by CJ Lyons
She squinted through the dark and rain, took a step closer, relaxing her posture. “Dr. Rossi. Sure, I remember you. You stitched up my partner’s arm when he sliced it up on a broken bottle. Doug McInerny.”
“I remember Officer McInerny.” I should. That laceration had taken me the better part of an hour to repair. Four layers of sutures. He’d been lucky there hadn’t been any nerve or tendon damage. “Officer Petrosky?”
“That’s me.” She stood beside me, now sharing the light instead of interrogating me with it. “Doug’s inside with Father Vance. We weren’t told anything about a missing girl.”
“I promised a patient I’d look for her. Can we check the alley?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no. I can’t let you go down there. It’s a crime scene.”
“Couldn’t I just take a look? I won’t touch anything.” I couldn’t hear Patrice’s voice, but my insides screamed that this was the place. If I was right, and that door led down into the Tower’s basement, the girl could be in grave danger. A lot of my patients came from the Tower—not just in the ER, but also at the Advocacy Center. Victims of assaults so horrendous they made the word rape seem too small to encompass the devastation.
“No, ma’am.” Petrosky’s voice was firm. “When was the last time this girl was seen? Do you know her name? I’ll call in an Amber Alert.”
Of course I didn’t have the answers she wanted. As I drummed my fist against my thigh in frustration, behind us came the sound of a car door slamming shut.
“Whatcha got, Petrosky?” Detective Matthew Ryder’s voice sliced through the rain drumming against the pavement. Should’ve known he’d head here after leaving the ER.
Petrosky’s attention slid away from me for a moment. That was all I needed. I ran past her, skidding away from her outstretched arm, down the alley.
“Stop!” Petrosky shouted.
Too late. I ducked behind the dumpster, Patrice’s last images filling my brain like a weird holographic overlay on reality. Past the dumpster on the right, a stack of concrete blocks, past the graffiti, there, recessed into the side of the building, a rusted railing. Slippery concrete steps leading down, no light, but I knew there had to be a door down there. The door. Leading to the girl.
I reached the railing, but before I could start down the steps, strong hands grabbed me from behind, a not-quite tackle that spun me around, my back to the Tower’s concrete-block wall.
“Rossi, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ryder stared at Angela Rossi, surprised. Her dark hair curled with the wet, sparks of light dancing from the icy sleet caught in it. She met his gaze, unafraid, despite the fact that her back was to the wall in a dark alley in a part of town where even cops didn’t walk alone at night.
She should be afraid, he thought. But he wasn’t thinking like a cop. Not with her body pressing against his, not with those lips opening as she caught her breath…
Idiot. He backed away before his mind could finish stripping her naked. Shoved the adolescent, X-rated images aside and took another step back, the rush of icy water sloshing into his shoes bringing him to full attention.
“You changed,” she said.
I hope so. But she didn’t mean it that way. She meant his quick detour home to wash the blood off and throw on clean clothes. Work clothes: a suit and shirt ripped fresh from the cleaner’s wrapping.
“So did you.” He shook off the banality and straightened to his full height, giving her his best cop stare. The one designed to inspire obedience and truthfulness. “Why are you here?”
“There’s a girl missing. I think she went through there.” She jerked her chin toward the dark stairwell beside her.
“What girl? When? Was she a witness to Sister Patrice’s shooting?” Too coincidental to be otherwise—except how the hell had Angela Rossi gotten tied up in it? “How do you know this?”
Her lips tightened with determination, giving her a look of ferocious innocence. Before he could question her further, she darted to the side, twisting down the steps with a clatter that echoed through the darkness.
“Rossi!” He dashed after her, crashing into her when the stairs came to an abrupt stop four steps down. His weight hurtled her against a metal door. The top of her head brushed beneath his nose, overwhelming him with the scent of springtime sunshine. She squirmed beneath him, shoving him back as she tugged at the door.
“It’s locked.” She turned to him. All he could make out in the dark were the whites surrounding her eyes and the faint sheen of rain giving her face a pale glow. “Can’t you get someone to open it?” She was pleading now. “I know she’s down there.”
“Who’s down there? How do you know?”
She pressed one palm flat against his chest. Not pushing him away, not at all. More like pulling him closer. “I can’t tell you. All I know is that she’s down there. Somewhere. Lost.”
“You expect me to risk losing evidence in a homicide, call in guys from their Thanksgiving dinner, and send them to search the Tower?” Was she nuts?
She nodded, her gaze locked on his. “Trust me.”
For a long moment he gazed at her, her hand pressed over his heart, the rain surrounding them in a misty curtain. He remembered how she’d looked, hands dripping with blood from holding Patrice’s heart, trying so very hard to save her. He wanted to trust her. But could he?
“You need help down there?” Petrosky shouted, breaking the spell.
“No. Yes,” he shouted back, spinning on his heel and taking the steps up to the alley two at a time. “I need a key to that door, an Amber Alert called in, and every man you can get to search the building for a little girl—” He stalled, turned to Rossi, who had followed him up.
“About ten years old, maybe four feet tall, black, hair braided in cornrows, wearing jeans, a gray sweatshirt.” Then she faltered. “I think there’s blood on the shirt.” Her voice trailed off as if she’d surprised herself.
“You heard the lady, she might be injured. Let’s move. Call the nearest firehouse, get the hose jockeys off their Barcaloungers and down here to help. And call in a mutual aid request to the staties and the county.”
“But, Detective, you can’t really expect us to search the Tower—especially not starting down in those tunnels.”
“Why? What’s down there?” Rossi asked.
Ryder answered her. “A cop’s worst nightmare.”
<<<>>>
Devon had seen bodies before. He’d had blood on his hands.
But not Jess—Jess couldn’t die. She was forever immortalized in his mind as the sassy, beautiful sixteen-year-old he’d loved and left behind.
“No!” His voice didn’t sound like itself. It was a strained whisper, too frightened to shout. Shouting might bring others, and bringing others, seeing, hearing, touching, would mean this nightmare was real.
He grabbed on to the doorjamb for support, his legs emptying out from beneath his weight. Even though it felt like time was frozen, nothing he did could push it backward. Could push that blood puddled on the cheap carpet—so much blood—back into Jess’s body, could push her back up to standing, could push life back into her eyes. He fell forward, onto his knees, and reached a tentative finger out to touch her face. Avoiding the scars around her eyes, he traced her jaw, touched her lips. Cold, too cold.
“There’s no sign of anyone else here,” Harold said after making a quick search of the apartment. “We should go.”
“Did Tyree do this?” Devon asked, talking to himself more than Harold. No. If Tyree had staged this, he’d be here to witness Devon’s devastation.
Then he realized what was missing. Jess’s daughter, Esme. His daughter. Where was she?
He whipped around. The hall was empty. Silent.
Too silent. Which meant someone knew what had happened here, had heard, seen something.
Devon climbed to his feet, rage giving him strength, filling the void. “Start knocking on doors
,” he told Harold, shrugging free of the larger man’s grip. “Tell them it’s me asking. Tell them I want to know what happened here. Tell them I won’t take no for an answer.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised by Ryder’s willingness to trust me or frustrated because I couldn’t explain exactly how I knew what I knew... if I really knew anything, which had yet to be proved.
The rain had turned to a foggy mist, the few overhead lights sparking off the droplets, making the neon graffiti on the walls beside us glow and shimmer. The illusion was so lifelike, as if the letters had separated themselves from the concrete to dance in the night, that my head spun and I had to put a hand out to balance myself.
“What’s down there?” I asked Ryder, hoping he hadn’t noticed how unsteady I was.
“Middle of the Cold War, the city put a huge underground bomb shelter under these streets, extending north from City Hall and Millionaire’s Row. The Tower was built on top of them. Tunnels going every which way for half a mile or more, rooms stacked on rooms, dead ends. Half the shit down there no one’s seen in decades.”
I stared at the closed door. Someone had painted a skull and crossbones on it, a jagged crown perched jauntily on the skull. “She’s down there somewhere. What about getting the people who live in the Tower to help?”
He stared at me like I was asking to fly to the moon. “Tyree Willard and his gang run the Tower. If anyone’s got the stones to shoot a nun, it’s Tyree. You really want me to put the people who might be wanting this girl dead on her search party?”
I craned my head up, focusing on the few lights scattered across the seven stories of the Tower. Swallowed against another wave of vertigo. “How big?”
“Seven floors, two wings, 280 doors to knock on, and best guess, about 1,100 people, most of whom won’t talk to us. And that’s just the Tower. Doesn’t include the miles of tunnels down below. You do the math.”
“What about calling in help? Search dogs or something?”
“You got a scent for the dogs? A name or knowing where she’s from would help. We’d at least have somewhere to start.”
I felt his disappointment as I shook my head in silence.
Petrosky rejoined us, frowning. “The deputy chief said he’s coming down. No mutual aid request until he gets here and ‘surveys the situation’ himself.” She said the last in an officious nasal tone. “The fire guys have building plans and can put together a search grid. Said they weren’t going to knock on any doors, though, unless you give them an armed escort. Sounded like they’ve been here before and didn’t like the welcome wagon.”
“We’re not going to get anywhere without getting Tyree’s cooperation.” Ryder scowled at the lights blazing from the top floor. “As soon as your backup arrives, tell Tyree’s goons I need to meet him. ASAP. C’mon.” He took my elbow to guide me away from the stairwell and toward St. Tim’s. “Let’s get out of the rain.”
“I want to help.” I needed to see.
He didn’t slow his pace, yanking open the side door of the church, and not exactly shoving—more like escorting—me inside, his motions as automatic and controlling as if securing a prisoner in a jail cell.
We were in a small alcove, an ecclesiastic mudroom. A single naked bulb overhead reflected off of white-washed plaster walls adorned with a large wood and brass crucifix. A collection of umbrellas and rain slickers hung on a coat stand near the exit, and a small bowl of water was attached to the wall beside the interior door. It was an intimate space, overcrowded with just me and Ryder.
I felt flushed—not a bad feeling, given that I was drenched with sleet—but none of the heart-racing, overwhelming sense of doom and panic I’d felt earlier when I’d tried to enter the church. Turning my focus away from my symptoms and back to the problem of finding the girl, I spun free of his grasp, pivoting to face him. “You can’t stop me—”
“Actually, I can.” His voice was calm, that same confident tone of command that had so irritated me in the ER. “If you know about a missing girl, a witness to Sister Patrice’s shooting, then I need to know who told you. Someone came into the ER after I left. Was it a patient? Is that why you didn’t tell the cops there? Some kind of doctor-patient confidentiality bullshit?”
My anger simmered down to a low boil as he gave me the answer I’d been struggling to find. “I can’t say.” I pulled my shoulders back in a posture of righteous indignation. “It’d be a breach of ethics.”
“Look,” he said, obviously exasperated. If he only knew how equally frustrated I was. “I saw what you did for Sister Patrice. I know we kinda almost had a moment back there in the ER. But I can’t let you stop me from doing my job. I need to know everything you know. And I need to know it now.”
I almost told him. Which would have been even crazier than the crazy voices in my head, talking to not-quite-dead people. But he wanted to help the girl as much as I did. And he’d trusted me this far. He seemed like someone I could also maybe trust.
So I was going to tell him. The truth. All of it.
The door to the sacristy opened. A priest stood there, a uniformed officer beside him.
“Ryder, what the hell’s going on?” the priest demanded. “Why are the cops stampeding my church like a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis?”
<<<>>>
Jess was dead.
Harold was at the end of the hall, knocking on doors, but Devon hadn’t moved. Couldn’t leave Jess. Not again.
So he stood in the doorway, staring at blood and flesh and a broken body.
Jess was dead.
It couldn’t be. It was impossible. All the million fantasies about her, about them, about coming home. Those thoughts had given him strength, saved his life. Jess was life. No way she was dead.
It was as if his insides had been hollowed out, raked clean by some animal wielding a giant claw. Jess was dead.
And Esme gone.
Thudding footsteps and the noise of a shotgun being racked spurred his body into a reflexive posture: standing tall, hands up and ready, gaze assessing the threat.
Tyree and two of his bangers, scowls fissuring their features, leading with their bulldog chins, stampeding down the hall. Amateurs. It’d been too long since Tyree had been in a serious fight. A fight for his life.
Mood he was in, Jess’s blood stinking the air, Devon was happy to accommodate.
Not waiting for Tyree to reach him, he rushed the trio, slamming Tyree against the nearest wall with a sucker punch to the gut followed by another to the throat.
“Was this you?” Devon ignored the guns aimed at him. “What did you do to her?”
Tyree shook his head at his men, Adam’s apple bobbing as he worked to breathe, then launched off the wall, taking Devon with him. They slammed into the opposite wall, cracking the plaster. “What you talking about? I got your guys shoving in my front door and the cops coming in the back.”
Devon ducked Tyree’s fist, shot his own into Tyree’s exposed armpit before one of Tyree’s goons dragged him off.
“Tyree, you got to see this.” The other was pointing through the open door at Jess.
Devon shook free and plowed into the second goon. “Don’t you look at her. Don’t you dare!”
The words were an incoherent mess that matched his thoughts. Before he could pull himself together, start thinking sense, Harold was there, accompanied by a woman in her sixties. Devon recognized Mrs. Anders as he shoveled in a breath and stomped down his anger.
“Jess!” Her mournful keen competed with Tyree’s cursing and the screaming inside Devon’s brain.
Mrs. Anders sagged in Harold’s arms while Tyree swiveled his bullhead away from the sight of Jess’s body, his tiny eyes pierced with fury, and aimed his bulk at Devon like a bullet. They crashed into the opposite door with a force that rocked it on its hinges.
“My sister! This is your fault, goddamn you!” Tyree’s fists rained down on Devon.
Devon pushed him off, and they
faced each other with the width of the hallway between them. “She called me. Said she was in trouble. That’s why I came back. What did you do? You promised to take care of her!”
Tyree’s expression was crushed pea gravel. Devon wasn’t sure if the other man even registered his words. “What’s going on here, Tyree? Who did you piss off? You tell me, now. How the hell did Jess end up—” He couldn’t finish, couldn’t even glance in the direction of Jess’s body.
“Nothing to do with me.” Tyree spat the words out, laced with bitter hatred. “She doesn’t talk to me. Thanks to you.”
“Where’s Esme?” Devon didn’t like the way his voice climbed to a higher pitch then snagged on the way back down when he said his daughter’s name. The daughter he’d never met. Thanks to Tyree.
“Shit,” Tyree bellowed, charging through the doorway into Jess’s apartment and reappearing moments later. “She’s not here. Neither is the dog.”
“Ozzie’s at my place,” Mrs. Anders said. “Jess asked me to watch him.”
“Do you have Esme?” Devon asked. A cold gnawing in his gut made him think he already knew the answer.
His need and fury pushed the old lady back a step. She shook her head no.
Devon reached inside the doorway, yanked a framed photo, a copy of the one Jess had emailed him last year before Cece died. Cece with Jess and a chocolate Lab—Ozzie, no doubt—wearing a seeing-guide-dog’s harness. Jess’s scars hidden behind sunglasses and a smile brighter than a sunbeam. Between her and Cece, swinging against their hands, a playful grin on her face, was a little girl. Esme.
“I told you, you ever came back here, you’d lose them both.” Tyree’s voice ricocheted from the walls, high-pitched and verging on mania. As if he’d won some kind of cosmic bet. “Just like I told Jess if she ever tried to leave, I’d do to Esme what you did to Jess. I’d cripple her blind.”
Devon ignored the urge to shoot Tyree and instead swung the cheap photo frame against the doorjamb, splintering it. Yanking the photo free, he held it up to his face, needing to get closer. This was the family he’d never had. The family Tyree had denied him.
