Broken Lullaby

by Tracy, Pamela

  Mary’s voice softened, “I’ve never believed my problems would be taken care of. Never put my faith in God. Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. Tomorrow is the first visit from the caseworker assigned to Justin and me, and I can’t help but think I have no hope. I keep picturing them making him pack, right then and there. I keep picturing them handcuffing me. I want the hope Alma has.”

  Mitch frowned. “If they make Justin pack, he’ll go to Eric’s house. If they handcuff you, they’ll answer to me. But don’t worry. It’s not a caseworker’s job to arrest. It’s a caseworker’s job to assess. And from what I can see, you’re a fabulous mother.”

  She blinked, and suddenly Mitch felt the same way he had when Alma said, God sent you to me.

  Before, with the exception of his sister, they’d all been cases.

  His cases were turning into people he cared about.

  It was a good thing his cell phone rang. Mary moved away, distancing herself from Mitch. She’d been about ready to melt into his arms. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Two things she avoided: men and chocolate. They both looked good for you, but mostly they weren’t.

  Sometimes she cheated on the chocolate. She’d promised herself that the next time she considered taking a chance on a man, he’d be something calm, boring even, like a barber or an accountant. A barber actually sounded best. Accountants could still be felled by the lure of money. She just needed to keep reminding herself that a certain man with gorgeous eyes was a cop—the exact opposite of calm and boring.

  The time Mitch spent on the phone helped her regroup. She wanted more information about Alma. Mitch certainly knew how to pull things together, but she could see that the weight of this case was starting to take its toll. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. He kept feeling the side of his shirt for the gun that was finally back where it belonged. The clenching and unclenching of his hands revealed more stress than a man deserved.

  It wasn’t stress on his face right now, however. It was surprise.

  He didn’t offer a greeting to whoever called. He didn’t issue orders or answer questions. After a moment, he simply asked, “How did you get this number?”

  Then, he listened for a long time, stopping to look at Mary and mouth, “Go find a local newspaper.”

  She looked around the waiting room, then turned and went into the hall. The nurses’ station didn’t have a paper. The cafeteria didn’t have one. Finally, the woman at the information desk pointed to the gift shop.

  Mary didn’t even need to pick up the paper to see what concerned Mitch. Alma’s pictures, both the sketch artist’s and the real deal, were splashed across the front page. The headline read Illegal Immigrant Connected to Baby’s Abduction. Mary took the paper from the bin and sat cross-legged on the floor of the gift shop to devour the story. It continued onto two more pages. The reporter had gotten his information correct, and, indeed, connected Alma to José’s abduction because she, too, had an abducted child.

  Mary plopped a five on the counter and headed out the door without responding to the cashier’s “Do you want change?”

  Mitch was pocketing his phone when she got back. He jerked his head at the newspaper. “Everything there?”

  “Everything except that Alma had twins.”

  “How many times was Roberto Herrara mentioned?”

  “I didn’t count, but he got just as much space as Alma. So, who was on the phone?”

  Mitch took the paper and skimmed it. When he reached the end, he muttered, “Alma just might be right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “God must want me on this case.”

  Mary waited. Finally Mitch looked at her. “That call was from Darryl Farr.”

  “Was he the crooked border patrol officer you think was working with Roberto?”

  “Yes,” Mitch ascertained. “Guess he got wind of this story. He’s more than frightened and wants to meet with me. Today.”

  “That’s great!”

  “It is and it isn’t.” Mitch took his cell phone out and stared at it a moment.

  “It is because…” Mary prompted.

  “Because I know how to get assigned to this case and how to make it my only case.”

  “That’s good,” Mary started. “And it isn’t because…” Unfortunately, Mary sensed the answer might not be as good as the first answer.

  “It isn’t because what I’m about to do will end my career.”

  “How?” Mary asked.

  “You know, my boss is the attorney general of Arizona instead of the chief of police.”

  “That’s pretty high up the food chain.”

  “No,” Mitch responded. “In my profession, it’s the top of the food chain. During my last case, the governor put me on special assignment and I wound up working on a case without my boss’s knowledge, a case that wound up involving her and making her look bad. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Going to her, using what pull I have left to take this case, will sever our relationship completely.”

  Professional suicide they called it, Mitch thought as he slid behind the wheel of his car and exited the hospital’s parking lot. He hadn’t needed a gun, a knife or even pills to commit it. Nope, a simple phone call did the deed.

  The governor hadn’t been happy to hear from him and overturning the decision of the hearing board and usurping the wishes of the attorney general wouldn’t be easy. But the governor owed Mitch big-time. And as far as paybacks went, the request to work on the Santos case was reasonable. The governor also knew that if Mitch broke the case, not only would Mitch be a hero, so would the governor.

  Come election time, it would be good print.

  Florence prison was a good three-hour drive from Wickenburg, and Mitch intended to enjoy every moment of it. He was back doing what he did best, back on a case that really meant something to him. He’d joined the police force to work missing persons because he knew exactly how it felt to have someone you love disappear.

  After his parents’ divorce, his father promptly forgot he had children or child support responsibilities. That was his first experience with loss. Then, his sister, Nancy, had walked out of their lives at age eighteen. She left no note, took nothing and had not contacted Mitch or his mother since. Because she was eighteen and had willingly left with her boyfriend, there was nothing Mitch or his mother could do.

  Mitch, then thirteen years old, had watched his mother get smaller and smaller with grief and guilt. Their phone was always answered on the first ring. It might be Nancy. Mitch played high school baseball without a family member to cheer him on. That might be the night Nancy came home.

  From the time Nancy left until the time Mitch found her, his mother had gone to work at nine in the morning, come home at six and sat in the living room watching television with the phone on the coffee table in front of her.

  It made for a lonely life.

  When Mitch graduated college and joined the police department, he’d made finding Nancy a priority. Once he had the means and the know-how, he figured he had a chance. It had taken three years and endless hours, but he’d found her.

  She’d never had the time to regret not writing a note. She’d never had the time to miss her possessions. She hadn’t contacted Mitch or his mother because she died just two months after running away. She’d married the much older man she’d run away with. He’d been driving a motorcycle that went out of control on a lonely highway in rural Arkansas. It had been an accident according to the police report. He’d buried Nancy and neglected to contact Nancy’s family.

  Mitch’s musings took him all the way to Florence. Pulling into the parking lot, he tried to shake his black mood. Thinking about his sister had that effect on him.

  Locking the door behind him, he decided Alma and Mary were making this case seem way too personal to him. He felt like he had when he was searching for his sister. As if he were the only one who could make a difference.

  He wondered what the cost
to him would be on this case. He wondered if he had the strength to pay it.

  After he’d found his sister, he and his mother moved her body to Oxenburger, Arizona. Within a month, his mother had joined her daughter in eternal rest. Mitch had been alone ever since.

  Suddenly, Mitch wished Mary had moved somewhere, anywhere else beside Broken Bones. She threatened the solitude he’d so purposefully embraced.

  An ambulance blocked the front entrance. Mitch stood to the side with a sinking feeling while two white-clad attendants loaded a body into the back. The ambulance wouldn’t need its siren. This body was no longer in a hurry. Two guards and the shift commander stood at the door. Mitch knew the commander. They had met more than once in Mitch’s line of work.

  Mitch walked over and shook the commander’s hand.

  “Heard about your troubles, Mitch.” the commander said. “Sometimes justice is blind. We both know it.”

  “And sometimes justice has a skewed definition.” Mitch nodded at the body bag. “Darryl Farr?”

  The commander looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

  TWELVE

  Mitch had both the jurisdiction—no way had Farr been offed without the help of an insider—and time to take over the crime scene. He compared notes with the shift commander, went through Farr’s prison records, spent hours on his cell phone, interrogated the non-witnesses and sequestered the man suspected of killing Darryl.

  The crime scene was amazingly intact. The guard first on the scene had done a thorough job of cordoning the room and protecting the grid line. The return of his badge and dignity didn’t guarantee the return of reputation, but if Mitch regained that, he’d write a letter of recommendation for the guard.

  Photographs had been taken and the video cameras monitoring the area had been confiscated. Mitch watched them twice. He, along with prison officials, believed there was enough evidence to charge the inmate suspected of committing the crime. The non-witnesses, and that’s all one ever got in prison, had dutifully reported what they hadn’t seen. The suspect, one Patrick Wagner, proclaimed his innocence. His record indicated he spent quite a bit of time before the court proclaiming innocence.

  Mitch returned to the cabin well after midnight and spent the early morning hours piecing together his notes, trying to sequence the chain of events from the time Darryl Farr had called to the time Darryl Farr had died.

  About three, Mitch nodded off on the couch, still clutching a stack of papers. At seven, the sun blinked a morning welcome and Mitch stuck the papers in a file folder. Tucking his shirt in as he walked to the window, he stared down at Mary’s cabin and wondered if she was awake yet.

  Mary would not appreciate the news he had to share.

  Of course, the news inspired a little bit more of the ‘we’ mentality she’d established. The more he thought about it, the more he liked it that she had volunteered “them” to help Alma. No one had spoken for him in a long time, especially not a woman.

  It was presumptuous.

  He liked that.

  Maybe the reason he’d never liked having a partner before was because none of the partners looked or acted like Mary.

  Mitch’s computer whirred to life and in just a few moments he was enmeshed in the world of Roberto Herrara. Post offices across Arizona were even now pinning his likeness to their walls. If he was still in the area, he’d be found. Officials didn’t drag their feet when it came to abducted children. The public also pitched in and tended to call in any and all suspicious people.

  Staring at the likeness of Alma’s stepfather, Mitch wondered at Alma’s mother’s sanity. How could a woman miss the cold eyes and permanent sneer? Could Herrara have ordered the prison hits? Doubtful. Herrara was just a bad penny who turned up in all the wrong places.

  Thanks to Mitch, the Feds thought they knew why Darryl Farr was murdered.

  It was who had ordered the hit that had everyone stymied.

  Mitch switched from reading about Herrara to downloading a file on Darryl Farr. The man had steered clear of the Mexican mafia, had been a model prisoner and probably would have managed an early release date if he hadn’t been killed. There were no reports of altercations. He’d been John Q. Inmate. That ended when a prison-made knife had entered his heart and Darryl had become John Q. Dead.

  Mitch heard a car on the road. At first he thought it was heading for his cabin, but instead the vehicle stopped well before Mitch’s place. Walking to the window, he watched as Ruth Santellis got out of her police cruiser and walked around to open the passenger-side door.

  Alma Fuentes was wearing jeans that were too big, a shirt that was too long and flimsy sandals. She clutched a small bag. Mary exited the house, took the bag from Alma and beckoned everybody inside.

  He checked for messages on his cell. No one had notified him of this change of venue. Great. He might be back on duty, but it seemed he was still out of the loop. He needed to make some phone calls, head to his office, talk to the attorney general, establish himself as the officer in charge and basically bully his subordinates. It was good to be back!

  Luckily, the primary on the Santos case, Ruth, had already involved him and would be relieved that his participation was now sanctioned.

  Mary and Alma didn’t care about the term sanctioned. Alma, and apparently God, had already put him in charge of her case. And as for Mary, she considered them in charge of the case.

  It only took one phone call to find out what he wanted to know. Sometime yesterday, while Mitch had been at Florence investigating the Farr murder, Alma’s temporary visa had come through. Early this morning, temporary housing was established at Mary Graham’s place, right next door to Mitch.

  Mitch’s badge was already in his pocket. He grabbed his gun, stuffed it in his holster and headed for Mary’s.

  Alma met him at the front door. She smiled at him in a way that made him uncomfortable. She expected too much. “Good morning, Mr. Williams,” she said. “Have you found Tomás?”

  “No, but we’re working on it.” He looked around the cabin until he spotted Mary wiping a kitchen counter. It took him only two steps to join her. “I take it you’ve volunteered to house Alma.”

  Mary looked frazzled but pleased with herself. “It was really Ruth’s idea, but I think it’s a good one. It shows that I’m staking a claim in the community and have no intention of running again. Plus, Alma’s going to help me clean up the used car lot while we look for Tomás.” The way Mary said “Tomás” let Mitch know she already felt like she knew Alma’s son.

  “That you live next door influenced my request,” Ruth said. “Now you can keep an eye on them while we search for José and Tomás—”

  Mary butted in, “We thought that I should start this morning, especially since the caseworker is due in just forty-five minutes. You can help explain everything. By the way, what happened with the border patrol officer?”

  Ruth blinked, looked back and forth between Mitch and Mary and then raised an eyebrow.

  Mary seemed to realize she’d crossed a line and didn’t ask again. She nervously glanced at her watch. Chagrin changed to panic. She headed for the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Justin? You awake?”

  No one answered. Mary disappeared up the stairs. The murmurs Mitch overheard went something like, “Get up. The caseworker’s coming” followed by a “No” and then quite a bit of conversation so low Mitch couldn’t catch any of it.

  “He’s getting up,” she told them when she came back down the stairs. Instead of looking angry like most mothers did when they heard a no from their child, she looked scared.

  “It will be fine,” Ruth said.

  “I keep thinking that if I busy myself dealing with everyone else’s woes, I’ll be too busy to worry about my own.” Mary rearranged a candy jar sitting on an end table. “So far, it’s not working.” She picked up the candy jar and put it on a different end table. “Justin heard something again last night. A thump.”

  “Is this the first time he
heard something?” Ruth asked.

  Mary looked at Mitch. “No, he heard something the night I took you spaghetti but I thought it must have been an animal.”

  “Did you search the house? Anything missing?”

  “I went over the house, but if something Eric left got taken, I’d never know. I keep telling myself that places like this always have bumps in the night.”

  “Did you tell Eric?”

  “Not yet. Yesterday after Alma’s visa came through and the hospital said they were discharging her today, everything started going pretty fast. I didn’t even think about it again until we were home and Justin was in his bedroom. I didn’t sleep much, worrying about the caseworker and Alma.”

  “You do not need to worry about me,” Alma said, coming down the stairs. “I have put my belongings away. Is there anything you need me to do before this caseworker arrives?” Looking as worried as Mary, she picked up the candy dish and put it on the end table it had originally occupied.

  He shook his head. That’s when he noticed Ruth looking at him with a know-it-all grin.

  “Spaghetti?” she said. “Mary brought you spaghetti?”

  Females.

  He was surrounded by enough estrogen to bring a weak man to his knees. Mitch wasn’t weak.

  Then, he looked at Mary, felt a stirring in his heart and changed his mind.

  Mary started cleaning, again. In some ways, keeping the house in order was the only thing she really had a handle on. Her eyes had opened at four, she’d rolled out of bed at six and Ruth had called at seven to say that Alma was coming over.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. That’s what her mother had always said—usually referring to the messes her husband and eldest sons got into. Mary hadn’t started getting into messes until she’d started going against Eddie’s wishes.

  Looking around the cabin, she realized Eddie had never really put his stamp on the place and that the memories she did have of him here were good. It was important that she have some good memories of the man who’d fathered Justin. Yes, she could find happiness here with Justin. Alma, too, if the authorities would just leave her alone. Of course, the chances of the authorities leaving her alone were slim to none. One was now a sister-in-law and the other authority seemed to pop up every day.