‘My guess,’ Hobbs said, ‘he’ll head back to the city. He’s either going to try and find you or find dope. And nice as you are to him, I bet he’ll find a fix first.’
‘Which sends him right back into harm’s way. Shit! Ed, we’re dealing with something big, and these kids are just disposable bits. I’m at this stupid conference right now … maybe not so stupid, but well intended and pointless, and I shouldn’t be here.’
Ed chuckled. ‘No, really, Barrett, how do you feel about it?’
‘What about the narcotics squad,’ she asked, ‘are they finding anything … like who’s setting up these kids to sell dope in the dorms?’
‘Whoa,’ Hobbs said, ‘don’t look to narcotics for the answer. They’re interested in working back as high up in whatever organization as possible. They don’t move fast.’
‘What about the girl, then? Jerod as good as ID’d her. She can’t have just vanished off the globe.’
‘My guess … she’s doing Internet porn,’ he offered. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want Jerod to know or … possibly against her will. Someone drugged her, stripped her … God knows what else.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s disgusting to contemplate, but what comes to mind is white slavery. She was being displayed, like something for sale.’
‘Not so far-fetched. White slavery is real … especially for wholesome-looking girls. Occasionally they find these kids years after the fact, they’re either dead, or so traumatized that they wished they were.’
Barrett looked down the street as fellow conference attendees streamed back from their lunch break. Mostly state employees, or else working for non-profit agencies that were funded by the state. ‘Ed, three of the four kids – Bobby, Jerod, and Carly – were products of the foster and group-home system. The only one who wasn’t was Ashley Dix, who just happened to fall for drugs and the bad boy who could get them for her.’
‘You don’t think it’s a coincidence.’
‘I don’t know, but I have a feeling that Jerod might. There’s stuff he wasn’t telling.’
She felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. ‘Hey, Barrett.’ She turned to find herself staring into Chase’s eyes. In the bright sun, they had specks of gold and amber. ‘Hobbs,’ she smiled at Chase, finding it hard to catch her breath, ‘give me a call later.’
‘You got it, and I’ll see if I can do a bit of street work. If my hunch is right, the kid is going to be like a homing pigeon back to his supply.’
‘I hope you’re wrong,’ she said, ‘call me if you find him.’
‘Problem?’ Chase asked, as she put her cell back into her bag.
‘Just some kid who got himself into big trouble.’
‘The one you were so worried about?’
‘Yeah.’ She broke from Chase’s gaze.
‘Anything I can do to help?’ he offered. ‘If he was one of the department’s recent graduates I might be able to access his records.’
‘Aren’t those sealed?’
‘In theory.’
‘But not in reality.’
‘Not so much,’ he admitted, ‘especially since they scanned everything and made it electronic. Maybe he has some family or something that he’d try to go back to.’
Why would he think that? she wondered, like he knew something. Before she could ask, she spotted Janice in sunglasses, stepping out of a cab. For an instant she hoped she’d not been seen, but Janice nodded in her direction as she smoothed down her skirt, and headed toward them. ‘Barrett, so glad you’re here.’
Not that you left me a choice, she thought, her jaw tense. ‘It’s interesting,’ she said, keeping the futility she felt about such projects to herself.
‘Amazing how many people they roped into this,’ Janice replied. She sighed, ‘It’s too big, but it’s what the Governor wanted.’ She looked at Chase. ‘I’m surprised to see you here.’
‘You two know each other?’ Barrett asked.
Chase nodded at Janice. ‘I don’t care if she knows,’ he said, and then added, ‘She was my counselor when I was in foster care. Now that she’s a big commissioner, you’d never know it, but she is an amazing therapist. If it wasn’t for her, I know that I wouldn’t be here right now.’
‘Please,’ Janice said, and then to Barrett, ‘You’ve got to watch this one, he knows how good-looking he is, and he uses it.’
Her tone was light, but it threw Barrett – was this some kind of peace offering? Show up to the conference and I won’t be such a bitch. ‘I liked what you said up there, frank, to the point.’
‘Just words,’ Janice said, ‘but that goes with the job, and I do understand that the patient always has to come first. So whatever happened to that kid who broke up our meeting?’
‘It’s a mess,’ Barrett said, and stopped herself from adding, he’s gone missing and someone is probably trying to kill him.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Janice said, and then looked back toward the broad steps of the administrative building. ‘We’re going to be late,’ she said, sounding less than eager.
When she turned, Barrett noted how crumpled her silk shirt had become – and it wasn’t all that hot. Her skin was flushed and up close her makeup was clumped, revealing the mesh of fine lines around her mouth, eyes, chin, and nose – almost like she’d taken the break to go work out and hadn’t showered and applied fresh foundation, just slapped on some lipstick. It felt odd and too convenient – Chase asking her about Jerod and then Janice … and now this coincidence, that she was Chase’s counselor. ‘Actually, he’s gone missing,’ Barrett said, keeping her expression neutral and wanting to see what reaction she’d get.
‘You think he’s in trouble?’ Chase asked.
‘I do.’
‘Jerod, wasn’t it?’ Janice asked.
‘Yes,’ Barrett said, starting to feel like a mouse batted by a cat’s paw. They were both too interested. ‘When they gave your introduction,’ she said, wanting to shift the focus, ‘I’d not realized you set up Mother’s Milk.’
‘I was extremely young then … and naive. If I’d known then what I do now, I probably wouldn’t have done it.’
‘Why not?’ Barrett asked, trying to find her footing with this different-acting Janice.
‘I bit off too much,’ she said. ‘The need is endless, just a stream of kids dumped onto the street with no place to go, no skills, half of them don’t even have a high-school diploma. It’s amazing they didn’t fire me when that first center opened. Almost every day the cops were there, because it became a hub of drug activity, some of the kids started turning tricks from the park across the street … it was a big mess.’
‘But you turned it around,’ Chase said.
‘Eventually … but that’s how we learn.’ She looked at Barrett. ‘You get thrown into something and you sink or swim. I so don’t want to go back in there.’
‘Really?’ Barrett was thrown. ‘I thought this was …’
‘A big deal,’ Janice said, glancing up the stairs, ‘I know, I’ll eat my words. We have to be here … I was still in my twenties when I’d been through my third Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on the problem of these kids. I was excited at the first one, determined to see something come out of the second, and by the third realized putting a lot of administrative types and state workers into a room won’t solve anything; it’s doomed from the start.’
‘Why’s that?’ Barrett asked, shocked that she shared Janice’s views, or that her boss would be so candid. Who is this woman?
‘Let’s face it, we make our living off the tragedy of these kids, or in the case of the Department of Mental Health, the adults they grow into. If the problems were ever truly addressed, there’d be a lot of people out of work – the unions would never go for it. To be blunt, the agencies mostly serve themselves. Our employees want nine-to-five jobs for problems that happen around the clock.’
‘But not Mother’s Milk,’ Barrett said. ‘My understanding is they’re open twenty-four–seven every
day of the year.’
Janice smiled. ‘I didn’t use union labor … or state workers.’
‘Then, how?’
‘I spun it off as a non-profit, half of the staff are volunteers, and I worked my butt off getting the funding – mostly grants. At this point they’re self-supporting; I just sit on the board, really have little to do with them.’
Barrett looked at Chase, and realized that he had to have been one of Janice’s last patients. ‘Do you miss the direct work?’
‘At times,’ again glancing up the steps and the stream of conference-goers headed in. She turned back to Barrett. ‘And that’s your struggle right now, isn’t it?’
A cell phone rang. ‘Not me,’ Barrett said, still wondering what ulterior motive Janice had in this sudden shift.
‘Mine,’ Chase said, pulling it out of his jacket pocket. ‘I’ve got to take this,’ he said, and quickly walked back into the small park across from the DFYS building. He stood behind the reddish trunk of a beech tree, his body mostly blocked from sight.
‘You were his counselor,’ Barrett remarked. ‘He kind of argues against your point that the department can’t help these kids.’
‘Touché, but Chase is unique. Have you known him long?’
‘No,’ she said, again feeling that this was some kind of game, only she didn’t know the rules, ‘just met this morning. He told me that he plans on going to medical school.’
‘Yes,’ she replied, looking toward the park and what little of Chase she could see. ‘He’s ambitious and has the brains to pull it off, that’s rare.’ She cracked a smile. ‘I bet you want to know if he’s dating material or not.’
‘Too young,’ Barrett said, struggling to find her footing.
‘Please, single men that good-looking, who aren’t gay; I’d say if he’s interested, go for it.’
At which point Chase emerged from behind the beech. Whatever the call had been had clearly upset him, even though Barrett could see he was trying to appear calm. ‘Trouble?’ she asked.
‘One of my clients … I have to take care of this,’ he said. He looked at Janice. ‘Please don’t rat me out.’
Janice looked at Barrett. ‘You want out of here too, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ Barrett said.
‘Fine, you did your duty. I’ll get Hugh to carry the torch.’
Barrett’s impulse was to say, ‘Hell no,’ but with Jerod on his way back to the city and someone after him she wasn’t about to argue.
‘Which way you heading?’ Chase asked. ‘Maybe we could split a cab,’ and before she could answer he’d spotted one and ran to flag it.
‘Dr. Conyors … Barrett,’ Janice said, ‘I hope everything works out with Jerod.’
Barrett’s every instinct was that something was way off with Janice, and she had to think it had something to do with Chase. Obviously the two had a history, but it wasn’t that. She tried to put words to the fuzzy impressions racing through her brain.
A yellow taxi pulled up and Chase held the door. As she slid in, she caught a worried expression on Janice’s face in the passenger-side mirror. She had mouthed something at Chase, the lines around her lower lip pulled taut.
Barrett twisted on the bench, trying to get a better look, as Chase scooted in next to her. ‘What was that about?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘What you just said to her.’
‘An old joke,’ he said. ‘She’s a great lady, and if it wasn’t for her … well, she was a big help to me when I really needed it.’
Barrett looked back as the cab pulled away. Janice was on the sidewalk staring at them; she caught sight of Barrett and quickly smiled.
Yes, Barrett thought, Janice was worried about something and the plastered-on smile seemed fake. She mulled over one of her favorite truisms – a gift from Hobbs – when things don’t add up, there’s always a reason.
‘So I was hoping,’ Chase said, ‘that we could clean up our respective messes and maybe get together after work, have some dinner. As I recall you’d left things at “maybe”. Can I push that into a yes?’
‘Why not,’ she said as the cab crossed Houston.
‘You like ethnic?’
‘Love it.’
‘Indian?’ he offered.
‘That would be nice,’ and they made plans to meet at one of the popular Indian restaurants in the East Village.
‘You can drop me here,’ he told the cab as they headed up 1st Avenue and hit 14th Street.
As he got out, leaving Barrett with one of his cards that had his cell phone and office numbers, she realized that something else didn’t fit … and Chase’s list was growing. How the hell did he know that sharing a cab would work? Had she told him that the forensic center was also on the East Side, had he guessed, or had he known?
‘I’ll see you at eight,’ he said, giving her a smile so dazzling that it momentarily wiped doubt from her mind … a brief moment, and as the taxi moved toward her 34th Street office, timing the lights as only a seasoned cabbie can do, she knew there was more to Chase than a handsome face, and as seductive as all his pieces were, like Janice’s pasted-on smile, something didn’t fit.
SIXTEEN
Chase’s thoughts raced wildly; he felt excited, on fire. Bits of plans slid into place, new contingencies flashed through his mind only to be replaced by other options as he entered the dingy regional DFYS office building. One false step over the next few hours could destroy everything he had spent the last twelve years building. He would need to be seen throughout the day and evening to create a seamless alibi – every moment of his time accounted for. He smiled and briefly flirted with Nadine, the pretty half-Asian secretary assigned to him and half a dozen other counselors. He retrieved his phone messages, and flipped through them, deciding which would be turned into the emergency he’d used as an excuse to leave the conference. ‘This is a real mess,’ he commented to Nadine, holding one of the message slips. ‘We’re going to end up having to find a safe home for Danielle Waters before the weekend. I really hoped this one was going to work out. Oh, well …’
‘Again?’ Nadine replied, as she leaned forward, letting Chase get a view of her firm breasts, sweetly framed by the outer edge of a lacy lavender bra. ‘Didn’t you just place Danielle a couple weeks ago?’
‘It’s not working … crap. Well, there goes my afternoon.’ He retreated to his office at the end of the hall. He closed the door, pulled out his cell, and booted up his computer. He pictured his ladder, having somewhere read about the importance of visualization; his goals were clear and solid in his mind. The next rung – medical school – was almost in his grasp, and as he’d needed to do before, everything below had to be cut away. It had been true for Janice’s husband, for Dom, and now for everything and everyone that could connect him to the mess with these kids and the dope. It was turning into a nightmare, and for what? So Janice could keep working through her issues with her dead husband, stockpiling cash, so that she’d never be at the mercy of anyone ever again.
The call that had made him leave had been from Marky; once again Jerod Blank had escaped. The more Chase thought about this, the more he realized that Jerod, who had never met him, was not the problem; it was Marky. And Janice was wrong about Dr. Conyors … Barrett. She was beautiful, intelligent, and could be his next meal ticket – out with the old, in with the new. He unlocked his desk drawer and looked at the framed photo-montage he’d taken from her office. The only image of her was in the center, holding her newborn, her dark eyes looking lovingly at her child, her bangs cutting a shadow across her exquisite cheekbones. He studied the surrounding pictures of the baby, blue-eyed and perfect. He wondered at her dead husband, a musician whose pictures he’d looked at on the Internet – not blond, not blue-eyed. What have you been up to, my lovely? He envisioned his upcoming dinner with her, he would become the man she’d always wanted, he’d make her feel desired, special. He played back their conversations at the conference, the ease with which she’
d opened up over coffee. What would it be like to feel her full lips pressed against his? He stared at the picture and imagined the baby was theirs – he’d be in the picture, by her side, two gorgeous parents and a beautiful child. Janice wanted her dead; jealousy had clouded her judgment. It was Janice who was the liability. She’d given him all that she intended to, and now she just used him for sex and as some kind of lackey; there was no equal exchange. Yes, she’d helped him immeasurably, but lately … not so much.
On impulse he picked up and dialed his grandmother’s nursing home. He asked for her aide. ‘Dorothy, could you put the phone up to Grace’s ear?’ he asked, having done this before, knowing she could understand, but not communicate, other than through blinking. He waited until the aide had done as instructed. ‘Grandma, it’s Chase. I have good news and you were the one person I wanted to tell. I’ve found the woman I want to marry. I’ll tell you all about her when I come out this weekend. She’s a doctor and she’s beautiful and smart and she’s the one I want; she’s perfect. Her name is Barrett, and I know you’re going to love her.’
He heard movement over the line, and then Dorothy’s voice, ‘That’s great news, Mr. Strand.’
‘Any reaction?’ he asked, picturing his grandmother, in that dreary room.
‘She’s blinking,’ Dorothy said, ‘just once … and once again. I think she’s happy.’
‘Thanks, Dorothy,’ and he reminded himself to put a couple hundreds in his wallet before his weekly visit. ‘Dorothy, do you ever do private-duty work?’ he asked, a new possibility flashing to mind.
‘Some,’ she said, ‘you thinking of breaking Miss Grace out of here? You know she’d need twenty-four–seven care and Medicaid won’t pay for that in the home.’
‘I know, just a thought for the future.’
‘Well, count me in,’ she said, ‘I just love our Miss Grace … she’s no problem at all.’
As he’d been talking, he’d punched Jerod Blank’s name into the department’s database, entered his security code, and printed out several typed summaries. He’d pass these along to Barrett at supper. She probably already knew the contents, but he’d said he’d help. He needed to show good faith. She needed to see his caring, concern, and intelligence. He stuffed the pages into a folder and dropped them into his briefcase. Next, he dialed the female director of one of the three local safe houses used to hold kids for brief periods after they’d been pulled from their families, or from foster settings that hadn’t worked. As a counselor he was skipping steps and going straight to the top, but the few times he’d met the house’s director – Jocelyn Flanders – she told him to call her ‘any time if you need help’. In a few brief moments he’d completed a complex bureaucratic transaction that would normally take weeks. The safe house had a female bed, and they’d hold it for Danielle. In the next hour, Chase dove through a stack of paperwork, made calls back to Nadine, the safe house, and arranged for Danielle’s transportation later that afternoon. ‘A fine day’s work,’ he whispered, again dialing his secretary. ‘Nadine, there’s no way I’m getting out of here before eight tonight, can you let security know I’ll be up here working?’
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