There Once Was A Child

by Debra Webb

  I check my Timex. Quarter to five. My appointment was at four-thirty. Another breath of frustration heaves from my chest. Then I cough until I lose my breath. My heart pounds and my face burns with the rush of blood there. When I can breathe again, I wipe my mouth with my shirtsleeve and struggle to slow my frantic heart.

  These episodes are coming more often. The pain’s a little worse this week but I have to be careful of the medication. I can’t be impaired on the job. Liv deserves a partner who won’t let her down. If it gets to the point where I feel I can’t be a good partner I’ll have to go ahead and retire.

  Until then, I plan to do my job. I intend to keep this ugly reality to myself. I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me or hovering over me. Work is what I do, it’s who I am and I want to keep doing it until I either die or fall down and can’t get back up. Then we’ll all know I’m done.

  Maybe it’s selfish but it’s how I want to do this.

  First thing tomorrow Liv and I will do what we can to confirm Sanchez’s whereabouts and then we’ll move on to the next name on the list. It’s always possible that someone besides one of his victims broke into Fanning’s home, fought with him over drugs or some other unsavory business and then carried him off, but it’s far more likely that the motive is revenge for the bastard’s very public sins. Either a victim or a friend or family member of a victim is the most realistic scenario.

  In my experience it’s always best to start with the things we know. If none of those things pan out, then we delve into the unknowns. None of his neighbors noticed any visitors at Fanning’s duplex. Of course he only moved in one month ago and most of the neighbors prefer not to get involved. No drugs or drug paraphernalia were found on the premises. No alcohol, no firearms. Three pairs of jeans and three shirts in the closet. The same number of t-shirts and boxers as well as socks were tucked into a drawer in a single, shabby dresser. Cheese and deli meats along with a carton of milk were in the fridge. His wallet, cash and ID still inside, was on the bedside table.

  I figure if he isn’t dead already he will be very soon.

  Unless we can find him first.

  The door opens and I sit up a little straighter as Dr. Kingsley rushes in, his nurse right on his heels. Kingsley is around fifty, tall, athletic looking. Gray has invaded his hair at the temples. Damn stuff took over mine ages ago.

  “Detective Duncan.” He glances up from my medical file and smiles. “Have you had time to think about what we discussed?”

  He settles onto the wheeled stool and tucks my file under his arm. His hands settle on his thighs and he watches me from behind wire-rimmed glasses as I hesitate before answering his question. He’s a doctor, a good one. I’m certain his Hippocratic Oath means as much to him as my vow to serve and protect does to me. But I’m the one who’s dying. We’ll do this my way.

  “I think we’ll just let this thing happen naturally,” I say. When he continues to stare at me as if waiting for more, I shrug. “I don’t want to go through what my Stella went through. I’ll just carry on until I can’t.”

  The moment of silence that follows feels like an endless waterfall and I’m already over the edge but the water just keeps crashing down, threatening to drag me into its dark depths.

  Finally, Kingsley nods once and passes my file to the nurse standing by. “All right then. Where are we with the pain level?”

  We discuss my pain management needs and then he pushes to his feet. I do the same. He extends his hand and I give it an appreciative shake.

  “Don’t hesitate to call the office if you need anything else,” he urges. “You know there will come a time when you’ll need help. Start working on that now, while you’re still able.”

  I know what he means. The next unpleasant level to this nightmare: Hospice. I nod. “Sure thing, Doc.”

  I leave with my new prescription. If I’m not dead in three months I have to come back in for a renewal. As I walk through the lobby I wonder which one of those faces won’t be here this time next week or the week after that.

  In the parking lot my cell vibrates against my hip. I pull it free of my utility belt as I slide behind the wheel of my Tahoe. “Duncan.”

  “Hey, Walt.”

  Tim Reynolds from the crime lab. Reynolds is my go to guy. A couple years younger than me, he has more experience and expertise in his little finger than most have in their entire beings. If there’s anything in the collected evidence to help our investigation, he will find it. “What’ve you got for me, Reynolds?”

  It’s too early to have a DNA match on the blood. We’re operating under the assumption that the blood is Fanning’s but it’s always possible it belongs to someone else. Not the sort of news I want to hear considering what that would likely mean. I want the blood to be his.

  “Most of the blood is B Positive, Fanning’s type. We should have DNA results in a couple of days. The chief put a rush on it.”

  “Thanks for the update.” The idea that he said most nudges me but before I can ask, he says, “Wait, there’s more.”

  I hesitate before backing out of the parking slot. “I’m listening.”

  “I found a second blood type in the mix, mostly on the hand towel that was in the puddle. This one’s O Positive. Maybe that blood was already on the towel before whatever happened in his kitchen. Either way it belongs to someone besides Fanning.”

  Holy shit.

  “Thanks, Reynolds. Let me know the second you find any DNA matches in the database.”

  Well now. I sag in my seat. If Fanning is a victim, the perp was injured as well during their struggle. The other option is unthinkable. I don’t want to go there, but I have no choice.

  If the second blood type doesn’t belong to the person who injured and abducted Fanning, then what we have is a pedophile on the loose that has injured—possibly murdered—a victim.

  Every victim Joseph Fanning ever took was a child.

  My gut twists. I need to look at any children who’ve gone missing in the past few days.

  Son of a bitch.

  The Child

  The bleeding has stopped. I should bandage the wound, but I won’t. It’s more painful if I leave it gapping open just as it is. Let him suffer.

  Most people think I’m a good person but if they knew the real me, they wouldn’t like me very much. They see what I want them to see. They know what I want them to know. They have no idea the things I’ve done. Bad things. But, like everything else in life, my actions are relative. Relative to the pain and the fear. Relative to what he did to me for eight long years.

  Relative to survival.

  I hope they never know how that feels.

  The truth is we all have a then and a now. Sometimes life forces you back to the then. It’s never pretty when that happens. No one likes to go back.

  So I’m here, in my then, and there is no alternative choice. He invaded my now, dragging me back here. After what he did to me, revenge is the only possible ending. But first, I want him to remember every depraved moment of our time together. I want him to feel what I felt.

  And then I want him to die.

  There are those who will completely understand how I feel even without knowing the grizzly details. There are others who even if they knew every single horror I suffered would say he is still a human being. All human beings deserve mercy, forgiveness, do they not?

  They are wrong. He is not a human being. He is a monster. He is evil. He is going to die soon, but first he is going to suffer.

  After all, he started this, then and now.

  I was seven years old when he took me.

  My family wasn’t one of those storybook tales that you see on television or in the movies. I don’t even know their names. My mother was a junkie. But first and foremost, she was a prostitute. My father was her pimp but when he got too messed up with drugs himself, the two of them threw in together to survive. He used her and she used him.

  Neither really noticed me until the day I became the sole rem
aining viable asset within their pathetic reach.

  At the time I didn’t realize that my family was different from others. I had never gone to school. I spent most of my days on street corners with my mom begging for whatever pennies passersby would toss us. Sometimes it was enough to feed us—assuming it covered their drug needs and there was money left over. Around holidays was the best time. People felt sorry for me during those periods. They always gave extra. One lady came back with a teddy bear. Soft and wooly. That was the only toy I ever owned.

  The year I turned seven, my mother died of an overdose. I felt bad about it. Not in the same way most kids grieve when a parent dies because we never had that sort of bond. But I cried and I missed her for a while. Dad made a new cardboard sign and sat on the street corners with me. He called himself a disabled vet and single parent. I didn’t understand what it meant but it worked.

  But then something different happened. A man stopped to talk to my father. He didn’t want to give us money. He wanted to buy me.

  At first my dad was like “No way!” But the man just kept coming back and finally my dad said yes. He patted me on the head and walked away, leaving me with this stranger.

  The man’s name was Joseph Fanning. I didn’t comprehend how unfortunate the situation was at the time but I learned very quickly.

  Joe, as he liked to be called, was a very bad man. He pretended to be nice at first. He bought me new clothes. He had plenty of food in his dumpy little place—even ice cream. I had only tasted ice cream once.

  I had lived in cardboard boxes under overpasses, in alleys next to dumpsters and once in a while in motel rooms or ramshackle apartments for a few days before we were kicked out. In winter, I was always cold. But my new home was warm when the weather was cold. The air conditioning sucked, but it was more important to have heat in the winter anyway.

  In that way I guess you could say my life improved. I still didn’t go to school and there was no television. Not that I’d ever had a television, but some of the friends my parents would dump me with often had televisions. There were books in my new home. Joe liked reading. I asked him about his books once but he said I didn’t need to know how to read. It was best if I stayed exactly as I was…exactly the way he wanted me.

  He called me the child, never by my name. He said I didn’t have a name anymore and after a while I couldn’t remember it anyway. There was a big old trunk in his bedroom and that’s where he put me whenever he had to go out alone. It was dark inside and I always worried that the air holes wouldn’t let enough air in. At least I had my teddy bear. I gave it a name but I don’t remember now what it was. Probably some name I heard on the street or from one of my parents’ friends.

  Eventually I became too big for the trunk so he built a box for me. It reminded me of the boxes they put dead people in before they put them in the ground. I once saw this on a television in one of the houses where I was abandoned while my parents did some bad thing to get their next hit. I guess, at the time, I had never really thought about what happened to a person once they died.

  Soon the possibility of death would become very appealing to me.

  In the beginning the things he did to me hurt really badly. I cried a lot but then he would give me candy or ice cream. It would be bad for a few days and then I would forget for a while…until next time.

  I didn’t mind the dress-up playing. He would put fancy little dresses and shoes with little heels on me. Then he’d fix my hair and put makeup on my face. I’d prance around like a model on a stage or like someone in a beauty pageant. I had never heard of a beauty pageant but that’s what he would tell me. “Let’s play be a model today!” or “Let’s play beauty pageant!”

  I liked that part but it was the part that came after I didn’t like.

  During all the years I belonged to him, I was the only one he kept. All the others went away after a few hours, but not me. Never me. He said I was special.

  Until one day when I wasn’t.

  I stare at him now. He looks so old. Old and stooped. His hair is gray and thin, his body is pale and frail. I’ve heard what they do to men like him in prison. I hope those things were done to him over and over for the past thirteen and a half years.

  He stares at me, his lips smiling despite his current circumstances. I shouldn’t have removed the gag. I’ll put it back on before I go. Doesn’t really matter. There’s no one to hear him scream.

  Would he scream? I don’t know. He’s up to something. I’m certain of that.

  After all, like I said, he started this.

  But I’m going to end it.

  Wednesday, May 2

  Detective Olivia Newhouse

  I cradle my coffee. Can’t get warm. Last night the temperature dropped to almost freezing. It’s cold as hell this morning. Blackberry winter or one of those crazy little cold snaps that disturbs the spring warm-up each year. I can definitely do without an encore of last winter’s unusually cold temps and all that extra snowfall.

  I consider the names on the white board in our joint cubicle. Even a detective as senior as Walt doesn’t get an office in the Criminal Investigations Division. Not enough offices. But we do get a larger cubicle, one big enough for our desks to sit face to face in the center of the small square. On one side we have a row of filing cabinets with anything else we need to store stacked on top; on the other side of our work area we have a white board and an extra chair for anyone we want to entertain with our scenarios and progress on a given case. The cramped digs aren’t such a big deal. We spend most of our time in the field anyway.

  “So we can’t actually confirm that Sanchez is in Mexico?” I say this knowing my partner is well aware of our current dilemma. What I don’t say is that the name is somehow familiar to me. It’s a feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. A knowing, some small fleeting flare of recognition that just won’t be captured and assimilated. Sanchez doesn’t have a criminal record, but somehow I’ve encountered him before. Or maybe it’s only that I’ve run across someone with that same last name.

  Walt shakes his head. “Both of his buddies, Lassiter and Watkins, are single with no significant others that I’ve been able to locate. I’ve called all three cell phones and left messages. Lassiter doesn’t have any extended family that we know of so there’s no one to reach out to for confirmation on his whereabouts. The other guy, Watkins, has a mother but she only knows that her son is on vacation in Mexico. She confirmed the trouble with cell service in the area where they’re supposed to be.”

  I glance at my notes. “The three men drove in Sanchez’s SUV so we can’t easily corroborate travel.”

  “Nope.” Walt scrubs at his chin. “I’ve put in a call to the feds to see if we can confirm whether or not their passports show they’ve left the country.”

  That could work. “Any ideas on when we’ll hear back?”

  He shrugs. “Soon I hope. You never know with the feds.”

  I can’t argue that point. “Moving on.” I scan the names on the board. “Considering the second blood type, we’re still assuming Fanning is the vic and not some kid he nabbed off the street.” The idea makes me sick. Walt and I don’t talk about it too much but we both hope the scumbag is dead.

  “Based on the report Reynolds faxed over this morning,“ Walt passes the single page to me for adding to the case board, “the blood found at the scene was maybe thirty-six hours old, give or take. I checked for any kids who went missing over the weekend. Got two but they were both found. Checked on missing adults as well. Only one came up and her body was discovered this morning. Took a bottle of sleeping pills and went to Centennial Park. A jogger noticed her body near the kids’ playground. Downed the whole bottle of pills and went night-night for the last time. Her baby girl died in her sleep about a year ago. SIDS, according to the report. The husband says she couldn’t learn to live with it.”

  I shake my head. “Damn.”

  That’s another aspect of pregnancy I find terrifying. With my parents
gone, I only have me to worry about. I’m an adult and totally responsible for the steps I take as well as the consequences of those steps. The idea of having a tiny human who depends on me is totally terrifying. If I make a mistake, he or she could pay the price. That’s one hell of a scary thought. Like that poor dead woman, how do you live with the death of a child even if it isn’t your fault?

  Vaguely I wonder if the fact that I failed to include David in the scenario is an indication that I’m not as committed to him as I should be…that perhaps I don’t love him as deeply as I thought. Maybe I’m in love with the notion of being in love. Hitting thirty jarred my reality. Or maybe it was losing my father, the only family I had left, that pushed me over the edge. I don’t like the prospect of being alone. And yet lately I seem to be pushing David away more often than pulling him toward me.

  I assuage my guilt with the notion that it’s hormones. Or maybe this whole moving in thing has pressed me into some emotional corner. Now that I’m impregnated, maybe I’m turning on him the way the female Black Widow will sometimes do her mate.

  You are losing it, Liv.

  Chalking up the ridiculous thought to yesterday’s headache, I force my full attention back onto the case. “Since we don’t have any other possibilities, for now, I guess we stick with the assumption that Fanning is the vic and move on to the next person of interest on our revenge list.” I look to Walt. He’s the senior detective. We’ll do this whatever way he feels is the best route. The list seems the only logical one to me.

  “I don’t see a better strategy at this point,” he admits. “Let’s do it.”

  I toss my empty Starbucks cup and grab my jacket. Walt gets a call as we cross the bullpen. If we’re lucky it’ll be Reynolds with an update that will give us something more to go on.