Once a Father

by Marie Ferrarella

  “We’ve found lots of clues, ma’am.” Most of which had been systematically swept away by certain chosen members of the task force, whose job it was not to find clues but to eliminate them. “But there are no official answers yet.”

  “Oh,” Bonnie declared, her eyes growing bright. “You’ve got a pin like mine.” To illustrate, she held up her overburdened charm bracelet and shook her hand so that it jingled loudly. She found the lion pin she’d converted into a charm and pointed it out. “The mayor gave me mine for outstanding service,” she said proudly, starting to reach out to touch his pin.

  Malloy pulled back, not wanting her to look closely. The woman might notice that while they appeared to be completely alike at first glance, on closer scrutiny the two pins were just a shade different. On his the lion’s leg that was partially hidden behind the other three was broken off.

  He wanted to get going. He’d only come by to make certain that nothing at the crime scene had been disturbed. One of the security people had discovered that his pin was missing and Stone wanted to be certain it wouldn’t turn up at the bombing site.

  “I’ll take your concerns up with Chief Stone the next time I see him,” Malloy promised.

  “Oh, please do. And be sure to give him my regards, will you, Officer Malloy?” she asked prettily. “Tell him I know he’s doing a fine job and I don’t mean to rush him, but—”

  It sounded as if she was going to launch into her explanation all over again. Malloy didn’t want to stay for a second performance. He had this feeling in his gut that the woman could go on and on. He had no time to stand here and placate her.

  “I’ll be sure to tell him,” he said quickly interrupting her. He tipped his Stetson hat. “Be seeing you, ma’am.”

  What a strange man, Bonnie mused, watching him walk away. If she didn’t know better, she would have said he was trying to avoid her questions. But that was silly. He was just probably very busy. After all, if you couldn’t trust the police, who could you trust?

  She just wished they’d hurry up and find out who was responsible for all this so that life could get back to normal.

  What a pity life couldn’t be like it was in those TV crime shows her fiancé, C.J., liked so much. Everything done up in a neat, tidy package in just under an hour, if you didn’t count the commercials.

  She sighed, and shook her head as she looked back at the pine wall that hid the charred remains of the Grill. Something had to be done about this, and soon. It just couldn’t remain in this horrible condition.

  She wrinkled her nose. The smell of smoke still clung to the air even after two weeks.

  Tracy had made a point of getting people to cover for her this morning. Making sure all shifts were spoken for, she was free to take the day off. She came into Jake’s room in her official capacity as his doctor only insofar as it was necessary in order to sign the boy out, which she did.

  Off duty for the first time in almost a year, she was ready to help Adam out with the boy in any way she could. Though she hadn’t run it by him, she felt he was going to need her. This was going to be Jake’s first day in a different environment, some place other than the hospital, and she had a feeling the boy would be agitated. She figured Adam could use the backup.

  She’d checked Jake’s vital signs and noted down his present condition as part of signing him out of the hospital. The wounds were healing far faster than she’d expected and she was well pleased.

  “A year from now,” she told Jake cheerfully as she helped him dress, “there’ll hardly be any marks left on your body from the burns.” She smiled up at him brightly. “I think that’s pretty good news, don’t you?”

  Jake said nothing, but then that was now normal for him. She’d made up her mind almost from the start to keep up a steady stream of conversation whenever she was around Jake in the hopes that eventually he would actually reply.

  “Big day for you, huh?” She gently pulled up one sock on his foot. “Going home with Adam. You know, he had to talk to a lot of people to get their okay before he was allowed to take you home with him. There’re a lot of people out there who care what happens to you, Jake.”

  The boy needed to know this and to have it reinforced as many times as she could bring it into the conversation. He’d lost the two people whose love he had taken for granted would always be there. It had shaken the foundations of his world and she knew that it was going to be slow going before he allowed someone else in, believing that they loved him.

  She took out the second sock and put it on his foot. “I know it might not feel that way to you right now, but there are. There’s Adam, and Randi and me, of course, plus a whole bunch of other people whose job it is to make sure little boys like you find some place with a nice, loving family to look out for them.”

  She stopped for a moment, trying to make eye contact with the boy. He seemed to be staring straight through her, as if she were clear as glass. As if she weren’t there. She took both of his hands in hers, shifting her head until she thought she saw his eyes flicker in her direction.

  “Are you in there, Jake?” she asked softly. “Can you hear anything I’m saying? It’s okay not to talk, okay if you just want to be your own best buddy right now, but I want you to know that we’re here for you when you’re ready for us. Adam and I, we’re here.”

  Hand on the door as he opened it, the force of Tracy’s words hit Adam with the precision of a bullet fired dead on target.

  About to enter the room, Adam stopped.

  Adam and I.

  It made them sound as if they were a set, as if he and this exuberant lady doctor with the quick smile and easy laugh belonged together. But they didn’t. All they were were two people interested in the same little boy, hoping for the same end goal: to have the boy come back around to the world of the living.

  There was nothing else.

  Adam walked in, letting the door close noisily behind him. He saw Tracy turn and look at him. She wasn’t wearing her white lab coat, he noted, wondering why. Every other time he’d seen her, she’d had it on, the sides flapping around her trim figure as she walked.

  Seeing her dressed in civilian clothing made things different somehow. She didn’t look like a doctor, all cool, competent and collected. She looked, instead, like a woman. A gut-wrenchingly attractive woman who looked as if she could be at ease in almost any circumstance, in any setting.

  That put her one up on him.

  He was here to bring Jake home, Adam silently upbraided himself, not to wax poetic—and badly so—about a woman he hardly knew.

  Adam crossed to the bed where the boy was sitting on top of the covers. “Hi, Jake. You ready yet?”

  “Just about,” Tracy answered for the silent boy. “Just need to get our shoes on.” Kneeling down in front of him, she slipped on the first athletic shoe. Though she knew it wasn’t easy because of the burns, Jake held his foot perfectly still.

  Adam felt compelled to make conversation. Standing over Tracy this way, so close to her, made him lose his concentration.

  He looked at Jake. “Hey, neat footwear.” He infused enthusiasm in his voice. “Who got those for you?”

  Tracy made a large, loopy bow as she tied off the laces on the right shoe. “I did.” She picked up the other one and smiled at Jake as if he’d said something instead of merely staring off, oblivious to the exchange. “They’re going to help you run like the wind once you start hitting those homers, aren’t they, Jake?”

  The boy sat on the bed, letting her put on the other shoe, his gaze fixed on some invisible spot on the wall behind her head.

  Adam sank his hands deep into the pockets of his blue jeans. He wondered if he was up to this, if he could somehow find the key that would unlock this boy’s prison and bring Jake back into the world he had once inhabited. Or did sentimentality have him biting off more than he could chew?

  Tracy rose to her feet, dusting off her hands. She saw the expression on Adam’s face. “Second thoughts?” she guesse
d.

  “No.” The response was quick, automatic. Being anything but certain was not the way he wanted to be perceived, especially when Tracy appeared so damnably optimistic and upbeat.

  “That’s good.” She picked up the boy’s jacket and began to slip it on his arms. “Okay, I think we’re ready to go, aren’t we, Jake?”

  Adam had a feeling something was going on here that hadn’t been run by him first. “Is that the editorial ‘we’?”

  Their eyes locked. It hadn’t occurred to her that Adam might not welcome her help. Maybe it should have, Tracy now thought. There was something very guarded in his tone.

  “No, that’s the encompassing ‘we,’ as in ‘you and me.’” She pointed to Jake and then herself to underline her meaning. “And you as well, since it’s your house.”

  “Apartment,” he corrected, still looking at her. Something told him that he should have seen this coming. And that maybe, all things considered, it wasn’t such a bad thing, anyway. “Are you telling me, in your unique, roundabout style, that you’re coming with us?”

  She cocked her head, amused. Her whole focus had been on getting through to Jake. Maybe she would take a crack at piercing Adam’s shell as well while she was at it.

  A smile curved along her lips like misty smoke. She was putting him on the spot and she knew it. “You really think I’m unique?”

  “That’s one word for it,” he allowed. One of a kind also came to mind as a description. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you coming with us?”

  Tracy nodded. “Yes. I thought you two might need a little help the first day out. You know, adjusting,” she added.

  Adam started to tell her that he didn’t need help, that he and the boy would do fine on their own, but then he thought better of it. Because it was a lie. They just might not do fine at all. The truth of it was that he was probably going to need help with this transition and she seemed to be a lot better with kids than he was. Hell, he thought, a mannequin was probably better with kids than he was.

  Besides, he hadn’t asked her to, she was volunteering. That made a difference.

  “Not a bad thought,” he told her.

  The smile that glimmered on her lips hit him like a burst of sunshine before he had a chance to prepare himself.

  “Is that a compliment, Collins?”

  “If you want it to be,” he finally said guardedly. Not wanting her to make too much of it, he advised, “Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Her attention shifted to the boy sitting so stoically on the bed. Jake was wearing a baseball cap one of the nurses had given him to hide his partially singed hair and there were still bandages on his arms as well as on his legs beneath the baggy trousers Tracy had carefully slipped on him. “Ready for your new adventure, Jake?”

  Silent, Jake allowed her to gently lift him from the bed, her hands carefully placed where the damage from the flames had been minimal.

  “Adventure,” Adam echoed. “Is that what we call it now?” He should have known she’d call it something whimsical like that. The term would never have occurred to him.

  Tracy nodded. “Everything’s an adventure if you just keep the right perspective.”

  He didn’t know whether to label her pushy, or just exuberant. He decided to withhold judgment. “Meaning yours?”

  She half-shrugged. “My perspective is always optimistic,” she explained, though she knew it was needless. That man had undoubtedly picked up on that. “Works for me.”

  She was young, beautiful and intelligent, with her whole life in front of her: a long career, a family, everything was still waiting in the wings for her. She had something to be optimistic about, he thought.

  It was different for him. Most of his life was behind him. Irrevocably lost.

  But in light of the fact that he was now, however temporarily, in charge of the young life he had rescued, Adam knew he was going to have to try to restructure his way of thinking, at least for the time being.

  For Jake’s sake.

  “I guess it is an adventure at that,” he said to the boy. “Well, you ready to go on your ‘adventure’?”

  Knowing there would be no answer, he reached for the boy’s hand to lead him to the wheelchair that was waiting for him. The hospital mandated that everyone being discharged was to be escorted out in this fashion.

  In Jake’s case, Adam thought it seemed especially advisable since he had no idea how far the boy’s strength would take him if he attempted to walk out. Tracy seemed to have no problem picking him up, but it was a long way from here to the entrance if measured in steps and he was afraid that he might hurt the boy if he attempted to carry him out. He couldn’t see himself doing anything but placing his hands on all the wrong places.

  Rather than allow Adam to take his hand, Jake pulled back.

  “Hey, buddy, what’s up? Don’t you want to come with me?” Adam asked in the friendliest voice he could summon. Jake didn’t look at him. Instead, in response, Jake looked around the room. “Is he afraid to leave?” Adam asked Tracy, completely at a loss.

  She was about to tell Adam that she honestly didn’t know when she saw Jake look toward the shelf that ran along the side wall by the sink. The boy’s expression suddenly relaxed as his eyes came to rest on the object lying there.

  Moving around the bed, Tracy crossed to the shelf. “No, he just doesn’t want to go without his glove, do you Jake?” Picking it up, she handed it to the boy who took it and held it against his chest.

  Minor breakthrough number one. She raised her eyes and looked at Adam, her smile warm. “Looks like you’re on the right track, Collins.”

  “Glad one of us thinks so,” he murmured. “Okay, ready, Jake? Didn’t forget anything else, did we?”

  Tracy did a final sweep of the room. The boy had no possessions of his own, only those things others had given him during his stay here. A St. Jude medal hung around his neck, courtesy of Randi, the physical therapist whose heart he had won, and his clothes had come from Maureen, whose own son Isaac was a year older than Jake and had outgrown the pants and T-shirt Jake was now wearing. The shoes and parka jacket she now slipped onto his arms Tracy had bought herself. The puzzles and games that littered the room, all virtually untouched except by the nurses, were the property of the hospital.

  “Looks like we got everything,” she informed Jake, walking him to the wheelchair. She gave the boy a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be fine, Jake, I promise. Just you wait and see.” Helping him onto the chair, she stepped back and looked at Adam. “Okay, Mr. Firefighter, looks like we’re ready to roll.”

  Adam gave a short nod of his head. At first glance, there was no indication that he was anything but prepared for the venture that lay ahead. Only the deep breath he took before pushing the wheelchair out of the room gave him away.

  And only to Tracy.

  She smiled to herself as they went down the corridor to the elevator. It was nice to know that even superheroes had their human moments.

  Stone tugged impatiently on the gunbelt resting at his hipline as he stood over Mitch Barnard. The latter was one of the three scientists who worked in the forensics laboratory of the crime investigation bureau. And the only one of the three Stone trusted to keep his mouth shut and erase any trail that might prove to be embarrassing to the police department, or specifically, to him.

  He paced around the small, brightly lit room, stroking the pain in his gut. It felt like an ulcer. All he knew was that he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since this whole business began.

  “Okay, so you’re sure that none of the findings can be tied to Ingram?” They both knew that, if found, even fragments of the detonator cap could be traced.

  The man sitting on the stool in the laboratory fingered the gold pin in his lapel, the one he’d been given for his outstanding service to the crime investigation department. The one Stone had personally given him. He was careful not to jab himself on the one sharp point the pin
had. The area where the fourth leg was neatly severed off. It signified an even closer, more distinct circle than the real Lion’s Den, for he, along with the twenty or so others who wore this particular version of the pin, were part of the chief’s handpicked team.

  And as such, he knew without being told where his allegiance lay.

  Barnard gave Stone a smug look. He had been thorough. Nothing was going to leak out to point toward the actual culprit. Unless he wanted it to. “None whatsoever.”

  Stone knew better than to ask whether that meant there wasn’t any actual damaging evidence found, or if whatever incriminating evidence did exist had been destroyed. Some topics were best left untouched.

  “Good. We’ll tell anyone who asks that the bombing is still an ongoing investigation, but that so far, it’s not going very far.” The chief smiled at his little play on words. He lay a hand on the other man’s bony shoulder. “Nice work,” he complimented Barnard before he left the room.

  “Thanks,” Barnard called after him.

  Alone, he smiled to himself. The chief and Ingram owed him and he knew it. It was nice to be on the plus side of the column for a change. You never knew when you might need a favor. It was always good to have something to trade on, especially with a man like the chief, who wasn’t exactly known far and wide for his evenhanded fairness. Quite the opposite was true.

  Whistling, Barnard went back to his work.

  Chapter 7

  Unlocking the door to his garden apartment, Adam pushed it open and stepped out of the way, allowing Jake to go in first. The boy stood in the doorway for a moment, then took halting steps into the living room, as if each was being taken across a minefield and he was uncertain of his path.

  “It’s not much,” Adam admitted.

  His own needs were austerely simple. There were parts of his house that the fire hadn’t reached. He’d salvaged what he could from them, mostly things that belonged to Bobby and Gloria, and moved into this small two-bedroom apartment to try to come to terms with the state his life was in. At no time was it about starting over, because he didn’t want to start over. To start over meant to leave himself open to possibly feeling the gaping hole of deprivation all over again from a fresh point. He wasn’t up to it.