Fresh Kills (29 page)

I had my weapon. It might not be made of metal or capable of blowing a hole in his midsection, but it was going to work. It was going to work because Kyle Cheney's whole life was about being a good father to Erin and a good husband to Donna.

“Is that what you want?” I persisted. I had to keep my breathing shallow; the gun was lodged so deeply in my diaphragm that each breath hurt a little more. And with every word I said, I ran the risk of pushing him over the edge, of causing him to pull the trigger just to end the agony of listening to me.

“If you confess to both killings,” I said, swallowing hard against the utter depravity of my suggestion, “maybe we can keep Donna out of it. Maybe Erin can keep one parent.”

“Why should I? Why not just kill you and get it over—”

“Kyle, if you were going to kill me, I'd be dead fifteen minutes already,” I cut in, making my tone weary. Pretending there was no fear, only boredom. “You did it once, but you can't do it again. Not up close like this. And you can't live your whole life looking over your shoulder, wondering when someone's going to figure it all out. Betsy knows what you did; Doc at least knows you've got Adam, and he's probably got a damned good idea how you got him. Do you really think you can trust Doc to go to the wall for you and Donna?”

Kyle swallowed; the Adam's apple bounced in his skinny throat like an orange in an ostrich gullet. He was a funny-looking man, all angles and oversized parts: hair too sandy and thin; nose too sharp; knuckles huge knobs on his rough hands. But as he squinted into the white clouds, his face took on the look of a martyr about to die for his faith.

Being a good husband and father was the only thing Kyle lived for, the thing that made him a man. And I was playing on those feelings, using them to save my own skin.

And Adam's. I caressed the soft, vulnerable head and worked on that thought. I was saving Adam, not just myself.

Yeah. That made it all right. My stomach turned over as I realized I was working out a deal, plea-bargaining in a swamp to let a killer go free. And it wasn't just for Adam. I knew now that even if Kyle managed to pull the trigger and leave me for dead, he'd pick the baby up and find a way to keep him alive. So this deal wasn't for Adam, it was for me. And for Erin.

I swallowed hard and kept talking. “I can get you a good lawyer,” I continued, hoping my voice sounded more confident than I felt. “The best. Matt Riordan.” I had no right in the world to offer the services of Manhattan's highest-priced criminal attorney, but I decided it was about time Riordan did a little pro bono work. And if Kyle bought what I was saying, he'd be copping a plea to Amber and Scott's murders, not splashing the story on the front page with a trial, so Riordan wouldn't be spending too much of his expensive time on Kyle's defense.

And Donna would have to deal with Jerry Califana's inevitable lawsuit for custody of Erin, but at least the little girl would have one parent she could count on.

I'd taken this adoption because I had a need to save a child, to atone for Rojean's children.

For a long time, I thought the child I was destined to save was Adam Greenspan.

Now I knew it was Erin Cheney.

I stood for what seemed like a long time, waiting for Kyle's reply. Waiting to find out if I was going to be dispatched to a bloody, watery grave, or if I'd walk out of the swamp with a confessed murderer in tow.

At last, Kyle lowered the gun. He took a long look at it, then lifted his sinewy arm and threw it as hard as he could into the heart of the swamp. He turned to me, despair on his face.

“Do you think they'll let me see her one more time? Say good-bye?” His voice broke on the last word.

“We'll go back to Betsy's,” I promised. “We can call Detective Aronson from there.”

And we did. The good father walked next to me, his hand cradling my arm. He made no sound, but tears glinted on his face, making crystal tracks like snail residue on the acned cheeks.

Then the rain started and washed away the tracks.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-ONE

Her name was Miranda.
Oh, brave new world, that has such people in it
! And now the world had a new person, courtesy of Mickey Dechter.

I carried a copy of
Goodnight Moon
in one hand and a bouquet of lilacs in the other—peace offerings; tributes to lay at the feet of the newborn goddess.

But as I mounted the steps to the hospital doors, other children followed behind, their sorrowful eyes unblinking, unforgiving. Erin Cheney, her blue eyes accusing, looking so like Amber's in her rosy face, asked, “Where are you taking my daddy?” Tonetta Glover, deep brown eyes wide with terror, begged, “No bath, Mommy.” They followed me up the stairs and into the elevator, on the way to greet Mickey's new miracle, Miranda.

I had no right to be here. That was the message the ghost children sent to me with their troubled eyes.

If I'd had a daughter, would I have done what Kyle Cheney did? Would I have killed for her?

I didn't know. I'd never taken the test.

My steps slowed as I approached the room number the woman at the reception desk had given me. Part of me wanted to turn and run home, to hide my face.

Sleeping Beauty. I thought about Sleeping Beauty, about how at the christening party all the good fairies brought her gifts. And then the Black Fairy swept in, all clouds and portents, and gave her the “gift” that would put her in a coma for one hundred years. I was afraid Mickey would look at me with the same horrified face Sleeping Beauty's mother must have shown the Black Fairy on that christening day.

I squared my shoulders and stepped into the double room. One bed was empty; the woman on the other bed looked up from her magazine and gave me a two-word message: “Sun room,” she said, then went back to her article on “Breastfeeding Today.”

I thanked her with a nod and hastened back into the corridor.

There was still time; I could leave before Mickey saw me. I could take my dark cloud away and not cast a shadow over mother and child in the sun room.

And not see Miranda? Not greet the child I'd felt kicking in my friend's swollen belly? Not make peace with the woman who'd been my friend and partner, the heart to my brain?

This wasn't about me; it was her day, her milestone. Hers and Miranda's.

I turned my feet in the direction of the sign that said, “Sun Room” and tried to compose my face in delight mode.

Once in the doorway, gazing at Madonna and child, backlit by strong afternoon sun, my expression became real, delight became real.

She was breastfeeding. One corner of her terry robe was pushed back discreetly; the baby sucked at a brown-pink tit, with lips that pushed in and out with the regularity of a metronome.

She didn't see me; her eyes gazed down at the tiny bundle of hunger and need. Her face wore the rapturous expression of Madonnas everywhere. I carefully set the flowers and book on the carpet and swung the camera around my neck up to shooting position.

The first shot gave me away; the click of the shutter, then the whir of the automatic film advance. Mickey turned and gave me a slow welcoming smile; I took a second picture, then a third. I moved in closer; I knelt and shot Miranda at eye-level, loving the way the sun caressed her damask cheek, marveling at the tiny eyelashes like feathers, at the button nose. Essence of baby: that was what my photographs would convey.

I took a close-up of the tiny hand, waving in the air, backlit by golden sun, the fingerprints outlined in relief. Miranda kicked her miniature foot; I focused on that, aware that what I'd probably get would be a peach-colored blur.

She closed her eyes and the lips stopped working. Mickey gently eased her breast out of the baby's mouth and closed her robe. She cuddled Miranda close to her, resting the wobbly little head on her shoulder and giving the fragile-looking back a hefty pat to bring up the burps.

The sound made us both laugh; it could have come from an overweight alderman with a cigar stuck in his face, it was so loud.

“God, she's amazing,” I said, meaning it even as I realized it could be said of all babies, not just this one.

But Mickey didn't mind. “I can't believe she's really here,” she said. “That she's really mine. That they're going to let me take her home and keep her forever.”

I lifted the camera and took another shot. Mother and child: Mickey's face glowing with pride and joy, Miranda sleeping the deep trustful sleep of very new life.

“Oh,” I said, recalling my duties as a visitor, “I brought you stuff.” I walked back to the doorway and retrieved my flowers and book. “I hope you don't already have six copies of this,” I said, handing her the bedtime classic.

“Thanks,” Mickey said, taking it with her free hand. “It's hard to imagine Miranda being old enough to read to, but—”

“But it will happen before you know it,” I finished. I felt awkward, as though clichés and banalities were the only proper conversation under these circumstances, as though the only way I could be sure I'd left my black cloud outside was to position my camera between me and my feelings.

I turned away, my face betraying me. I couldn't look at the radiant pair, illuminated like medieval saints by the golden light of the afternoon sun.

The Black Fairy had outstayed her welcome. I turned to go.

“Cass?” Mickey called softly.

“Yeah?” I replied without looking back.

“You did it,” she said. “You found the missing baby, and you found out who killed your client.”

I nodded. I didn't want to talk about it, especially with Mickey. She'd hated the adoption from the beginning, and now she'd been more than proved right.

“Who has the baby?”

“Josh and Ellie,” I replied. “The adoptive parents.”

“I'm glad.”

“Me, too.”

“What about the other child?” she persisted. “Amber's first baby, the one she pretended was dead.”

“Erin,” I said. It seemed important to give the little girl her name. Her adopted name; Jerry Califana still thought of her as Laura, but it was as Erin that I'd made her acquaintance.

“Erin's with her mother,” I replied. “But she and Jerry, the birth father, are talking about a visitation schedule. Jerry could upset the whole adoption, but so far he's willing to go slow, to let Erin get used to the idea that she has another daddy.”

I took a deep breath and went on to the hard part. “Kyle's in jail, of course. Riordan's trying to get a plea to man one, fifteen to life, but the D.A.'s holding out for murder, at least as to Amber. They might go to man two on Scott, but—”

I broke off; the details of the plea bargain were too depressing to contemplate. Manslaughter or murder, Kyle was going to be away from his wife and child for a long, long time. He wouldn't see his daughter play an angel in the Christmas pageant, wouldn't take her to Great Adventure and watch her pet the llama, wouldn't bandage her skinned knees or take the training wheels off her bike or help her with her homework. Hell, he'd be lucky if he made it to her high school graduation. He'd see her through a mesh curtain, talk to her on a security phone, write her letters that would be read by wardens.

I heard a sigh as soft as a summer breeze. “I can understand why he did it,” Mickey said. “If someone came five years from now and tried to take Miranda away from me, I'd—”

“You'd kill two people?” Even as I asked the question, I protected Kyle's secret, maintaining the fiction that he, not Donna, had driven the van that struck Scott's cycle.

Mickey thought about it. “I can understand what that couple was feeling,” she said at last. “How vulnerable you are when you have a child to think about.”

“Were Kyle and Donna Cheney thinking about their child?” I asked, posing the question I hadn't answered for myself. “Or were they protecting their own role as parents? Did they kill for Erin, or to keep their precious little doll?”

I took a deep, ragged breath. “Scott Wylie may have been scum,” I pronounced. “No, I amend that. He was scum. But he was killed for nothing; he wasn't Erin's father. He was killed because Amber, trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the Cheneys, passed him off as the father. If Kyle had known Jerry Califana was the real father of his child, he'd have headed off to Tottenville and wasted him instead. And Jerry is a guy who loved his daughter, just like Kyle. So where does it stop? Is there anything you draw the line at doing in the name of your child?”

The sweet Madonna voice, tartened. “I don't remember saying what Kyle did was okay, just that I understood why he did it.”

“Point taken,” I said with a quick nod, as though this were a legal debate without a trace of emotional content. I steeled myself for the next logical follow-up: that I couldn't possibly understand because I'd never given birth.

But that's not what Mickey said. She gazed at Miranda's downy head and leaned over, brushing her lips against the light brown fuzz. “I love her so much,” she said, “and we've just met. I can't imagine what it would be like to face losing her after five years.”

“Four years and eight months,” I amended, recalling the red-haired child who'd told me her age in Betsy's painted driveway.

I looked at Miranda, sleeping peacefully, making little gurgly grunts and shifting herself in Mickey's arms, waving her tiny feet in the air, then nestling into Mickey's breast.

e.e. cummings crept into my soul again:

a world of made is not a world of born

And Mickey held a world of born in her strong, loving arms.

For me, there would always only be the world of made.

Mickey gave first me then Miranda a shy glance. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked.

I nodded; I couldn't speak. I reached out my arms and let them be filled by a world of born, a world I could never live in, but would be privileged to visit once in a while.