by B. A. Morton
“Terry told her she was a little freak and he’d burn her books and slit her throat if she didn’t disappear.”
Definitely not nice. “And do you think he would’ve?”
“Would’ve what?”
“Slit her throat.”
She shook her head. “Come on. It’s just something you say when you’re mad, isn’t it?”
Oh sure, maybe in the world according to Lydia Brown, but not in any world he knew. He recalled wryly the times when Joe had interrupted him at an inopportune moment. That little guy had built-in radar but slitting of throats didn’t come into it. “How’d he know about the books?”
“Huh?”
“How did he know about the books? Did he go into her room?”
She shrugged. “I dunno, I guess so ... I was pretty whacked out.”
Connell started counting back in his head and tried to remain calm. He wasn’t sure whether his alarm bells were ringing because she was hiding something or simply because the whole situation stank.
“Did Terry stay all night? Was he still here when you noticed that Molly had gone?”
“I don’t know what time it was when he left. When he was done, I guess. I was high. It was about lunchtime when I realized she’d gone, and I gave her till dinner to come home. When it started to get dark, I began to get a little worried because Molly doesn’t like the dark.”
She didn’t like the dark and yet there wasn’t even a light bulb in her excuse for a room. God, he knew deep down this could only get worse. He just didn’t want to think about it.
He thought instead of Lizzie and the feel of her warm restraining hand on his arm. He needed her, but maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to think of the love of his life when he was caught up in a case and hadn’t been home in four days.
He returned his attention to Lydia. “What about the other guests?”
“There were no other guests.”
“Some party ...”
She pulled a face. “We had fun.”
Oh sure, so much fun that she couldn’t remember any of it. “You didn’t call your folks?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged again, a little sadly this time. “Because I don’t know where they are.”
Well that didn’t surprise him; she didn’t know much at all.
So, that was last night and Molly had probably been gone twelve hours already by then. He added it up in his head, whichever way you looked at it, that little girl had been gone a long time.
“You phoned the cops and they came straight over?”
“No,” she replied in a voice that suggested she thought he was as stupid as her crazy little sister. “They came this morning, said they’d look out for her, and to let them know if she turned up.”
Connell had sat outside in his car and watched them leave. He’d assumed it was a return visit, hadn’t realized it was the first response. “They weren’t worried?” Since when did cops think it wasn’t a big deal when a child went missing?
“Kids go missing, most of them come home ... that’s what they said. Maybe there was a game on, or a sale at Dunkin Donuts. They were in a hurry.”
Oh yeah, they’d be in a hurry when he caught up with them. “Did you tell them about Terry?”
She avoided his gaze. “They didn’t ask.”
He glanced back at the pathetic little room and thought of the child who’d slept in that bed, imagined how she must have felt curled up under thin dirty covers with no light and no comfort. He couldn’t bear the thought of Joe in similar circumstances.
But that wasn’t why he was there or what he was getting paid for. He should just leave it to the locals and back off, but he’d never been very good at backing off, even when he’d been told to.
He turned back to the girl with a sigh. “Have you been smoking today?”
“Some.”
“You need to stop now. You need to get your head in gear and go get cleaned up. You need to be ready when your sister comes home. Is there someone who can stay with you until your parents come back?”
“I’m doing okay on my own.”
Connell looked her up and down and shook his head sadly. “No, kiddo, you’re not. You let strange guys into your home. Think about it, you let me walk in off the street and you still haven’t asked for ID. Strange guys have a habit of doing strange things and they usually won’t be good things. How long have your parents been gone?”
She shrugged, looked away and he realized they weren’t on a trip. They’d been gone for some time and Lydia had been playing mommy, unsuccessfully as it turned out. “Who’s been paying the rent?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
“I have,” she answered with a defiant glare.
“For how long?” Maybe Lydia wasn’t putting on an act. Maybe she had to be stoned to do what she’d been doing.
“I don’t know, weeks, months, maybe two months.”
Two months! What’d they do, go out to the store for cigarettes and forget to come back? Okay, so it wasn’t uncommon for guys to run off and leave their women, or ladies to take off on their men, but it was unusual for both to walk out the door without saying goodbye to their kids.
“They happen to mention where they were going?” asked Connell and she answered with a shake of her head. “… or when they’d be back?”
“They left in a hurry. I guess they’d had enough of her too.”
“Enough of whom?”
“The Bookworm, who else?”
“And what did Molly think about it?” She was a kid. Her mom and dad had disappeared and her sister was probably a whore. He was getting a bad feeling about this whole situation.
“Molly doesn’t say much. Like I said, she reads a lot.”
“But she does understand that they’ve gone?”
“Who knows? She doesn’t exactly sit around making small talk.”
“Do you think she may have gone to look for them?” It was a possibility but the thought of a little kid wandering around the city, looking for her parents, did things to his gut that hurt.
“I doubt it. We’re better off without them.” Lydia reached down, and with one hand securing her to the door frame, she undid her shoes, slipped them off and shrunk by four inches and a couple of years.
“Why? Because they’re bad parents or because they walked out on you?”
“Both.”
Connell acknowledged that she was right. Good parents didn’t walk out on their kids. Of course that was supposing they had walked out and weren’t currently laying unclaimed in a drawer at the morgue.
He shot a final glance at the little room. “Where do you think she is?”
The girl cocked her head and gave a sad smile. “Well that’s pretty obvious ... she’s off to see the wizard.”
“Huh?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? Didn’t you notice?” She gestured to the books. “Some cop you are ...”
“I told you already, I’m not a cop. What should I have noticed?”
“They’re all the same shitty story.” She tapped her head again. “Don’t you get it? Molly lives in a world of her own. Molly lives in the wonderful world of Oz. She’s off to see the Wizard.”
Chapter Two
Connell was doing this as a favor - a little quality control for his buddy Gerry Gesting - checking out a couple of cops who thought it was fine to take their pay check and simply go through the motions. Gesting figured that they might be getting an additional pay check from someplace else, but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to rock the boat until he was.
Gerry didn’t like bad cops - he had dealt with a few in his time and knew that Connell had a similar distaste for them - but the department was currently stretched trying to track down a serial killer with a taste for sharp knives and dead cops. No one, including Gerry, wanted guys sitting on suspension for taking bribes when they were needed on the street. Gerry was a patient man, though, and with Connell’s help he would
gather what he needed to know, and when the boys in blue had gotten their man, he’d step in and separate the gold on the force from the lead. It was what he did and he did it well.
Connell was about done with his own investigation on Detective’s Gibbons and Scott. He’d been observing them discreetly over a number of days: cases not followed up; witnesses who mysteriously withdrew their statements; and perhaps more significant, a substantial amount of missing time, time when they should have been doing their job but were too busy doing something else, someplace else. Connell wasn’t entirely sure what they were up to, or where they were up to it, but he figured that, yeah, they were definitely looking the other way, and if he’d had more time and a little more interest in them, he would have dug a little deeper.
Trouble was, the deeper he dug into the shit left behind by crooked cops, the more he was inclined to stop digging. It left a bad taste in his mouth that he didn’t like. He’d been about ready to write up his report, hand it back to Gerry and go home, but then he’d followed them, gone into the room, and realized this case was something different. This was about a child and now that he was here, he didn’t feel inclined to pass it on.
Nobody was going to look for Molly Brown. She wasn’t the sweet, photogenic all-American kid the press liked. She was a weird little runt who reeked of neglect and freaked people out with her strangeness. Similarly, nobody would give a shit about her mouthy sister. She should be in school, making a future for herself; instead, she was selling herself to pay the rent. He thought about the parents and wondered if anyone had bothered to look into their disappearance or whether it had even been reported. Both girls were in danger. He couldn’t just look the other way, couldn’t live with himself if he did. It bothered him greatly that a child had disappeared. It bothered him almost as much that the two lousy cops in charge of the case had chosen not to follow it up.
He stood outside the building and looked at the street, at the route Molly would likely have taken had she left under her own steam. He hoped she had; he hated thinking about the alternative.
A poor neighborhood, the sidewalk was littered with uncollected trash bags and general crap. Molly would have needed to walk on the road. At night, in the dark, that would have held its own dangers. She had a flashlight, but as Lydia had already told him, the batteries were dead. So, if she hadn’t been sideswiped by a car and taken to the ER, then maybe some driver might remember trying to avoid her.
There was a gas station at the end of the block. If she’d gone that way, she might have been caught on camera. The cops who’d called that morning should have been following this up. He knew they weren’t - didn’t yet know why - and the longer the trail was left, the colder it would become.
Giving a final glance at the shabby building, he bent and unlocked his car. Slipping off his jacket, he threw it onto the passenger seat and slid in behind the wheel. He should head home. He’d been away longer than intended and had a long drive ahead of him. He smiled at the thought of the welcome he’d get when he eventually got there, but first he needed to speak to Gerry.
“What’s the real story with your guys?” he asked curtly when Gerry answered his phone.
“Well, hello to you too, Tommy. I see you left your manners at home again.”
Funny guy. Connell reached over to his jacket and pulled out the photo of Molly he’d swiped from the apartment. It was maybe a year old, taken at school. She really was a little squirt - looked about eight at the most. Her hair was pulled roughly into braids and her ears stuck out like handles. Staring blankly at the camera through dollar store spectacles, her eyes appeared to be looking in two directions at the same time, though that could have been a trick of the light. He was starting to see weirdness where there was probably none, but either way she was no beauty pageant contender.
“What do you expect? You said this wouldn’t take up much of my time. I’ve been on this four days and I’m still not done.”
“Hey, don’t forget, I’m doing you the favor. Don’t tell me you don’t need the money. I heard all about Lizzie’s plans for the house.”
“Oh yeah, plans for Parker’s house ...”
The old man had eventually relented and sold them the farm, but Lizzie had gone all doe-eyed and said they couldn’t see an old man of ninety in a home for the almost-departed. She’d spent what money they’d had doing up the little house by the barn so Parker could stay in the place where he’d been born. As far as Connell was concerned, he was a sly old buzzard who was nowhere near taking his last breath, and he had Lizzie wrapped around his little finger. He figured he owed him one, though. Without Parker he wouldn’t have Lizzie.
“Yeah, that twenty million is looking real attractive,” he added wryly.
Gerry laughed. “Forget about it. You always were an honest cop.”
“You think?” Temptation was a terrible thing … so tempting. Never mind the twenty million, he was tempted to put his hands round Parker’s scrawny neck and help him with that last breath.
“I know it,” said Gerry.
“So, about these guys - what are you not telling me?” asked Connell. Gerry liked to play things close to his chest. Connell figured it was a control thing, a consequence of the spooky company he kept. Gerry would disagree.
“I only know what you tell me. You’re the one doing the digging.”
Connell wasn’t convinced. He knew Gerry too well but gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it. I guess I should be used to being the last one to know what’s going on.”
Gerry laughed again. “You work better that way, Tommy. When you know nothing, you come up with possibilities. When you know everything, your mind shuts down.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“You decide.”
“Yeah, well, I reckon my mind is open for business and I’ve got a few possibilities to keep me thinking.”
“I’m listening.”
“Your guys; at the very least they’re not doing their job and they’re being paid to look the other way by criminals incorporated, identity as yet unknown. I should have that information soon. I tailed them last night to a very shady location, thought I’d take another drive by in daylight and see if the sun shines on anything of interest.”
“And at the worst?”
“At the worst, they may be mixed up in something serious.”
“Such as?”
Connell adjusted his rearview mirror. He liked to know what was going on around him, even when he wasn’t paying too much attention to it.
“They came out on a report of a missing ten year old at least twelve hours after it was called in. This little kid is vulnerable, Gerry. A little off, not quite all there, if you get my meaning, and for the last two months she’s been taken care of, if you can call it that, by her sixteen-year-old sister who’s prostituting herself to pay the rent. Your guys took one quick look, told her sister the kid would come home on her own when she was ready, and went off to watch the game.”
“Where was child protection while all this was going on?”
“No idea, Gerry. At some fucking fundraiser with the mayor, for all I know?”
“Okay, Tommy, rein it in ...”
Connell heard the disapproval in Gerry’s curt tone. He knew his tendency for over-enthusiasm, and his unhealthy intolerance for officials, grated on the man.
“I’ll see those boys get what’s coming,” continued Gerry. “Just let me have your report and then you’re done. See, I said it wouldn’t take long. You’ll be back on the farm, enjoying all things horse-related, before you know it.”
Connell stared a moment at the phone. “Is that it? What about the kid?”
“The kid’s not your concern, Tommy. Leave it to Missing Persons. Your job was to check up on wayward cops.”
“And that’s what I’m still doing. Gerry, think about it. Why would these guys turn a blind eye to a missing child unless they’d been told to, or paid to, by someone who didn’
t want that child found? And why would anyone not want to find a child?”
“Are you sure you’re not just getting carried away with the moment, Tommy? It’s hard when a child is involved, particularly when you’ve got a kid of your own. How do you know they’re not checking it out?”
“Because they took less than ten minutes in the apartment. I know because I timed them. I sat outside the entire time.”
The phone stayed silent and Connell knew that Gerry was considering, knew the way the man’s mind worked like the mechanism on a rundown clock, slow but sure. “Maybe they’re just busy with other stuff, the stuff you’re meant to be investigating,” Gerry eventually replied.
“Maybe, but that’s not all, Gerry. The parents have up and disappeared and no one is giving a shit about that either. Something’s not right here, Gerry. I can’t just leave it. This kid is weird. Nobody is going to look for her. Nobody’s going to find her ...”
“You mean unless you do it?”
“Maybe.”
Gerry’s sigh whispered down the line. “It’s not your job, Tommy. It could have been but you chose to turn your back on your badge.”
Connell recalled bitterly, the day he’d turned it in. He had no regrets. “Do you blame me, Gerry? I don’t exactly have confidence in the justice machine.”
“What can I say, Tommy? You were screwed. Nobody can say you sat back and took it. You shook the place up, righted a few wrongs, but it’s been almost two years. You need to leave all that behind now.”
“What do you think I’m doing here? Righting wrongs. But I can’t do it on my own, Gerry. I’m not Joe. I haven’t got some secret Spidey suit on under my shirt.”
“What do you want me to do, Tommy? Missing kids aren’t my area.”
Connell gave an exasperated shake of his head. Missing kids should be everybody’s area. “Keep me on your special payroll a little longer and I’ll do some more digging on your two lame boys in blue, find out whose holding the end of their leash and make sure the kid isn’t forgotten.”
Gerry paused again and Connell imagined the cogs grinding. “I don’t know whether I can square that, Tommy. I don’t have the juice I used to.”
