Angel Interrupted (31 page)

I knew how that felt, for sure.

Maggie was staring at Fletcher. He misread her look. “I sound bitter and petty, don’t I?” he said.

“No,” she assured him. “It’s not that. It’s just that I saw her in action yesterday, with some of her patients. I was waiting to talk to her in a playroom near the nurse’s station. A little girl was there, drawing with crayons. She was precious, but very ill, I think. She made me a picture. It was lovely. She drew me a house by a lake with flowers and shrubs everywhere. And a little boy who lived in the house. She was telling me about it when your wife came in. She sent the little girl off with a nurse without so much as a smile because the girl had missed her radiation appointment. She seemed so angry at the child. I thought it was cold.”

“And that story shows the difference between the two of you,” Fletcher said. “You were in that ward for how long? Ten minutes? And you got presented with a picture some child lovingly drew for you? Serena has been there twelve years and she’s never even brought home one memento. She probably throws them in the trash when she does get them. While I bet you put yours up on the refrigerator when you got home, didn’t you?” He smiled. “That says a lot about you.”

Maggie laughed. “Actually, I put the picture in Fiona Harker’s case file.
That
says a lot about me.”

Fletcher smiled. “Good luck explaining that in court.”

“Yes, I will have to come up with a good reason why a map of a house by a lake is relevant to . . .” Maggie’s voice trailed off and I could feel words connecting to ideas and then forming thoughts, tumbling through her brain in a millisecond. She made the connection. Then she discarded it. Then she made the connection again.

Come on, Maggie
, I willed her.
Have a little faith. Have a little faith in me. Have a little faith in those things you cannot see.

She stood abruptly. Fletcher looked alarmed. “I have to go,” she said.

“You have to go?”

“Now.” She glanced at him. “I can’t tell you anything more, but I have to go. I’ll send in someone to guard the gunshot victim’s room when he’s out of surgery. Can you clear that?”

“Sure,” Fletcher said. “But where are you going?”

“I can’t tell you. It would sound crazy anyway. I just have to go.”

By the time she hit the parking lot, Maggie was running. I was right behind her.

When Maggie is on a case, her determination manifests itself in velocity. Normally I enjoy it when she’s driving like a NASCAR star on methamphetamines. But that night, she was so preoccupied with the thoughts tumbling through her head that she forgot to turn on her running lights. We were passing people at double the speed limit and burning through red lights with no warning whatsoever. I had no fear for myself—I was already dead—but I wasn’t anxious for Maggie to join me. Not yet.

A particularly close call with a truck about five blocks from the hospital woke her from her reverie. She flipped on her lights, and I sat up tall and enjoyed the rush. My old partner and I had loved running with the lights on, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. We had pretty much peeled out for a run whenever the mood struck us, even if we were just going out for burgers and beer. I enjoyed it just as much with Maggie. We were on the move and, quite literally, it made me feel alive.

I wasn’t sure what she was rushing toward, but I knew it had something to do with the drawing I’d had the little girl in the cancer ward make for her. I was exultant. Elements of it had been tumbling through Maggie’s mind ever since she left the hospital: the blue-scribbled lake, the house, the little boy in blue shorts, the carefully outlined streets, even the little girl’s reference to a boy drinking water. Maggie knew it was crazy to be pinning her hopes on something so out-there; I could feel her hesitation. I also knew she had nothing to lose and nothing else to go on for at least four more hours. There was a chance she’d go for it.

The station house lobby was quiet. It was after midnight on a Saturday night, and the reception desk was dark. The sergeant on duty was probably in a back room eating a late-night lunch or taking advantage of the distraction on the floors above, where the Tyler Matthews task force toiled, to watch television. Then I noticed a lone figure draped over a chair in the lobby, his long arms and legs sprawled out to each side as he snored, head back.

It was Adrian Calvano.

Maggie spotted her partner and woke him. He struggled to an upright position, recognized Maggie, and looked vaguely ashamed.

“What the hell are you doing still here?” Maggie asked him. “Where’s IAD?”

“Don’t know,” Calvano mumbled, his New Jersey accent even more pronounced when he was caught in an unguarded state. “I’ve been here for three or four hours.” He looked confused. “What the hell time is it?”

“It’s almost two. Listen, Adrian, if IAD hasn’t shown up by now, they’re not coming until morning. Gonzales is just screwing with your head. He wants you to sweat it out all night. That’s your punishment.”

“I know,” Calvano said. He hunched over, looking miserable. “But he told me to stay here and I am.” He glanced up at Maggie. “I know you think I’m a joke. I know most of the guys on the force think I’m a joke, too, and that I just got my shield because my uncle pulled strings. But I like my job, Gunn. I know I’m a lousy detective. I’m not like you. You always seem to be one step ahead. I’m always running to catch up. But if I hang around with you long enough, maybe I’ll catch up a little. I want to be a detective. I want to be a good detective. I’m sick of being a joke. So if Gonzales says to stay here until IAD arrives, I’m going to do it.”

“Oh, Adrian.” Maggie sat in the chair next to his. “Gonzales would probably respect you a lot more if you didn’t act like his lapdog.”

“What would you do?”

“First tell me what’s going on upstairs,” she asked.

“For starters, I’ve been bounced.” He looked down at his empty holster. “Probably afraid I’d accidentally shoot Tyler Matthews if I did manage to find him. But some of the guys have been stopping by and updating me on their way out. You know what Colonel Vitek’s real name is? Howard McGrew. He’s some lifelong pervert who went off the radar in 1993, right after he got released from serving a stretch for abducting a little boy in Kansas. His DNA lit up CODIS like a Christmas tree, though. He molested enough victims to fill an elementary school.”

“But no one knows where he’s been living since 1993?” Maggie asked.

Calvano nodded. “Only if you follow his string of victims. He’s been moving around constantly. His whole being-in-the-Marines story was bullshit. Should have seen that one coming. But he really was in a car wreck. He didn’t have a wife and son, though, so they weren’t killed like he told everyone.” He shrugged. “About three years ago, him and another male named Cody Wells were part of a ten-car pile-up on a highway down in Florida. The Wells guy was driving and Vitek—or McGrew, or whatever his name is—got thrown from his vehicle because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and got hit by another car. That’s how he ended up in the wheelchair.”

“And Cody Wells?” Maggie asked. “The man driving?”

“That’s the same name as one of the KinderWatch volunteers. Martin put him at the top of his list of volunteers to look into. He’s also the one a lot of the other volunteers say was Vitek’s right-hand man. We’ve showed them some photos and they confirm it’s the guy I shot in the back.”

“Except Cody Wells probably isn’t his real name,” Maggie said glumly. “So knowing it isn’t going to do us any good.”

“Probably not, but they’re checking property under that name and running it through the system anyway. What else have we got to go on?”

“Anything come up after looking at the video files again?”

“Only that the mother flipped out when they brought her in to see the footage. She didn’t recognize anything about where her kid was being held, and she didn’t recognize the Wells dude when he was in the shot, but she did flip out when she saw her son and now she won’t leave the room. And I mean
she won’t leave.
They couldn’t pull her up from the table. She’s just sitting there, watching the video of her son over and over and no one can get her to budge. Everyone’s just working around her.”

“She needs to believe he’s alive,” Maggie explained. “She needs to see him.”

“Yeah, but the most recent video is from yesterday. She acts like it’s a live feed or something.”

“She has to,” Maggie said gently. “It must be terrible to see your child and not be able to go to him.” It was something Calvano would never have thought of, which was the reason he’d never be as good a detective as Maggie.

“She’s lucky he’s alive,” Calvano said. “You and I both know that’s a miracle. And lucky that he looks like he’s unharmed. You don’t want to know what the colonel did to the other little boys he took, at least until he landed in that wheelchair.”

“No, I don’t want to know,” Maggie agreed quickly. “Has Gonzales said anything to you? Asked you to help?”

“I’m dead to him,” Calvano explained. “He’s walked right past me twice without even looking my way.”

“He knows you’re sitting here. That’s the point.”

“Like I said, what other choice do I have?”

I could feel Maggie hesitating, wondering whether she should tell Calvano why she was there.

Come on, Mags
, I willed her.
Have a little faith in what you can’t see
.

“Gonzales ordered me to go home and get some sleep, but I’ve got a lead,” she finally said. I wanted to jig with joy. “More of an idea, really. Or a hunch. I need your help with it.”

She told Calvano about going to the hospital to question staff about Fiona Harker’s murder and about the little girl from the cancer ward who had come up to her and handed her a drawing. “She said she drew it just for me,” Maggie explained. “Then she said something like, ‘A little boy who is lost lives there and drinks from the lake.’”

“So?” Calvano asked. “She’s probably whacked out on drugs.”

“How did she know we were looking for a little boy?” Maggie asked. “She even included him as part of the drawing. He had curly brown hair like Tyler Matthews and was wearing blue shorts.”

Calvano shrugged. “Maybe she saw him on TV?”

“No way,” Maggie said. “They keep a close eye on them. I saw Disney DVDs, but they’re not letting them watch the nightly news.”

“Maybe her parents told her?” Calvano suggested.

“Because when your kid is dying from cancer, it’s so reassuring to talk about other little kids who’ve been kidnapped a few miles away?” Maggie asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, Gunn. Have it your way. Somehow she knew you were looking for the boy. What are you getting at?”

“I think the drawing is a clue.”

“Like what, a clue beamed from outer space?”

“Adrian,” Maggie said. “Have a little faith.”

“What do you mean?” Calvano asked. “You’re telling me that you, Miss Show Me the Money, is actually going to believe in spooky shit like that?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “I am. I’m going to go upstairs and get the drawing and show you. I’m telling you—it’s a map.”

“A map?” he asked skeptically.

“If I remember it right, it might be a map of the old reservoir. The one they built that neighborhood around about fifteen or twenty years ago. There are a lot of up-scale rental homes in that area. It would be the perfect place to hide Tyler Matthews.”

“How could a little girl who’s been living in a cancer ward on the other side of town know where Tyler Matthews was being held?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. “But on the KinderWatch webcam footage that Martin brought in, Peggy told me that Tyler Matthews was talking to someone no one else could see, offering him toys and calling him Pawpaw.”

“Which I heard the mother said was the kid’s name for his father, who’s dead as a doorknob, thanks to a roadside ambush in Iraq.”

Oh, that Calvano. Sensitive to the bone.

“Maybe Tyler
was
talking to his father,” Maggie said. “Maybe the father is the one who told the little girl. She’s dying. Maybe she sees things we don’t.”

Great. Even when Maggie figures out it was a ghost helping, I don’t get the credit—she gives it to
another
ghost. It was the story of my afterlife.

Calvano and Maggie were staring at each other, letting her words sink in. Then they both burst out laughing. “We sound like idiots,” Calvano said.

“Yeah, I know,” Maggie conceded. “But come on, Adrian—what have we got to lose? Neither one of us is supposed to be on the job right now. No one else is going to listen to us if we tell them this crazy story and, I’m telling you, the drawing looks exactly like a map. Wait here and I’ll show you.”

Calvano, who was too afraid to do anything but wait like Gonzales had told him, shrugged as Maggie raced to the elevator, as if trying to beat herself to the squad room before she changed her mind.