Only the Strong

by Ethan Cross

  “What did you say, Doctor?”

  “I was just speaking with little Leo,” he said with a large grin.

  She laughed. “I think it’s great that you care so much about your patients. It’s a shame you don’t have children of your own. You would have been a great dad.”

  Derrick maintained his smile, but his mind turned to the scalpel in the pocket of his white lab coat. He imagined himself standing up from the chair and jamming the scalpel into one of the cigarette-stained nurse’s eyeballs. He pictured the shock on her face when he rose from the chair and the confusion when she noticed the scalpel in his hand. The blood spurted from her wounds as he sliced her neck and face to pieces. It rained a red mist over the top of the squalling and squirming children.

  Pulling him back to reality, LuAnn said, “I’m assuming you want a picture with your new patient, as usual?”

  “I never miss a visit or a photo op, LuAnn.”

  He handed over his phone and posed with the baby. She snapped a few photos for him and then asked, “Do you want me to put him back for you?”

  He wanted to scream at her that he was much stronger and more capable than she was, but instead, he held the fake smile and said, “I’d like a few minutes with him, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course. I need to take him back to his parents soon, but you can wait with him until then.”

  “Thanks, LuAnn. You’re the best.”

  She winked at him and said, “Anything for you, Dr. Gladstone. I wish we had more like you here. That young couple was truly blessed to find you as a doctor.”

  He shrugged in deference. “Thank you. That’s very nice of you to say.”

  When she was gone, he stared into the boy’s eyes. The child already showed thin strands of blonde hair, very close to his own color. But the newborn’s build reminded Derrick more of his youngest brother, Simon.

  He thought of the first time he had laid eyes on Simon in a hospital nursery much like the one he was sitting in now. The twins, Derrick and Dennis, had been five years old when his mother had told them that she was pregnant. It had been at the kitchen table in their old two-story colonial. His father, learning of the surprise pregnancy at the same time as his two sons, had been quiet at first.

  “Say something,” his mother had said. “I just told you we’re going to be having another child.”

  Finally, his father had smiled and said, “We’re adding a new lion to the pride, boys. And you’re going to have to teach him all that I’ve taught you.”

  Derrick had taken those words to heart and had considered that duty as he first saw his baby brother. There had been something off about Simon even then. When a five-year-old Derrick Gladstone looked into his newborn brother’s eyes, he instantly noticed the boy’s strength. Simon’s body was strong and muscular compared to other newborns, but the thing that had struck Derrick was that Simon never cried. His brother had been born tough, and Derrick had loved the boy from the beginning, feeling a kinship with Simon that he had never experienced with his own fraternal twin, Dennis.

  His mind turned then to the day when, out of kindness, he and Dennis decided to murder Simon. Looking back, Derrick wished they had killed their mother instead. His little brother didn’t deserve to be erased from existence, but the same couldn’t be said for the woman who wanted the boy gone. Still, there was little Derrick could do about that now, other than make the old witch pay for her sins, which he was already doing.

  Leaning in close to little Leonardo’s face, he kissed the boy’s forehead and said, “Your parents certainly were blessed to have met me.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Marcus fought the urge to roll his eyes when Emily Morgan, the SO’s resident counselor, asked for a few minutes alone with him. The others were preparing to leave, and so Marcus and Emily pulled out a couple of chairs from the conference room table and sat down facing one another.

  “So what’s up, Doc? How do you feel my brother is assimilating, or whatever you want to call it?”

  “I believe Mr. Ackerman is learning and growing by leaps and bounds. But I wanted a moment to talk about you.”

  “I’m an open book. Ask away.”

  “What if you don’t like the question?”

  “That sounds like a loaded response. Did the Director order you to talk to me about Eddie Caruso?”

  “He strongly suggested I discuss your old friend with you before you board the jet. But, as always, my primary concern is your health and well-being as a member of this team and someone whom I consider a friend. You helped me through my husband’s death more than anyone else, Marcus. You are my number one concern. And from the way the Director described it, this Eddie Caruso is not someone of whom you think highly.”

  “I’m sure that’s not quite the way the Director tactfully phrased it.”

  “He’s a colorful man. But we’re not here to talk about him either. How do you feel about going back to see your old friend Mr. Caruso?”

  “I appreciate the concern, Doc, but it’s nothing to worry about. Eddie and I were best friends when we were practically babies. We had a falling out, and we ceased being friends, spent some time as adversaries, and ended up just trying to pretend the other person didn’t exist.”

  “Does that situation sound healthy to you?”

  “You always tell me not to live in the past. Not to overanalyze all my decisions and question whether I could’ve made different choices. It is what it is. I haven’t thought about Eddie Caruso in years. It’s not anything that still bothers me.”

  “I think that may have been the most you’ve ever spoken during one of our counseling sessions. So I would say that it obviously is bothering you.”

  “Bullshit! I’ve talked a lot more than that at least a few different times. You realize that when we go out there in the field I’m your boss, right?”

  “Yes, but there’s one area of management where I’m the boss. And that is when it comes to the well-being of this team.”

  “No worries. I’m all good.”

  Emily raised her eyebrows.

  “Okay, we were close. We had a falling out. After that he teased me a lot, really made life hard on me. And I can’t fault him for that. We were kids. That kind of thing happens. But the deal with Eddie is that after my parents were murdered he didn’t lighten up on me. In fact, he started in harder. Made my life a living hell. It was so bad that I took a year off from school. Which everybody thought was completely understandable, considering that my parents had just died. No one really questioned it. But the real reason I needed to get away was because of Eddie Caruso.”

  “But you eventually came back to the same school?”

  “Yeah, after taking some time away and looking at the situation objectively, I remembered that I could beat the living hell out of Eddie Caruso. So, first day back, I cornered him, and under threat of violence and humiliation, I offered him a truce. Kind of a North and South Korea type of deal. The kind of agreement where we don’t want to work out our differences and so we’re just going to pretend that the other party doesn’t exist.”

  “Again, very healthy. But I totally understand, and you’re right about one thing: we should learn from the past, but we should never worry over it. However, your unresolved history with this man could quite easily become a problem when you go to see him.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Doc. Water under the bridge.”

  “After your parents died, what was the worst thing that Eddie did to you?”

  “He said that my mother was a whore. He called my dad a dirty cop. The same dad who had just fought and died for me. He told me that they were probably relieved when death came, because at least they didn’t have to put up with me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that, but as you said, it was a long time ago. I’m sure both you and Mr. Caru
so are very different people now.”

  “I can’t help thinking that anybody who would say that kind of thing to another kid whose parents had just died . . . I don’t know, that just seems like an issue with a person’s heart and soul. A darkness that’s never going to change.”

  “Perhaps, but one of the limitations of this mortal existence is that we can never truly see into another person’s heart and soul. We spend so much time trying to chart a roadmap of what’s in everyone else’s heart, but we forget that the most important thing is what’s in our own. We can’t worry about what’s in the hearts of others because our own soul is the only one over which we have any control.”

  “And how does that help me with Eddie?”

  “You need to examine your own heart. We should forgive others in the same way we hope others forgive us. If you go in with a humble spirit and a forgiving heart, then you’ll be fine. But here’s a question: What if, as you suspect, Eddie still possesses a spiteful personality? What if he responds negatively? Will you give in to your anger?”

  “Just because people make me angry, doesn’t mean I have an anger problem. It seems more that I have a people problem.”

  “Last week, I was told you had an incident with a local sheriff.”

  Marcus gritted his teeth and growled deep in his throat. “We needed this Podunk sheriff to serve a warrant on one of the security guards who was supposed to be protecting the truck that Demon’s cronies altered. The guard turned out to be dirty. He had taken a bribe to look the other way and erase the security footage.”

  “I don’t believe the guard’s culpability was the issue. This sheriff claimed that you defecated in his breakfast. He threatened to file a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.”

  Marcus laughed at the memory and Emily’s description of it. “That’s only partially correct.”

  “How do you partially defecate in someone’s breakfast?”

  “This local sheriff, I find out, is running for re-election, and he’s in there at some greasy-spoon diner jibber-jabbering and won’t go with us to serve the warrant until he’s finished his breakfast. We tell his office that this is a time-sensitive investigation. They respond that we’ll just have to wait. So we wait. For forty-five minutes. Finally, I go in and find this sheriff laughing it up with a bunch of old banker types. They’re just sitting there, cackling like a bunch of old hens and sipping their coffee.”

  “How does that connect your excrement to his breakfast?”

  “I’m getting there. So I walk up and introduce myself. I ask if he’s the sheriff. Anyway, long story short, he gave me attitude, and I pissed in his coffee cup.”

  “You urinated in a fellow officer’s coffee cup in the middle of a crowded restaurant?”

  “No, I took the cup into the bathroom. Then I urinated in it and brought it back out to him.”

  “Do you feel that was an appropriate and proportionate reaction to his behavior?”

  “To be honest, Doc, considering some of the other things I thought about doing to him, I think pissing in his coffee was a pretty measured response on my part. I actually think it displays some real personal growth.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The past . . .

  It was the biggest house Marcus had ever seen.

  And probably the most famous place he’d ever been, if you didn’t count the lady in the bay or other New York City landmarks that had become commonplace to someone born and raised in the city. This was even in a whole other state: New Jersey. Other than a few camping trips with his dad, he had never been anywhere that didn’t begin with “The New York . . .” His dad, NYPD Detective John Williams, always said, “Why go on vacation? This is the greatest city in the history of the world. If you can’t find it here, it doesn’t exist.”

  But Marcus Williams, now seeing his teenage years within reach, had a sense that his world was finally starting to grow beyond the old neighborhood of brick and concrete.

  It was a far cry from what stood before him now. The sprawling green of the manicured grounds and the massive white-and-black mansion seemed to be composed of colors he had never seen before. Or maybe they were only more vibrant than he had ever seen.

  He still couldn’t believe he was here, and he even had the permission of his parents. He hadn’t necessarily lied to them, merely withheld information. He had waited for a busy moment to ask if he could go to a birthday party with Eddie from school, knowing they wouldn’t question him. They were just glad that he was getting out of the house and away from his action figures and the “damn Nintendo.”

  Of course, Marcus didn’t volunteer which Eddie from school he was going with, even though he knew his father didn’t want him hanging around Eddie Caruso or ever spending the night at the boy’s house. His father had told him that Eddie’s father was a criminal and “not a very nice man.” But Marcus didn’t care about that. Eddie’s father was never around anyhow, and he wanted to be Eddie’s friend, not his father’s.

  Marcus didn’t know the kid whose birthday he was about to celebrate. Eddie had told him that the party was at the home of an associate of his father’s—someone named Tommy Juliano. The birthday boy, Nicky Juliano, was turning two years old. Eddie had said that the party was just as much for Nicky’s brother Junior, who was graduating from eighth grade, so there would be lots of kids of different ages there. Maybe even some older girls.

  Eddie, who had never been without a girlfriend since kindergarten, was always talking “about” girls, when he wasn’t talking “to” them. Marcus wasn’t completely oblivious to the opposite sex. He noticed them. They sometimes noticed him. But that was about as far as the interaction ever went, and when it did go farther, he usually said or did the wrong thing and scared them away.

  The mansion had its own parking lot, and the whole lot was filled with the shine of the newest model cars. Eddie’s mother parked the big Cadillac, which was also brand new. Eddie had bragged incessantly about his father just bringing it home from the dealership.

  The inside of the mansion was as clean and sparkling as the exterior. Junior Juliano met them at the door. He and Eddie exchanged an elaborate handshake full of fist bumps and finger wiggling. Eddie was much younger than the eighth-grade graduate, but the older kids always seemed to like Eddie. Everyone seemed to like Eddie.

  “This is my boy, Marcus. He’s part of my crew, but his dad bleeds blue, so watch what you say around him.”

  Marcus, having no idea what it meant to bleed blue, punched his friend in the arm, which earned a little chuckle from Eddie and the response, “It just means that your dad’s a cop, asswipe. Don’t spaz out on me.”

  “Why does it matter if my dad’s a cop?”

  “It doesn’t. Just don’t mention it to anyone.”

  Sometimes he hated being a cop’s kid. The others treated him like he was a junior officer, and he felt obliged to live up to everyone’s expectations. At least, he had, before he became part of Eddie Caruso’s “crew”—which was really nothing more than a scared and insecure group of kids mobbing together for survival.

  In the years before he had become Eddie’s best friend, on the same playground he now ruled, Marcus had felt as if he died more days than he survived. He hated school. It was a constant barrage of overwhelming input. All those social interactions. All those people to analyze and quantify. When he became Eddie’s friend, people started liking him even if he said or did the wrong thing. None of the other kids screwed around with Eddie and his “crew.”

  Junior Juliano laughed and said, “We have almost an hour before the kids from my class are supposed to get here, and my little brother, Bratman, has already dug into the cake and opened his presents, so . . . You two little scumbags want to see something cool?”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Corin Campbell was a gorgeous yo
ung woman. Her sister, Faraz’s girl, had paled in comparison when she had handed Baxter the photo of Corin. He wondered at the time if drugs had caused the contrast between the two siblings. If the roles had been reversed and Corin were handing him a picture of Samantha, Baxter wondered, would Sammy have been the beautiful sibling?

  He didn’t think so. He had a feeling that Corin had always been the golden child. Prettier. Smarter. Catching the eye of all her sister’s potential boyfriends . . . Jealousy was always a good motive, but not one he planned to pursue.

  He knew within seconds after meeting Corin’s sister that Sammy Campbell wasn’t involved and didn’t know where her sister had gone. He knew that not only because of the answers to his questions, but from watching Sammy answer them. She simply didn’t have the capacity to harm her sister and lie about it. She barely had the capacity to form complete sentences, let alone link those sentences into complete thoughts.

  Unfortunately, that also meant she didn’t possess any information that could help him find Corin. All she really had for him was an old photo and the knowledge that her sister had disappeared.

  But Samantha had introduced him via phone call to the first of the usual suspects.

  Corin’s boyfriend, Blake, had suggested a coffee shop to meet. Baxter had insisted on meeting at the couple’s condo located in the city’s trendsetting Dogpatch neighborhood. He claimed he wanted to get a better feel for Corin, but that was only one reason. An old detective’s rule of thumb was to find the person the victim was sleeping with, and you’ve found your killer. But Baxter didn’t know if the boyfriend was the one she had been sleeping with or if Corin even was a victim.

  When he opened the door to the condo, Blake reminded Baxter of a former Nickelodeon teen heartthrob, about five years past his prime. Handsome but haggard. When Baxter looked into the kid’s eyes, he saw something else. The hollowness of loss and grief.

  The handsome medical student ushered him into the small apartment. The space was cramped but elegantly decorated with modern art furnishings. Everything had a certain enforced symmetry.