Come to Dust

by Bracken MacLeod

  All that mattered was Sophie. They had to help Sophie. He could figure everything else out later. “It’s just me and Sophie,” he said, knowing that admitting it was the beginning of the end.

  He needed her as much as she needed him.

  6

  While the medical team wheeled Sophie up to the Pediatric ICU, the admitting nurse urged Mitch to wait out in the lobby with everyone else. Feeling shell-shocked, he did what he was told. The Emergency Department was full of people quietly waiting to hear their names called. They sat with hands wrapped in blood-soaked dish towels, with limbs cradled and bent at strange angles. They sat holding on to each other, seeking comfort in familiar and tender touch. Most were silent but a couple spoke softly to one another, and one woman—a mother—cradled her little girl’s head as the child lay in her lap, a compress stuck to her foot where it was sliced open. The child whimpered, and her mother shushed and cooed at her, assuring her it would be all right. Everything was going to be just fine.

  He rubbed his palms over his eyes, trying to hide his fearful tears. He was forced to look up when a nurse holding a clipboard asked where his shoes were. Mitch looked down at his own feet, bare except for the quick bandage job the EMT had given him in the ambulance as they rode to the hospital. In his rush to get out of the house and into the ambulance, he’d grabbed a T-shirt and the jeans he wore the night before off the floor, but missed his shoes. He told the nurse he’d left them home, and asked about Sophie. She said she’d check on the girl. In the meantime, she’d try to scrounge up something for him to put on his feet. “It’s a hospital,” she said as if he was only now realizing where he sat. She came back a few minutes later with a set of green paper booties made to slip over a person’s shoes. He pulled them on, pretending they were his favorite winter comfy socks and not crinkly paper.

  After four and a half hours, everyone else in the waiting room had cycled through triage and on to treatment rooms. Everyone except Mitch. He sat in the same seat watching the same clock above the same receptionist typing on her computer. He’d gotten up a couple of times to ask about Sophie. She told him that she didn’t know; he’d just have to be patient. She gave him paperwork to fill out. He completed it as best as he could, but only knew the answers to the most mundane portions of the form: names, birthdates, addresses. He imagined that Sophie’s health history—wellness checks, her pediatrician, if she had one—was all recorded under his sister’s social security number, which he didn’t have committed to memory. The information regarding her Children's Health Insurance Program enrollment was back at their house. There was so much he didn’t know. So much he was failing at.

  Then, through doors marked “HOSPITAL STAFF ONLY. NO ADMITTANCE! a trio of men emerged. Two wore similar tan raincoats and charcoal colored suits. Both white. Both middle-aged. One blond and the other with thinning brown hair. A mostly-matched pair. Ahead of them, a doctor in a white coat raised a hand to summon the nurse from behind the admissions counter. Mitch wanted to jump up and race her to the group so he could ask the doctor about Sophie before the man could brush him off or disappear through the doors again without updating him. The look of the men flanking the doctor kept Mitch rooted to his seat, however. Nothing about them was inviting and whatever they were doing here, Mitch wanted no part of it. He recognized them for what they were.

  The nurse nodded vigorously as the doctor spoke. She turned and pointed at Mitch. The doctor’s wingmen looked past her at him and nodded once. Mitch couldn’t read lips, but he could clearly see the doctor say, “Thank you,” before he turned to leave. One of the two men handed the doctor a business card before breaking off and heading toward the waiting area. Mitch could hear his grandfather saying, “Look who it is. Frick and Frack!” When he was a kid, he had no idea what that meant other than that it signaled the old man’s contempt for authority and usually an altercation in the offing. Grampa was always outwardly contemptuous of authority. The greater the assumed power over him, the more strongly his derision and mocking. It never served him in the long run. Not at home, in jail, with his parole officer, or with the administrators or staff of the nursing home where he died. He bucked hard every time, and they tried to break him. Sure, he died wild, but he’d been whipped his whole life. Mitch felt the same inclination; he always heard that mocking tone of his grandfather’s in the back of his mind, rushing up right before the old man’s words came spilling out of his mouth. He pushed it down and adopted a different tack. Be respectful, but not effusive. Be nondescript. Blend in. Don’t get noticed. Do your time quiet. Rules for survival.

  Except here he was, being noticed. The two men stopped in front of him. The blond was slightly taller than the other one. He was a good looking guy, solidly built with a cauliflower ear and a slight cant to his jaw that said “boxer.” Like Mitch. The other one wasn’t as handsome, but looked nicer, slimmer and without any odd damage to his face. His hairline was receding, but he wore it well, like he wasn’t fighting with his recessive genes. “Are you Michel LeRoux?” the shorter one asked, using his legal name, and pronouncing it incorrectly, like the angel he wasn’t.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I go by Mitch.”

  The shorter man gestured to the chair next to him. “You mind if we have a seat? Maybe a little chat?” Mitch looked at the chairs on either side of him, silently saying “go ahead.” Just imagining the two men on either side of him made him feel penned in, however. The short one took the seat to his left while his partner remained standing, arms folded. Even worse.

  The balding man pulled a billfold out of the inside pocket of his suit and flipped it open for Mitch to see. Above a heavy-looking gold badge, his unsmiling face peered out of a small square beside a bunch of text, too small to read without taking it in hand. Mitch knew better than to touch it. The badge was a totem—a symbol of the power of the state—the power that was assembled in front of him right at that moment. Touching it would burn him.

  “I’m Detective John Braddock. This is my partner, Detective Bill Dixon. We were hoping you could answer some questions for us.”

  Mitch’s stomach felt emptier than it ever had in his life. He folded his arms over it and pressed down, trying to keep it from aching or collapsing in on itself. “What about?”

  “The child you accompanied here—Sophie—where is her mother? Have you tried to get in touch with her to let her know her kid’s in the hospital?” Dixon asked. He’d never bothered to flash his credentials. He just stood there with his arms crossed, mirroring Mitch. He didn’t look like he was trying to hold himself together the way Mitch was, though. He resembled a sliding trap wall glacially closing in to crush him. Mitch shook his head.

  “Why not?” When he didn’t answer, Braddock continued conspiratorially. “Look, Mitch, we’re here to help. Bill and me, we need to know everything there is to know about what happened in the last twenty-four hours if we’re going to do that. We’re not trying to trick you, okay? We just want to make sure we have all the facts straight.”

  Dixon leaned in. Mitch could feel his presence pushing against him. The man’s fundamental essence was threatening. “Don’t try to protect her. Not after what she did to that little girl. Where’s Violette LeRoux now? We need to speak to her.”

  Violette LeRoux. The sound of it stunned him. It sounded alien, like a sour musical note. Something that wasn’t supposed to be hanging there in the air. She was just Violette—Mama to Sophie—until she wasn’t anyone to either of them anymore. Just a ghost who’d left them alone in a house whose every room cruelly pointed out her absence. Mitch shook his head again. He knew better than to say anything. No matter how friendly or innocent any question from a cop seemed, he’d learned the hard way that they weren’t there to help him. The day he’d feared would come was at hand. He was losing everything. He realized that since they called him by the name on his driver’s license, they already knew everything they needed to about his past. Even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to unc
over who he really was. It was all on that application for their food assistance and Sophie’s CHIP coverage. He didn’t care about the past; the present was all that mattered. Maybe, if he came clean, they’d let him up to see his niece.

  “When can I see her?” he asked.

  The detectives ignored his question. “Where’s the girl’s mother?”

  “Violette asked me to come over and help out for a while. She said she needed to get away and have some time alone. So… I’ve been staying over.”

  “How long ago was that?” Dixon asked.

  Mitch’s head dropped. “August.”

  The detectives shared a glance and Braddock pulled out a notebook and began writing. “A month ago?”

  “Thirteen… months ago.”

  It was the detectives’ turn to look shocked. Braddock leaned back, a look of honest surprise washing across his face before being replaced by the stoic cop expression that his partner unfailingly wore. “And you’re her legal guardian?” Braddock asked. “Appointed by the court?”

  “I have a power of attorney. Violette said she was just going away for a little while, so I came over and she handed me the paper—in case anything happened—and said she’d be back. It’s just been me and Sophie since then.” So far the document had allowed him to enroll the girl in day care and keep her social benefits coming in. Violette had sprung the power of attorney on him and he hadn’t questioned it because he loved Sophie and didn’t want to see her in the system. He figured it was just his sister being dramatic, like she so often was. She was going to split for a couple of weeks and when she came back, he’d go home and resume his normal life. He later learned it was an uncommon moment of forethought and planning ahead for her. She never meant to come back. Mitch had known that for a while, but only chose to acknowledge it at the present moment.

  “So, if it’s just the two of you, Mitch,” Dixon said. “Why don’t you tell us what happened last night?” Braddock put a hand on Mitch’s forearm. His palm was dry and soft, but there was a promise of power in the man’s touch. If he squeezed, Mitch was certain his thin arm would squish out between his fingers like putty. “Just tell us what happened.” The focus of the men’s intensity seemed to shift. The feeling of being stuck in between two walls closing in intensified.

  “I-I went out on a date. I got home, paid the babysitter, and... went to bed. When I woke up, Sophie... Sh-she wouldn’t wake up. So I called 9-1-1.” Mitch felt about to break. He’d been doing the right thing, getting Sophie up in the morning and off to day care. Fed and to bed at night. His work had suffered. He lost a promotion and was stuck as a barista at the coffee shop instead of assistant manager like his bosses had promised him before Violette took off. That didn’t matter, though. Sophie was more important, and as long as she needed him he was there for her, whatever the cost. Until he felt like he needed to have a night off to play. And now she was sick. He imagined drunk Faye feeding the girl something spoiled from the fridge. Giving her food poisoning. Except with food poisoning, she’d wake up. She’d be puking all over the place and crying. No. It was something else. Something he didn’t want to imagine.

  “That’s it, guys. I’m not saying anything else until you tell me how she is. I need to know. Can you get someone to tell you how she is? They just keep making me wait here saying someone will come out. But it’s been all morning and nobody’s told me a god damned thing.”

  “Michel,” Braddock said, using his legal name again—the one he hadn’t written on the admission sheet—giving his arm another light squeeze. If it was meant to be calming, it had the opposite effect. “Sophie died. Three hours ago.”

  “We’re from homicide division,” Dixon finished.

  Mitch’s lungs refused to expand. He felt like a ton of dirt had just been shoveled in on top of him. Buried alive in open air, he choked out, “No! How?” He tried to stand. Dixon took a step closer, forcing him back down into the waiting room chair. He spoke through gritted teeth.

  “MRI scans suggest a brain hemorrhage. It could have happened from a fall off of something high, but since you never mentioned an accident and the hand-shaped bruises on her arms didn’t come from toppling off the sofa we know different. That’s what we call, ‘non-accidental trauma.’ You know what that means?” Dixon didn’t wait for an answer. He continued on, voice edged with contempt and barely restrained anger, spitting out the words like they were ashes in his mouth. “We won’t know anything for sure until the autopsy.”

  “Autopsy!”

  “But we will know. Maybe you want to tell us something else. Tell us the truth about last night.”

  “That is the truth. I went out on a date. Faye... Mrs. Cantrell and her daughter, Meghan, from next door were watching her. When I got home everything was... fine. I thought it was fine anyway. Sophie was sleeping and Faye was drunk. I sent her home. I... I went to bed and... What are you saying? What did she do?”

  “Where’d you go on your date?” Braddock asked. “Who were you with?” His pen hovered above the notepad waiting for the answers.

  Mitch struggled to remember the details of the night before, but everything was blank. Dixon’s words were clanging in his head like hammers against steel plates ringing and bouncing off of his skull, making it vibrate and ache.

  Hand-shaped bruises.

  BANG!

  Non-accidental trauma.

  BANG!

  Autopsy.

  BANG!

  Finally, the fog began to clear. “Liana. Liana Halliday. We went to see The Witchfinder at the Savoy Theater.” He fished in his pants pocket and pulled out a ticket stub. Braddock reached for it. Mitch pulled back a little before deciding to hand it over. The detective took a long look and then wrote in his notebook some more. Mitch held his hand out to take the stub back, but Braddock didn’t seem interested in returning it.

  “You went to the nine o’clock show. When did the date end?” Braddock asked.

  Mitch struggled against his first instinct to protect Liana’s reputation. Chivalry would have to take a back seat. They thought he killed his niece! “This morning, I guess. She stayed the night.” He didn’t expect either cop to give him an “attaboy” wink and a nod, but he’d hoped for some sort of recognition that it was a believable story. Instead, what he got was the same stone-faced expression that said no matter how much Dixon sounded like he cared, no matter how much Braddock reassuringly touched Mitch’s arm, they were doing a job and were not on his side. “She left me a note. It’s at home.”

  “And how can we get in touch with Miss Halliday?” Braddock asked.

  Mitch had her phone number written down on a piece of cash register paper in his wallet. That was back at the house, along with his shoes. “I don’t remember her number. She works at the Wholesome Market on Lear Street.”

  “I know that one,” Braddock said. “It’s new right? Used to be a Foodbasket.”

  “Yeah.” He turned and looked directly in the seated detective’s eyes, his own blurry with nascent tears. “Please let me see her. I need to see Sophie.”

  Detective Braddock shook his head, no. “Sorry,” he said.

  “You said you had someone over to watch the girl,” Dixon said.

  “I told you. My neighbor, Mrs. Cantrell.” Mitch felt the sick realization of what had happened slip over reality like a final curtain. He’d come home from his date at first too excited by Liana inviting herself in and then too furious about Faye being there—drunk—instead of Meghan that he hadn’t bothered asking whether Sophie had stopped crying after he left or what and how much of it she’d eaten for dinner. He’d just wanted the old woman to go home and sleep it off. He’d wanted to banish the evidence of his poor decision making before he had to acknowledge it. Neither had he wanted to disturb Sophie’s sleep. He knew that doing so would mean getting her a drink of water, maybe reading a book, getting her back to bed with a few whispered songs and cuddles while Liana waited alone in the living room reconsidering “coming in for coffee.”
Another bad decision.

  Faye killed Sophie. And I didn’t stop her. I let them in the house!

  Another selfish choice for which he deserved to pay.

  Braddock consulted his notes. “It was her place you broke into to make the call. Why’s that?”

  “My cell was dead and we don’t have a landline. I needed a phone. Faye wasn’t home and I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “And do you know how we could get in touch with Mrs. Cantrell?”

  “I just go and ring the bell.” Except when I smash her windows. A dark realization settled over Mitch’s consciousness and he let his shoulders slump and head drop. Except you probably already tried to talk to her, didn’t you? You tried to find her because I broke into her house and you need to investigate that too. But you can’t because she’s not home. She’s not ever coming home because she got drunk and killed Sophie and ran away.

  Mitch let out a loud sob, his weakly maintained composure finally giving way to the weight of reality. He knew from experience, it only takes a single night for the whole world to change. One moment where someone does something you can’t control and everything you know shifts, leaving you off balance, disoriented, and looking back at what you had while the world pitches and rolls beneath your feet. Time carries you forward like a cresting wave. The best you can do is brace yourself and hope you don’t get crushed when it slams you into the rocks on the shore.

  He dropped his face in his hands and met his grief in the dark. “When can I see Sophie?” he whispered through his palms. “Please, let me see her.” He looked up, pleading with glassy eyes, face ruddy and wet.