualified as a foster. I mean we can get you qualified. It would take a few weeks, but we can do a temporary emergency placement—”
“I’ll be seeking guardianship.”
Out of the frying pan…
She stared at me. “Doctor, are you sure?”
“Mrs. Domingues, are you kidding me with that question? That young woman isn’t going to make it in one of your foster group homes and she’s certainly not going to stay put in a foster home.”
“But…to take a former sex worker into your house…”
“I suggest you clam it, Mrs. Domingues. Or I will do what I need to do to pull your license.”
She leaned back and gasped, “Doctor!”
“Put it in your pipe and smoke it, Paige. I will be coming back with a court order to let Ellie see her brother. He was the whole reason she was a prostitute—to keep him from a horrible life on the streets. She’d do it again if she had to. And I would never hold it against her.”
“Doctor—” She held up her hands. Shaking her head, she sat back in the chair. “I’m not going to be able to talk you out of this. That girl will hurt your reputation. I swear it.”
“No one needs to know she’s staying with me, Mrs. Domingues. Keep that in mind. You don’t have to tell the world I’m going to be caring for a young woman who has survived being sex trafficked. You might do well to remember what brought her to this point.”
Paige swallowed and a moment later the printer started spitting out paperwork. “These are the temporary guardianship papers you’ll need to fill out so that I don’t have to send Detective Haden out to arrest you for kidnapping. I suggest you get a lawyer and get your guardianship claim going.” She handed me a stack of sheets. “Get them back to me by the end of the day and we can get the temporary order in place by noon tomorrow. Can you keep her in the hospital that long?”
“She’s being discharged on Friday if there’s care.” Tucking the forms in my bag, I headed for the door. “Paige, don’t forget what I said. Not everyone needs to know where this girl is.”
I pulled the door closed and found a very curious Fischer standing there with his arms folded.
“I can handle this, Fischer,” he said. “Don’t worry, Fischer. It’s all under control, Fischer. We’ll have a perfect place for her to go so she can start to recover, Fischer.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
He laughed—he wasn’t really mad, and that was a huge relief. Curling an arm around my waist, he pulled me close. “Congratulations, Mom.”
“Oh, really fuck off.”
He laughed and led me down the hall. “Where is she going to stay?”
“Well, I have to clear it with Miriam, but we have an attic. It’s got holiday decorations and luggage, and nothing else. We can fix it up. Get a space heater, run some lights, a platform bed. And if we can get Ben back, they can share. I think he’d have fun with that.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “You have a very big heart, Doctor.”
“You really aren’t upset?”
“Ellie is a special girl. She needs someone who understands who she is and her very precarious situation. You’ve grown close to her, so why not?”
I pulled something out of my bag and handed it to Fischer with as much innocence as I could muster. He took the folder and opened it. Gasping he stopped walking and stared at me.
“You didn’t!”
I shrugged. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t trust the system all the time. I know it can go wrong. So, I took a step towards skipping ahead.”
He paged through. “These are all of Ben’s records. His address, his birth certificate…wait…” His eyes went wide. “Is that…who I think it is?”
“I think we need to find out.”
“You want to confront one of Philly’s most influential residents and most prominent restauranteurs about the possibility of his abandoning a child to the foster system?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck, I’m going to need a scotch for this one.”
“You don’t have to come—”
He stopped my words with a hard kiss. “We’re in this together, Wren. If you’re going to talk to Matthias Sheehan about this, I’m going with you.” He grabbed my hand and wrapped his around it.
I took a deep breath. “Right. Lemme text Miriam about the attic thing.”
Wren: So I did a thing.
Miri: What thing. You do so many things.
Wren: I’m petitioning for guardianship
Miri: …
Miri: I knew you were going to do that.
Wren: You did?
Miri: Please. That girl wouldn’t stay anywhere except a place that had us there. Oh, lemme guess…
Miri: Paige told you to fuck off about the kid brother.
Wren: She’s predictable like that.
Miri: Un. Real.
Miri: So, when are we going to Ikea? I’m assuming you’re thinking attic? And a cute fireplace space heater?
Fischer started laughing as we walked down the hall. “She really does know you, doesn’t she?”
“The house wasn’t the only thing we’ve shared over the years.” I balked when I realized I said that.
He cocked his head, and smirked. “Oh really?”
/> “Well, you already knew we slept together…” He nodded and motioned for me to continue. “So there might have been a guy, or girl, or both, that we also shared.”
Fischer’s expression was pained for just a moment, and I was terrified that he was about to walk away from me.
I clutched his hand. “Fischer—”
He pressed my hand to the front of his pants and pulled me close. He was as hard as rock beneath my hand. “Little bird, the last thing I am is disgusted. The idea of sharing does funny things to me, and it’s not bad sort of things.”
Shit. I slammed my mouth over his and stole into him. The idea of being shared was doing funny things to me too.
When the kiss got a little too heated, Fischer pulled back and rested his head on mine. “If we’re going to talk to Sheehan, we should just go and do this and get it over with. He’s…”
I chuckled. “Yeah. He’s…”
Wrapping his arm around my waist again he pulled me in close and nuzzled my neck. “You know the bad thing about bringing Ellie to live with you?”
I was a little frightened to hear his response.
“No more Orgasm Contests.”
“Bourbon, Double neat.”
Wes put the glasses in front of us and we both grabbed them and chugged them down. The poor bartender’s eyebrows tried to escape his hairline, and he pulled the bottle out to refill both classes.
“Well, that was interesting. Something on your minds?”
I enjoyed the last of the burn from the scotch. It was a delicious warm burn that started at the back of my throat and followed all the way down to my stomach, loosening my limbs a bit. “Yeah. There is something. Is Sheehan around?”
Wes nodded. “He is. He’s upstairs. The accountant is here and they’re going over the books for the week. He’s in a good mood, if you want to hit him up with something.”
Fischer wrapped his knuckles on the bar top. “He’s not going to be happy after we’re done with him.”
“Shit. Let me get my stuff together so I can make a quick break,” Wes said.
He was only half kidding.
After he pointed us to the door to the second floor, he turned to the back of the bar and actually started to clean up as if he were closing for the night.
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