Justifiable (13 page)

When she pulled back, she gave Stan a little smile. “I’m fine. Go ahead and do whatever you have to do at work. I brought Kelsey some clothes to try on and some games I’m going to play with her. Give me a call if you think you’ll be late and I’ll hold dinner for you.”

He put his hand up against her cheek. “Don’t hold dinner for me, babe. We’re ordering sandwiches for the team. We need to kick up the ratings. WNUZ is becoming a real pain in my side. Go on to bed when you’re ready and I’ll slip in once I get home.”  He gave her a peck on her forehead and the Stan Myers she knew was back. With a glance into Kelsey’s bedroom, he shook his head then strode down the stairs.

She gave it a minute, listening for him to leave. When the front door opened and closed, all the tension went out of her shoulders. When Stan came home tonight she’d be waiting for him with a bottle of wine and late night snack. All would be back to normal.

Lucinda tiptoed back into the bedroom and around the end of her daughter’s bed.

The look of betrayal on Kelsey’s face when she lifted her head ripped Lucinda’s heart apart. What was going on with her baby? “Kelsey, honey, want to see what I brought you?”

“No.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“No.”

“Want to play a new computer game with me?”

“No.”

Lucinda wished for the days when she had to hound her daughter to get off the computer and go outside for fresh air. Kelsey wouldn’t even go near the computer now, which was another disappointment for Stan. He and Kelsey had first bonded over a mutual love of computer games while Lucinda preferred reading a book. That had been his and Kelsey’s special time together. “I got you some new clothes and – ” 

“No.”  Her daughter’s pretty blue eyes were swollen from crying and her strawberry blond hair fell in limp strands around her shoulders.

Lucinda moved forward slowly. Kelsey had curled into almost a fetal position. Her lacy dress crumpled where she’d caught the skirt between her legs.

“Sure you didn’t hurt yourself?” Lucinda asked. “Want to show me?”      

Kelsey shook her head, wrapped her arms around herself and started sobbing again.

Heartbroken, Lucinda reached down. “Come here, baby.”  She started to hook her hands under Kelsey’s arms to lift her when her daughter screamed, “
Don’t touch me!
”

Chapter 14

Based on the vehicles crammed into the visitor parking lot in the spaces cleared of snow, it looked like a fire sale on meds at St. Joseph’s hospital. Riley parked his truck and started the quarter-mile walk to the emergency entrance.

A hike might take the edge off.

The hell with Kirsten and her damned high-horse attitude. Did she think she had the corner on right and wrong, just because she worked for the DA’s office?

She thought she knew what happened in Detroit? Only what she heard on sound bites sprayed across the country from every major station. She might have read the police report, but even that wouldn’t tell the story.

If she’d ever gone through what he’d been through she’d realize that. He paused his mental ranting. Had Kirsten been involved in a lost child case before, or lost a sibling? He hadn’t considered that. Dammit all. Maybe he was the one with the hair trigger today. Walking out of Kirsten’s office hadn’t helped anyone.

He sure as hell hadn’t charmed her as he’d boasted to Biddy.

Flashing red lights cut across his vision. A load of pain squealed up to the hospital in an ambulance. Medical personnel scurried.

He slowed, hesitating. Maybe he should let this go, leave the investigation to others. To do so would be admitting Kirsten had rattled him. Had him questioning himself, his actions.

Like everyone else, she couldn’t see past Riley’s news credentials. Yes, he needed a major story now, but he wanted Sally’s kid found more. If it came down to missing the story or endangering a child, there would be no story.

But people like Kirsten convicted him of having no conscience without seeing all the evidence.

They had no idea just how brutal his conscience could be. He saw that interview over and over again. Night had cloaked the two of them, alone in the woods, camera on a tripod, silently transmitting the live scene.  Riley pointed a microphone toward the Kindergarten Killer who pointed a .357 Magnum at Riley in return.

He could still smell the crisp outdoors, the gunpowder and blood.

Everything moved in agonizingly slow motion at the point the Kindergarten Killer swung the gun up under his own chin and pulled the trigger. The explosion from the killer’s suicidal shot slammed against Riley, the trees, the ground, in deafening finality. Blowback of brain matter scattered in red droplets.

Then the silence. The empty, frozen silence.

And the sick realization that the chance of finding a kidnapped child had just died with the only person who knew the child’s hidden location. 

The police found a note on the Kindergarten Killer that said the little boy had been buried in a four-by-six wooden box with only seven hours of air left.

Cold chills danced over Riley’s skin. He lifted shaking fingers to drag through his hair.

The Detroit television station had gotten what they wanted after all – ratings through the roof – but the story of the year had cost a mother her baby and Riley his sanity. 

Standing outside St. Joseph’s hospital, he swallowed the sour taste of regret and pressed his mind back on task. Search for information that could help the police find Enrique Stanton first. Worry about the story next.

Stay out of the way of law enforcement no matter what.

Riley might not have been in Philly long but he’d built up a network of contacts, people who might know other people. The network wasn’t broad or deep, but he had a place to start digging for answers of what had happened to Sally Stanton the night she disappeared and was killed.

Unearthing information on Sally would put the police one step closer to finding her son.

When Riley reached the emergency room entrance, glass doors slid away to each side. Air bulging with antiseptic anxiety slapped him in the face.

Some people associated a hospital with the joy of a new birth or saving a loved one. The too-clean smell and hushed sounds would always remind Riley of human suffering.

Like now. He’d heard a couple of his sources were here, one of them injured. Riley had just given a name to the admission clerk when he heard a low shout of “Hot shot!” from his left.

Only five people called Riley that and all five knew each other. He’d found his source.

He swung a wry smile at Romeo, the street name for one of the tight-knit group of teenagers ranging in age from fourteen to sixteen that Riley played basketball with at least once a week in Northern Liberties. Romeo had on the same black, gold, blue and red Philadelphia 76ers sweatshirt Riley saw him in most of the time. Romeo and his team lived, breathed and dreamed basketball.

He asked Romeo, “Why’s Baby G getting patched up?”

With skin the color of cappuccino, almond-shaped eyes and tight black curls covering his head, Romeo ignored Riley’s question and swaggered forward. He came by the grunge look naturally, the legs of his oversized jeans dragging the ground. His thick-lashed gaze strayed to something more important than Riley – the ample backside of a tall African-American woman leaned against the wall talking to another female.

“Hello, you hot mama,” Romeo purred.

The twenty-something woman, who stood close to six feet in her four-inch heels, cut a you-can’t-be-serious glare over her shoulder down at Romeo’s cocky grin. Full dismissal.

Oblivious to anything else, Romeo smiled as though she’d blown him a sexy kiss.

Riley sighed at the five-foot-eight teen whose mix of African-American and Mexican parents had rewarded him with an exotic face that fed Romeo’s oversized ego.

The kid’s no-limit confidence had sucked Riley in the first time they’d met. Riley had been on his way to visit the local Boy’s Club, like he did in every city, when he saw Romeo and his “team” playing on an improvised basketball court where weeds grew at will and a rusted wire hoop served for a basket. The five boys bounced a ball that should have stopped holding air a million dribbles ago.

Riley had left and returned an hour later in a ratty T-shirt, faded shorts and nasty sneakers for a pick up game. He got a resounding “no,” the same answer he’d received on his next six attempts.

Each time he’d hang around and watch them play.

When Romeo’s curiosity finally got the better of him, he gave Riley a chance to match up against “his team,” which Riley knew meant an opportunity to be knocked over, stepped on, elbowed and run into the ground.

He hadn’t been disappointed.

That had been four months ago. Now they gave him hell if he only showed once a week. Weather was no deterrent to them or an acceptable excuse for missing a game.

Romeo sidled up to him, every muscle in his body bragging he had something to offer any woman. “She’ll find me later.” 

Riley lifted an eyebrow at him. “That might not be good news if she busts your chops with a sexual harassment suit.”

“
That
don’t happen to me.”  Romeo broke out the smile that had probably saved him more times than his quick wit.

Romeo would continue in this same vein for as long as he had an audience so Riley changed the topic to what brought him here. He’d swung by the pseudo-basketball court and the other three on Romeo’s team would only tell him that Baby G had gone to the hospital.

“What happened to Baby G?” Riley asked again. He’d only recently found out that G stood for Ginormous. Any other kid his size would take up football instead of basketball.

“Cut himself playin’.” 

Riley might be tempted to accept that if not for how Romeo’s eyes shifted away when he lied.

“Show me.”  Riley waited for Romeo to make up his mind first, then followed the boy to where a nurse pointed out a curtained-off area. Baby G – a five-foot-eleven, two-hundred and ninety pound, Asian kid who reminded Riley of a Sumo warrior with bad acne – lay on his back with his shirt off. One side of his enormous gut had a bandage the size of Riley’s hand just above the elastic on his baggy green warm up pants.

“What’s up, Hot Shot?”  Baby G’s sixteen-year-old voice had changed already to a deep radio announcer’s baritone.

“Hanging out. What happened to you?”

Romeo and Baby G exchanged a guarded look before Baby G answered. “Got cut screwin’ around.”

A knife fight. Riley had a scar riding his shoulder from “screwin’ around” on the streets as a teen, which meant just trying to survive. He crossed his arms and asked in a tone of camaraderie, “What was being discussed during this screwin’ around?”

“Told you he’d figure it out,” Romeo whispered under his breath to Baby G.

“Usual bullshit.”  Baby G lifted his hand to his face and tapped a cheek with his thumb, a motion that meant he was thinking.

Riley let him think. These kids were used to being interrogated by everyone from parents to teachers. He let them talk to him in their own time.

There was no better resource for anything that went down in Northern Liberties. To get a lead on the missing Enrique Stanton, he’d wait as long as it took. 

Baby G stopped thumping his cheek, angular eyes slanting at Riley. “Blades showed up at our court when they heard Romeo was forming a regulation team. Their leader
suggested
we were wasting our time.”  In complete conflict with his generally unkempt appearance, Baby G surprised everyone who didn’t know him when he opened his mouth and spoke with such precision.

A regulation team? Ah, hell. Riley had planted the idea in Romeo’s head to consider building a full team to compete in a city league...at some point. He figured if you gave kids a goal they spent less time hunting ways to get into trouble.

At least that’s what Jasper had believed when he’d found Riley and brought a wild fifteen-year-old foster child into his home. 

But Riley had thought Romeo wouldn’t act on it for a while yet, not until they actually
attended
a city game. He’d been thinking about taking them to some games later this year.

But Baby G wouldn’t be talking about this if the “team” hadn’t made a decision. No one acted solo in this bunch.

All five of the boys had potential to do better in school, and a couple of them showed exceptional athletic ability, but any decision was made as a unit. No one in their group would consider moving ahead and leaving the other four behind.

If they organized a league team, they had a chance to expand their world beyond a scrappy parking lot. Find out how to battle in a healthy way, how to interact with other males without using fists. Or knives.

Another lesson Riley had learned from Jasper.

But didn’t it just figure some rival gang would throw a kink into a simple plan to get these boys invested in something productive?

“What’d you tell the Blades?” Riley asked. Baby G’s smile formed slowly, climbing his face to pinch his eyes. “I mentioned their flawed ancestry and suggested to their leader he should attempt sexual penetration upon himself.”