by Chaz McGee
Clearly, Maggie was unaware that Calvano’s usual interview technique was to insult people, then alienate them completely, and, eventually, make them hate every cop they met from there on out. But there was nothing I could do to stop him as he headed out the door, leaving Maggie kneeling with Peggy Calhoun among a sea of forensic techs so intent on their own tasks that they paid no attention to the two women.
“It’s really sad,” Peggy said. “It looks like she was completely alone. There’s not a trace of anyone in this house but her.”
Maggie glanced at her friend. “That bother you?”
“A little,” Peggy admitted. “I mean, look at her. She was so beautiful. How can a person like that end up alone?”
“Some people like being alone,” Maggie said. “I live alone.”
“I know,” Peggy conceded. “And I’ve lived alone for thirty years. It’s just that she seems so delicate, and this house is so filled with love. As if she had a lot of love to give. It’s horrible for her to die alone this way. What made her so unhappy?”
“My guess is someone else,” Maggie said. “She’d have been better off alone.”
Maggie was on her hands and knees, her eyes level with a spot only a few inches from the floor. “You know what? I don’t think this woman was alone when she died. Look at the position of the hand, the way it’s wrapped around the gun and the fingers are curled around the trigger. You ever see that before?”
Peggy shook her head. “Not in a suicide.”
“Exactly,” Maggie said.
“Calvano is going to want to call it self-help. He always does.”
“I can handle Calvano,” Maggie said confidently. “This one is not being marked closed anytime soon. Not until we catch the guy.”
Peggy gave a sound that was halfway between a sob and a sigh. Maggie looked at her sharply. “You okay, Calhoun?”
“I knew you would take her side,” Peggy said, nodding toward the victim on the floor. “I knew you’d be the one to fight for her.”
Maggie patted her on the back. “I’m going to need you on this one. Together, we’ll find out who did this to her. He won’t get away, I promise.”
“Gonzales knows her,” Peggy said. “She’s a trauma nurse. He says she saved his son’s life one night after he’d been hit in the temple at a baseball game. The doctors said not to worry, that it was just a minor concussion. But she saw something in the kid’s eyes and wouldn’t let it go until they finally did another scan. Turns out the kid had a serious internal cranial bleed. They caught it in time because of her.”
Together the two women stared down at the dead nurse, searching for a reason why she might be lying there while others walked around alive.
“It’s always the good ones, isn’t it?” Maggie asked.
“Seems that way,” Peggy agreed.
Chapter 4
Outside the cottage, Calvano was busy pissing people off. “Get back behind the tape before I take you in myself,” he told one woman who had leaned so far over the crime scene tape in her efforts to see inside the front door that her breasts were spilling out of her shirt. The lady’s husband sputtered at Calvano in outrage, but he’d already moved on to insulting someone else. His tall figure in its well-cut suit towered above the sea of neighbors who had come running from their homes and from the park across the street to see what the fuss was about.
Crime scene crowds are a strange lot. Since my death, I had learned just how strange they truly were. For one thing, I always spotted familiar faces among the crowd—the very same faces, in fact—at virtually every crime scene since my days tracking Maggie had begun. I called them The Watchers. There was a blank-faced black man with tattoo stripes on his cheeks, a pale, blonde lady wearing a light cotton dress and no shoes, two teenagers with greasy hair and even greasier skin, and a rigid dark-haired man with military posture. They were always there, scattered among the crowd, waiting, though I was not sure what they were waiting for. I’d see them when I first searched the faces of the crowd, but when I looked again—they’d always be gone. Today I was late, having lingered inside with Maggie, and I’d caught a glimpse only of the black man with the tribal tattoos on his cheeks. I tried to find him again, but he had disappeared.
If these were my colleagues in the afterlife, I was in sad shape indeed.
Calvano was scanning the crowd, just like me, examining faces, looking for anyone who seemed out of place. Most of the people were from the neighborhood. They came in all ages, all shapes, all sizes. Most looked curious and very little more, although a few seemed frightened. Only my old lady friend, Noni Bates, looked upset.
“You knew the woman who lived here?” Calvano asked abruptly, not bothering to conceal his use of the past tense.
“Yes,” Noni said in a voice that lacked her usual preciseness. “I give her advice on her garden. She’s a nurse in the emergency room at the hospital. What happened?”
“She killed herself. Stay here,” Calvano told her. “We’ll want to talk to you.”
She blinked, taken aback by his abruptness. Her new friend, Robert Michael Martin, interceded. “Are you sure?” he asked Calvano. “Isn’t it a little soon to make that call?”
Hoo-boy. Calvano was going to love this one. He looked at Martin with contempt. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m her neighbor.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Then shut up and leave the scene to us.”
“There was a man in the park,” Martin said. “He was sitting on the bench right over there.” He pointed straight across the street to where a row of benches lined two sides of the playground, forming a neat right angle that gave one row of benches a perfect view of the cottage’s front door.
“That’s what benches are for,” Calvano said impatiently. “For sitting on.”
“But he’d been there for days,” Martin insisted.
“And you know that how?” Calvano asked brusquely.
“I’ve been watching him.” Martin started to explain, but Noni put a warning hand on his arm. She knew people like Calvano on sight. Martin fell silent.
It was too late. Calvano was staring at Martin more closely, sizing up his sloppy clothes and intense gaze. “What’s your name?” he asked abruptly.
“Robert Michael Martin,” the chef said promptly.
“Well, Robert Michael Martin, I’m going to need your address, too.” Calvano held a pad out to the man. “Print, please. We’ll be in touch.”
Martin wrote his address down, eager to help, not knowing he would likely pay dearly for speaking up.
The old lady knew better. She’d lived longer. She’d run into bullies like Calvano before. “Robert, you go home and wash up,” she said firmly when he was done printing his address. “I have some things to tell this nice detective and then I’ll stop by.”
“But someone needs to—”
“I can do that,” Noni interrupted firmly. “You go on and I’ll stop by when I’m done.” Even Robert Michael Martin got the hint. With a look at Calvano that was part scorn and part fear, Martin started marching resolutely down the block, trying to maintain his dignity. Calvano’s only choice in stopping him was to tackle him and risk damaging his expensive suit, possibly for nothing, or let him go.
Naturally, Calvano let him go. He was an even worse detective than I had been. At least I’d had the excuse of being a drunk to explain my sloppiness.
Calvano took it out on Noni. “Lady, I don’t appreciate you—”
“Did you want to talk to me or not?” Noni demanded. “I can give you ten minutes and then I intend to go to church and pray for this young woman’s soul.”
I was impressed. Her voice had gone from cooperative to steely in an instant. I bet she’d been one hell of a teacher in her day. Calvano actually flipped to a new page in his notebook, ready to take notes. What a grand old dame.
“What did you know about . . . ?” Calvano asked, his voice faltering. He
flipped back a few pages and checked for the victim’s name, one he had already managed to forget. “ . . . about Fiona Harper?”
“Her name was Fiona Harker,” Noni correctly him grimly. “She lived alone. She never married. She didn’t have a boyfriend that I know of. And she would never have killed herself. You’re quite mistaken on this point. Fiona was a practicing Catholic. She would not have killed herself.”
Calvano looked bored. I wanted to brain him. Fiona Harker deserved better. Yes, I had been just as careless when I was alive. But I was different now. I was sensitive. Which was why I knew he needed a good beat-down. Watching Calvano reminded me of how sloppy I had been, and I didn’t like looking in the mirror.
“What else can you tell me?” Calvano asked Noni.
“She was very private and a little shy. We only met because she stopped by my house to ask me about some perennials in my garden. People say she was an excellent nurse, and I know she was an excellent gardener.”
“But no boyfriend?” Calvano asked skeptically.
“Not that I know of,” Noni said. “Although I’m not the one to ask. We did not discuss our personal lives.” She managed to make it sound like Calvano had been a pervert for asking, even though it was his job to know. I totally enjoyed his shamefaced reaction. Noni had his number.
“Are people in this neighborhood tight?” Calvano asked, trying to regain his authority. “Can you point out other people who might have known her?”
“I can’t help you,” Noni said. “I didn’t know her well enough to say.”
That was when the screaming began. We all heard it: uncontrolled, feral panic, so intense it made you want to flee first and ask questions later.
The crowd turned, searching the park, trying to put it all together. A woman in her late twenties stood on the edge of the playground, face flushed, her hands held over her mouth, her eyes searching the park as she screamed and screamed and screamed.
Noni was the first to realize what it meant: a playground, a panicked mother, the strange man in the park. She pointed to the woman and yelled at a stunned Calvano, “Go. A child is missing. Go.”
Chapter 5
The crowd of onlookers outside the cottage came as close to stampeding as I have ever seen people do. Calvano was helpless to stop the flood. They surged across the road in a pack, terrifying the already frightened children who had been left alone on the playground while their parents rubbernecked at the crime scene a few yards away.
While some in the crowd ran to the screaming woman, others found their children and scooped them up, holding them tight, circling the wagons of their hearts while they waited to hear who and how tragedy had struck. A few knew the screaming woman and guided her toward a bench, getting her to sit long enough to elicit the story: her son was missing. He was a four-year-old boy with curly brown hair, small for his age, wearing blue shorts and a T-shirt with dinosaurs on it. His name was Tyler.
She had only left him alone for a couple minutes. Drawn by the sirens and the gathering crowd, she had drifted toward the cottage, leaving her son on a swing. When she returned a few moments later, he was gone. No one had seen a thing. They had all been focused on the small, white house rimmed by crime scene tape. The mother had immediately started pushing through the crowd, expecting to find her son. The little boy loved policemen; he wanted to be one when he grew up. Surely he had wandered across the street, searching out his heroes?
He was nowhere to be found.
Unnoticed by the distracted crime scene crowd, the mother had searched the open lawn with a rising sense of panic before, in full-blown terror, she had begun to run blindly through the park, calling out her son’s name, each step without an answer sending her further over the edge of reason. The scratches on her face and hands told of how frantic and alone she had been during her search. Not finding him anywhere and too overwhelmed to continue, she had returned to the playground. There, she’d overheard two women repeating a rumor: the dead nurse in the cottage across the street had been shot to death.
The mother was sure the killer had taken her son. No one could tell her otherwise.
She was a heavyset woman with curly red hair and freckles sprinkled up and down her arms and legs. Her face was splotchy, and she could not stop shaking as she sobbed out her fears. She carried an immense sorrow with her, as if her whole world had been lost. But it was not a new emotion; I could sense she had grown as used to it as a beetle to its shell. Her fear was fueled by past tragedy as much as by the present circumstances.
A small crowd had surrounded the sobbing woman, wanting to lend support. Other playground mothers, grim-faced, tried to calm her as their children, ashen-faced, tried to understand what was happening.
Calvano pushed away those trying to comfort her and sat beside the mother, assuring her that he was a detective and that they would find her son.
It was as if the woman were deaf. She continued to sob uncontrollably, unable to assist at all.
After a few minutes of cajoling, Calvano started to lose patience. I could not say I blamed him. They were losing precious moments better spent looking for the boy. Others realized this as well. Spurred into action by Calvano’s increasingly impatient voice, a woman who was holding on firmly to the hand of her daughter tapped Calvano on the shoulder and beckoned him to follow her. They stood away from the bench where they would not be overheard by the sobbing mother.
“She lost her husband in Iraq a year ago,” the woman told Calvano. “She was hospitalized for a month when she found out. I don’t think she’ll be of much help at all. If you don’t find Tyler, she’ll have nothing left and she knows it. I think you better call her doctor.”
Now it was Calvano’s turn to panic. The mother’s help was essential. If the cases were related, they needed to know. If not, if someone had just taken advantage of the distraction and snatched the boy, it could be the worst kind of case. Without the mother’s help, they had nothing.
It was about to get even worse. Calvano left the sobbing woman with her friends and went to consult with Maggie just as dozens of well-meaning neighbors and strangers alike organized into search teams. They scattered across the park and began calling the young boy’s name, pulling bushes apart, searching the branches of trees, trampling the ground with their feet. Within minutes, before Calvano or Maggie could stop them, any evidence had likely been destroyed by well-meaning strangers. They would have nothing to go on at all.
Which meant it was all up to me. If I hurried, I might be able to pick up a trace of where he had gone.
Maggie had reached the edge of the playground, angry at being called away from her crime scene. But when told of the boy’s disappearance, she looked every bit as disbelieving as Calvano had. She began arguing with Calvano in a tight circle formed by patrolmen to keep civilians out. It looked oddly like a football huddle, and it did little to conceal the heated argument they were having. Calvano had about three theories, all of them confusing. Maggie had one: the two crimes were not related. Both she and Peggy Calhoun had estimated the nurse’s time of death at least twenty-four hours before, and there was no reason to suspect the boy being taken was anything but a crime of opportunity.
Calvano was of the opinion that they should take the missing boy’s mother over to view the nurse’s body just in case it turned out that she knew the woman—proving there might be a connection between the two cases. The silence that met this suggestion did not faze him. “It’s fast and efficient,” he insisted.
“Let me get this straight,” Maggie asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. “This poor woman loses her husband to war, and now her only connection to him, their son, is missing, and you want to ask her to go look at the dead body of a woman with a bullet through her head?” Maggie’s voice broke with frustration. “I’ve called in Gonzales. Let’s let him make the call about how to approach this.”
“There’s not going to be anything left in the park to go on,” one of the beat cops said. “People are trampling an
y evidence there might have been.”
“All we can do right now is try to talk to the mother and pray that someone she knows did this,” Maggie said. “If it’s a stranger abduction, we’re done.”
“It was that weirdo,” Calvano told the others. “This fat guy with flour in his hair. I questioned him earlier. I got a weird vibe off him. And he lives around here. He’d know how to get out of the park fast.”
Some of the gathered officers looked hopeful at this, but Maggie knew Calvano too well to believe his hunches were worth a damn. “We’ll let Gonzales make the call,” she repeated. “In the meantime, I need the door of the cottage under guard at all times, no one gets in or out, and, for God’s sake, keep the search for the missing boy from spilling over into my crime scene. No one goes near that yard. The rest of you need to search the surrounding neighborhood.” When Maggie gave orders, she had a way of sounding as if she were asking for your help personally, and that you and you alone could help her out. The uniforms began their organized search for the boy without hesitation.
Maggie sat by the sobbing mother, waiting patiently while the woman fought for control. She was hoping to get something from her before Gonzales arrived. I didn’t think it would happen, and I could feel that Maggie didn’t either. Still, she had to try.
Meanwhile, Calvano went running after some civilian searchers so he could blow off his frustration by screaming at them
And me? I went in search of the abductor.
Chapter 6
I could find no trace of the boy. Too many lives filled the park and too many emotions muddied the air. The taking of a child is a transgression that strikes a chord of visceral terror in everyone, whether they have children or not. It is a primal reaction beyond our control: no one likes to be reminded of how helpless we are to stop the worst from happening. Because of this, everywhere I turned, the way was blocked, either by well-meaning searchers or by the residual energy from their frenzied emotions.
