“That’s it,” he announced. “I’ve had it. This insanity has to end.”
“Dr. Jones” gave no response. It was as if he hadn’t even heard Robert speak. He seemed preoccupied and Robert wondered if perhaps he was high on some medication.
She’s going to the hospital,” Robert continued. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
He strode across the room.
Made it to the open door.
And Virginia screamed, her voice jagged and high-pitched, intense now with anger, not pain. “NO! You will not call an ambulance! I’m having this baby right here. You agreed to this and you will NOT BACK OUT NOW!”
Robert stopped in his tracks, confused, the certainty of a moment ago gone. At the foot of the bed, he thought he saw a smile flit across “Dr. Jones’s” face and disappear.
Then Virginia screamed again as another contraction struck. She sounded like she was being beaten with a baseball bat. The contractions were coming more rapidly now and increasing in intensity.
Robert rushed back to her bedside. He realized it was probably too late for an ambulance now, anyway. Something was going to happen soon, he could feel it. The baby was going to be born in the next few minutes or…well…Robert refused to consider the alternative.
Again Virginia screamed, her voice like a buzz saw ripping through a stubborn plank. She was panting and sweating, screaming constantly now, thrashing on her blood- and sweat-soaked bed.
The unlicensed doctor bent down over Virginia, somehow deciding now was the time to act. “You need to push,” he announced softly.
“I can’t,” she screamed.
“PUSH,” Dr. Jones said again, more forcefully this time, grabbing her by the shoulders, and she pushed. She screamed and cried and sweated and swore, but she pushed, and then pushed again, continued pushing when she swore she could not, and then it was over and Virginia Ayers had given birth to a baby girl.
And then to a baby boy.
7
Milo Cain wandered down Washington Street toward Roxbury, moving slowly, randomly. The night was still young, so he was forced to share the sidewalk with plenty of other people. Few took direct notice of him, but, as always, the majority of pedestrians gave him a wide berth, somehow unconsciously sensing menace. Mothers tightened their grips on their children, adults averted their eyes at his approach.
His face was nearly invisible, sunken deep inside the shadows of a hooded grey New England Patriots sweatshirt. Baggy jeans, desperately in need of a washing they would not receive, threatened to slip down his narrow hips, somehow defying the laws of gravity and staying up. Tattered Chuck Taylors flopped on his feet.
A group of three young black males approached, flat-brimmed baseball caps askew, sauntering shoulder-to-shoulder, forcing Milo off the sidewalk and into the gutter. One of them shot him a glance, silent and resentful. They passed and Milo waited for a sign and received nothing, so he continued on.
A small hole-in-the-wall tavern appeared on the right, flickering neon Coors sign illuminating a plate-glass window that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the Bush administration. The first one.
Inside the bar, a tired-looking middle-aged waitress schlepped glasses of beer clustered atop a small round tray. As Milo watched, a heavyset drunk lost his footing and stumbled into the waitress, sloshing beer over the sides of the glasses and off the edge of the tray in a golden mini-tsunami. No one paid any attention and the waitress soldiered on.
Two girls, white and young, blonde, clearly college students, too ignorant to realize they had no business being in this area—Milo’s favorite kind of girl—rounded the corner and turned in his direction. They chatted quietly, unaware of their surroundings, oblivious to the potential for danger.
The girls passed on his left, quickening their strides, and his head snapped back like he had been struck in the face as an image seared itself into his mind. The girls were students at Northeastern University. Juniors. The one passing closest to Milo was named Angela and she was cheating on her boyfriend, sleeping with her married Philosophy professor for no reason other than it seemed exciting and daring. She had told no one, not even her best friend.
As quickly as it had slammed into his brain, the vision vanished. The two clueless college girls continued on, moving away from Milo, and he paused, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, analyzing what he had just learned, trying to decide if the information was in any way useful. He glanced at his feet and saw sickly looking weeds struggling through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Then he raised his head and the Northeastern students were instantly forgotten as he locked in on what he now knew he had been waiting for. Across Washington Street, a young Hispanic boy ambled along the sidewalk. The kid was perhaps ten years old, wearing gang colors, MP3 listening buds sprouting from his ears like cancerous growths.
Milo didn’t even need a vision to tell him what he needed to know. The kid was a runner, a middleman employed by local gang members to deliver product to customers and cash back to the dealers. It was the oldest scam going. As a minor, if apprehended with illegal drugs, the kid would face nothing more than a slap on the wrist, whereas the older gangbangers could be put away for years, even for life, depending on their arrest records.
What Milo didn’t know was whether the kid was carrying drugs or cash; whether he had already made a delivery or was on his way to do so. Milo had no need or desire for drugs, his reality was warped enough from the nearly unending stream of visions he experienced. Cash, however, was another matter entirely. For a man living on the farthest outskirts of society, cash was indispensable.
Milo crossed Washington Street at a jog, moving quickly enough to gain ground on the kid but not so fast he might draw unwanted attention. In this neighborhood, a sprinting young man most often suggested a felony in progress. Behind Milo a cab slammed on its brakes, nearly clipping him as it slewed to the side of the street. The furious cabdriver unleashed a string of broken-English epithets into the muggy night, his anger unacknowledged by Milo or anyone else.
When he reached the opposite sidewalk, Milo slowed. Now roughly twenty feet behind the kid, he maintained his distance. And waited expectantly.
He didn’t have to wait long. In seconds a vision sizzled into his fevered brain like a lightning bolt. It’s money, he thought. The kid is carrying the proceeds from a drug deal. It wasn’t much, only a couple of hundred bucks, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, especially when you took the expression literally. Two hundred dollars would go a long way when you had nothing but a little spare change rattling around in your pocket.
Milo picked up his pace slightly, staying attuned to his surroundings as much as possible while still absorbing the vision. The money was in the right thigh pocket of the kid’s cargo shorts, nine twenty-dollar bills and two crumpled tens stuffed next to a throwaway cell phone. Milo could see it in his mind as clear as day. In the left pocket the kid carried a knife, a weapon that would wind up being completely useless to him.
It was perfect.
What was not perfect was the fact that the kid was almost back to the burned-out shell of an abandoned tenement—a building not much different than Milo’s—that served as his gang’s headquarters, only another block and a half away on the left. Once within sight of that warehouse, the kid would be untouchable, as the gang would have a team of sentries posted, young men who were heavily armed and not likely to approve of their runner being taken down before their very eyes.
Milo knew he had to act now—stealth and surprise would work in his favor. He resumed jogging and wrapped his fingers around the stolen Glock 19 inside the hand-warmer pouch of his sweatshirt.
In seconds he was couple of feet behind the kid, who was still bopping along to the music in his ears, feeling secure in a way he never would again. Milo pulled the Glock from his pocket and in one smooth motion lifted his arm to smash its butt against the side of the kid’s head.
The boy had begun to turn at the last moment, some instinct
alerting him to the impending attack. His reaction was much too late. He spun around and the gun caught him just above his right eye. He dropped like a felled tree, blood gushing from a jagged gash in his forehead.
This was the critical moment. Time was precious. The kid moaned and clutched at his skull, almost but not quite unconscious. Milo knelt and reached into the left pocket of his victim’s cargo shorts, withdrawing the hunting knife still secured in its scabbard and jamming it into his pocket. He didn’t really need it, owned plenty of knives already, but he had no desire to find he had misjudged the extent of the kid’s injuries by getting shanked as soon as he turned his back.
Milo pulled the wad of cash and the cell phone out of his victim’s pants, then stood and began walking briskly away from the tenement building. He made it half a block before the first rough shouts of surprise went up. He didn’t turn around, didn’t glance behind, didn’t do anything. He just kept walking.
In a matter of minutes, Milo had left the scene of the attack behind and was well on his way to the safety of his “apartment.” He assumed as a matter of course that he had been seen attacking the kid, but the likelihood of being identified was almost nil between his outfit—the uniform of urban anonymity—and the fact that he rarely spent time in that neighborhood.
To be safe, Milo knew he would have to avoid Washington Street for a good long while, but the prospect didn’t concern him. Boston was a big city and there were plenty of areas suitable for hunting. All one needed was the time to seek out victims.
And Milo Cain had plenty of time.
8
The private investigator’s name was Arlen Hirschberg and he was hungry. Specifically, he was hungry for a turkey melt with crispy fries and a chocolate shake. Cait knew this because she could see it in her head; the vision exploded into her brain the moment she stepped into Hirschberg’s office. It was not exactly the sort of he-man meal Cait would have expected out of a macho private detective, but she had been on the receiving end of Flickers for her entire life and had never known them to be wrong.
Hirschberg had called yesterday and scheduled the appointment, saying only that he had some news to share. When Kevin expressed surprise that the PI had obtained results already, he laughed and said he would be happy to sit on the information for a couple of weeks if it made Kevin happy.
Now, sitting in the PI’s office, it occurred to Cait that her expectations of what a private investigator would look like had been inaccurate all around. She had expected to meet a gruff, burly man wearing an ill-fitting suitcoat over a leather shoulder holster into which would be crammed a big handgun. He would have a booming voice and arms like stevedores and his office would be small and Spartan, with a ceiling fan moving the air around and a metal filing cabinet in the corner behind his beat-up desk. He would be the Hollywood noir cliché of a private detective.
The reality was almost the complete opposite. The Hirschberg Investigations office was big and airy, with framed, signed prints of American sports heroes adorning the walls. To Cait’s right, Bobby Orr flew through the air, hockey stick held high in triumph, forever celebrating his Stanley Cup-winning overtime goal for the Boston Bruins in 1970. To her left, a young Michael Jordan slammed down a dunk, tongue wagging out of his mouth. Behind her, some NFL kicker she didn’t recognize was booting a football into a raging blizzard.
Instead of a clichéd cheap suit, the private detective was dressed casually but crisply in tan Dockers and a midnight blue golf shirt. His weapon, if he was sporting one, was nowhere to be seen. There was no ceiling fan, and the filing cabinets weren’t even in this office, they were located behind Hirschberg’s receptionist in the waiting area. Behind his desk, the glass wall offered a breathtaking view of the Tampa cityscape, with the greenish-blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico beyond.
In short, Caitlyn realized this was no down-on-his-luck Hollywood PI. Everything about Arlen Hirschberg screamed competence and success, and Cait supposed that was exactly the point. She wondered how much money Kevin had had to shell out to secure this man’s services. She had asked him that very question on the way over but he refused even to discuss the issue.
“So,” Hirschberg said after introducing himself and seating them, “can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Sparkling water?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Cait replied, smiling. If she had held on to any remaining stereotypes about Arlen Hirschberg, the offer of sparkling water pretty much destroyed them. Her adopted father had been a devoted fan of the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files, in which James Garner played a down-on-his-luck private detective. As a child, Cait had watched just about every episode with him on TV Land and she was almost certain he had never once offered sparkling water to anyone.
“Okay, then, let’s get right to it. You have quite the unusual history, young lady,” Hirschberg said with a smile. “In most cases, when an adopted child wishes to unearth her history, the official records may have been sealed to protect the privacy of the birth mother and thus are not accessible, but there are records.”
Cait nodded. “I understand. But that’s not the case with me, is it?”
“No, Ms. Connelly, it’s not. In your case, there were no official records, accessible or otherwise. You weren’t born in the Tampa area, I’m sure you are aware of that much. Do you have any idea where you were born?”
“The only information I ever got from my adoptive parents regarding my birth history was that I was born somewhere in the northeastern United States. That’s as specific as they would ever get. I got the impression that even they didn’t know exactly where I came from.”
“And your adoptive parents are now deceased, is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Hirschberg crossed his arms and cupped his chin in one hand. “What do you know about the black market baby trade, Ms. Connelly?”
The question caught her by surprise. She paused and then shook her head. “Um, nothing, really.”
“You’re not alone. It’s not a subject that gets a lot of media attention. But it should. There is a flourishing market in this country for people who want babies but are not able to have their own and, for whatever reason, cannot or will not go through the normal and accepted—and legal—channels of adoption. This market has existed for decades, centuries probably, and continues to this day. It will likely continue long into the future.”
“Are you saying I was a black market baby?”
“It would seem logical, wouldn’t it, given the lack of official documentation regarding the circumstances of your birth?”
Cait nodded and Hirschberg continued. “This would explain why there seems to be no way to trace your adoption through legal channels. There are no legal channels to speak of.”
“But you said you had news for me. If there’s no way to trace my history, why am I here?”
Hirschberg held up a finger. “I didn’t say there was no way to trace your history. I said there was no way to do it through legal channels. I’ve worked in law enforcement my entire adult life and over the course of my career have served as a patrol officer, a homicide detective and federal agent, among other things.
“Over time I developed a fairly extensive network of contacts, as you might imagine. In your case, mining those contacts was problematic due to the fact that three decades has passed since the adoption occurred. Many people who might have been familiar with the circumstances of your case are now dead or moved on years ago and cannot be found. However, ‘problematic’ does not mean ‘impossible,’ and I was able eventually to secure the information you wanted.”
Cait shook her head, confused. “How in the world could you do that if there are no records?”
“Oh there are records, Ms. Connelly. There are always records, at least in these sorts of cases. They may not be official government records, all neat and clean and notarized and legally binding, but they do exist. And those records are accurate, certainly accurate enough for your purposes.”
> “So…” After years of dealing with the pain that came from assuming she would never learn the specifics of her familial background, Cait discovered that being on the verge of getting that information was more than a little daunting.
She took a deep breath and started again. “So, where am I from, Mr. Hirschberg?”
9
The visions pounded through Milo Cain’s head, one after the other, like movie trailers playing non-stop on some cursed screen in his brain. These trailers, though, often made no sense. They were mostly short snippets of lives being lived by anonymous people Milo would never meet. Pointless visions of ordinary actions, like a woman washing the dinner dishes or a man making plans to play basketball the next day. Their very pointlessness made Milo Cain’s torture even more difficult to bear.
He sat in the tiny shell of an apartment, back propped against the wall—his usual method for riding out the storm of visions—waiting for them to take a break. They always did, eventually, just as they always came roaring back eventually as well. When they finally, mercifully, came to an end, an exhausted Milo Cain considered how to spend his evening.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Milo had survived a traumatic early childhood involving physical and mental abuse, had survived and moved on and deserved better. Up until the age of five, he had lived in suburban Austin, Texas, with his adoptive parents, both executives in the nuclear power industry.
Normal.
Respected.
Abusive to Milo.
He didn’t remember much of anything about Texas, but one thing he did know was that while living there he could not recall so much as a single episode involving visions blasting into his head.
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