by Diane Kelly
Twenty minutes later, we stood before the magistrate, a balding man with a shiny scalp and a semicircle of curls rounding the back of his head, connecting one of his ears to the other.
Jackson gave the man a quick review of the events from the preceding Thursday night. “A baby was dropped off late that night at a local fire station by a man who appeared to be around thirty.” She hiked a thumb to indicate me. “Officer Luz responded to the call from the station. She summoned Child Services. When she went to hand the infant over to the caseworker, she noticed something strange about the stitching in the baby’s blanket.”
“Strange?” asked the magistrate, looking from the detective to me and back again. “What do you mean ‘strange’?”
Jackson laid the bluebonnet baby blankie on the bench before him. She pointed to the word sewn into the blanket. “See that? The word ‘help’ is sewn into the trim. We believe it could be a cry for help from the baby’s mother.”
The man slid on a pair of cheap plastic reading glasses and leaned in to take a look. “Well, the thread does spell ‘help.’ That’s clear. But how do you know that whoever sewed that word wasn’t just asking for help for the baby?”
Jackson cut me a discreet glance. She’d asked me the same thing earlier and I’d been the one to convince her I thought something was up.
The detective returned her focus to the magistrate. “We believe the mother wants our help because she gave us a clue to finding her. We suspect she’s a member of the People of Peace. It’s a religious group that lives in a walled-in property near Benbrook Lake.”
“People of Peace?” said the judge. “Never heard of ’em.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jackson said. “They work very hard to keep a low profile. At any rate, their symbol is a combination cross and peace sign.” She pointed to the loose threads. “It looks like whoever stitched the message in the blanket also stitched their symbol. Some of the threads have pulled loose, but if you look closely at the needle holes, it’s like a dot-to-dot puzzle of their mark.”
He leaned in again, even closer this time, and blinked twice. “Not seeing it. Could be just a regular peace sign. Might even be something else entirely. Heck, if you ask me, it looks like a star.” He looked back up at the detective. “You been out to the property yet? Talk to anybody?”
“Officer Luz and I went out to the church compound earlier to see if they’d let us in voluntarily, but their leader refused to give us access. We made up a ruse about looking for a runaway teenager.”
The magistrate issued a disapproving grunt. “I’m not sure that was such a good idea.”
Guilt gripped me. Am I wrong about all of this? It was one thing for me to screw up. It was another thing for me to drag Detective Jackson down with me. But even more worrisome was the thought that I was right. If this judge didn’t give us a search warrant, there was no telling what types of bad things could result. It wasn’t my place to say anything, but in my panic words blurted from my mouth before I could stop them. “We can’t know for sure what the person who sewed the word meant. But don’t we owe it to her to find out?”
The magistrate slid his glasses off and pointed the earpiece at me. “I think you owe it to her not to find out. The safe drop law was intended to protect the privacy of mothers and fathers who surrender their babies. If law enforcement goes hunting down the parents, it would defeat the intent of the statute, discourage them from making safe drops, and we’d be back where we were years ago, with babies being left all over town and some of them not found until it was too late.” He shook his head. “Any link to that church is highly speculative, at best. Even if you convinced me the baby came from the group, it’s not clear a crime has been committed and the downsides are substantial.”
One of those downsides was that the judge could get potential flack from the religious community if he allowed us to force our way into a church compound. Groups were sometimes permitted to hide dirty secrets behind their religious identities, knowing the potential for public outcry about the separation of church and state and religious sovereignty would keep law enforcement at bay. Child-abuse scandals, adultery, and financial foul play had been swept under many a prayer rug.
“Sorry, you two,” the judge concluded. “I know you mean well, but no can do.”
Frustration gripped my innards. Ugh! Just let me do my damn job! I was tempted to order Brigit to take the man down and refuse to call her off until he issued a warrant. Of course I’d be out of a job, then.
While I grappled internally with my emotions, Jackson, on the other hand, took the judge’s ruling in stride. “Thank you, sir.”
We left the building and returned to the cruiser, loading Brigit in her pen, taking our seats, and belting ourselves in.
I put my hands on the wheel, but didn’t start the car. “What do we do now?”
Detective Jackson exhaled a long breath. “We do nothing.”
“Nothing?” My hands involuntarily squeezed the steering wheel. “How can we do nothing?”
She angled her head and gave me a pointed look. “You’ve got good instincts, Officer Luz, but sometimes you’ve got to learn when to call it quits. The law isn’t on our side here. Like the judge said, we don’t have clear evidence of a crime.”
“But what if there’s someone who needs our help?” The thought of leaving a woman in a hopeless, helpless situation made me feel sick inside.
Jackson gave me a sad smile. “There will always be someone who needs our help, Megan. We won’t even know who some of them are and, even if we did, we’d never be able to help them all. We’ve just got to help the ones we can and hope fate or God takes care of the others. You’ve got to accept that fact or this job will eat you alive.”
I knew she was telling me the truth, but I didn’t like the truth at that moment. Call me naïve or overly optimistic or even stupid, but I wanted to change the truth … or at least change it in this one case, if I could.
“Would it be all right if I kept an eye on the compound?” I asked. “Maybe drive by every so often just to see if the Ford pickup shows up?”
Jackson sighed and closed her eyes. “You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”
She might be admonishing me, but she wasn’t telling me no, either. “So I can drive by?”
She opened her eyes and cut me a look. “Use discretion and be careful. I don’t want my ass getting chewed out if you screw up.”
Woo-hoo! “Thanks, Detective.”
I dropped her at the station and headed back out on patrol. As much as I wanted to go back to the hill and spy on the compound, they were likely on alert now. Better to give them a little time to let down their guard.
Did they suspect why we’d really come to the compound? Or did they buy our story? There was no way to be sure. I hoped we hadn’t tipped them off, but what if we had? What might they do? And what if I was totally off base here? What if there was nothing going on at the People of Peace compound? What if the symbol really was just some loose ends of thread and I was harassing a bunch of lost souls whose only crime was to want to be left alone? Or what if the baby’s mother had only wanted help for her baby, and my actions could cause her more emotional trauma? The last thing I would want to do was make things harder on a mother who’d been unable to care for her child. Ugh …
The remainder of my shift involved handling standard traffic offenses. Speeding. Reckless driving. A broken taillight. Not exactly the type of work that challenged the mind. But I had to handle these kinds of ho-hum tasks in order to achieve my goal and become a detective.
I’d just issued a speeding ticket to a businessman in a silver Lexus when my mother texted me on my cell. Can you help me study tonight?
Mom had been a college student when she’d met my father. The two married young and, as young people are wont to do, fornicated recklessly. They’d also fornicated without contraception, as the Catholic church would have them do. The results of the careless copulation included both yours truly and Mom puttin
g her plans, vague as they were, on hold for the next two and a half decades. With the youngest of my four siblings, Gabby, now in her mid-teens, my mother had some free time on her hands and decided it was high time to pursue her dreams. She still hadn’t quite figured out exactly what her dreams were yet, but decided it couldn’t hurt to get some of the basic courses out of the way while trying to decide what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
I texted her back. Sure. I’d be happy to help.
She responded with, Great! I’ll make dinner.
More ugh … The word “great” simply did not apply to my mother’s dinners. My father and we kids had managed to choke her meals down all these years because the alternative, cooking for ourselves, sounded like a lot of trouble. Still, even if the food would be substandard, it would be nice to see my family. My irregular work schedule meant I didn’t get by their house as often as I’d like.
When our shift was up, Brigit and I drove to Walmart, where I picked up a pair of binoculars in the sporting goods department. Brigit herded me over to the pet aisle, where she nosed through the toy selections.
“You’re spoiled rotten,” I told her, as if it were her fault. It wasn’t, of course. It was mine. But you try saying no to that sweet face of hers. It’s impossible.
After looking over all the options, she plucked a squeaky rubber pig from a peg. Oink-oink.
That high-pitched noise would get old fast. “Any chance I can talk you into a quiet toy? Something plush?” I retrieved a stuffed mallard. “This one looks fun.” I waved it around in front of her. “See?”
Brigit let me know in no uncertain terms that it was the pig or else. She looked up at me and emitted a soft growl. Grrrrr.
“All right,” I conceded. “You can have the noisy pig.”
I returned the duck to the shelf. Brigit carried the pig in her teeth to the checkout, where she reared up on her hind legs and dropped it on the belt for the cashier to ring up.
Our shopping trip complete, we headed over to my parents’ house in the Arlington Heights neighborhood, which sat to the west of downtown, near the arts district. My parents’ house was a three-bedroom, two-bath, one-story frame structure, with peeling yellow paint. Not exactly the kind of place you’d see gracing the cover of Better Homes & Gardens. But my family had managed to eke out a relatively stable and happy life here over the years.
I parked at the curb, unloaded Brigit, and gave her a few seconds to relieve herself on the grass before heading up the walk.
When I opened the door, my mother’s voice came from the kitchen. “In here, Megan!”
Brigit trotted in ahead of me, heading right past my mother’s three identical orange tabby cats. Mom claimed she could tell them apart, but I had my doubts. Upon seeing Brigit, the ginger-haired trio stood up on the back of the couch, arched their identical backs, and issued identical hisses. Hissss!
My partner ignored the cats and aimed straight for their bowl of kibble in the kitchen, treating herself to a crunchy treat. I, on the other hand, admonished the felines with an eye roll. “Drama queens.”
I found my mother and my brother Joey at the kitchen table. My mother had red hair and freckles, the quintessential Irish look. While she’d passed some of those freckles along to me, my darker skin and dark hair were courtesy of my father, who was of Mexican descent. Yep, my siblings and I were typical American mutts, a little of this, a little of that. Joey had earbuds in his ears and was bopping his head in time to music while doing homework on his laptop. My mother, on the other hand, was doing her homework old-school style, poring over a thick American history textbook.
I ruffled Joey’s hair and gave a “hey” in hello to my mom. “Where’s Gabby and Dad?”
“Gabby stayed after school to work on the yearbook,” Mom said. “Your father’s picking her up.”
I reached for the handle of the refrigerator. “How’re the classes c-coming along?”
“Great!” She closed the book and hugged it to her chest. “My American history class is so interesting.”
Joey issued a derisive grunt. Apparently his music hadn’t entirely drowned out our conversation and, also apparently, he did not share my mother’s enthusiasm for history.
I retrieved the bottle of cranberry juice and poured myself a glass before taking a seat at the table.
My mother held out a stack of index cards on which she’d written questions and answers. “Here. Quiz me.”
“Okay.” I took the homemade flash cards from her and mixed them up before selecting one to read from. “What was the Stamp Act?” I was pretty sure I’d once known the answer myself, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall it at the moment. That piece of knowledge had probably been lost while I’d attended the police academy, its place in my memory banks superseded by a section of the Texas Penal Code.
“I know that one.” My mother raised an index finger. “The Stamp Act imposed taxes on printed paper such as newspapers and legal documents. It was enacted in 1765 to raise money to support the colonies.”
“Your answer is correct!” I announced in my best game-show-host voice. Moving on to the next card, I asked, “Where did the First Continental Congress meet and when?”
“They met in the fall of 1774,” Mom replied, “in…” She snapped her fingers three times, as if the gesture would jog her memory. Evidently, it did. “Philadelphia!” she cried. “In a building called Carpenter’s Hall.”
“You are correct!” I placed the card at the back of the stack.
Having downed the kitty kibble and sniffed her way around the house to see what might be new or interesting, Brigit returned to the kitchen. She made her way over to me, sat on her haunches, and draped her chin over my thigh. I ran my hand over her head as I asked my mother the next question. “Who was Thomas Paine?”
Before Mom could answer, Brigit raised her nose in the air and twitched her nostrils. But it didn’t take a canine’s superior senses to scent the burning smell, though. My nose detected it now, too. “It smells like something’s burning.”
My mother glanced at the stove. “Oh, no! I forgot to set the timer!” She leaped from her seat and ran over to open the oven. Dark smoke wafted out. She jabbed the button to turn the oven off, retrieved two pot holders from the counter, and pulled out a cookie sheet bearing a charred veggie pizza. Mom hadn’t so much cooked our dinner as she had cremated it.
She waved the pot holder over the pizza in a desperate attempt to cool the food and dissipate the smoke. “Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, which is famous for the quote ‘These are the times that try men’s souls.’”
The homework question now answered, she grabbed a knife from the drawer and rubbed the serrated edge back and forth across the blackened bits. “Good news. It’s still edible if I scrape the top and edges off.”
The front door banged open and my sister Gabby’s voice preceded her into the kitchen. “Hey, Megan!”
I stood in anticipation of my sisterly hug, delivering it promptly and lovingly when she flounced into the room. “Hey, Gabs. What’s new?”
“Homecoming’s this weekend,” she said. “T.J.’s taking me to the dance. He’s being very secretive. I think he might be getting me a triple mum!” She covered her mouth with both hands to stifle her squeal of excitement.
A triple mum would set her boyfriend back some serious bucks. Spending so much money on flowers that would dry up and die in a day or two seemed imprudent to me, but if a triple mum made my sister feel special, who was I to judge?
Dad came in the front door, Gabby’s backpack in his hands. “Did you forget something, Gabby?”
She turned, saw her backpack, and gave herself a head slap. “Oh, right. My homework.”
Dad came over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hey, Megan. How’s everything going?”
“There’s been some burglaries in the area,” I warned him. “Be sure to lock your garage-door remotes in your glove compartments. The thieves are stealing the controllers from the
victims’ cars, and using them to get inside their houses and rob them.”
Dad raised a brow. “That’s actually a clever strategy.”
“Thieves can be crafty.” Too bad they didn’t use their smarts for good instead of evil.
As I stood to help my mother serve what passed for dinner in the Luz household, my dad yanked the earbuds from my brother’s ears. “Go wash up.”
Soon we were all seated at the table, forcing down dry, crunchy slices of pizza. The food might not taste great, but if dog biscuits were any indication, it was probably cleaning our teeth.
Over dinner, I told my family about the baby that had been abandoned at the fire station. “She was adorable. Had a full head of black hair.”
“She did?” Mom said. “You don’t often see a newborn with much hair. Of course all of you had a full head, too.”
“Like a bunch of little monkeys,” my father added.
Joey curved his arms to scratch his armpits and issued his best chimpanzee imitation. “Ooh-ooh, ah-ah.”
“That reminds me,” Mom said, “I need to add bananas to the shopping list.”
When we finished eating, I took care of the dishes so my mother could have a few extra minutes to prepare for her midterm. When the last dish had been dried and put away, I bade everyone good-bye. “Good luck tomorrow, Mom. If you get an A, I’ll take you out for ice cream.”
“Ooh!” She grinned. “That’s an incentive if ever there was one.”
* * *
Brigit and I arrived for duty an hour early Tuesday morning. While I wanted to keep an eye on the People of Peace compound, I didn’t want to leave my beat understaffed during my shift. I figured I could swing by the compound before my shift started, again on my lunch hour, and a third time at the end of my shift. Maybe I’d see something that would give me a clue.
My partner and I headed southwest. Brigit played with her new pig as we rode. Oink-oink. Oink-oink.
I eyed the dog in the rearview mirror. “That toy is getting on my nerves. I have half a mind to toss it out the window.”
Brigit didn’t give one dog biscuit about my frayed nerves. Oink-oink.
