She looked over the receipt for a delivery driver’s name. When she didn’t find one, she asked.
“It was a new guy. I didn’t catch his name. Big fella.”
To McCorkle, that could be anyone over five-foot-six. Ellie handed him the receipts and waited for the copies. McCorkle stuffed them in the machine then punched a button. He blew air into his hands again while they waited.
Afterward, Ellie put the copies in the car then headed into Marisol’s. The walls were dark-paneled with lopsided dart boards hanging on for dear life every few feet. The numbers around the circles were worn and unreadable, some punctuated with holes big enough to drive a truck through. Green-covered lights hung from the low ceiling and cast an eerie glow over the few scattered tables and wooden bar that had lost its sheen a long time ago.
A woman with a masculine haircut and biceps bigger than McCorkle’s body was stocking bottles of whiskey behind the bar. “Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing Ellie suspiciously.
Ellie navigated around discarded peanut hulls and sticky-looking liquid spotting the floor and approached the bar. “Ellie Saunders, Burkesboro PD.” She offered her hand but the woman stared at it as if it were spurting blood.
She continued with her restocking. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“And I’m not here to offer any. A little boy was found in the alley Tuesday night, and I’d like to ask you a couple questions if that’s OK.”
The woman put up the last bottle of liquor then busied herself wiping down the bar. Ellie held the picture of Johnny Doe in front of the woman. The woman squinted against the dim light for a better look then shook her head. “We don’t get too many kids around here. It’s not exactly a family-friendly neighborhood.”
“Were you working Tuesday night?”
The woman continued wiping away at the bar, removing spots apparently only she could see. “Yeah, I was here. I’m here all the time.”
“And your name is?”
The woman eyed Ellie then after a moment offered her name. “Marisol Bowman.”
Ellie jotted down the name. “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”
Marisol snickered. “Honey, ain’t anything around here normal. It’s a full-time job just keeping some of these yokels straight. Know what I mean?”
“Some of the clientele’s a little rough around the edges?”
She laughed then shook her head. “A little rough? They make longshoremen look like sissies.”
“Think any of them are capable of—“
“Hurting a kid?” She shook her head again, thin lips drawn together tight. “They’re a bunch of brutes but hurting a kid…naw. Kids, dogs, and mommas are off limits.”
“The 911 call came in around six from a pre-paid cell phone registered to….” She referred to her notes, raised her eyebrow then sighed. “It was registered to a Mickey Mouse.” Of course the name was bogus, so she hadn’t made any effort to remember it.
Marisol grinned. “Mickey. He’s a regular. He’ll be in later if you want to talk to him.”
Ellie stared at her. She couldn’t be serious. “Mickey Mouse?”
“His name’s Mickey Makowski.”
Ellie had interviewed several gawkers standing around that night, but no one saw anything, heard anything, or knew anything, and no one owned up to having placed the 911 call. She’d bet money Mickey was standing in the crowd, probably one of the gawkers who hadn’t seen or heard anything, either. “What time does Mickey usually roll in?”
“Three thirty, four.”
“What time did he leave that night?”
She shrugged. “He was here at last call so that was around midnight.”
“And he didn’t say anything about finding a kid in the alley? Seems like that would be a topic of conversation.”
Marisol shook her head. “You’ve got to know Mickey. Been coming here five years, and we ain’t figured out if he’s a genius or just plain stupid.”
Wonderful. So far, the only witness was either a freaking genius or an idiot. Ellie handed Marisol a contact card and asked her to call if she heard of anything.
As she was leaving, Marisol called out. “Hey, the kid—was he dead?”
Ellie gnawed on her bottom lip a moment then finally answered. “He was pretty close.”
Marisol slowly shook her head. “What a shame.”
Ellie nodded her agreement. “Yeah.”
She spent the rest of the morning hoofing it between grungy insurance salesmen and pudgy lawyers wearing cheap ties and cheaper shoes. No one saw anything. No one heard anything, and no one knew anything. An insurance salesman, Stan Kellum, said he saw the blue lights and the ambulance and figured there had been a pretty good bar fight and didn’t want to get involved. One of the lawyers, a bulky guy named Alvin B. Kepler, III, said his last client, a girl with a habit of writing bad checks, left around three then he closed up shop and headed to the gym. Guy’s got to keep in shape, you know. Wink, wink.
Around eleven, Ellie headed back to the office. She had one more stop to make and turned into the Market Street Plaza. She found a spot in front of Wal-Mart, went in, and headed straight for the clothing department. She couldn’t decide between the blue, red, or black, so she grabbed all three and marched to the checkout line.
The cashier grinned as she scanned the items. “Guess your little guy likes Spiderman, huh?”
Ellie smiled.
5
Ellie rushed up the stairs, stretching her limit to four flights, and hurried to her desk. Partly because she was anxious to check her email and partly because she was ready to collapse. She thought of Alfred B. Kepler, III—the pudgy lawyer—and willed her legs to stop throbbing and her heart to slow to a normal rate.
The message light on her phone was blinking red. She punched in her passcode and listened. She had five messages, and four of them were from Detective Brady Mitchell with the Avery County Sheriff’s Department; the fifth was from her father again. She deleted the messages and clicked open her email. Her heart raced when she saw a file with attachment from Avery County. She downloaded the file then clicked it open, her breath backing up in her lungs. “Please let it be him,” she whispered as the pixels danced across the screen until they united to form a picture. She let out her breath and stared at the screen.
The quality still wasn’t great. It was still grainy and had been taken from an odd angle, making it difficult to get a good look at the kid’s face. She honestly didn’t know if it was him or not. Deep in her heart, she didn’t think it was, but there was too much similarity to not pursue it.
She picked up the phone and called the Avery County Sheriff’s Department. “Detective Brady Mitchell, please.”
After a moment, Mitchell answered.
“Brady—it’s Ellie Saunders, Burkesboro PD.”
“Man, you’re hard to track down. Burkesboro too cheap for cell phones? Did you get the picture?”
“Yes, and thanks for sending it. It’s still pretty hard to tell if it’s the same kid.”
“Yeah, it’s a crappy picture. It was the only one they had, though.”
Ellie held the hospital’s photo up to the computer screen to compare them side-by-side. “You mean this was the only picture these parents had of the kid in the whole entire house?”
Brady grumbled. “They had some baby pictures, but none recent. Has your kid got any birthmarks? Scars? Anything like that?”
“He has a birthmark on his upper left back, triangle-shaped, right above the shoulder blade. About two inches in length.”
Mitchell let out a long slow breath. “Our kid has a triangle-shaped mark on his right upper back.” Disappointment registered in his voice.
“That’s too much of a coincidence to not pursue. And, oh yeah, I canvassed the neighborhood where he was found this morning, and one of the businesses received a truck delivery yesterday from Avery County. Maybe your kid was a stowaway, or kidnapped, or killed there and transported here?”
Ellie bit down on her bottom lip. It was hard enough for her to understand; explaining it was even more difficult. “Not exactly.”
There was a deafening pause on the line. Mitchell cleared his throat. “Either he’s dead or he’s not. There’s not much in between.”
Ellie resigned herself to the truth. She might as well get used to trying to explain it. “He was pronounced dead at the scene and at the hospital but somehow…recovered.” Yeah. That was a good word. Recovered.
There was a long pause again then Mitchell finally responded. “The kid came back to life?” His voice raised a whole octave. “How long was he dead?”
Ellie cleared her throat. “A couple hours.” She was anxious to move on to the similarities between Mitchell’s missing kid and her Johnny Doe. “Can you arrange for the parents to come up and take a look?”
“Yeah, sure.” They arranged to meet at the hospital at three o’clock. Ellie was about to hang up when Mitchell asked, “What was the name of the company that made the delivery? I’ll check it out before heading your way.”
Ellie referred to her notes. “Bekley’s Wholesale Seafood. I don’t have the name of the driver. He was a new guy.”
There was silence on Mitchell’s end of the line. After a long moment, he spoke. “Hmm. Interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“The dad of my missing kid works for Bekley’s.”
Ellie’s breath backed up in her lungs. She glanced at the clock; it was 11:45. She told Mitchell goodbye then headed straight for Jack’s office. “OK, the lead from Avery County is looking really good.” She spit the words out, battling a time-clock and an overzealous Chief of Police.
Jack stared at her as she rattled off the new developments, obviously not as impressed with the similarities in the two cases as she was.
“So, what do you think?” She sat on the edge of the chair in front of his desk, her hands gripping the side arms, ready to spring into action. “Are you going to call the chief? Maybe he could hold off until the six o’clock news? I mean—this is a pretty good lead, right?”
Jack continued staring at her. After a long moment, he leaned up, folded his arms and rested them on his desk. “Why are you so afraid of the press? They can help us in situations like this, you know.”
“I’m not afraid of the press.” She lied. She sat back in the chair and sighed. “It’s just I don’t see a need in plastering the poor kid’s face all over the news when we might be able to wrap this whole thing up this afternoon.”
“You’re afraid of the press. You were terrified when they interviewed you about the Smithfield robbery, and you’re terrified now.”
“I’m a private person, Jack. I’m not comfortable in the spotlight.”
Jack laughed. “You won’t be in the spotlight. You won’t be the focus of their story; the kid will.”
She knew what that was like and wouldn’t wish it on any child. “Don’t you feel an obligation to protect him? To shield him from this circus?”
“What circus? All we’re trying to do is find out who the kid belongs to and what happened to him. Like it or not, we need the public’s help for that. You’re just going to have to suck it up and get used to it.”
He dug the remote from under a case file and clicked on the small television perched on a bookshelf in the corner. He turned the channel to the twelve o’clock news and punched up the volume.
Kristen Conrad stared into the camera from behind the anchor desk, her face expressionless. “Burkesboro police have a highly unusual case on their hands. A little boy found Tuesday was pronounced dead on arrival….”
And so it begins, Ellie thought as she tuned out Kristen Conrad. Ellie stared at the picture over Conrad’s left shoulder. There was little Johnny Doe, sapphire eyes and bright smile, staring back at Ellie.
6
Ellie could hear the clatter of dishes and yelling before she walked in Caper’s Deli. If one wanted a quiet lunch, Caper’s wasn’t the place to go. Jedimiah Caper was a barrel of a man who roared food orders like a drill sergeant while the cooks and waitresses slung dishes like they were Frisbees. The place was usually packed, and customers wanting conversation resorted to yelling at one another so they could hear over the racket.
She found an empty stool at the counter and squeezed herself between a city fireman and a guy in an expensive business suit. She ordered her usual: a ham and turkey club with spicy mustard, no mayo, an extra pickle, and a large sweet tea.
Jack was wrong. She wasn’t afraid of the press. She was terrified. It was a long time ago but she remembered the cameras and the lights and the microphones jammed in their faces like it was yesterday. To an eleven-year-old, seeing hordes of strangers camped out on your front yard left its mark. Seeing vans with flashy logos and satellite antennae that disappeared high into the night parked end to end in front of the place you called home was as disturbing as a nightmare that left you afraid to close your eyes. It was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. A nightmare that led her mother to disappear into the fortress of her bathroom and chop away at her hair with a straight razor before slicing her wrists open.
Ellie sipped on her tea while she waited for her sandwich, replaying the scene over and over again in her mind as she had done countless times before. The blood, her father’s wailing screams, the sirens, and the throngs of reporters already in place moving into action like a disjointed army.
“Hey. I’ve been thinking about your dead kid and—”
“What?” Ellie stared at Jesse Alvarez as he wedged himself between her and the fireman.
“I’ve been thinking about your dead kid,” he shouted.
The fireman turned and shot him a questionable look. Ellie massaged her forehead with the tips of her fingers and slightly smiled. “Burkesboro PD,” she mouthed to the fireman.
He stared at them a moment then went back to his burger.
“What are you doing here?”
“Jack told me you were at lunch. Caper’s is one of my favorites, so I thought I’d take a chance.” He winked at her then sidled closer. “Anyway, I was thinking about your dead kid—”
“He’s not dead.”
A waitress slammed a sandwich down in front of Ellie, and Jesse helped himself to a homemade chip.
“OK, so he’s not dead. You have sent his picture to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children?”
She huffed. “Did Jack send you?”
“No, Jack didn’t send me. I was just thinking if the center didn’t get a hit, I’ve got a few connections with the FBI, and they’ve got some really cool equipment.”
Ellie pulled a piece of bacon from her sandwich and chewed on one end. “Thanks, but no thanks. I really don’t want the Feds involved.”
Jesse snatched another chip and shook his head. “No black suit with shades is going to swoop in and take your case, Detective Saunders.” He grinned and helped himself to another chip. “I thought we could get them to run his picture through the facial recognition scanner. Maybe we’ll get a hit.”
What was with all the we stuff? The case was complicated enough. The last thing she needed was Jesse involved. She didn’t need a constant reminder of her downward spiral.
“So what do you think? You want to give it a try?” he asked.
Ellie sighed. “We’re going to get a hit on every kid with blond hair and blue eyes. Do you know how many kids have blond hair and blue eyes?”
“No, sweetheart. That’s not how it works. There has to be something like a ninety-eight percent match in characteristics. It’s real technical. It measures the size of the nose, the distance between the eyes, stuff like that. It’s used a lot with missing persons.”
Ellie took a bite of her sandwich then grabbed a chip before they disappeared. “I know what a facial recognition scanner is, Alvarez.”
Jesse rolled his eyes and snagged another chip. “Touchy. Sorry if I insulted your intelligence. But loo
k, if the kid’s been reported missing, he’s somewhere in the system.”
Ellie took a sip of tea and considered what Jesse was saying. “But what if he’s not in the system?”
“He has to be. I mean, he’s a missing kid. People usually report missing kids. Although I do have a couple little maverick nephews I’m not sure their parents would report.” He burst out laughing, and Ellie remembered why she let him come home with her that night.
Jesse was just grungy enough to make a woman swoon without making her wonder if he ever bathed, and he was soft enough to make you want to mother him. He was someone she wouldn’t have minded getting closer to, if she hadn’t fallen in bed with him. How can you want to see someone again when you can’t look them in the eye?
“Earth to Ellie. It’d be worth a shot, don’t you think?”
She pushed her remorse and the thoughts of what could have been from her mind and sighed. “Of course it would. But like I said, I don’t really want the Feds involved.”
“They’re probably going to get involved anyway. Especially if it turns out to be a multi-jurisdictional kidnapping. But for now, we won’t worry about that. All we’re asking them to do is simply run a scan.”
When had Jesse been assigned to this case? Last she heard he was pretending to smoke dope with hookers.
“Look,” he said as he finished off her chips, “all the scan is going to do is give us a possible lead on his identity. It ain’t going to tell you who beat the crap out of him. But once you know who he is and where he came from, you can start narrowing down the how and why. Know what I mean?”
“Is there a cost involved?”
“For you dear, my services are free.”
Ellie couldn’t help but laugh. She shook her head. “I meant is there going to be a cost involved to the department. If so, Jack will have to approve it. Unlike vice, we don’t walk around with wads of department cash in our pockets.”
“No cost. I got connections, baby.” He winked and she laughed again.
Ellie stared at him a moment wondering about those connections. She shook her head then finished off her tea and picked up her ticket. “Why are you so interested in this case? Shouldn’t you be hanging out with dope dealers?”
The Rising Page 5
