Jubilee's Journey (The Wyattsville Series) (27 page)

It was ten-thirty when Mahoney arrived at the Wyattsville station house. Luckily Gomez was nowhere in sight, so he got to talk to Pete Morgan.

“Captain Rogers called,” Morgan said. “Thought your missing person might be tied to the Klaussner shooting. How so?”

“It’s possible this woman I’m looking for is the aunt of the kid who got shot.” Mahoney deliberately made no mention of Jubilee Jones.

“You know the kid’s name?”

“Not yet, but I’m hoping to talk to him today.”

“Lots of luck on that. Gomez has been working this for five days. Yesterday he talked to the kid and got nothing.” Morgan lifted a folder from the desk and handed it to Mahoney. “This is all we’ve got right now. Take a look.”

Mahoney took the folder and lowered himself into the available chair. In all it was only nine pages. It detailed the pitiful life of a small-time crook named Hurt McAdams. Mom left when he was twelve, father a racetrack junkie with ties to several bookies, the kid bounced out of school, spent seven years in a correctional institution. Plenty of disturbances; no visitors.

Mahoney shook his head sadly. “Guy like this never had a chance.”

“We’ve got an APB out,” Morgan said, “but my bet is he’s long gone.”

“What about the kid in hospital? Any prints tie him to scene?”

“No prints, but Klaussner put a bullet in him.”

“Ballistics indicate the bullet came from Klaussner’s gun?”

Morgan nodded. “Gomez said this one is a slam dunk. The kid’s guilty, period.”

“Klaussner identified him?”

“No such luck. Klaussner’s still in a coma.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Neighborhood woman, Martha Tillinger. Apparently she was in the back of the store and hid behind some cereal boxes when the shooting started.”

“So she identified the boy?”

“She didn’t see the shooter, just heard the shots.”

Mahoney began rubbing the back of his hand across his chin, the way he did when something was troubling him. “Any chance the kid was a bystander?”

Morgan chortled. “Not according to Gomez.”

Mahoney’s next stop was Mercy General Hospital. During the drive he ran through the details of the case. A ballistics match pointed to the kid being guilty; a witness who hadn’t heard the voices was a zero. The prints on the register tagged Hurt McAdams as the guy who grabbed the cash, but was he working alone or working with the kid? There were too many questions and too few answers. Mahoney kept wondering if the kid was with Hurt or simply standing in the line of fire. But the most troubling question, the one that pushed him to pursue answers, was the identity of the kid in the hospital.

If he was Jubilee’s brother that might tip the scales in his favor, not necessarily showing innocence but making him less likely to team up with someone like Hurt McAdams. The kid wasn’t in the system, which meant he had no priors. Hurt was from Pittsburgh. Jubilee Jones was from Coal Fork, West Virginia, a place so far out in the boonies you had to know it was there to find it. So where was the thread that connected McAdams to this kid? Too many loose ends—way too many.

When he arrived at the hospital, Mahoney found Gomez had already been there and gone. “I think he’s coming back later,” the duty nurse said. Mahoney saw this as an opportunity. Captain Rogers, true to his word, had called ahead so there was no problem getting in to talk with the boy.

Mahoney showed his badge, spoke briefly with the officer at the door, then entered the room. A kid with the body of a man and the face of a teenager lay in the bed, his head raised slightly and his eyes staring up at a water-stained ceiling. The television flickered, yet he seemed unaware it was there. The boy was no longer on a respirator, but the bandage on his throat was evidence that he had been.

“Good morning,” Mahoney said.

No response. Nothing.

Mahoney continued. He asked the kind of nebulous questions that answered nothing. “Do you know where you are?” “Do you remember being shot?” “Do you remember walking into Klaussner’s Grocery Store?” Not one of these questions generated even a flicker of the boy’s eyelid. He looked neither right nor left, just continued staring at the faded brown stain that said some time in the near or distant past water had seeped through there.

Once he’d run through the gamut, Mahoney asked the question he had come to ask.

“Paul, do you think Jubilee is still sitting on the bench waiting for you?”

The boy did not respond, turn his head, or speak, but his eyes grew wide and flickered nervously. His heart began racing, and the neon heart monitor flew past 160. It climbed to 190, then jumped to 210. Mahoney saw the reaction and continued. “Your sister needs your help,” he said, but before he could go any further a nurse came running into the room.

“What going on here?” she asked.

“Routine questions,” Mahoney answered. He reached across the bed and gave the boy’s leg a comforting pat. “Rest easy, son,” he said. “I’ll stop back later.”

As Mahoney stood in the hallway waiting for a down elevator, Gomez stepped out of one on its way up. His displeasure was obvious.

“What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t in on the Klaussner case.”

“I’m not, actually. I just thought there was a chance the kid you had might be related to my missing person.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Gomez sneered. “So what’d you find out?”

“Like the file indicated, the kid’s non-responsive.” A down arrow flashed green, and Mahoney stepped into the elevator. As the doors were closing he glanced back and thought he saw a look of malice on Gomez’s face.

With his face turning redder by the second, Gomez rumbled down the hospital corridor, pushed through the intensive care department doors, and headed for the boy’s room. The duty nurse stopped him before he was halfway across the floor.

“Not now,” she said. “He’s had enough for a while. His heartbeat’s still over two hundred.”

“That last detective who was here,” Gomez said, “what’d he find out?”

“Ask him,” she answered and turned off in a huff.

“Damn,” Gomez grumbled.

Hector Gomez

D
id you ever get a thorn caught under your skin? It hurts like hell, but you can’t get it out.  That’s what Mahoney is to me: a thorn under my skin. He shouldn’t even be here. He belongs in Northampton. So why is he sticking his nose in where it don’t belong? Why is he looking to screw up another case for me?

If not for his meddling, I’d have made detective last June instead of waiting another ten months. Mahoney’s why the Doyle case went south. I could’ve had the kid for the shooting, but then he shows up with this do-gooder attitude and makes me look bad. Justice don’t give a crap about how old a person is; guilty is guilty. And that kid was guilty. I could feel it in my bones.

You know what I think? I think Mahoney’s got it in for me. Don’t ask why, ‘cause I don’t know. Maybe ‘cause I’m younger or better looking. Who knows? I really don’t care what his reason is. This much I can tell you: he ain’t getting away with it again.

Klaussner put a bullet in the punk’s head to keep him from robbing the store, and that’s all the proof I need. This kid is guilty, no question.

If Mahoney thinks I’m gonna roll over on this one, he’s got another think coming.

Jubilee’s Choice

W
hen Mahoney left the hospital he was all but certain the boy lying in the hospital bed was Jubilee’s brother. There were no new facts, no spoken word, not even a nod, but the glimmer of recognition was there. Some relationships were so close that the bond of love bypassed locked doors, ignored time, and paid no attention to circumstance.

He thought back to the day his own dad died. It was June twenty-first, seventeen years ago. Jack was new on the force and working days. That morning as he stood in front of the mirror shaving he felt it: a wrenching pain in his chest. It came sharp and sudden, hammered him for a minute, then passed. Jack gave a sigh of relief and got dressed, but even though the pain was gone the bitterness of acid indigestion continued all day. He gulped down two rolls of Tums, but nothing helped. At four o’clock he got the call: at seven-thirty that morning the man he loved and respected more than any other human on earth had suffered a massive heart attack. For the remainder of the day it had been touch and go, then at three-thirty-seven Jack’s dad passed away.

Seventeen years had gone by, but the acid indigestion was still with him. Sometimes he could go for weeks, months even, without a trace of it. But when something was not right there it was, back again. It was a warning sign, a red flag, a smack in the head that said, “Listen up, this is important!” Mahoney stopped at the drug store, bought a roll of Tums, then drove to the Wyattsville Arms apartment building, uncertain of whether what he had to say was going to be perceived as good news or bad.

Ethan Allen was already home from school, and he was the one who answered the bell. “Hey, Mister Mahoney,” he said and yanked the door open. “You here for more questioning?”

“Perhaps,” Mahoney answered, then asked if he could have a moment alone with Olivia. 

Ethan yelled, “Grandma!” and moments later, Olivia came from the kitchen drying her hands on a dish towel. She knew by the look on Mahoney’s face he had something.

Turning to Ethan Allen she said, “You and Jubilee scoot on out of here. Go work on that puzzle you’ve been doing.”

“There’s pieces missing,” Ethan answered and stayed put.

“Then go do your homework.”

Ethan gave a disgusted sigh. “I guess we’ll work on the stupid puzzle.” He turned and motioned for Jubilee to go with him.

Jubilee, who had begun to tag after Ethan like a shadow, didn’t move. Instead she narrowed her eyes and looked at Mahoney suspiciously. “You gonna ask me more questions about Paul?”

“Maybe later,” Mahoney answered.

“Scoot,” Olivia repeated. She led Mahoney into the kitchen and closed the door. He settled into a chair, and after she’d poured two cups of coffee she sat across from him. “Have you found Anita?”

“Not yet,” Mahoney answered, “but I’m pretty sure I’ve found Jubilee’s brother.” He went on to tell of the hospital visit and how the mention of Jubilee’s name brought a glimmer of recognition. “Right now he seems to have very little memory of anything, but I believe seeing his sister could change that.”

Olivia gasped. “Absolutely not. The child has been through enough. If he is her brother and doesn’t recognize her…”

“I know it’s chancy, but I think the kid will respond.”

Olivia shook her head. “There’s got to be another way to find Anita. If Jubilee had some real family to care for her, she might be better able to handle her brother going to jail.”

“Whoa there,” Mahoney said. “First off, you’re jumping to conclusions. I’m not even sure the boy was involved in this. And secondly—”

“Not involved? But you said—”

“No, I never said I think he’s guilty. Gomez is heading up the investigation and he thinks the kid is guilty, but—”

“Sargent Gomez? The one with the bushy black mustache?”

Mahoney nodded. “But he’s not Sargent Gomez anymore, he’s Detective Gomez.”

“Oh, dear.” Olivia remembered Hector Gomez all too well and wasn’t eager to have another encounter with him. “We have simply got to find Anita.”

“Yeah, well,” Mahoney said with a sigh, “right now I’m coming up with a lot of dead ends. Your F.M. Jones gave me a lead on a woman in Norfolk who years back rented an apartment to Bartholomew Jones and his wife. Supposedly there was a woman named Anita who visited frequently, but I’ve gotta say this is thin at best; more than likely going nowhere.”

“You never know,” Olivia said hopefully.

For several minutes they sat there saying nothing. Mahoney stirred his coffee three times even though there was not a drop of cream or sugar mixed in. Olivia fussed with folding and refolding her napkin. After a long while she asked, “Do you honestly think there’s a chance Paul’s not involved?”