Dark to Mortal Eyes (23 page)

Josee watched Sergeant Turney brush a Burger King wrapper and a dog-eared manual from the seat to the floor. He said, “Sorry ’bout the mess. Are you gettin’ in?”

“Scooter’s gone.”

“Chief told me over the radio.”

“He left a message with this nurse lady, said I’d know where to meet him.” She stood frozen at the open door. “As if I have a stinkin’ clue.”

“What’ve you got in your hand there?”

“Jesús Cristo,” she mouthed in Spanish, her pinkie tracing the figure on the wooden crucifix in her palm. She slipped the object over her spiked hair onto her neck and tucked it beneath her sweater so that it hung between her breasts. “Nurse gave it me.”

The cross and her vial of gel capsules. Nestled together above her heart.

Turney’s brown eyes watched her.

“What’re
you
staring at, mister?”

There she went again, tossing out her sticks of dynamite. She was such an idiot. This man had been so kind yesterday, sharing not only his own self-doubts but an understanding that they were battling something unusual and unnatural. Supernatural? Most likely. How long, though, had it been since she’d entrusted another person with her well-being? And a cop, of all people. Dangerous ground. She’d been lured before into positions of trust and had them melt away like quicksand beneath her feet.

Turney checked the dash clock. “Concerned about you, Josee, that’s all. Let’s find Scooter, then get you over to Avery Park to meet your mother. You get ahold of her?”

“Nope. Listen, it’s your lunch break. Don’t let me waste all your time.”

“Chief’s freed me to do what needs to be done. He wants the best for you too.”

“Oh, right. Just enough leash to hang ourselves.”

“What?”

“Forget it.” She dropped into the seat. “Just wish I knew where Scooter was.”

“How ’bout the park? He knew you planned to meet your mother, right?”

“Worth a try, I guess.”

She guessed wrong. By one-twenty, Avery Park still showed no sign of her missing friend or her mother. Not that Josee expected any different. Despite the Subway sandwiches they had picked up, her stomach was knotted. She used Turney’s cell to place a fourth and a fifth call to the Addisons, left two messages, then put her head against the window. On their way back to the Van der Bruegges, the sergeant suggested they stop by the police station downtown to pick up Scooter’s bike and belongings that had been stored since yesterday.

“Maybe you’ll find somethin’, get an idea where he’s run off to.”

“You mean go scrounging through other people’s stuff? Excuse me, Sarge, but I have a little respect. Scoot’s stuff—I don’t touch it.” Actually, she had reached for his backpack once and been startled by Scooter’s harsh rebuke.

Turney pursed his lips. “Hmm. Blame it on my cop instincts. I’m shameless as they come.” He turned into the station parking lot. “You comin’ in? Can’t leave you in the car unattended. Nothin’ personal. Just strict guidelines.”

“I’ll sit outside. Need some time to think. Some air.”

Ten minutes later Turney wrestled the rusty bike and Scooter’s pack into the trunk. He grunted and grabbed a hand to his biceps as a flash of pain crossed his face. With an apology, he headed back into the station. Said he’d be right back.

One minute later she heard the noise.

Tunka-tunk-tunk … hsss!

Turney’s knee struck a wayward chair in his glass-partitioned office, his feet slipped on old newspapers and Snickers wrappers, and he scrambled for balance. An empty Dr Pepper can clinked against the desk leg. He fell into his seat. One hand clutched at his arm; the other waved away a fly.

How many years had it been? This hadn’t happened since he was a kid.

“Lord, don’t leave me now.”

On the wall, certificates and plaques offered vain praise. More fitting, Turney thought, was the Weekend Warrior poster that fellow officers had given him on his last birthday. The Warrior cradled a bag of chips and a six-pack, a fishing pole and net, and boasted a cartoon belly that distended an old wrinkled T-shirt. His eyes were apathetic.

Turney related. In this job he tried to sympathize. Tried to care. “The job’s a struggle for me,” he’d told his minister. “Sometimes it’s easier to just apathize.”

“Apathize? Is that a word?”

“It is now.”

From boyhood, Turney had wanted to help others. Wanted to save the day. Be a hero. He’d worked out in the ring. Read Tarzan books beneath the bedcovers. With a little help from his mom’s liquor cabinet, he’d even found a way to feel larger than life. But when push came to shove, he had failed in his role. Let that snake stare him down. Lost a baby. He should’ve pulled that cop’s gun and stood guard. Stopped anyone from steppin’ foot through that hospital-room door.

And as a grown man, where had he been when Milly needed him?

He’d earned his badge and the privilege of driving a car with a siren and spinning lights, but it did her little good. Maybe if he’d been there at the scene …

“Daydreaming again?”

“Chief.” Turney straightened in his seat.

Chief Braddock stiff-armed the door shut, rattling partitions on three sides. “You drop off that Josee girl back at the Van der Bruegges?”

“Not yet. Swung by here to pick up her friend’s stuff.” Turney hid a grimace.

“Well, let’s talk about her, shall we?”

“Can it wait, sir? I’ve got her sittin’ out by the car.”

“You know who she is, don’t you? Don’t tell me you haven’t put two and two together. You wrote the report. You marked down her birth date. This is your big chance. The girl’s here in town again, and look whose arms she’s come running to.”

“Jumpin’ to conclusions. That’s not the way it’s been.”

“Oh, it’s not? Listen, Sarge”—the chief hooked his thumbs into his belt buckle—”I’m happy for you. Don’t you back off the way you usually do. No. Let fate play its hand here and get back in the ring. Let’s see ol’ Thunder Turney go a couple of rounds. Put this behind you, grow up, and maybe you’ll have a shot at taking my position someday. ‘Chief Turney.’ You’d love to see me retire. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t.”

“Sir, what makes you so sure that Josee’s the same kid?”

“Besides the obvious? Well, let’s tick off the facts—”

“Can we play this game later?” Turney pushed himself from his desk. Cupped his arm. “If you don’t mind, I gotta get out there.”

“Katherine Davies. Remember that name?”

Turney lurched. The lady who’d been shot years ago. The baby’s mother.

“You want confirmation of Josee’s identity? Well, there it is. I’m handing it to you on a platter. Ask her the name of her birth mother. Then, while you’re at it, ask her what her mother’s married name is now. The lady’s shortened her first name, but you’ll recognize it. She’s a prominent philanthropist, a respected community member.”

“Chief—”

“Ms. Davies got married soon after that ugly incident. Did you know that? Or doesn’t a nine-year-old kid read the wedding announcements? Ms. Davies is now Mrs. Kara Davies Addison.”

“As in Addison Ridge Vineyards? Those Addisons? They don’t have children.”

“Why do you think Josee’s here, Sarge? A reunion—that’s what it is. Except we have a problem. Lansky and Graham found Kara Addison’s vehicle this morning, a heap of metal at the bottom of a ravine. No sign of her. They’re pulling in Mr. Addison to ask some questions.” Braddock dropped a file on the desk. “Read all about it.”

Turney shook his head. “Hold up. Why drag me into this?”

“Thought you’d like to keep abreast so you can mull it over with that imagination of yours. As for our little friend outside, I’ll leave it to you to break the news.”

Cross-legged on a strip of lawn beside the cruiser, Josee was filling her lungs with the scent of approaching rain. Even the blades of grass, infused with emerald luminescence, seemed to breathe it in. A seagull floated across the darkening sky, and Josee decided a squall must be headed inland; as a girl, she’d learned that gulls in the valley indicated stormy weather from the Pacific.

Hope you’re somewhere safe, Scoot. Somewhere nice and warm
.

Time for her prescription. As good a time as any.

With a saved chunk of Subway bread to help it down, she tapped a red capsule into her hand. She noted her vial was running low. Refill orders were shipped special delivery to her through a medical courier. This month’s order had failed to arrive before her trip south. Would it be there when she went back to Washington? Without it, something as minor as a bruised heel could have serious consequences. She would bleed internally. She could bleed to death.

Tunka-tunk-tunk … hsss!

Behind her, a horn blared and tires squealed. Had someone blown a tire? She whipped around. Cars were streaming through a yellow signal, and an elderly couple in a Dodge Duster sat trapped in the intersection, afraid to turn, afraid to reverse.

Tunka-hssss … tunka-tunk-tunk
.

The noise irritated Josee. She saw no sign of a damaged tire or collision, no explanation for the sound that seemed within arm’s reach.

In the warmth of her palm, the gel capsule was turning soft.

Ignore the noise. Just stick to your routine
.

Josee had hemophilia. She had read of others with similar conditions; nearly a century ago, young Alexei, the son of Russian Czar Nicholas II, had almost died from a standard nosebleed. Josee knew that her particular type of disorder had stumped the professionals. As with the other four hundred hemophiliac babies born each year across the country, her blood lacked essential clotting proteins. To further complicate her condition, she had developed inhibitors in utero that blocked the activities of clotting treatments such as recombinant factor VIII.

The doctors had tried everything. Only with constant blood transfusions
had she been able to function with some safety and normalcy. State funds and foster homes handed her around like the damaged material she knew she was.

Then, after her ninth birthday, a local specialist had offered her and her newly adoptive parents an experimental treatment—one final transfusion plus concentrated capsules to regenerate daily the protein-rich blood that would pump through her veins.

Just like that, a new world had opened before her.

For the first time, Josee Walker was able to affix fresh pages in her vandalized scrapbook of memories, writing new captions to cover the past. Lights and needles, probes and scalpels—they were history. She felt big and reborn, no longer a damaged child with blood that ran thin as water through her veins, no longer a mistake rejected by nature, by biological parents and foster homes, by twisted fate. She was a girl who could now play with kids who had always been bigger, stronger, and less likely to bruise and bleed to death. She was a very grown-up nine-year-old with a vial of gel capsules that tasted like metal-tinged blood.

“Just one pill?” she had confirmed. “That’s all?”

“One each day, Josee.” Her adoptive father had smiled at her wonderment. “Take it with some bread, something to absorb it and ease your tummy. Soon it’ll be second nature. But of course we’ll be here to remind you.”

“Do I have to go, you know, back to that place anymore?”

“The clinic? Your days there are over.”

“No more transfusions?”

“No more. Nope, Josee, that was it.”

With arms stiff at her sides, she leaned into his embrace and let tears spread over his shirt. She tried to lift her arms around his middle, but her arms had never learned that maneuver. Hugs were not part of her repertoire. Maybe with time.

Now on the grass, amid traffic sounds and exhaust fumes, Josee clutched the capsule in her hand and hoped her adoptive parents weren’t too worried about her. She’d given them more than their share of grief. Wasn’t really their fault she left when she did—she knew that at this point, accepted responsibility—but it’d broken their hearts. She’d seen it in their eyes, heard it in their voices.

The prescription.
One each day, Josee … We’ll be here to remind you
.

She reached for the bread crust, lifted the capsule. These were her elements of survival. Like the elements of communion, the Lord’s Table … His broken body. His spilled blood.