by Lisa Gardner
“Everyone out,” I ordered. “Just out. We’re not doing any good.”
Lucy was back at the window, banging futilely against the glass. There was a hopelessness to her actions that hurt to watch. As if she knew the glass wouldn’t break, as if she knew she couldn’t escape, but she had to try.
How long had she banged on the freezer door? How many hours and days had she spent, forced into a fetal position, feeling her arms and legs burn from the cramping muscles?
These kids were tougher than us. These kids were braver than us. That’s why we loved them so.
We backed out slowly, easing into the lit hallway, where the domino effects of Lucy’s outburst were already in motion. Kids were off their mattresses, looking wild-eyed as Lucy launched into a fresh series of shrieks. Jimmy raced by, arms outstretched as he reacted to the stress by making like an airplane and taking flight. Jorge and Benny were hot on his heels.
Verbal kids were chattering away. Nonverbal kids were curling into balls. Suicidal Aimee stood in the doorway, looking as if the world were ending, but then, she’d known it would. She disappeared, shuffling back into the darkness of her room, and Cecille swiftly followed her.
Lucy began to wail. A thin, anguished sound that built, then fell off, then rose to a crescendo all over again.
“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!” Jimmy yelled, roaring down the hallway, arms straight out, bathrobe flapping.
Lucy wailed louder.
“Stop, stop, stop!” Benny and Jorge took up the chant.
“Midnight matinee,” Ed boomed over the growing uproar. “To the movie room. Popcorn for all.”
He started to herd dazed and distraught children away from Lucy’s room, toward the common area. I joined suit, gathering as many kids as possible as I worked my way to the medicine dispensary. I tried to appear as if I were merely walking fast when, really, I wanted to bolt.
The wails continued, a long heartbreaking ladder that made the adults pale, even as we pasted reassuring smiles upon our faces.
I found myself picturing my father. He was standing in my doorway, framed by a halo of hallway light. “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”
The pitch of his last words matched Lucy’s wail perfectly. Songs for the dying.
I wanted Lucy to shut up. I needed her voice out of my head.
I finally reached the dispensary and grabbed the Ativan. Two more kids went racing by. I snagged the first, then the second, got them to the movie room, where the MCs were getting it together now. A movie was on, audio blasting almost loud enough to drown out the ruckus down the hall.
Lucy screamed more frantically, and I bolted for the rest of my supplies. Having the proper sedative was only half the battle. The real problem would be administering it. Most kids, we talked through the process or even bribed. Lucy, however, didn’t have language skills.
She was a mystery to us, and she was a mystery now screaming so shrilly my head hurt. The windows should shatter. The building should implode from so much anguish.
“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”
I grabbed three pieces of cheese and a boombox and raced down the hall.
I walked straight into the room. Lucy was so beside herself, I figured it hardly mattered. She must’ve spotted me out of the corner of her eye, however, for she launched herself at me immediately, fingers curled into claws, gouging at my eyes.
She caught me in the shoulder. I staggered back, surprised, making a low, involuntary oomph under my breath.
I had an image of tangled brown hair, and dark, desperate eyes too big in her pale face. She launched herself again. Instinctively, I brought up the boombox and used it to block. She whacked it with her hand, hard enough to hurt. Her arm recoiled. She held her right hand against her chest and whimpered.
I hit Play, filling the room with a light piano mix. Music soothes the savage beast.
Not Lucy. She kicked at my shins.
I pedaled backwards, trying to put distance between us. She stalked me, up on the balls of her feet, gaze never leaving my face.
She wanted to gouge out my eyes, dig her fingers into my sockets and squeeze. I could see it on her face. Something had gone off inside of her. A switch thrown. A link with humanity further breaking. She wanted blood. She needed it.
I kept moving, careful to stay out of corners and remain within line of sight of the doorway.
I was stronger.
She was faster, a swirling blur of green shirt and pale, flashing limbs.
She lashed out with her foot again, catching me in the side of my knee. I stumbled and the boombox fell to the floor. She snatched it up and hurled it at the window. It bounced off the shatterproof glass, landing on the floor, where George Winston resiliently carried on.
Lucy didn’t seem to notice. I was already up, moving quickly toward the open doorway. She seemed to register the angle, instantly understanding my intent. She dashed left, cutting me off from the doorway, herding me deeper into the room. I got the mattress between us, thinking that might help. Then I started circling back around, always mindful of the doorway.
Lucy gave up on stalking, leaping across the mattress instead.
The direct attack caught me off guard. I barely got my hands up before she head-butted me in the stomach. The force of her attack carried us both back, slamming me into the window. She was wild now, clawing with her fingers, jabbing with her knees. I tried to catch her hands, make some attempt to subdue her.
She grabbed my arm with both of her hands and yanked, hard. The sudden force bent me forward, and she immediately leaped upon my back, grabbing fistfuls of my hair. Then she got one hand around my neck and squeezed.
I careened over to the next wall, backing into it solidly. She held, so I performed Greg’s favorite maneuver—I bent forward and flipped her over my head.
She landed on the floor hard, the wind knocked from her small chest. I saw her eyes widen, her mouth forming a soundless oh. She was stalled, but probably not for long. Quickly, before she could get back on her feet, I jammed a tablet of Ativan into the first piece of cheese and formed it into a messy ball. I rolled it to her, then stumbled toward the open doorway.
Ed was standing there, looking horrified.
“What the—”
“Shut up! She’s not done yet.”
True to my words, Lucy was already lurching to her feet. She swayed more now, her eyes gone flat, glassy. She staggered forward one step, then another. Her toe hit the cheese ball, sent it rolling across the carpet.
The motion caught her eye. She stilled, staring at it.
I held my breath, taking out the other two pieces of cheese and busily rolling them up. Think cat. That’s what soothes Lucy. Get her into a feline state of mind.
I rolled the second piece of cheese across the floor, shooting it like a marble into her line of sight. Lucy tracked that one, then jerked back to the first. I could see her body rearranging itself, instinctively taking on a more feline pose. I tossed the third piece toward her feet: That did the trick. She pounced, catching it in her now pawlike hands and batting it into the air.
“Where is the Ativan?” Ed was asking. “For heaven’s sake, Danielle—”
“Shut up!”
I didn’t want him distracting her. I needed her focused on the cheese. Play with the cute little cheese balls. Bat them around. Then gobble them up.
She made me work for it. Five minutes going on six, seven, eight. One ball started to disintegrate. I held my breath, waiting for the tablet to be revealed. But that ball contained only cheese. Lucy finally stopped, lapping little bits of cheddar off the carpet, then making her way to the next ball, then the next. One … two … three.
The cheese was consumed, the tablet downed. I finally sagged with relief, realizing for the first time that my legs were unsteady, and my arms felt like they were on fire. I had blood on the backs of my hands. More running down my cheek.
“Did you …? How did …?” Ed started again.
“It was in the cheese,” I murmured, tugging him back, trying to get him out of the doorway. “She just needs a few minutes. It’s over now, she’ll be out soon.”
“Jesus, Danielle, your face, your neck … You need medical attention.”
“Then it’s a good thing we work at a hospital!” I didn’t mean to snap at him, but couldn’t help myself. I was still wired, nerves all jangled. I wished Greg were here. I wished … I needed …
Then I thought of George Winston, still plugging away on the floor of Lucy’s room, and I wanted to laugh, then I wanted to cry, and I knew it was all too much.
I retreated to the bathroom, where I splashed water on my face and told myself I absolutely, positively did not still hear my father singing in my head.
When I returned to Lucy’s room fifteen minutes later, she was curled up in a corner, one arm extended above her head. She was moving her hand this way and that, watching the shadows her fingers made upon the wall. Her movements were lethargic; the sedative was bringing her down.
She’d sleep soon. I wondered what she’d see when she closed her eyes. I wondered how she found the strength to get up again.
I eased into her room this time, making my body small. I halted not far from her and sat cross-legged. Her head turned. Her jaw was slack, her cheeks had lost their angry flush.
She looked like what she was—a nine-year-old girl who’d been through too much.
I wanted to brush back the tangle of her hair, but I kept my hands at my side.
“It’s okay now,” I whispered. Probably more for my benefit than hers. “Rough night, but these things happen.”
She cocked her head as if listening to my words, then resumed studying the flow of her fingers, held high above her head.
“You’re safe here,” I told her. “We’re not going to hurt you. All we ask is the same consideration. No more attacks, okay, Lucy? We don’t hit here. We don’t bite, kick, or pull hair. It’s one of the only things we’ll ask of you. To treat us nicely. We’ll treat you nicely, too.”
“Bad man,” she chimed, her voice so soft, so girlish, it took me a second to register that she’d spoken.
“Lucy?”
“Bad man,” she said again.
I didn’t know what to say. Lucy was speaking. She had language skills.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “No bad men. You’re safe here.”
Lucy turned her head. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, the Ativan taking effect. She reached across and grabbed my hand. Her fingers were strong, her grip tighter than I would’ve thought, given the sedative.
“Bad man,” she said again, fierce this time, urgent, her eyes blazing into mine.
“It’s okay—” I tried again.
“No,” she said mournfully. “No.” She released my hand, curled up, and went to sleep.
I stayed beside her, watching over her thin, pale form.
“Bad men die. Life gets better,” I said, to both of us. Then I shivered.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
D.D. knew she was in trouble when she woke up to a commercial for a sexual lubricant. According to the ad, the man used one lubricant for a cool tingle, the woman used another for a warming thrill, and then, when they got together…
D.D. wanted to know. Hell, she needed to know.
She spent several minutes, standing half-naked in her family room, staring at the TV screen as if it would repeat the commercial. Except this time, it would be her and, say, Alex Wilson in that rumpled bed. She’d be wearing one of his silk ties. He’d be wearing nothing at all.
Ah dammit.
Life sucked.
D.D. climbed aboard her treadmill, banged out three seven-minute miles, then downed two shots of espresso and went to work.
She pulled into HQ by eight-thirty, bearing a dozen donuts. Most of her squad were too health-conscious to eat donuts. That was okay. In her current mood, she’d be good for half the batch. She started with a Boston crème, poured a fresh cup of coffee, à la homicide unit, and got serious.
By nine a.m. Saturday morning, she had her squad plus Alex in her tiny office. They had approximately thirty minutes to hash out the past forty-eight hours, then she needed to report to the deputy superintendent. Given last night’s crime scene, did they have two independent incidents of mass murder? Or did they have one much larger, more horrifying crime? Option A meant two cases handled by two squads. Option B would involve the formal creation of a taskforce.
D.D. handed out large coffees, gestured to the half-empty box of pastries, then assumed the position beside the blank dry-erase board. Alex sat in front of her. Given that it was Saturday, he wore khaki pants and a rich blue golf shirt. The shirt emphasized the deep color of his eyes. The pants draped fit, athletic legs.
Then there were his hands, with those long, callused fingers resting upon his knees….
“What happened to all the donuts?” Phil spoke up.
“Bite me,” D.D. said. She returned to the whiteboard. “Victimology,” she announced. “We got the Harringtons in Dorchester….”
“White, working-class Christians,” Phil summarized. He’d found a maple frosted, and was chewing contentedly.
“School, employment, church, social clubs, prior address?”
Phil rattled off a geographic profile of the Harringtons’ known activities and organizations. D.D. dutifully wrote down each answer, then drew a line down the middle of the whiteboard to create a second column. “Okay, now we have the Laraquette-Solis clan.”
“White, low-income drug dealers,” Phil provided.
Alex spoke up. “Four children, four different fathers.”
“Long history with child services.” Phil again.
“Long history with immigration,” Neil, their third squadmate, countered from the back. Neil’s skin held the ghostly pallor of someone who spent too much time under fluorescent bulbs. Given that he’d spent the past two days at the ME’s office, overseeing the Harrington autopsies, and now there were now six more dead … Neil used to be an EMT. Made him the best man for the job.
“Turns out that Hermes Laraquette was from Barbados,” Neil continued now. He glanced at his notes. “Hermes was a Redleg—some small white underclass that descended from indentured servants, criminals, etc. INS has been looking for him, which is one case file they can now close.”
“School, employment, church, social clubs, prior address?” D.D. prompted.
This list was thin. The Laraquette-Solis clan lived across Boston, in Jamaica Plains. They were not known for their community involvement or their social consciousness. The family had moved into the neighborhood six months ago, and while Hermes liked to saunter around in his rainbow knit hat, the woman and kids were rarely seen outside.
D.D. couldn’t imagine it. How could anyone stay inside with that smell?
She studied the list under the Harrington name, then the list under the Laraquette name. Nothing leapt out at her.
“Enemies?” she prodded.
No one could think of any enemies for the Harringtons. The Laraquettes, on the other hand … They’d need days to research that list, given Hermes’s drug dealings. D.D. filled in TBD, for “to be determined.”
“So,” she declared briskly, “according to our lists, there’s no obvious overlap between the Harringtons’ world and the Laraquettes’. From a logical perspective, how could these two families know each other?”
“Mission work, maybe,” Alex spoke up, “if the Harringtons’ church does anything with low-income families. Or their own volunteer efforts.”
“Worth checking,” D.D. agreed. “The Harringtons are do-gooders and the Laraquettes could use some good done. Other connections?”
“The kids,” Neil suggested. “Teenage boys are close in age. Maybe knew each other from sporting activities, summer camps, that kind of thing.”
D.D. wrote it down.
“Foster families, troubled kids,” Phil continued, brainstorming. “Harringtons
adopted Ozzie, who we know passed through a variety of households before reaching them.”
“You’re thinking the Laraquettes once fostered Ozzie?” D.D. was dubious. “I’d think it would be the other way around—child services looking to place the Laraquette children to get them the hell out of that house.”
“That, too,” Phil agreed. “Again, we know the Harringtons had an interest in at-risk kids, and we know the Laraquette kids were at risk.”
“All right, from that perspective, I can buy it. We’ll call social services. They always love to hear from us. Other possibilities?”
The group was quiet, so D.D. made a few notes, then cleared the whiteboard and set them up for discussion number two: crime scenes.
Neil, the autopsy guru, led the way. “ME confirmed that the mother, Denise Harrington; the older son, Jacob; and the younger son, Oswald, all died of a single knife wound. Of note, there are no hesitation marks on any of the wounds.”
“Christ,” Phil muttered, the lone family man in the room.
“The girl, Molly, suffered a knife wound to the upper left arm. Cause of death, however, was manual asphyxiation. Fractured hyoid bone, which indicates a perpetrator of considerable manual strength.”
“Like a nine-year-old boy?” D.D. spoke up.
Neil gave her a look. “Not likely.” He glanced back down at his notes. “As for the father, Patrick Harrington, ME hasn’t gotten to him yet. According to the doctor’s report, however, he died due to complications from a gunshot wound—swelling of the brain.”
“Okay. So three stabbed, one strangled, one shot. Kind of original right there. Most family annihilators have a singular approach, don’t they?” D.D. looked to Alex for an answer.
He nodded. “Traditional approaches include shooting, drugging, and/or carbon monoxide poisoning. Sometimes, you see a case where the father figure drugs the family first, presumably to limit their suffering, then shoots them. If we look at teenage family annihilators—the abused son seeking retribution—methodology expands to bludgeoning and/or arson. I haven’t heard of a case where a single attacker switches weapons as he/she goes along.”
