While You Were Dead

by CJ Snyder

  “Need some help, Miss Kat?”

  The soft voice made her tears stream harder.

  Groceries!

  “I–I think I do, Sam.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she whispered the lie and scrubbed her hands over her cheeks. “Just worried about. . .things.” The little bell on the front door tinkled as she tried to focus on her list. Sam didn’t leave her side.

  “I hope it’ll be all right, Miss Kat. Can I help?”

  “You already have.” She patted the hand he laid on her arm. “Where’s the tomato?”

  “One can or two?” Sam pressed two into her hands. A super salesman, just like his father.

  Snick. A gun’s trigger engaged directly next to her ear.

  “Don’t move, lady, and everybody will walk away.” The barrel of a gun inched over her shoulder, pointed at Sam’s dark head. “Don’t even breathe, little chink.” The man’s voice was a sneer, almost directly in her ear.

  Kat felt heat from his body when he yanked her back, closer to him. All too aware the gun stayed pointed on Sam, she kept her gaze on the little boy. His eyes would swallow his head if they got any wider. The boy glanced from the gun to Kat. Cold determination froze deep inside her at the terror in those dark, trusting eyes. “Do what he says, honey,” she urged, angling her body between them with a barely perceptible movement. If she could get the barrel of the gun back behind her shoulder, Sam might be protected, even if it went off.

  “Yeah, yella, go open the cash drawer.”

  Kat glanced over Sam’s head to the open front door, where another man stood, his face obscured by the hood of a sweatshirt. Two of them, then. One she might have handled, but not two. “Sam, do what he said. Very carefully get the key to the register from the back room.”

  Sam showed he was as smart as she’d always suspected. She saw understanding dawn in his eyes and then watched him back away down the aisle, his direction taking him in the opposite direction of the front door, toward the safety of the storeroom.

  “Hold it!” The gun jerked, the barrel smashed against her eye socket as an arm snaked around her waist. “Open that drawer!”

  Sam froze at the man’s bellow and now he blinked back tears. Kat kept her voice calm and quiet. Still focused on Sam, she let her eyes dart toward the store room door. “The key to the register is around the corner in the back room. Do you really think his parents would leave him in charge of an open cash register?” She didn’t give the man behind her time to figure out if he believed her or not.

  Shouting, “Now! Run, Sam!” she rolled her fingers around the soup cans, forming fat fists. Kat swung around, hammering the man in each eye. At the same time, she brought the spiky heel of her boot down on his instep, his fashionable tennis shoes no match for her classy Italian leather. The man dropped the gun, howling in pain even before she brought her knee up hard to finish the job. The gun’s single eye tracked the second man by the time he reached the top of the aisle.

  Kat backed up, giving herself enough range to cover both men. “On your knees!” she ordered the one still standing, then held her breath and prayed she wouldn’t have to shoot him. She’d only shot a gun in her life once. Before that day, at the shooting range with Vic, she’d never even held a gun. The men danced in her vision and she could only pray the gun was held steadier than it looked. She repeated her order, but the man was already kneeling. The one she’d injured was still curled up on the floor, cursing, but very still.

  “Sam, get your father!” Also unnecessary, because by the time the words had left her mouth, he was there, with a much bigger gun. His wife was right behind him, on the telephone to the police. Kat’s vision blurred even more and her knees started to shake.

  By the time the police came, her knees were absolute gelatin. Sam’s father, Sun Ye, insisted on dragging his prized office chair out for her to sit in, then had Sam fill her forgotten grocery order while the police hand-cuffed and hauled the perps away. Kat thought she might throw up, given the slightest chance, as she gave her statement to the police. Lin, Sam’s mother, never said a word but brought ginger ale, snapped open the cold can and held it steady while Kat sipped. She also insisted on calling an ambulance for a cut Kat had somehow received on her left temple. Kat didn’t have the strength to refuse.

  But before the admiring young paramedic had thoroughly cleaned the wound, finished applying a butterfly bandage, and listened to exaggerated tales of her bravery eight times, she was better. And by the time Sun Ye delivered her back at her front door, she felt herself again. He insisted on carrying in her groceries, setting them on the counter in her kitchen and finally Kat put her foot down, flatly refusing his offer to put them away. She also turned down the reward he offered her, but accepted his tearful gratitude with a smile. The smile was still in place when she closed the door behind him. Her hands still shook, she noticed.

  She thought maybe she wanted to sit for awhile, but a little voice in her brain told her thinking might not be such a good idea. Groceries. Then cooking. At least her knees seemed to be working again. Groceries. Kat swung around. Directly into Max. She bit back a scream and pressed her hands on her barely-calmed heart, which was now galloping wildly again. She’d forgotten how quiet he could be when he wanted. “You scared the life out of me! I didn’t think you’d be up so. . .soon.” Her voice, every thought in her head, died with one look at his face.

  Max shut off his cell phone, replacing it in its holster at his waist and Kat backed up into the front door. “Lizzie,” she breathed.

  “Another package at the hospital.” His voice was harsh, his eyes anguished. Kat reached for him and he brushed her hand away. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, getting out of his way as he flung open the door. “I do.”

  Chapter Six

  Just like the last one, the package was left outside Miriam’s door. Like the last one, the only inscription was written in crayon in a childish hand. And like the last one, the package was addressed to “Uncle Max.”

  Unlike the last “delivery” this one was a box. The police wouldn’t let him open it. So they waited again, first at the hospital while workers were carefully interviewed with no significant results, and then at the police station while the box was scanned. After the scan, she and Max were shown to a private interrogation room and left alone. Kat tried not to imagine why. She also tried very hard to ignore the gravity in the unfamiliar face of the detective who’d ushered them into the small, airless room.

  “It’s the only private place we’ve got,” he apologized, before the heavy door clicked shut—and automatically locked—behind him.

  Kat had never known Max to be claustrophobic but he exhibited the symptoms now. He paced, then braced his hands against the wall, for all the world as if testing what it would take to bust them out, and then he paced some more. Kat thought she might explode. “Max?”

  The restless whisper of his soft leather shoes never stopped. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold. “You shouldn’t have come, Kat. This doesn’t concern you.”

  Rage exploded in a loud gasp. Not concern her? Somehow she caught the words back just before they erupted out of her throat. She couldn’t tell him. Not now, when it might be too late. That kind of pain she just couldn’t inflict.

  So she curled up in her chair, not moving, except to flinch when his fist connected solidly with the heavy table that occupied the center of the room. Kat pressed her eyes into her drawn-up knees and wanted simply to die.

  An hour crept by. A second uniformed officer brought in a tray and then left them alone again. Coffee, soft drinks and stale-looking donuts. Neither of them touched the refreshments. The silence became almost tangible. Kat’s guilt grew with every second that ticked by on the old clock high above them on the wall. She played out the argument in her mind:

  “You were dead, Max. I’m not a fit parent.”

  “You had no right, Kat! I’m her father! You should
have told me yesterday!”

  And there wasn’t an argument for that, so Kat kept her mouth shut. The red second hand ticked its way down to the quarter hour for the ninety-third time.

  Max no longer paced. He stared at one spot on the wall, his eyes scaring her they were so icy cold.

  Tell him!

  Kat didn’t trust herself not to, so she blurted out a request instead. “Talk to me,” she pleaded. “Tell me about Lizzie.”

  Max met her gaze for the first time since the door of the little room closed. The pain etched there rocked her. “Lizzie is wonderful.” His voice cracked and his eyes shifted back to the blank dingy grey wall. “She’s smart, really smart, which is why I don’t understand. . .” he tried to clear the emotion from his throat, wasn’t quite successful. “She loves to analyze stuff, figure things out–like word puzzles. Her heart is huge.” Silence fell. As much as she wanted to, Kat didn’t move. Max sucked in a breath that sounded painful. “Witty. She’s got this great wit–sarcastic, but cute, y’know?”

  She knew. Just like her daddy. Tears slipped down her cheeks but Max never looked away from the wall.

  “Miriam says Lizzie’s the only thing that got her through losing me and Doug. She’d never hurt anyone–not ever.”

  Kat’s tears fell faster, her chest jerking with the effort to breathe.

  “She’s fun–easy to be with. I love her. Since the moment I first saw her.” Max dragged the heels of his palms across his eyes and exhaled a groan.

  She lifted a hand to brush his too-long hair out of his eyes. “We’ll find her.”

  “No.” His hands abruptly fastened on her wrists, forcing her fingers out of his hair as he shoved her away.

  Kat’s arms dropped numbly to her side, empty again.

  “It’s been too long. Twenty-four hours.” She knew the averages, knew the chances of finding Lizzie alive after twenty four hours dropped to near zero. For her, it changed nothing. “And this,” he gestured vaguely to the tiny room, “is bullshit.” He got to his feet, moved to the door, ignoring her again. The door was still locked–a room where they interviewed suspects they wanted to keep contained. They weren’t suspects, or at least she didn’t think so, but they were most definitely prisoners. Detained with secrets and a horrible truth between them.

  Slowly and methodically, Max began to pound on the heavy door. “Reicher!” The sound reverberated in her brain, and she was reminded for no reason of a doomed man’s footsteps, marking off his final walk to the chair.

  Thud. “Reicher!” Silence.

  Thud. “Reicher!” Silence.

  Kat broke. She grabbed his right arm with both hands, heedless of the fist that could have knocked her cold. Max didn’t try to remove her hands. He didn’t stop either. His left fist connected with the door and a low moan slid up from her toes, through her heart and out into the room only to be drowned immediately.

  Thud. “Reicher!”

  The door swung open, out into the hall. Detective Reicher barely escaped a knock-out punch. Max shook Kat’s hands off his arm and she retreated to a corner. Max backed up just enough to let the shorter man into the room.

  “Sit down, Max,” he ordered.

  Max sat, but his eyes never left the detective’s impassive face. Hank Reicher glanced at Kat, still hiding in the corner. “You too, doc,” he requested. Kat shook her head. She couldn’t have moved if she tried.

  “What’s in the box, Hank?” Max’s voice, so furious just seconds before, was calm and even. So were his features, she saw with astonishment.

  Hank cleared his throat. “It’s a,” he stopped and glanced at Kat, then back at Max. “There’s no good way. . . “

  ”What was in the box?” He ground out each syllable, but never raised his voice.

  “Her toe, Max. Lizzie’s middle toe.”

  Kat heard someone scream. A woman. The woman cried, “No!” over and over and over and over. The screams underscored a picture of Lizzie, terrified, backing helplessly away from her captors as they reached for her little bare foot. Kat put her hands over her ears to block out the sound, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped.

  Max, suddenly in front of her, hauled her forcibly into his arms and buried her head in his chest. The screaming died away almost immediately. The picture didn’t.

  Time didn’t exist. Only Max. His arms tightened fiercely around her and she knew what that meant. But she couldn’t respond, couldn’t move, could only hang onto Max. His grip on her loosened and he cradled her head now, hands gently soothing, even as he continued to talk to the detective. She heard the rumble of his reply, but not his words. Slowly, far too slowly, the mental movie of Lizzie faded, replaced by the grey little room. Finally she sucked in a ragged breath and lifted her head, needing his eyes. After a single glimpse though, she shoved his arms away and wrenched out of his arms to face him fiercely.

  “No.”

  “Kat–“

  ”No.”

  “Easy, baby.”

  “No! She’s not dead, Max. She’s not.” Max wasn’t listening. The grief and guilt in his eyes were more than she could stand, so she turned to Reicher. “Show me.”

  “Now, Doc, that’s really not such a good idea.”

  “Show me. If you’re doing your job, you can’t. Lizzie’s toe is evidence and it should already be on its way to the lab. Cooled, of course to preserve it for testing. Is that where it is, Detective?”

  He met her eyes, assessing, obviously not trusting the sudden change in her. “Yes, ma’am. It is.”

  She gave one short nod. “CBI?”

  “For starters. The Bureau handles all evidence like this. I gave instructions to go Fed if they’d rather.”

  “Good. I’ll call Bruener. He owes me one.” The detective continued to stare at her. It was clear he still didn’t know what to make of her transformation from stunned hysterical woman to detached professional. Kat didn’t care what he made of it. She turned her back, dismissing him. Max sank into the chair she’d vacated earlier. His eyes were haunted now, he looked drained and defeated. He’d known somehow, that the news the detective was going to bring would be terrible. He’d started grieving over an hour ago.

  Kat touched his shoulder. He didn’t look up, didn’t move at all. His pain hurt her so much she wanted to cry, but not for Lizzie. For Max. Definitely not for Lizzie. Lizzie was alive. Hurt, but alive. “Max.”

  He straightened at her voice, although his voice was flat and when he stood it was without energy. “We have to go to the hospital.”

  She waited. There was more, she knew, things she’d missed in her shock. There wasn’t a single thing he could tell her, however, that would make her believe her daughter was dead.

  “There was a note, with her. . .inside the box. It said that Miriam’s next.”

  ##

  Two hours later, Kat stood across her kitchen bar from an unspeaking Max. He’d insisted on personally making sure of Miriam’s safety, although Reicher had posted two additional officers at the hospital as soon as he’d opened the box. By the time they’d returned home to her house, Max was once again silent. He ignored the chicken casserole she’d placed in front of him, but she didn’t blame him for that. She couldn’t eat a bite either.

  “Who did this, Max?” she asked finally, after he’d ignored all her other questions.

  He surprised her by straightening and meeting her eyes for the first time since they’d left the police station. But he didn’t speak.

  She decided not to let that stop her. Any response was welcome at this point. Her heart was breaking for him but stony, silent grief wouldn’t help them find Lizzie. “I figure it’s got to be someone with a grudge, either against Doug or Miriam.”

  His eyes narrowed just the slightest bit.

  Encouragement soared. Time for another direct question. “How well did you know Miriam’s husband?”

  “It’s not Doug.”

  Her heart sped up. A verbal response! And somewhere in the back of his
eyes, light glimmered. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s me.”

  Kat laid one hand down flat on the cool tile of the island. He’d already thought it through. As usual, he was a step ahead of her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you’d damn well better figure it out.”

  Max straightened then and picked up his fork. He began to eat, not quickly, but with a definite determination. Somewhere in his mind, a decision had been made, but what kind? A decision about what?

  Kat cleared her throat when it seemed he’d go back to ignoring her. “What are you going to do?”

  “Figure it out. Find whoever’s responsible.” And take them out.

  He didn’t speak the words, but his eyes shouted them. Kat felt a sudden cold fury inside. This was the stranger who’d accused her–only two days ago–of taking Lizzie. This was the man who’d left her, pregnant and alone while he traipsed all over the damn planet. This was the man who’d held her daughter for seven years, while she ached for them both. And it would take this man to find Lizzie, now. Lizzie was all that mattered. “I’ll help you.”