“Marty, I think your worries are unfounded. Hope knows that you are not remotely, in any way, anything like her ex-husband. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. She may not be the type that needs the whole ritual wedding thing, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to be totally committed. Maybe she’s afraid that talking about it will scare you off.”
“Maybe,” he said, stretching his legs out again. “It’s just that she seems real comfortable the way things are, me spending a few nights and weekends with her and living with my father the rest of the time.”
He turned his eyes downward before continuing. “Actually, that is a dilemma for me, as well. I don’t like the thought of the Captain living by himself again, even though he keeps telling me to take the plunge and move in with Hope.”
I took my hand off the wheel and gently punched his shoulder with my fist. “The Captain is quite capable of tending to his own self, Marty. He’s a grown man. Besides, it’s not like you would be that far apart. How long does it take you to get to the Captain’s from Hope’s? Fifteen, twenty minutes?”
He made a face, pretending that my punch caused his pain. “I know, but I’ve worried ever since that fall he had, when he lay there all day with a broken hip. That wouldn’t have happened if I was living at home.”
I couldn’t tell if he was trying to convince himself or me.
***
We reached our destination and pulled into the driveway of a run-down red brick ranch house. The front bay window had black tar smeared across the top where there must have been a leak. The wooden white frame windows desperately needed painting. A street light lit up the area like it was daylight and everything was visible, even though night had fallen. A red tricycle lay on its side next to a broken-down push mower. The lawn was in desperate need of mowing.
I turned to him as I shut off the motor. “Marty, life happens. You need to live your life and stop worrying about your father. I know that’s what he wants for you.”
I exited the car and met him on the other side. We walked a narrow red brick pathway that matched the exterior of the house. The glow of a television flashing dark and then light could be seen through the bay window.
As we got closer, I could hear the sound of children playing inside the house. I recalled the file I had gotten on Dylan. Dylan and his two siblings, a two-year-old girl and ten-year-old boy, lived with their widowed mother and grandmother. Dylan’s father, a decorated Marine, had been killed in action the day his two-year-old daughter was born.
I rang the doorbell and immediately recognized the sound of a young child running to the door as if in a race. “I’ll get it!” a boy’s voice hollered out.
I heard a voice of authority yell for him not to open the door, but the kid either didn’t hear or chose not to heed the warning.
When the door was opened, a wide-eyed boy stood there with his mouth agape. From the expression on his face, I assumed he was expecting someone else.
“What did I tell you, Griffin? Didn’t I tell you never to answer the door without asking who it was?” The woman, who I guessed was the grandmother, grabbed the boy by his arm and gave it a tug. “Now go get ready for bed, and brush your teeth!”
The boy took one more good look at the Marty and me, and with an abundance of reluctance, walked away.”
The woman turned her attention back to us.
“Can I help you?” she looked at us with suspicion.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but we would like to have a word with Dylan. Is he home?” I told her, as I tried to scan the room behind her.
“And you are?” her hand remained on the door as if she would be ready to slam it shut.
“I’m sorry, I’m Detective Whitley, and this is Detective Keal. May we come in?”
She looked us both over carefully. I took out my badge and showed it to her. She examined it and seemed satisfied. She took her hand off the door and backed up so we could enter.
“Are you Dylan’s mother?” I asked her.
“No, I am his grandmother. The police were already here, asking for Dylan. What’s this about? This about that girl that got killed?” She sounded more suspicious than curious.
Another voice came from inside the house.
“Mama, what is it? Who’s here?”
A very pretty woman with short, dark hair, a younger version of the older one, came rolling out in a wheelchair. A toddler lay across her lap, in the beginning of slumber, eye half closed, her mouth making slow sucking motions from a bottle. Her little fingers were wrapped around a blanket that hung from her mother’s shoulder.
She rolled to a stop right behind the grandmother and looked up at Marty and me, her face contorted in a state of complete panic.
“Mama? What is it? Is it Dylan, Mama?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Silver, I apologize if our visit has caused you any concern. We came here to talk to Dylan. I understand he isn’t home?”
“No, Dylan didn’t come home,” the older woman answered. “It’s really not like him. He knows we worry about him. He’s a good boy, but sometimes he goes off and wants to be by himself. He’s got a lot on his plate.” She spoke affectionately of her grandson.
“How long has it been since he was home, Mrs. Silver?” I looked down to the boy’s mother.
“What do you want with Dylan? Why are you here?” The lady maneuvered the wheelchair so she could see us better.
“Can you tell us the last time you saw Dylan, Mrs. Silver?” I asked again.
“Look, what is this about? My grandson is a good boy,” the older woman interjected. She was practically jeering at me until the baby, who was becoming jittery and started to cry in her mother’s arms, took her attention away.
The older woman immediately took the baby from her daughter’s arms. She rocked the little girl and turned away as if dismissing us. She left the room with the baby, leaving Dylan’s mother to deal with us.
“Please, can you tell me what this is about? Dylan hasn’t been home in two days. It just isn’t like him to stay away this long. He did call me this morning, told me he was fine, and that I shouldn’t worry.” It was obvious she wasn’t paying her son’s words any attention. Worry was written all over the woman’s face.
“Does this have something to do with the girl that got murdered?” Her voice took on some urgency.
“Why do you ask that, Mrs. Silver?” I questioned her.
“I know they went to the same school, and I think I recognized her name. I asked Dylan and he said that he knew her, that they were friends. He sounded very upset that she had died.”
“Did Dylan tell you he was the one who drove the girls up to the woods that night, Mrs. Silver? Did he tell you he was one of the kids that found her body?” Marty asked her.
I noticed her hands were turning white as she gripped the metal frame of her wheelchair tires.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I know my son and he wouldn’t hurt anyone.” She stopped and thought about it for a few seconds and then qualified her answer. “Well, he certainly wouldn’t hurt a girl.”
“Well, we would like to be able to talk to him Mrs. Silver, so Dylan can tell us himself what happened. Right now, it isn’t looking so good for him, so he needs to come into the police station and talk to us.”
“Detective, My Dylan would not hurt that girl or any other girl,” the woman insisted. “I can promise you that. If my son Dylan has gone off, it’s because he needed to think. He has always done that, ever since he was a little boy. He has a tendency to take off, and I guess you can call it ‘meditate.’ When he was too little to leave the house, he would climb up on the roof and just stare at the stars and daydream. I can promise you that Dylan isn’t trying to avoid you, detective, he is just off somewhere trying to figure things out.” She spoke defensively.
I handed her my card.
“Please have him come in or call me as soon as you hear from him, Mrs. Silver. Like I said before, this is not the time for him to pull a disappearing act to think.” I put an emphasis on the word “think.”
“It’s doesn’t look good for him. A young girl is dead, and your son may be able to give us information we need. I’m going to give him till tomorrow morning to show up or call me, or I’m going to have the judge sign a warrant for his arrest. Do you understand?”
She nodded a reply and didn’t say anything more. She maneuvered the wheelchair again so she was able to shut the door when Marty and I turned and walked out of the house.
Chapter Nine
I was just pulling up to Hope’s driveway to drop Marty off when the call came in. I knew that he must have overheard the dispatcher, because he grabbed the blue globe, positioned it on the dash, and hit the siren.
“What the hell?”
I just shook my head in disbelief. There was no way that this was happening. A couple of men stopping at the side of the road to take a leak stumbled across a Jane Doe in the woods, not far from the Forester house. She was barely alive, her face badly burnt. She was being transported to St Katherine’s Hospital. I backed the car out of the driveway and the tires squealed. I took off in the direction of the hospital.
I pushed the speed-dial on my cell and it rang twice before Glenn answered.
“I thought you would be home by now, Jean.” I sensed a bit of attitude.
“I know—me too. Where’s Bethany?” I tried not to sound anxious.
“She’s holed up in her room, why?”
“Are you sure? Go check!” I demanded.
“Yes, I’m sure. What’s going on, Jean?” Now he was sounding a bit anxious himself.
“We’re on our way to St. Katherine’s. Another girl’s been hurt. Can you just go upstairs and check on her? Please. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’m sorry, Glenn.”
“Do you know who it is? Someone from Bethany’s school?” he asked.
“No, right now it’s a Jane Doe; that’s why I need you to just pacify me and make sure she’s in her room.”
The traffic light ahead was amber. I hit the accelerator, causing Marty’s head to snap back. I threw him a look of apology.
I heard silence for a few seconds, and then he said something that caused all my anxiety and fears to leave my body.
“I can hear her stomping around upstairs, she’s there, unless Roxy is wearing boots.” I could tell that even with the slight humor in his answer, he sounded relieved.
I pulled into St. Katherine’s and parked in a No Parking Zone behind an empty ambulance. I quickly got off the phone with Glenn, and Marty and I marched into the ER.
Doctors and nurses were running around like someone had stepped on a fire-ant mound. Off to the side, with his back towards us, a familiar looking uniformed officer, was standing by the nurse’s desk, doing some paperwork.
“You want to fill us in?” Marty asked when he caught his friend Justin’s attention.
Justin
pointed to a couple of gentlemen who appeared to be in their early thirties.
“They had a few beers and needed to take a leak, so they pulled over to the side of the road. The taller one claims that he tripped over her and fell into some brush. Claims that’s how he got those scratches on him. She was just lying there, half-naked like the other one, her face badly burnt using some sort of accelerant, barely alive. They called 911, and Beck and I got there about the same time as the ambulance.”
I was about to go talk to the two gentlemen who made the call when one of the attending physicians walked over to us.
“Do we know who she is yet? I need to have her transported to the Burn Unit at Cornell. We’re just not equipped to treat her here,” he said, more frustrated than apologetic. “She’s unconscious and in critical condition, but those burns require immediate attention. We would like to have parental authorization if possible.”
Justin
walked over, his cell phone in hand. “See if she has a scar on her abdomen from an appendectomy. We got a call last night about a missing teenager… Kimberly Weston, age sixteen.”
He handed me the phone. Displayed in the window was the image of a beautiful raven-haired teenage girl. I recognized the girl immediately. She was one of the girls in Father Murphy’s youth group at the church. The doctor walked back to the room the girl occupied, quickly pulling the drape that enclosed the cubicle. He spoke to one of the nurses, who was in the process of applying some sort of salve to the girl’s skin. He didn’t say anything when he turned back around, he just nodded. We now had a name for our Jane Doe.
Marty and Justin took off in Justin’s patrol car to inform the girl’s parents. I was left to interview the two men with the bladder problems. Their story seemed to hold water and left me satisfied that they weren’t culpable for the girl’s condition, but I had them give all their information to one of the other uniformed officers that had responded to the call.
I was just finishing up with them when the attending physician came back out. I stopped him and asked the doctor whether Kimberly had any other injuries.
“Nothing that stands out,” he informed me. “Her pupils are dilated, and I’m concerned that she may have been under the influence of something. I need to know if she has anything in her system so I ordered up a blood work and a tox screen. I haven’t gotten the preliminary results back yet, but I would make an educated guess that she has some sort of drug in her system. There doesn’t appear to be any other obvious injuries, no.”
A familiar voice called out my name. Father Murphy was racing over to me.
“Jean, how is she? Marty called and told me to get down here. He’s on his way with her parents.” The priest could barely catch his breath. Apparently, he had run from the parking lot, and he wasn’t as in good a shape as he looked.
I pulled him aside to allow medical personal to get in and out of Kimberly’s room.
“She’s alive, Father, and they are going to airlift her to Cornell as soon as her parents arrive. They don’t have the facilities to care for her injuries here.”
“What in the good Lord’s name is going on here, Jean? Why would someone do this?” He ran his hand through his hair as he took a deep breath.
“How well do you know her, Father? Do you know if she was friends with that other girl, Jamie?” I led him out of the ER and into a small waiting area. There were a few people seated, waiting for medical attention or with others that required attention.
I walked the padre over to a small bench that was unoccupied and we sat down.
He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t remember, I’m not sure. Maybe. Oh sweet, Jesus.” He sat back, leaning his head against the wooden bench and stretching out his legs. He rubbed his thighs as if massaging out a cramp.
“We have a few different groups, sometimes they overlap. I think the girls must have known each other, but I don’t recall if they were friends.” His hands patted his pockets as if he was looking for something. He pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. “I need a cigarette,” he said, continuing to pat his jacket. “I seem to have misplaced my lighter.” His voice was brittle and sober. “Maybe it’s a sign it’s time to give it up.”
He looked up when he heard the clatter of multiple feet rushing toward us.
Kimberly
’s mother, an older version of the photograph I was shown of Kimberly, was approaching us, a look of pure panic on her face. Quickly following behind her was her husband, who was holding a small child dressed in pajamas and wrapped in a pink cotton blanket. The little girl was sucking hard on her thumb, her index finger bent over her nose. Her father’s hand was holding the child against him so his movement would not cause the little girl’s head to bang relentlessly against his shoulder. Behind him, another child, a boy about twelve years old, fought to catch up.
“My daughter… someone said my daughter was brought in. Please, can someone help me?” The woman had stopped in the middle of the room, not knowing in which direction she should go, and was shouting aimlessly.
Her eyes darted from each individual in the room until her eyes rested on Father Murphy. Recognizing him immediately, she covered her mouth and let out a muffled scream.
He immediately got up and walked over to her.
“No, no, she’s alive, Rita, she’s still alive.” He grabbed her hand and rubbed it. The woman looked at him, stone-faced, not knowing where to go, what to do.
It was her husband who spoke next.
“What happened? Can we see her?” He handed the little girl to her brother. The girl did not resist the changing of caretakers in the least. I flashed back on memories stored in my head of all the times I handed Bethany to her older brother Cliff, and how comfortable she felt in her big brother’s arms.
Someone must have notified the doctor that Kimberly’s parents had arrived, because he came out and pulled them off to the side. He explained what was happening and obtained their authorization for additional treatment. Before he left the room, he gave them a stark warning of how horribly she had been hurt and what to expect.
Father Murphy
made his way over to the boy, who now was shifting the little girl’s weight from one arm to the other. He didn’t say a word to him, he just put his hand on the boy’s shoulder in a sign of support.
It wasn’t long before the victim’s parents were brought back into the waiting room. Someone obviously pointed me out, because the girl’s mother marched immediately over to me.
“Who did this? Who did this to my beautiful baby girl? Did you see what they did to my baby?”
She spoke through gritted teeth, her nostrils flaring.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Weston, at the moment we don’t know who did this. Our best hope is that when (and I emphasized the word when) Kimberly regains consciousness she can identify the perpetrator. Believe me, I want to put away this bastard just as much as you do.”
“Is this the same person that killed Jamie Camp?” Kimberly’s father asked me.
He had taken the little girl from her brother and was holding on to the child, as if to protect her from this unknown danger that was still lurking. I knew that if this were my husband, Glenn, he would be consumed with guilt, feeling that he had failed to protect his daughter. I guessed that it was the same emotion that Mr. Weston was now feeling.
Marty walked over to us and turned to Mr. Weston.
“Mr. Weston, Officer Beck has the weekend off,” he told the girl’s father as he pointed to the petite female officer. “She has offered to drive you and your family up to Cornell so you can be with your daughter. She can stay as long as you like, and then, when Kimberly regains consciousness, she can be there to interview her. Would that be all right?”
The attending doctor came out and informed us that preliminary tests showed that Kimberly did have an unknown substance in her blood system that was yet to be determined, but he hoped that she would overcome the unconscious state she was now in. However, he wasn’t willing to make a prognosis this early.
After a few minutes of deliberation and coordination, the family decided to take Officer Beck up on her kind offer. Just as they were walking out the automatic glass doors, I called out her name. “Wait, Officer Beck!”
The group stopped.
I ran over to Kimberly’s mom. Her husband continued into the parking lot.
“Mrs. Weston, was your daughter a friend of Jamie Camp?”
The woman was trembling. It took a moment to gather her thoughts and get the words out. I waited patiently as I held one of the glass doors so it wouldn’t shut.