The accident, yes—Last year Maisie wandered into the street and was hit by a car. She died, but woke up and was returned to the Michaelson’s. For all I could tell, that had been an accident, and the Michaelson’s seemed thrilled they’d gotten their daughter back.
“I don’t believe you are a bad mother,” I said calmly. Mrs. Michaelson cried at this, as if my words were simply too hard for her to hear. “Accidents happen.”
She nodded. “We wanted Maisie so badly. Why would we let her get hurt?”
“I know,” I said. The Michaelsons had adopted Maisie after failing to conceive. I didn’t think they’d go through all that trouble just to change their minds about having her. Everyone I’d talked to—teachers, neighbors, friends—said Maisie was a sweet and bright kid. As lovable as they came. It was clear Maisie adored her parents and clear they adored her.
“It’s like when we first got her,” she said quietly, looking up and beyond me, at something I couldn’t see. “There is always a danger that the mother will change her mind, you know? That someone will appear and take the baby back. So there are these days where you are just waiting and waiting to find out if you’re going to lose her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again because I wasn’t sure what else to say. When the silence stretched on and I realized that Mrs. Michaelson was in no shape to talk, I decided to try something else. “Mrs. Michaelson, can I take another look through Maisie’s room?”
“You’ve been up there a hundred times,” she said.
“Actually, I’ve only peeked in once, briefly. It was mostly the tech crew that inspected the room.”
“What are you looking for?” she said, stiffening on the couch. “Her body?”
“Is it up there?” I asked and regretted it as soon as I spoke. The woman’s shoulders began shaking violently with her tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s been a long weekend.”
The woman said nothing, just cried into her palms. I watched her for a moment longer trying to consider what to do. Finally I said, “Do you mind if I just go up?”
Still shielding her face with one of her hands, she waved me on with the other.
I climbed the stairs one at a time, noting the family pictures on the wall. Mr. and Mrs. Michaelson with their dark hair and eyes. Maisie with her bright blond locks and big blue eyes. A few had just Maisie and that beast of a Saint Bernard.
Maisie’s bedroom was on the left at the top of the stairs. It was pulled closed, probably because the Michaelsons simply didn’t want to walk by it and be reminded again and again that their daughter was not home. I was damn sure a closed door still did the same.
I wrapped a fist around the handle and it was warm. I wondered how often one or either of them came up and wrapped a hand around it but couldn’t bring themselves to open it. How hard must parents cling to this place between the possibility that they could open the door and find her there on the other side, or open the door and know she is truly gone.
I pushed the door open and was confronted by a barrage of pink. The walls were pink and white-striped satin and the comforter was bubblegum fluff. The room was tidy and I could see lines in the carpet from a recent vacuuming. I stepped into the room.
The sloped ceiling forced me to stoop or risk bashing my head. I picked up a few age-appropriate toys. Pulled back the bed sheets and replaced them, opened the closet and closed it. But I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing spoke to me.
I went downstairs, prepared to give Mrs. Michaelson a polite goodbye before heading over to the school, but I didn’t find her in the living room. I called her name, but heard no answer. I resisted the urge to pull my gun, given the fact that I was in someone’s home. A child’s home.
Then I saw her outside on the opposite side of the glass door. She stood in her backyard, fussing over one of those ornamental trees. With a pair of clippers, she hacked at it ruthlessly, the little green twigs falling away to the deck beneath her. The Saint Bernard tried to lick her face once or twice before she succeeded in shooing it away.
Before I could reach her, something caught my eye. On the fridge was a kid’s drawing. For six years old, it was no masterpiece, but Maisie had some skill. Enough that I could tell it was her and a man, holding hands. I would have assumed it was her father, Mr. Michaelson, if not for one exception. This man had light hair, scribbled in by a yellow crayon. But Mr. Michaelson, like his wife, had black hair.
I removed the picture from the fridge and opened the back door. Mrs. Michaelson paused, her blades held open in one hand, the bonsai hanging in the other. The Saint Bernard, whose name I suddenly remembered as Max, galloped by chasing a squirrel.
I held up the picture. “Did Maisie draw this?”
“Yes, why?”
“When?” I asked. I squatted down beside her so she didn’t have to crane her neck up to look at me.
“I don't know. It had to be in the last month. I probably wrote the date on the back.”
I turned it over and saw there was in fact a date, just a few days before Maisie’s disappearance. “Did she tell you who the man was?”
“The tooth fairy, why?” The blades in her hand began to look more threatening.
“Did the tooth fairy visit her often?”
She was about to refuse my suggestion. I could see it in her face. Then her irritation softened with a question. “She told us that he visited her all the time, even before she began to lose her teeth.”
“Was there anything strange about these visits?”
“They weren’t real,” she insisted. “They were just a dream.”
“Humor me,” I said. “Tell me about this tooth fairy.”
“Maisie has only lost three baby teeth. We told her to put them under her pillow each time, and then John or I would sneak in to put money under her pillow, except we could never find the teeth and there would already be money under the pillow. The first time I thought my husband did it. The second time he thought I did it and the third time we asked each other and realized neither of us had taken the teeth or given her the money.”
“Could a real man be coming into your house and stealing your child’s teeth?” I asked.
She scoffed. “That’s absurd. The house was locked tight. The alarm was set. I even checked her window every morning and night to make sure it was locked. There’s no way to climb up to it either. A man simply could not have gotten into this house.”
I knew from experience this wasn’t true. “Did Maisie tell you what the tooth fairy wanted or why he was visiting her?”
She looked at the mangled plant in her hands. “Once she told me that he had come and used a cutie tip on her.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“It’s just the way she used to say Q-tip. Cutie tip. She was three at the time.”
“Right.”
“Oh god, no. No,” she repeated. “It was just a dream. No one in their right mind would believe the tooth fairy is real.”
No, I thought, but a man sneaking into a house and lying to a child so she wouldn’t be scared of him, that was a very real possibility.
“What about the money and the teeth?” I asked. “I think John is just trying to trick me. He’s a bit of a joker.”
“If I ask your husband, do you think he’ll tell me the truth?”
“Of course,” she said as the Saint Bernard galloped by again.
Chapter 11
Monday, March 24, 2003
It was coming up on six o’clock and the last bit of the city’s congestion was starting to clear off I-270. A bright headache was blooming behind my eyes and I knew it was too early to grab a drink. Instead, I grabbed a burger from the first drive-thru I saw and replayed the last several hours in my head.
The husband had denied taking the teeth, even as a joke, but admitted that it sounded like something he would do. The interviews at Maisie’s school hadn’t turned up much. One teacher thought she might have seen a man matching the description of Maisie’s tooth fairy, but
couldn’t be sure. Another insisted that she’d never seen anyone like that. They both maintained the stance that Maisie went to the little girl’s bathroom and never came back, but that there was no way a man could have snatched her. The bathroom was locked, inside their classroom, with the teacher standing outside. There were no windows and no other doors.
She was washing her hands and singing. She loved to sing the young teacher had said. Then she yelped as if surprised and sort of giggled and I asked her what she was laughing at, but she never answered me. When I opened the door, she was gone.
Someone was lying.
I had half of my daily burger down when Charlie called to tell me that the flasher was spotted going into a laundromat in South Grove. I thanked him and whipped the Impala back onto the highway.
I pulled up in front of the laundromat to see an old woman heaping baskets into one of those pushcarts. A boy sat behind the counter with a large Big Gulp soda in one fist and the remote to the TV in the other. Would it kill him to be an attendant and actually attend to the elderly woman? Punk.
Then I saw her.
She walked up to the desk with the kid behind it and handed him a sheet of paper and a pen. She bent over the table in a way that drew the kid’s eyes down the front of her shirt and made him go all red in the face.
I opened the door for the old lady, who thanked me, and I came up behind the girl working the kid.
“Rachel Wright?” I asked.
The girl turned slowly. Her black bob hanging in frizzy ringlets. My face was doubled and clown-like in the dark glass of her large sunglasses. I reached up and tore off the wig and glasses, realizing immediately that I had a problem.
“Hey, ow. You’re hurting me,” she squealed.
It wasn’t Rachel Wright.
The kid chose this moment to get all chivalrous. “Hey man, she’s just applying for a job, get off her back.”
“A job, huh? With false information maybe?” I snatched up the application and sure enough, it was Rachel’s information printed in the little fill-in-the-blank boxes.
“Why are you applying for a job under a false name?”
She went all doe-eyed and soft in my grip. Then I saw the tears brimming. “Christ, don’t cry. Just answer me.”
“I was unaware of the false information, sir.” The kid wised up. Nice tits or not, the rats will always abandon a sinking ship.
I ignored him and remained focused on the girl. “How did you come by Rachel’s information?”
The girl was bawling now and I knew I wouldn’t get any further with her until she calmed down. I steered her to the Impala by her elbow. Then I cuffed one of her wrists to the oh-shit handle.
“Please don’t get the bright idea to jump out of a moving car. She doesn’t brake as quickly as she used to. I’d hate to have to drag a sack of meat along until the Impala decides she’d like to stop.”
I went to the driver’s side door and climbed in. Then I backed out of the laundromat parking lot to the sound of the girl sobbing.
When she seemed tired of crying, I tried again. “You about done?”
“I don’t want to go to prison,” she said.
“That’s why we have it,” I replied. “If everyone wanted to go, it wouldn’t be much of a punishment, now would it?”
“Please,” she begged. She yanked at the cuff and whimpered. It hurt like hell banging your wrist bones on that metal. I knew from personal experience. When she finally realized it would only hurt more, she had the good sense to go still. Or as still as she could, given the uncontrollable shaking of her hands. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?” I asked. “Like buy me a drink?” Just the mention of booze made my mouth water. I counted up the hours. Too long. No wonder my mind had gone fuzzy around the edges.
“Yes, please, anything.” She began to cry again. I swore.
“If you’ll do anything, start by telling me what the hell you’re doing applying for a job with someone else’s name.”
She cried harder. “I can’t tell you.”
“Let me guess,” I said and turned on the heat. It didn’t work great, but I hoped it would help her shaking. “Someone will kill you.”
She whimpered and gave me the quivering lip for show.
“Of course,” I said and changed lanes, heading back toward the FBRD station.
“And this is the part where I tell you it will only get worse for you if you withhold information. But if you work with me, I’ll work with you. I can make promises about witness protection and all that shit and so on. So can we skip to the part where you tell me why you did it?”
She turned toward the window and then looked into the backseat as if looking for a way out.
“Assuming you don’t go underneath the car and I break both of your legs by running them over.”
Her response to this was to yank at the cuffs again as if she would rather break her wrist and be free than tell me anything useful.
“OK,” I said. I scratched my head and searched for some patience. I didn’t have much, especially not with the pressure building behind my eyes. “I’ll give you some time to calm down and then maybe you’ll feel chatty.”
When I parked the Impala outside the large brick building—an old post office that was claimed and renovated for the FBRD’s cause—her resolve melted.
“OK, OK. Let’s just talk, OK? Don’t take me in yet.”
“Sure,” I said. If the little shit who’d cried for the last five miles wanted to talk now, I’d take it. I’d rather use her fear of custody against her than take her inside and hear the where is my lawyer and phone call bullshit.
Besides, I couldn’t keep her here long. We could detain and interrogate suspects of crimes related to our cases, sure. But I’d have to send her over to the jail sooner or later, once I filed official identity theft charges.
“I know a guy—”
“Let me stop you there,” I said. “A guy is pretty damn vague. So why not tell me how you know him and it will save us both a lot of time and energy. Do you get what I’m saying? Speak in complete thoughts.”
She blinked.
“For example, you might want to say his name, followed by his relationship to you.”
“OK,” she said. Her mascara had smeared, giving her dark rings beneath each eye. Not flattering, but neither was the snot coming out of her nose. “Jason, my dealer—like that?”
“Perfect. Don’t stop now.”
She wiped snot across the back of her hand. “I owe my dealer a bunch of money and I can’t pay him. He gave me these papers and told me that if I went around to these businesses and applied for jobs, I wouldn’t owe nothing. He told me to start with the high-class shit, places I knew wouldn’t take me. Then I should apply for everything else.”
I tried not to look as surprised as I was. Cop face isn’t always as easy to pull off as you might think. “How much did you owe?”
“A thousand dollars. Sometimes he just let me fuck him for it, but then he wasn’t interested anymore. He said I got too skinny.”
I glanced at the bony wrist hanging in the cuff. “What’s your poison?”
“What?” she asked. Sitting up as if I’d prodded her.
“Your drug. What are you getting from him?”
“X,” she said. “I get a little coke sometimes, but I don’t like the way it makes my heart race. But I love X. It’s the only time I’m happy.”
I’d seen her cry enough to believe it.
“There are worse drugs,” I said. “So you agreed to file these applications so you could pay off your debt and get more X. And what about Jason? He got a last name?”
She didn’t answer.
So I put the car in reverse and backed away from the building. Charlie stood in full view of the glass and watched me go. I flashed him a one minute finger before looking over my shoulder to check my blind spot. When I turned back around to straighten out the car, he was still there, hand on his hip. I motioned for his pa
tience one more time before speeding away.
“Where are we going?” the girl asked. Her voice was high and hopeful through the thick snot coating it.
“I’m gonna treat you to a meal. Your choice. Then maybe you’ll remember this dealer’s last name and where I can find him. So tell me what you like to eat, sweetheart.”
“You’re going to let me go?”
“Did I say that?” I just wanted more information on Jason and why he wanted someone applying for jobs in Wright’s name.
The girl sobbed again. “Please just let me go. Please?”
“Ah, don’t cry,” I said. “How about if you stop crying right now, I’ll throw in dessert.”
Chapter 12
Monday, March 24, 2003
I’d left the girl in the interrogation room with a couple slices of pizza and a soda. I wanted to finish what I’d started with her, but Charlie wasn’t looking so good.
He was pissed and I wanted to know why.
I knocked before entering his office. “Sir?”
“What’s with the girl?” he said.
“She’s Rachel’s dummy. She’s been going around putting applications in to make it look like Wright is job hunting. She was also given a ticket to Cabo, dated two weeks from now.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because her drug dealer told her to. I’m hoping to find out why.”
The phone rang and after looking at the number, he huffed. He didn’t answer. When his cell went off next and he still didn’t answer, I put my hands on the back of the chair and arched an eyebrow. “What’s going on?”
“How are you coming on the Sullivan case?” he asked, finally looking up from the yellow legal pad in front of him where he was tapping a blue ink pen furiously.
“The wife and kid were a dead-end. Either he was pissed that she turned him in or he came back and saw she was remarried and split. Either way, it seems no one in his hometown has heard from him and he didn’t have much to go back to. He probably started another life somewhere else.”
“I want you to prioritize the case,” he said. “Find where the hell Sullivan is now.”
Dying for Her: A Companion Novel (Dying for a Living Book 3) Page 4
