She was on the downside of twenty-nine and beginning to worry about things like frown lines and crow’s feet. She’d never been one to spend money on expensive makeup and wrinkle-reducing creams but wondered if it was time to start. Maybe if she had had some instruction on how to use the stuff, the whole idea wouldn’t seem so foreign to her. Maybe if her mother had been around to show her how….
The kettle’s shrill whistle snapped her out of the “what-ifs.” She fixed herself a cup of straight black coffee, drank it down, then headed to the shower.
When she was through, she pulled on her tattered bathrobe and padded to the bedroom, the bare wooden floor cold beneath her feet. She stared at the rumpled sheets. What few hours of sleep she had managed, had been restless. Her whole life seemed restless lately. She couldn’t put her finger on why. Her biological clock was ticking, and she didn’t know if she even really wanted kids. Of course, a husband would have to come first, and those prospects weren’t hitting on much. The few dates she’d had lately weren’t horrible, but they didn’t take her breath away, either. She’d pulled so far away from God over the last few years, she felt like a total hypocrite praying for God to send her someone. She was a lot of things, reckless at times, stubborn, judgmental, but no one could accuse her of being a hypocrite. She jerked the sheets off the bed and piled them in the corner of the room to be washed. Nothing like clean sheets for a good night’s sleep. When she got to sleep again.
She wished it were that simple. Throwing something in the washing machine, or taking a hot cleansing bath, anything to wash away the dirt. Like being baptized, her father would remind her.
She carried the soiled sheets to the washer on the back porch, dumped them in and started the machine. The winter wind whipped through the screen door, which didn’t exactly fit the frame, and made her shiver. After five years in the old house, she had grown used to the oddities—like windows that weren’t standard size, molding that didn’t meet in the corners, and doors that weren’t level. Or either the house wasn’t level. She hadn’t figured that one out yet.
But it was home. Like a second skin, she was comfortable in it.
She hurried back in, into the natural warmth of her little house, and pulled a clean set of sheets from the cabinet in the bathroom. After making the bed, she arranged the pillows. Who was it that said loneliness could be measured by the number of useless pillows a woman kept on the bed? She had four. Not too bad. Maybe she was just a little lonely.
She looked at the clock on the nightstand then panicked when she saw it was 7:45. She was supposed to meet Jack at the hospital at 8:15. “Oh...” She hurriedly got dressed—gray twill pants, cream colored blouse and black blazer, a proper ‘uniform’—then grabbed a towel from the bathroom and towel-dried her auburn hair. A short haircut came in handy when she was pressed for time, especially when the only outlet in the bathroom was attached to the pull-chain light. Blow drying in this house was both time consuming and risky.
Satisfied her hair was presentable, she ran back into the bedroom to slip on her shoes. The phone rang and she nearly tripped trying to get to it, afraid it might be Jack. She picked up the phone and stared at the name and number displayed. Dad? That was all she needed right now. The good Reverend Ferrin Saunders. What was he going to preach to her about this morning? Whatever it was, it could wait. After the sixth ring, it finally shut off. Moments later, the red voicemail indicator light flickered. She took a deep breath, returned the phone to the charger, and rushed out the door.
She pulled into the hospital parking lot at 8:10 and breathed a sigh of relief. Jack’s car wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She parked beside a police cruiser outside the emergency room, gathered her notepad, and headed inside. She flashed her badge at the admitting nurse and was buzzed through without question.
The hallway and corral were buzzing with morning activity. The faint smell of vomit still permeated the air. Peter Bryson still manned the helm, looking ragged and tired.
“Don’t I know you?” he asked and smiled.
“Don’t you ever go home?”
He half-laughed. “Home? What’s that?”
Ellie leaned into the counter and whispered. “It’s that place you go when you want to get away from work. Anything new with our little John Doe?”
Bryson shook his head. “Haven’t heard anything. I know he’s up on the pediatric floor. Other than that...” He shrugged.
Ellie smiled softly. “Go home and get some rest.”
As she started to walk away, Bryson called to her. “Oh, by the way—Sara Jeffries from the Bulletin called.”
Ellie groaned then turned around and glared at Bryson. “What did you tell her?”
“Told her we didn’t know anything more than we did last night, and if she needed further info to contact Burkesboro’s finest.” He grinned.
Ellie slowly nodded and forced a smile. “Thanks. I’ll remember you at Christmas.”
She turned and headed to the elevator, cursing Sara Jeffries and the Burkesboro Bulletin under her breath. This case was going to be tough enough without the media jumping on it.
The elevator doors opened to a whole different world. It was still a hospital, no doubt, but the walls resembled a giant canvas covered with colorful characters of every child’s fantasy. The nurses wore brightly colored knit pants and t-shirts with “Team Peds” printed across the front. They were bouncy and walked and talked with a youthful energy that reminded Ellie of a cheerleading squad.
She found the main desk, showed her badge to one of the cheerleaders, and smiled. “Detective Ellie Saunders, Burkesboro PD. I’m looking for Dr. Deveraux.”
“Are you here about Johnny Doe?” Her eyes were wide. She gnawed on her bottom lip, anxious for Ellie’s answer.
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “He was admitted to this floor, wasn’t he?”
The nurse nodded. “Room 413. Dr. Deveraux’s with him now. Pretty wild about him coming back to life and all, huh?”
Ellie slowly nodded and forced a smiled. “Yeah.” Just as she was turning to go, her cell phone beeped. She again smiled at the nurse as she removed the phone from her jacket pocket. She was surprised to see it was Jack calling from the office. “Hey, where are you?” It wasn’t like Jack to be on time—he was always early.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said.
“Sorry. Good morning. Where are you?” She stepped away from the nurses’ station.
“How’d the call come up?”
“What?”
“How did the call come up?”
She sighed. “From the office.”
“Then that’s a pretty good indication of where I’m at. Think, Ellie, before you ask a question you already know the answer to.”
“Jack—I knew you were at the office—what I meant was why aren’t you here at the hospital?”
“Ah. So you were on time.” He snickered. There were times she wanted to strangle him, and this was one of them. “I forgot I’ve got an eight-thirty meeting with IT.”
Jack Walker forgot something? Maybe the kid did come back to life through divine intervention because the world was certainly ending. “You want me to wait until you get here?”
“No. Just fill me in when you get back to the office.”
Ellie’s heart raced, and she couldn’t help the grin curling her lips. Jack actually trusted her. With this case.
“Just mind your manners, and when the doctor tells you no more questions, no more questions. As long as he’s in the hospital, we play by their rules. Got it?”
She hesitated a moment.
“Ellie?”
“Got it,” she said reluctantly.
“Good. Keep me posted. And Ellie, try not to irritate the doctors. We are on the same team.”
Ellie closed her phone and tucked it into her pocket. She stared down the long hallway, her new-found confidence slipping a little. She smiled at the nurse again, took a deep breath, then headed to room 413.
She read the room nu
mbers posted on the doors along the corridor, but refused to glance inside as she passed each room, afraid of what she would see. Sick kids tethered to mechanical beds by IV tubes, tiny hollow eyes glaring at her as if she offered salvation from their ravaged little bodies. She stared straight ahead.
Room 413 was at the end of the hallway with the door partially open. She knocked once then poked her head in. Johnny Doe was sitting on the side of the bed, laughing at the doctor standing in front of him. His eyes were as bright as before, his smile as pure.
“Am I interrupting?” Ellie asked as she stepped into the room.
“That depends,” the doctor said and smiled. He offered his hand. “Dr. Marc Deveraux. And you are who?” He spoke with a heavy accent but Ellie couldn’t pick up on the dialect.
She smiled and shook his hand. “Ellie Saunders. Burkesboro PD.”
“Ah. Dr. Terry told me you were coming.”
Ellie didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“She’s a cop,” Johnny Doe said. The Superman t-shirt had been replaced by a pint-sized hospital gown.
There was something about the way the kid said “cop.” Most kids around his age would have said “policeman,” familiar with the more honorable term. He had picked up the word “cop” somewhere, and Ellie doubted its usage had anything to do with honor.
“How you doing?” Ellie approached the bed and lightly touched his hair.
“They have a big truck in the playroom. Leon’s gonna come play with me later. You can come, too, if you want to.”
“I just might do that.” She stroked his hair again. “How you feeling?”
He looked at her, his tiny brows furrowed. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
Ellie glanced at Dr. Deveraux and hem-hawed before answering. “Well, because everyone cares about you so much. We just want to make sure you’re OK, you know?”
He scrunched his button nose then bobbed his head up and down. “Can we go play now?”
Dr. Deveraux cleared his throat. “We’ll go down to the playroom in a few minutes. Right now, I need to talk to Ms. Saunders. You use those new crayons I brought you and color Ms. Saunders a picture, OK?”
Ellie stared at the doctor a moment, still unable to catch the dialect. She turned back to Johnny and smiled. “Will you color me a picture? I’d like that.” She pulled the tray table up to the bed and skimmed through the coloring book. “How ‘bout a ladybug? I like ladybugs.” Except when they colonized in the corners of her ceiling when the weather turned cold.
While Johnny Doe took a red crayon from the box and went to work on his masterpiece, Ellie followed Dr. Deveraux outside to the hallway.
He looked to be in his early thirties, but Ellie figured he was older—there weren’t many thirty-year-old department heads in the medical profession. His mocha-colored eyes were warm and sincere and radiated compassion. His hair was blacker than midnight and his smile brighter than fresh snow, and the only imperfection Ellie could find was a scar that ran from the outer corner of his left eye downward, stopping just below his perfect cheekbone.
“I’ve ordered a series of tests. It could be days before we have all the results, but so far, there doesn’t seem to be anything at all wrong with him. You’re still looking for his parents?”
“His parents, grandparents... anyone who could tell us who he is. Have you been able to get any information out of him?”
Deveraux shook his head. “We haven’t really pushed him too hard. I’ve arranged for a child psychologist to spend some time with him this afternoon, so maybe we’ll know more after that.”
Ellie peeked into the room and watched Johnny Doe as he colored her ladybug. “And until then?”
Deveraux twisted his mouth into a tight knot. “I suppose we wait.”
“What then?”
“We wait some more.” He smiled. It was a beautiful, soft smile, and Ellie thought for a moment the gorgeous doctor should be counseling adult patients, delivering life-altering news to grown-ups who could find comfort in the warmth. Or at least be distracted enough by his looks to not care about the bad news he was delivering.
“What do we do when we’re through waiting? There has to be a point when you’ve done all you can.”
Deveraux leaned against the brightly painted wall, his shoulders resting between a cartoon bear and a tiger. A slight look of resignation crept over his face. “You mean child services. When do we reach the point that, as a hospital, we’ve done all we can do and turn him over to the court system?”
Ellie peered in the hospital room. Johnny Doe had finished the ladybug and moved on to a dragonfly. Poor little guy. Ellie’s heart ached knowing unless they found his parents soon the kid would probably end up shuffled back and forth in the system.
“It’s going to be a while before the hospital releases him,” Deveraux said, his voice soft and comforting. “He’s not going anywhere until we know what happened to him in the morgue.”
Ellie pulled her attention away from Johnny Doe and stared at Deveraux. “Have you seen the pictures?”
“The before and after? Yes, I’ve seen them. Quite a miracle if you ask me.”
Ellie laughed. “I didn’t think doctors believed in miracles.”
Deveraux shrugged his shoulders. “Depends on the doctor. I’ve always thought it a bit arrogant to think there has to be a scientific explanation for everything.”
A scientific explanation sure would help at the moment. She removed a business card from her pocket and handed it to him. “This has all my contact information. Can you call me as soon as you get the test results?”
Deveraux slipped the card into the pocket of his lab coat and nodded. “I’ve instructed the lab to call as the results of each test come in. We should start getting them in a few hours.”
Ellie nodded. “Can I sit in when the psychologist examines him?”
Deveraux frowned. “Probably not a good idea. The fewer the distractions, the more Doctor Mertzer will be able to get out of him.”
She peered in the room again. Johnny Doe had finished the dragonfly and had started on a bumblebee. She wondered how many other kids his age would be content to sit and color picture after picture while the adults around them talked in hushed voices. Not many, she guessed.
She stepped back into the room to collect her artwork and to tell Johnny Doe she’d see him later.
“You like it?” he asked as Ellie carefully tore the ladybug picture from the coloring book.
“It’s the most beautiful ladybug I’ve ever seen, and I’ve got the perfect place for it.”
Johnny Doe’s tiny face lit with pride. He held his hand up to Ellie, offering a high-five.
Ellie lightly slapped his hand. “I’ll be back this afternoon, OK?”
“OK.” He pulled a green crayon from the box and went to work on a lizard.
Ellie leaned into Deveraux and whispered. “Tell Doctor Mertzer Johnny’s very good with his colors.”
In the elevator, Ellie stared at the ladybug. Swooshes of red colored the body while jagged streaks of black made up the dots. The ladybug’s eyes were colored bright blue. It was perched on a dark brown tree limb with a few brown leaves jutting from the sides. The little house in the background was dull, cinderblock gray. Although there was an outlined sun high above the house, it was untouched. No lemon-yellow or orange color to bring it to life. Nothing but a black outline.
Ellie folded it neatly and slipped it in the pocket of her jacket.
4
Ellie left the hospital and headed to the Burkesboro Police Department. Rush hour traffic along Main Street had died down, but the everyday traffic was still pretty heavy. The morning sun was glaring through the windshield, blinding her to the color of the light at the intersection of Main and Baker Street. A horn honked behind her, and the woman driver gave her an exasperated look, hands spread wide, mouth hanging open. Ellie slowly pressed the gas and crawled forward then offered the woman a smile as she jerke
d around Ellie and sped by in the other lane. Ellie threw her hand up in a mock wave.
She fished her sunglasses from the glove compartment and wondered about Johnny Doe’s colorless sunshine. Was it an indication of a sun-less world, or had he simply forgotten to color it? And what was with the little gray house? Prisons were made of cinderblock, not homes.
Ellie turned into the department’s parking lot and pulled around to the back. The morning shift had already checked in and headed out, while a few of the night shift’s squad cars were still lingering, taking up valuable parking spaces. There was an empty spot between the Crime Lab van and Jesse Alvarez’s red Camaro, and one at the far end of the lot. She opted for the one at the end of the lot. Walking a little farther would be less painful than an encounter with Jesse Alvarez.
He must be behind in his paperwork, she thought as she locked up her car. Working vice, his appearances at the station were few and far between. Probably just as well. Jesse had been a one-night stand during a bout of reckless abandon a few years back. He’d been the only one she wished had called back, but when he didn’t and started ducking behind corners whenever they were within a hundred feet of each other at the office, she pretty much knew where she stood. Just as well, he was different now. She was different.
The Burkesboro Police Department was a sprawling, six-story building of black-paned glass and chrome, and looked terribly out of place among the older, more traditional buildings jammed up around it. Over the years, Burkesboro’s population had spiraled upward with new residents coming in who longed for a “small town” atmosphere but weren’t quite desperate enough to make a total escape of city life and head to the mountains proper. With all the new residents, the small town atmosphere had blossomed into a busy little city.
That was fine with Ellie. She liked the convenience of having a Starbucks around the corner and a movie complex that showed first-run movies. The community where she grew up was nestled in a valley tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains about fifty miles west of Burkesboro and opened its first movie theatre when she was well into her teens. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if it had been built earlier, anyway, as her father was a preacher and didn’t approve of too many movies. She was twenty-three before she saw the Wizard of Oz. She liked the scarecrow best and still had nightmares about the flying monkeys.
The Rising Page 3
