“Give it a couple of minutes and try again,” Richard advised.
Uncomfortable under Dr. Marsh’s stare, I wandered into the kitchen again. I couldn’t shake the feeling of . . . dread? Whatever it was surrounded me, squeezing my chest so I couldn’t take a decent breath.
Hands clenched at his side, Richard studied me in silence. We’d been through this before, and his eyes mirrored the concern he wouldn’t express for fear of embarrassing me. He knew just what these little empathic forays cost me.
Turning away from his scrutiny, I went back into the boy’s gloomy bedroom. Though banished from the apartment, Paula’s anguish was still palpable. How many times had she stood in that doorway and cried for her child?
I ran my hands along all the surfaces a kid Eric’s age could’ve touched. After eight months there was so little left of him. His clothes in the dresser drawers, neatly folded and stacked, bore no trace of his aura. I pulled back the bedspread, picked up the pillow, closed my eyes and pressed it against my face. Tendrils of fear curled through me.
Airless.
Darkness.
Nothingness.
Death.
A rustling noise at the open doorway broke the spell. Dr. Marsh studied me as she must’ve once looked at rats in a lab. Her appraising gaze was sharp, her irritation almost palpable. Even so, she looked like she just walked off the set of some TV drama instead of the University’s Medical Center campus. I’d bet her brown eyes flashed when she smiled. Not that she had.
“I understand you’ve done this before,” she said.
“Define ‘this,’” I said.
“Helping the police in murder investigations.”
“Once or twice.”
“Are you always successful?”
“So far,” I answered honestly and replaced the pillow, smoothing the spread back into place.
“And what do you get out of it?”
Her scornful tone annoyed me.
“Usually a miserable headache. What is this, an interrogation?”
“I’m merely curious,” she said. “My, we are defensive, aren’t we?”
“I can’t answer for
we
, but
I’m
certainly not here to fence with
you
, doctor. If you’ll excuse me.”
Brushing past her, I headed back to the kitchen. The smooth walls and ceiling were practically vibrating. Eric’s childish laughter had once echoed in this room, though nothing of him remained there. I frowned. I still didn’t have the whole picture, and Dr. Marsh had rattled me.
I opened all the cupboards. The remnants of Eric’s babyhood—plastic formula bottles and SpongeBob sippy cups—had been stowed on the higher shelves.
No Nestle’s Quik.
“Any conclusions?” Richard asked.
“Whatever I’m getting seems strongest in the kitchen.” I leaned against the counter, stared at the refrigerator covered with torn-out coloring book pages attached with Scotch tape. Something about it bothered me. I opened the door.
Paula wasn’t taking care of herself. A quart of outdated skim milk, half a loaf of sliced white bread, a sagging pizza box, and three two-liter bottles of diet cola looked lonely in the full-sized fridge. No chocolate milk. An opened box of tater tots, a sprinkling of damp crumbs, and a couple of ice trays were the only things in the freezer. Everything looked completely innocent, yet something was terribly wrong.
“Do you think all the apartments are set up the same?” I asked Richard.
He shrugged.
Pushing away from the counter, I walked through the rooms one last time—just to make certain—then paused in the kitchen before heading into the building’s entryway. There was no trace of Eric, but something else lurked there.
Hands thrust into her jacket pockets, Paula waited by the security door, looking pale and frightened. I couldn’t even muster a comforting smile for her.
“Chocolate milk,” I said.
She blinked.
“Did Eric drink it?” I pressed.
“He loved it, but was allergic to chocolate. I never had it in the house.”
I glanced up the shadowy staircase. A wounded animal will always climb. Eric hadn’t been wounded, but something had lured him up those stairs. I took three steps and staggered against the banister when a knife-thrust of pain pierced the back of my head—fierce, but unlike the skull-pounding headaches these intuitive flashes usually brought.
“You okay?” Richard asked, concerned. Was he feeling guilty for roping me into this?
I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and tried to catch my breath. “Who lives upstairs?” I asked Paula through gritted teeth.
“Mark and Cheryl Spencer in apartment D. A retired widow, Mrs. Anna Jarowski, lives on the other side.”
“Did they see Eric the day he disappeared?”
Paula shook her head. “No.”
I took another step. The heaviness clamped tighter around my chest. I’d felt something when I first entered the building, but I’d assumed it belonged to Paula.
I’d been wrong.
“I want to talk to them.”
“They’ve been cleared,” Paula insisted.
I didn’t budge.
She bristled with impatience. “You came here to find answers about my son, not waste time questioning my neighbors. They’ve been cleared by the police and badgered by the press.”
“Paula,” Richard said gently, “it can’t hurt.”
Finally she tore her gaze from mine and stormed back for her apartment, letting the door bang shut.
Richard took the lead, leaving Dr. Marsh and me to follow. He went to knock on the first apartment door, but I shook my head. He gave me a quizzical look and I nodded toward the opposite door.
Richard crossed the ten or so feet to the adjacent door and knocked. We waited. Were Richard and Dr. Marsh struck by the unnatural quiet in that building?
The door opened on a chain. Steel gray no-nonsense eyes peered at us. “Yes?”
“Mrs. Jarowski, I’m Doctor Alpert and this is Dr. Marsh,” Richard said with authority. “We’re from the University. May we speak with you?”
Mrs. Jarowski blinked in surprise. “Did Dr. Adams send you?”
Dr. Marsh gave Richard an inquisitive look, but he said nothing.
Mrs. Jarowski looked at us with suspicion. “Can I see some identification?”
“Of course,” Richard said, and reached into his coat pocket.
“I left mine in my purse,” Dr. Marsh said.
Mrs. Jarowski scrutinized Richard’s hospital security badge. “Please come in,” she said at last.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be anywhere but this place that smelled of mothballs and sour cabbage.
She ushered us inside, stepping into her kitchen. Anna Jarowski was a compact woman in her mid-sixties. Her short silver hair was caught back from her forehead with a barrette, like something out of the 1950s. Dressed in a faded housecoat, no make-up brightened her wan features, leaving her looking colorless and ill.
She glanced at me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”
“Jeffrey Resnick,” I said, forcing a smile, and shoved my hand at her.
The woman eyed my outstretched hand, hesitated, then took it.
Our eyes locked. Her hand convulsed around mine. Peering past the layers of her personality, I looked straight into her soul.
A tremor ran through me. I pulled back my hand, my legs suddenly rubbery. Sweat soaked into my shirt collar and I took a shaky breath, hoping to quell the queasiness in my gut.
“Do you mind if I sit?”
She gestured toward the couch in the living room, but I lurched into the kitchen and fell into a maple chair at the worn Formica table. The others followed, leaning against the counters, looking like wallflowers at a dance. Mrs. Jarowski moved to stand in front of the refrigerator, arms at her side, body tense. The open floor plan allowed me to look into the apartment. Like the kitchen set, the rest of the furniture was shabby but immaculate. Mrs. Jarowski’s faded housedress was freshly ironed. She probably spent her days scrubbing the life out of things.
I looked around the sterile kitchen, an exact replica of the room directly below us—the floor, the counters, the cupboards—everything, right down to the white plastic switch plates. Three embroidered dishtowels lined the oven door pull, Mrs. Jarowski’s only concession to decor. The tug of conflicting emotions was even stronger than downstairs. We looked at one another for a few moments in awkward silence.
Mrs. Jarowski cleared her throat. “Are you a doctor, too?” she asked me.
“You might say I’m an expert on headaches. Tell me about yours, Mrs. Jarowski. Migraines, aren’t they?”
The old lady’s sharp eyes softened. “I’ve had a lot of tests, even a couple of CAT scans, but they’ve all been inconclusive. I’ve been told they’re due to stress. One doctor said they’re psychosomatic.”
“I doubt that,” I said, winning a grateful nod. “They get pretty bad sometimes, don’t they?”
She nodded again, looking hopeful.
“I can sure identify with that. I got mugged last year. A teenager with a baseball bat cracked my skull. Since then I get some really bad ones. I’m working up to a doozie right now.”
“What does that have to do with me?” she asked, an odd catch to her voice.
“Nothing. Tell me about Eric Devlin.”
Her back went rigid. “I’ve already told the police, I don’t know anything about his disappearance.”
“His mother said he was ‘all boy,’ but I get the feeling he was a little hellion. A noisy kid. Kind of a brat, really.”
Dr. Marsh glared at me as if I’d blasphemed God almighty. The whole city had developed a reverence for the missing child.
Mrs. Jarowski didn’t share that feeling.
“He used to ride up and down the sidewalk on one of those big plastic tricycles for hours at a time. Up and down and up and down. They make one hell of a racket, don’t they?”
Her lips tightened. The tension in that kitchen nearly crackled.
My nausea cranked up a notch and I loosened my tie. On the verge of passing out, I rested my elbows on the table to steady myself.
“When I have one of these sick headaches, I have to lie down in a dark room with absolute quiet. Otherwise I think I’d go insane. Has that ever happen to you?”
Mrs. Jarowski’s gaze pinned me.
The vision streaked before my mind’s eye: Eric, eyes round with anticipation, his small hand clutching the tumbler of chocolate milk, something his mother would never let him have. Paula calling to him from somewhere outside. The half empty glass falling to the spotless floor, shattering. Chocolate milk splashing the walls and cabinet doors.
“It’s peaceful and quiet these days,” I said. “Like a morgue.” My gaze drifted to the full-sized refrigerator—back to her. I swallowed down bile. “Do you want to show me?”
Her cheeks flushed. She wouldn’t look at me.
Dr. Marsh and Richard looked at me in confusion. Mrs. Jarowski seemed to weigh the question, her solemn gaze focused on the floor.
“The freezer, right?”
Mrs. Jarowski’s anger slipped, replaced by a tremendous sense of guilt—but not, I noticed, remorse.
“Dr. Alpert, maybe you should have a look,” I suggested.
Mrs. Jarowski held her ground.
Richard brushed past me and crossed the room in three steps. His eyes bored into hers and the older woman backed down, moving aside. The freezer door swung open. A heavy, black plastic garbage bag filled the space. Richard worked on the twist tie and then he pulled back the plastic. His breath caught in his throat and he slammed the door, suddenly pale.
“Holy Christ.”
The quartz wall clock ticked loudly, but time seemed to stand still.
At last Richard moved to the phone and punched 911. “I’m calling to report a body at 456 Weatherby, apartment C.”
Richard swallowed as he listened to the voice on the other end of the phone. Dr. Marsh blinked in confused revulsion.
Stony-faced, Mrs. Jarowski turned, her slippered feet scuffing across the vinyl floor as she headed for the living room. She sat down on her faded couch, picked up the remote control and turned on the television.
Finally Richard hung up the phone.
“Dr. Marsh, can you watch Mrs. J until the police get here?” I asked.
She nodded, still looking shell-shocked.
I squinted up at Richard. “Maybe you could help me to the bathroom. I don’t want to barf on Mrs. J’s nice clean floor.”
I sat
back against the lumpy couch, breathing shallowly, a hand covering my eyes to blot out the piercing light. After more than an hour, two of my pills still hadn’t put a dent in the throbbing headache.
The cops had already taken Mrs. Jarowski away. The ME had arrived and the crime photographer was still flashing pictures in the kitchen. The place was full of cops and the murmur of a dozen voices drilled through my skull.
“Can I get you something, Mr. Resnick?” Lieutenant Brewer of the Buffalo Metropolitan Police stood over me. The chunky, balding cop still seemed taken aback that his case had been broken by an outsider.