Hidden Crimes (14 page)

“Tell me,” she said, her large amber eyes
pleading. “Did you find a body?”

It was at this point that Nate’s interest
pricked. Maybe this stop wasn’t another waste of time. “Did you
recognize the child in the picture on WQSN?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “His name
is Joel Martin. I used to be his nanny.”

“You used to be,” Carmine said without making
it a challenge.

She nodded emphatically. “The Martins didn’t
have a lot of money, and they both worked. They had to hire goblin
childcare or none at all. Look.” She pointed to a wall of pictures
in mismatched frames. Silver duct tape affixed them at odd angles
to the chipped paint. “There I am rocking Joel’s cradle. He was a
sweet baby. No trouble to anyone.” She covered her mouth to hold
back a little sob. “Joel was always laughing. The silliest things
could make him giggle.”

Nate didn’t miss her use of the past tense.
Wanting to see her face when he asked his next question, he went
down on one knee in front of her. “Mrs. Erg,” he said, taking her
shoulder as if she were made of glass. “Why do you think Joel is
dead?”

“They didn’t appreciate him!” she blurted,
tears spilling from her snake-pupil eyes. “They were always taking
him to specialists, trying to get him fixed.”

“The Martins, you mean.”

“Yes. I’d hear them arguing about where
they’d get the money to try again. Once, Mr. Martin said he didn’t
know how much longer he could bear the shame. Joel was a good boy!
They were lucky to have him!”

She wiped her tear-streaked face, mumbling a
thank you
when Carmine handed her a Kleenex. To the squad’s
frequent amusement, his wife stuck a packet of them in his pocket
each morning.

Nate waited for Mrs. Erg to dry up enough to
speak. “What were the Martins ashamed of?”

“Joel couldn’t change,” she said, waving the
hand that held the tissue. “As if any sensible parent wants a child
who turns into an animal. No offense,” she added, belatedly
remembering to whom she was speaking.

Carmine let out a quiet snort, but Nate was
too intent to take offense. “Mrs. Erg, what sort of shifters were
the Martins?”

“Foxes,” she said as if it ought to be
obvious. “Werefox children change very young.”

Nate rose and rubbed one finger across his
mouth. Mrs. Erg’s windows were blocked by parchment shades, but he
stared at them anyway. Everything she said jibed with Evina’s
vision. It wasn’t proof, but it was getting there.

“When did you leave the Martins’ employ?”
Carmine asked, holding the picture she’d pointed out earlier.

“Two months ago.” She drew her slender
shoulders back stiffly. “Mrs. Martin called me one morning. No
explanation. She just said they didn’t need me anymore. I went back
secretly to check on Joel. I was worried about him. Mrs. Martin
wasn’t so good with him.”

“And?” Carmine prompted, because she’d
flattened her lips and stopped.

“And he wasn’t there! The neighbor’s goblin
maid told me they’d said Joel had gone to stay with cousins. Who
sends a one-year-old away from his family?”

Carmine patted the picture of her and Joel.
“If you thought something bad had happened, why didn’t you go to
the police?”

“Me?” The goblin’s open mouth exposed her
square white teeth and long tongue. “And give them the chance to
accuse me of harming Joel myself? I don’t think so!” She shut her
jaw again with a snap, reminding Nate why goblins were at risk of
such suspicions. Once upon a time, they’d been known to make meals
of children around Joel’s age.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mrs. Erg
accused, wagging two of her six red fingers. “Those were the bad
days, when we lived in the Old Country.” She tossed her head
angrily. “I’d like to see you werewolves account for every bite
your ancestors gulped.”

Nate admired her spirit, but that didn’t mean
he’d take her word on faith. “Sometimes people backslide,” he said
softly.

“It was
ritual
,” she huffed.
“
My
favorite food is spaghetti with meatballs.”

Her arms were crossed, her gaze nearly
shooting sparks. Nate was still going to check her background, but
right then he relented.

“Thank you,” he said. “We’ll get back to you
if we have more questions.”

The anger fell away from her manner. From the
movement of her fingers, Nate was guessing she wanted to clutch his
arm. “What about Joel? You never said what happened to him.”

“We’re not sure. We think . . . If we’re able
to confirm Joel was the child in the picture, chances are it
wouldn’t be inappropriate for you to say a prayer for his soul’s
passing.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Erg in a little voice, her
citrine eyes welling up again. Her hand pressed her thin-lipped
mouth. “Thank you for telling me.”

~

Nate and Carmine left the claustrophobic
building without speaking. Once free of its confines, both rolled
cricks from their necks and shoulders. The gloomy atmosphere of the
courtyard seemed like Palm Beach right then.

Because the bland department car didn’t
require Nate’s expertise, Carmine was driving. “What do you think?”
he asked after sliding behind the wheel. “Do you buy her
story?”

Nate closed his door with a solid
thunk
. “We’ll check it out. First, though, I think we’d
better make the acquaintance of Joel’s parents.”

~

Little Jersey was, by Nate’s guesstimate, a
ten-minute bus ride from Goblinville, easy enough for a nanny to
take every day. The borderline suburban area reminded him of
Evina’s neighborhood. Ugly modern construction alternated with
tired old, little of Resurrection’s downtown charm having extended
out this far. There were more trees and grass here, but Nate didn’t
see the point.

Then again, he was a city boy.

The Martins lived in a square brick apartment
complex. Since they’d crossed into the dinner hour, cooking smells
suffused the hallways, none especially appealing.

Carmine looked at Nate when they reached the
Martins’ door. His bushy brows went up in question.

“You take lead,” Nate said, realizing what
Carmine was asking. “Unless they give you reason not to, do your
nice guy thing. I want to watch their reactions.”

Nate stood aside with his weapon drawn while
Carmine gave the plain brown door a thumping triple knock. “RPD. We
need to speak to the Martins.”

A male opened the door, presumably Mr.
Martin. He was medium height and narrow, with ginger hair and a
thin mustache. Nate thought his watery blue eyes weren’t as pretty
as the goblin’s, strange though those had been. He seemed nervous
to have cops on his threshold.

Nate tucked his gun away. Martin’s vibe was
weasely but not aggressive.

“What’s this about?” Joel’s father asked, his
gaze darting between them.

Carmine showed his ID. “Police business, Mr.
Martin. We need to speak to you and your wife.”

His pale eyes grew shiftier. “We’re about to
sit down to dinner.”

“This won’t take long.” Carmine pulled one of
his trademark moves, giving the ball of Roger Martin’s shoulder a
friendly squeeze even as he stepped past him. Martin gaped at his
presumption, but wasn’t bold enough to protest. Amused, Nate
followed Carmine into the living room.

A cheap hotel painting of a blurry forest
hung above a dull brown couch. The seating wasn’t in any way
improved by a row of beige pillows. The lamps on the small end
tables came from a low-end department store, as did the knockoff
Oriental rug. A wedding picture of the Martins hung opposite the
couch. Ironically, their decorations were less homey than Mrs.
Erg’s. Nate saw no photos of Joel, nor any sign he’d once lived
here.

That was telling. Whatever had happened to
their son, they weren’t making a show of remembering him.

Mrs. Martin came into the room. She looked
more like a mouse than a fox, her clothes too old for her slim
thirty-something body. Her unstyled hair was a lackluster brown.
“What’s going on?” she asked her husband.

“It’s the police,” he said, his manner
striving for natural and failing utterly. “They want to ask us a
few questions.”

“We were wondering what happened to Joel,”
Carmine said gently.

Mrs. Martin’s hands tightened on the napkin
she was carrying. “Joel is staying with his cousins. We thought it
would be good if he had relatives his own age to play with.”

“Could you give us an address?” Carmine asked
even more softly, pegging her as the weaker link. “We’d really like
to check that he’s fine.”

“I . . . I think I might have mislaid it.”
Mrs. Martins’ eyes were white-rimmed with panic. Carmine lifted his
hands like a priest about to give a blessing.

“You know that’s not true,” he said in a tone
so compassionate, so comforting it would have calmed a rabbit in
the thick of a chase. “Joel isn’t with his cousins at all.”

“I think you need to leave,” Mr. Martin
summoned the spine to say. He was too late. Two fat tears were
already rolling down his wife’s gaunt cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” she cried, completely
unraveling. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed. I just was at my wit’s
end!”

The truth as the Martins understood it came
out between defensive pleas for understanding and tears of
self-pity. Carmine exhausted his supply of Kleenex before they had
the whole story.

Overcome with shame at having sired a flawed
offspring, and unable to afford more dead-end cures, the Martins
turned to a lawyer they’d heard could arrange “special” adoptions.
In return for a then welcome sum of cash, they were promised their
son would be placed not with a family in Resurrection, but in a
loving home beyond its borders. To mundanes, their non-shifting son
would seem normal. Raised Outside, he’d think he was normal too.
He’d forget the place he’d been born existed and, as a result,
would never be able to track down his birthparents.

“They showed us the adopters’ file,” Mrs.
Martin claimed passionately. She leaned forward on the couch, one
of the pillows clutched to her belly. Her husband sat beside her
and nodded at all she said. “We read their letters. They really
wanted a child. We know the way we gave him up was illegal, but
surely Joel will be happier with them.”

Nate didn’t know how to respond to that.
Carmine didn’t either. He looked at Nate helplessly.

“Mrs. Martin,” Nate said, his throat tight
enough that his words came out rough around the edges. “We’ll need
the name of the lawyer and anyone else you met at the adoption
agency.”

“I’ll get it.” Mrs. Martin hopped up, eager
to redress her wrongdoing now that it had been exposed. “I wrote
everything in my datebook.”

When it came to wrongdoing, Mr. Martin was
more resistant to remorse than his spouse. He waited until his wife
left the room, then spoke in a low worried voice. “They don’t want
to return the boy, do they?”

Nate’s answer was more heartfelt than he
expected. “Mr. Martin,” he said, “you should be so lucky.”

~

The subsequent takedown was pulse pounding in
its execution and oddly anticlimactic afterward. More or less
hiding his surprise that Nate and Carmine had obtained
warrant-worthy affidavits, Adam convinced a judge to issue one that
night. Then he called Special Tactics to assist them with the
arrests.

The Martins were taken into protective
custody, mostly so they wouldn’t have a chance to give the lawyer a
head’s up—had they been so inclined. With them under wraps, a force
that included Adam’s squad, plus Johnny Lupone’s Special Tactics
unit quietly surrounded the adoption agency at 9:30 the next
morning. The Wings of Love Placement Agency did business from an
unremarkable storefront in a strip mall. Considering the amount of
man- and weapon-power they’d brought, the only real suspense was
how many fish they’d catch.

As it happened, Adam chose his timing well.
They netted the lawyer the Martins had used, his partner, two
paralegals, and one office manager. Tony had the presence of mind
to paw through their file room before it was boxed up as evidence.
This led them to the trio of masked doctors Evina had seen in her
vision. They turned out to be dentists who worked in the same strip
mall two stores down. They’d gone out for breakfast and had missed
the RPD’s mostly stealth entry.

When they spotted the half dozen police
vehicles circled around their associates’ door, naturally they
tried to run. This gave Nate, Carmine, and Johnny the satisfaction
of chasing and subduing them personally.

Carmine looked slow, but he could haul ass
when he wanted to.

Nate’s sole complaint was that none of their
catches were talking.

Now Adam and he stood shoulder to shoulder
behind the two-way glass that overlooked the largest of the
precinct’s interrogation rooms. They’d separated everyone they
arrested, to prevent them from strategizing tales. The leftovers
were down in Holding, enjoying the station’s cells. The Wings of
Love head lawyer sat alone at the table in the room they observed.
He was a smarmy lion shifter who came off as too stupid to be a
mastermind. That he hadn’t demanded representation Nate understood;
he probably thought he could represent himself. That none of his
co-conspirators had asked for counsel was bothering him.

“They’ll crack,” Adam assured him, bumping
Nate’s arm with his elbow. “And if they don’t, the evidence in
those files Tony found is damning. These guys are aren’t going to
walk.”

The files went back a disturbing eighteen
months, during which no less than two dozen shifter children had
been “placed” in new homes. The Special Crimes department was at
work notifying the birthparents, none of whom seemed to realize the
offspring they’d given up weren’t perfectly safe and sound. They’d
all gone to the agency voluntarily, having heard about it through
an amorphous grapevine they couldn’t yet pin down. The only
definite link between the parents, aside from being non-wolf
shifters, was that their children all suffered from a defect that
prevented them from changing.