“That’s all I wanted to hear. Now I do this alone.”
I stood outside the one-way glass with Feeney, Lambert and Russo.
Leo loomed large in that small room with the small, seated dentist. He paced. His shirt had eased itself out of his suit pants during the drive out here and he hadn’t bothered to tuck it back in. If I looked like something you scraped off a shoe, Leo looked like what that shoe had stepped in. He began, “Now Sheldon…”
“Doctor Morris,” the dentist corrected him.
“Shel—” The dentist winced but said nothing. “—so did you get help with those dahlias of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Not from this site you didn’t. Where is she?”
“You can’t assume that just because I looked at a Web site—a thousand people must have looked at that.” A shaft of light suddenly poured through the high western window as the sun came into position for a direct hit, making the sheen of perspiration on his face glow.
afraid of the dark the dark the dark bad in the dark hurts
“Actually, on the day in question, Sheldon, only fifty.” Leo leaned in to his suspect and spoke in a very chummy manner. “And going back, you know what we found? You have looked at that site on a very regular, you might say frequent, basis. The site is no good, Sheldon. You wouldn’t find anything useful about plants on that site. After the first visit, you’d know that. The only reason you’d go back is to find your next victim.”
I turned to Feeney. “Did the lab have time to go back farther than April third?”
“No. Gianetti is making that up.”
“And that’s not all we have.” Leo’s voice resonated through the box on the wall next to me. “We have a record of your EZ pass. We know you made a trip in to the city every day from April fourth till the day Anna was taken, and you haven’t gone in since. What kind of a dumb bastard uses his EZ pass when he’s going to kidnap a kid?”
“There you are, Lieutenant.” Nervous laughter leaked out all around his words. “If I were kidnapping someone, would I have used my EZ pass?”
Leo steamrolled over that bit of nervous logic. “We know where you got the fake uniform so you would look like a New York City parks worker.”
The dentist visibly wilted.
I asked Feeney, “Do you know that?”
“Nope.” Feeney was grinning.
Leo spoke softly, intimately. “Where’s the body, Sheldon?”
“There’s no body! I didn’t kill her!”
Like his namesake, the King of Beasts when he has closed the gap on the hyena, Leo smiled, “Oh?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t kill anybody.”
Leo kept smiling through his heavily lidded, weary eyes.
“I want my lawyer.”
Leo slid the phone toward him and left the room.
“Can you listen in on that call?”
Officer Lambert nodded and headed for the outside office.
“Make sure he only calls his lawyer. Then find out who the lawyer is and give me a traffic jam between wherever he is and here. Hold him up for at least forty-five minutes.”
“You got it.” Officer Opie was out the door.
Sheldon Morris spent about ten minutes on the phone. We heard nothing enlightening from his end of the conversation. Just where he was, that the lawyer should get there as quickly as possible and was to notify Mrs. Morris. Leo and I waited and sipped coffee that the office clerk, a middle-aged, chunky but solid woman named Cathy brought us in glass mugs. “Anybody take it white?” I nodded and she handed me two packets of powdered creamer and a plastic stirrer. I thanked her. Then I asked Leo, “Is it legal to listen in to a call like that?”
Leo stretched and took a sip of coffee. “Gee. I just am not that familiar with Jersey laws.”
Officer Opie came back and took his place beside Russo, Feeney and me. As soon as the receiver had come to rest in the phone set on the interrogation table, Leo was in the room again.
His lips pursed, almost pouty, the dentist admonished, “You have to wait for my lawyer before you can interrogate me.”
“Who’s interrogating? We’re just talking. I’m just keeping you company till he gets here.”
The man tried to stand up, and Leo growled the order, “Sit down!” Lion: the hyena killer.
The dentist sat. His veneer of calm was showing signs of wear and tear. Leo continued to prowl the room, his demeanor no longer chummy.
“Can I have some water?”
The hyena’s mouth was dry. I could hear it in his voice and see it in the way he was licking his lips.
His pout turned to petulance and he said, “You can’t do anything till my lawyer gets here.”
The lion stopped prowling and leaned into the hyena, so close he probably felt Leo’s hot breath on his cheek. “Let me tell you something about the real fucking world, Sheldon. I can do anything I want. Absolutely anything. What would be a good analogy here?” Leo straightened up and searched the air for his analogy. “Let me think. Oh, yes. I’m the man. And you’re the little girl. You’re absolutely helpless. You are absolutely at my mercy. No-one-to-hear-you-scream type deal. I can do what I want, any time I want, as often as I want, for as long as I fucking want. You are my little girl.”
My knees were shaking. I looked around for a chair. There wasn’t one. I had never seen Leo like this. In the few interrogations I had watched, Leo was always strictly by the book. I wanted to leave, but I was also fascinated. Anyway, my legs wouldn’t work. The crying in my head was now a migraine, voices indistinguishable from pain. I saw what was happening in the room as if I were looking through a camera lens. I couldn’t see anything around it. Just Leo, and the dentist, and the words coming out of the box to my right mingling with the sound of pain in my head.
The dentist licked his lips, and his eyes moved rapidly back and forth. “Isn’t there a jurisdiction issue here? Where are the New Jersey police? I know the chief of police. Bernard Stackmeier. We golf together. You may get by with your high-handed thug tactics in New York City, but not here you won’t, mister. This is a decent community.” The dentist took out a white handkerchief and blotted his face and neck. “Where’s Bernie? He’ll tell you you can’t do this.”
“Look, little girl, this is me, doing it.” Leo unbuckled his belt.
I leaned up against the wall just to feel something solid.
“What the hell is he going to do?” breathed Officer Russo to my left. “Fuck him or beat him to death?”
Feeney didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. The skin around Officer Opie’s freckles got a paler shade of white.
“You see, the Chief of Police, Bernie, is out. I heard him tell the dispatcher. The other officers are all on coffee break. They won’t be back till, well, I don’t know when they’ll be back. I’m unfamiliar with the Garden State’s rules about that. You see, as you pointed out, it’s not my jurisdiction.”
Watching Leo, Lambert was uncomfortable, Russo was hard-faced, his eyes slits, maybe enjoying the little play in the interrogation room. Feeney looked grim.
The suspect had stopped his face-blotting when Leo unbuckled his belt and, as Leo slid the belt off slowly through the loops, the chair the dentist sat in began to rattle.
“Tell me where she is, honey, or the fun begins,” Leo purred.
I finally felt someone who I thought was Hester…if she had had control of the body, we’d be throwing up now.
“We’ve got you on the Web site.We’ve got you going to New York every day to scope out the playground while you figured out what you were going to do. We’ve got a search warrant, and the police are right now going through your beautiful house on Sattherwaite. They’ll find that uniform.”
Two officers had been sent to Morris’s house with a warrant. That part was true.
“Could I have some water please?”
“No.”
“I want my lawyer.”
“Tell me where she is.” Leo folded his belt in half.
<
br /> “You can’t—”
And slammed it down on the table with a whack! loud as a gunshot.
Bethy running! Bethy running! Don’t. Don’t hit. Running to the stairs running up the stairs belt off calls me the bad names behind me closer running to the dark space hiding hiding in the dark space way to the back crouch the big coat smells bad is heavy but I crawl under it he won’t see I’m hiding go by go by don’t find me I’m invisible I’m not here he’s here he’s here! the coat is off hurts my arm hurts my shoulder hurts he’s pulling me up hard my feet don’t touch the floor tight around my chest something tight I can’t breathe I kick it gets tighter it’s too tight it’s holding me up I’m hanging in the dark he slams the door alone dark can’t breathe can’t breathe I hate him want to hurt him can’t breathe ……………………………….
………………………………………...I am June. I can be still. I know how to breathe hanging.
“Isadora. Isadora. Hey, you okay? I brought you some more coffee. You take it with milk, right?”
I took the coffee that Feeney was holding out to me. My other cup was on the floor, half full and cold.
“I think Leo’s going to break this guy. He’s got him sweating like a pig.”
So was I. I looked at the clock. He’d been in there fifteen minutes.
I hate flashbacks.
Leo’s voice was still coming through the box on the wall. I tried to listen to what he was saying as I held my cup in both hands and sipped. Stay here, no matter what happens, I said to myself and all my people. No response.
“…tired of this, Sheldon? I know I am. I’m so tired. But I can go get some rest. You can’t. If I quit keeping you company like I’m doing, someone else will be in here keeping you more company. You’ll never want for company, Sheldon. So why don’t you stop trying my patience. Thin ice, Sheldon old man. That’s what my patience is right now. And it’s cracking.” Leo had been pacing around the dentist like a predator wearing down his prey. “You hear the cracking?” Now he turned and circled close again and said, “Nope that’s it, Sheldon. I want to know where she is. I can’t kill you, but I can make you hurt in ways no doctor can diagnose.”
“Feeney, I’m going out for some air,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears.
I was nearly staggering down the hall, and the junior detective followed me. I had a feeling that Leo had ordered him to keep an eye on me, so telling him to leave me alone would only make him more suspicious that I shouldn’t be left alone under any circumstances. I collapsed in a chair in the office and sipped my coffee. Feeney casually pulled up a chair and sat next to me. Cathy smiled at us and went back to her work, whatever that was.
“You and the lieutenant have known each other a long time.”
“A few years.”
“I know he’s not happy, me being his partner.”
I didn’t confirm or deny. I did not feel like small talk.
“He thinks my old man pulled strings to get me this job, and he did, but he wasn’t happy about it. He wanted to use his strings to get me into politics and I wanted to work with Gianetti. He’s good. Learn from the best, right?”
I nodded and concentrated on the taste of my coffee and the yellow woodwork and the light bouncing on the shiny linoleum floor. My metal chair was hard, and I tried to stay aware of it against my back and my butt. Stay here. Stay here, I ordered myself.
Feeney was distressingly chatty. “So, what kind of name is Shiloh? Is that your first name, like Cher? Or a last name?”
“It’s an acronym.”
“Of what?”
“The names of some of my people.”
“Oh. Like a pseudonym, or stage name.”
“No, it’s my legal name. I had it changed in court.”
“Well,” he said rather softly. “I guess I understand why you wouldn’t want to go by your father’s name. Hey. Did you hear? Calafano sacked Jimmy Stokes.”
“Why?”
“That little scene with you…er…the other…”
“Hawk.”
“Right. That was the last straw on a pretty heavy bale. The camel died. But, really, the captain was only going to put him on probation with compulsory sessions with the department shrink, but Stokes lost it. Really lost his temper and made some threats. I don’t know what all. So the captain fired him on the spot. Took his gun and his badge. End of story. Lieutenant Gianetti thought his fuse was way too short anyway, and it should have been done a year ago.” Feeney sipped his coffee. “But, it’s done now.”
Lambert and Russo shot through the door, followed by Leo, who barked, “She’s in a room in the basement of a public storage facility on Kingsland.”
Russo and Lambert had already bolted out the door to their car.
Leo, still buckling his belt and tucking in his shirt, ordered Feeney, “Take over. Find out everything you can about that site and how they use it—if there are any passwords when they make the phone calls and how the information is changed on the site. He doesn’t get water, he doesn’t get to piss or call his mama. You don’t have much time before his lawyer shows up.”
Sirens were already blaring away from the station north toward Kingsland when we passed Cathy on our way out to Leo’s car.
She was putting the phone down. “An ambulance is meeting you there,” she said to him. “You know where it is? Take a right off Franklin when you get to Kingsland. Half a block down you’ll see a big gray building on your right.”
The paramedics were just getting out of the ambulance as we arrived. An old man, probably the building manager, was handing keys to Russo. Leo said, “Wait. I think a woman should go in first.” Leo looked at me.
Jesus Christ, Hester, where are you? I can’t do this! I can’t. Where were they? Even Cootie would do. But there was no one but whimpering Bethy-June. I couldn’t send a crying child in there. Even Sula was gone. My vision was now restricted to a narrowing tunnel straight ahead of me.
I followed the building manager, who was just a shadow. Leo was right behind me and the paramedics behind him. I didn’t feel my legs, but somehow I was going forward, gripping the railing hand over hand to get myself down the stairs. I moved my head from side to side to take in the basement. A fluorescent bulb made the concrete floors and rows of doors to left and right look flat, colorless.
The manager offered me the keys to the last padlocked door on the right. I shook my head. He opened the padlock and removed it. I pulled the door open. A faint fetid smell greeted me. There was a high window in here, so it was dim, not dark. Straight ahead of me under the window was a twin bed with a rumpled pink coverlet. A child lay on top of it.
All my people had left me. Now even Bethy-June was silent. Gone. There was no one to go with me. I, Isadora, approached the bed. I was the only one left to look down at this still silent child.
I picked up her hand. It was warm. She had a strong pulse. She was dressed in an elaborately frilly pink dress. Her face was sticky and tear-stained. Her hair lank. Her hands grubby. Her dress had slipped up, exposing ruffled underpants. I pulled the dress down carefully. “Anna.” My voice sounded like it was coming from a squawk box a mile away.
“Anna, we’ve come to take you home.”
She didn’t move.
I turned to Leo. “I think she’s drugged.”
I hoped she had been drugged insensible for most of her incarceration in this grotesque playpen. Not her playpen, but his. No, I did not need feelings. I knew why the others had retreated deep into the gyre.
I backed away from the bed and one of the paramedics stepped up and gave her a quick examination. “Heart’s good,” he said. “Breathing good too. Yeah, I think she’s just doped up.”
As he gathered her into his arms, she moaned and moved her head. I tried to take in the small room on my way out. A television was on low, either playing tapes or tuned in to a cartoon channel. A nightlight was plugged into the outlet above the television plug. Scattered dolls and empty ca
ndy and snack wrappers and soda bottles littered the soiled indoor-outdoor carpet that covered the cement floor. A full potty chair in the corner.
As we mounted the stairs, Leo was already on his cell phone calling Claudia Keating. “We’ve got her. We’ve got Anna. We’re taking her in an ambulance to the Nutley Hospital.Yeah.Nutley, New Jersey. She seems—okay. I’ll have a squad car pick you and her mother up. Right.”
He placed another call to order the squad car he had promised, then he closed his phone with a snap and slipped it in his pocket. “I need a drink. Come with me, Isadora.”
We went out and up the street to a neighborhood dive that advertised chicken wings every day and lasagna, all you can eat, on Tuesdays. Leo ordered a Jack Daniels straight up. I ordered a tonic water with lime. The bartender was a woman in her forties, with overtanned skin, ample and visible cleavage, and long nails with silver racing stripes painted over the bright pink lacquer. Word travels fast in a small town. “On the house,” she said and left us alone.
Leo called Feeney and told him to get a ride to the bar and pick us up and drive us back to New York. Stackmeier now had official charge of the dentist whose lawyer was threatening all kinds of things but, according to Feeney, was so disgusted with his own client that his heart wasn’t in it. Mrs. Morris, when told that they found the child, and where, refused to post bond for her husband.
Relating this to me, Leo said, “Yeah, this kind of thing will really put a crimp in a marriage.” Neither of us laughed.
He threw back his whiskey and didn’t order another. I downed my tonic. The bar was dark and seemed to be getting darker. I heard myself say, “Now we can get Charlotte.”
“I thought you said—”
“I said you couldn’t help Charlotte.”
“You know where she is?”
“I think so.”
“Well, Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick, Shiloh! How long have you known?”
“From my first day on this case.”
Command of Silence Page 17
