Cold Case--A Jeff Resnick Mystery (2 page)

“
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 yellowing 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of outdated skim milk, half a loaf of sliced white bread, a sagging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.

“
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. 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.”

“
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, 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.

“
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 house dress 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. 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. “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.”

She held her ground.

Richard brushed past me, crossed the room in
three steps. His eyes bored into hers and she backed down, moving
aside. The freezer door swung open. A heavy, black plastic garbage
bag filled the space. He worked on the twist tie, pulled back the
plastic. His breath caught 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.”

* * * * *

Breathing shallowly, I sat back against the
lumpy couch, 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 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.

I squinted up at him. “Yeah. Assure my
privacy—don’t give the press my name. The last thing I want is
publicity.”

“
Okay, but answer me this; how’d you
know?”

“
I don’t know how it works, it just
does.”

“
The old lady waived her rights. Said
she heard Ms. Devlin had signed a new two-year lease and decided
she’d had enough of the noise. She lured the kid up here and made
him quiet—permanently.”

“
And the chocolate milk?” Richard asked
me.

“
The lure of a forbidden treat. Mrs. J
ground up sleeping pills, had him drink it,” I said. “When he was
dopey, she planned to smother him.”

I thought about it—remembered what I’d seen
when I’d touched her. Fury gave her the strength to hold the boy,
who’d struggled in those last minutes. She’d sealed his nose and
mouth with a wad of freshly pressed linen dish towels, pinning him
against the floor until his body slackened, his small chest no
longer heaving. Then she’d heard Paula Devlin frantically calling
for her son. Anna Jarowski sat beside the dead boy for a long
time—triumphant in the knowledge she’d finally silenced her
intolerably noisy neighbor.

I looked up at Brewer. “I take it you haven’t
searched the place yet.”

“
Call me paranoid, but I’m waiting for
a warrant. No way do I want this thrown out on a
technicality.”

“
You’ll find what’s left of the
tricycle in one of the closets. She’s got a hacksaw. Been cutting
it up and sneaking it out in the trash for the past eight
months.”

Dr. Marsh elbowed her way through the crowd
in the kitchen. She’d been gone about an hour—breaking the news to
the boy’s mother, no doubt.

“
How’s Paula?” Richard
asked.

“
I gave her a sedative. Now that her
mother’s here, I think she’ll be all right.” She looked at me. “How
are you, Jeff?” Her icy veneer had melted, her best bedside manner
now firmly in place.

“
Sick.”

“
But you’ve got to feel good about what
you’ve done.”

I frowned. “I made two women miserable. Why
would that make me feel good?”

She seemed puzzled by my answer, but I didn’t
have the energy to explain it to her. “Dr. Marsh, you said another
psychic came here—what did she tell Paula?”

“
That the boy was well and living in a
small town down South, anxious to be back home with his
mother.”

Poor Paula.

“
You need me anymore?” I asked the
detective.

He shook his head. “Go home before you keel
over.”

I glanced at my brother. “Now would be a good
time, Rich.”

I moved on shaky legs. Richard and Dr. Marsh
steadied me on the stairs. We ducked under the crime scene tape and
they pushed me through the throng of press as we headed for
Richard’s Lincoln Town Car.