Manhattan Mayhem (12 page)

“I don’t know what to say. Wow. That’s”—Sam stared at the traffic going by—“really awful. I can’t imagine who—”

The cop shrugged. “I’m thinking it wasn’t the hot-dog guy or that taxi driver.”

“Yeah.” Sam glanced at the detective. “I heard a story you didn’t hear. Remember the woman who got up to say something, but she never got a chance?”

“There were people popping up all over the place. I was at the back. I could see all of them. Which one was she?”

“Floral dress. Middle aged. Close to the front.”

“What was her story?”

“That she fired Priscilla the day she died.”

“She was going to tell
that
?”

“Well, no, she was going to say that all the little kids loved Priscilla.”

“Then why fire her?”

“For telling the truth.” Sam told the whole story, according to both women, as it had been told to him.

“So that would be ‘The Awful Parents,’ I guess. But who are ‘The Other Awful Parents’?”

“Her own, I think. Or vice versa.”

“So that could explain the incredibly impersonal service. I’ve never seen one like it. All those fancy people there to hear nothing about her, at least not until the mourner rebellion.”

“Mourner rebellion.” Sam nodded. “That’s what it was.”

“The mom and dad looked as if they’d wandered into a funeral for a stranger.”

“I just got slapped by one of them.”

The detective’s eyes widened. “What did you do, tell them you liked her?”

“I suggested to her mom that if she ever wants to know for sure whether her husband had molested their daughter, I still have some DNA that could prove it one way or the other.”

“Holy moly, Doc. Let’s walk while you tell me more.”

As they got up to enter the park, the detective pointed to the bucket list. “Who are Sydney and Allen, do you know?”

“Sydney is the sister who hated Priss for giving away three million dollars to charity, and I’m guessing that Allen is Priss’s boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister.”

“Man, oh, man,” the detective said. “Am I ever glad you gave her a piece of paper with your name on it.” He laughed a little. “What about this last name? Dustin.”

“Don’t know,” he said, lying.

As they parted, the detective said, “Don’t worry. We’ll catch her killer the easy way—with surveillance video.”

Sam’s heart picked up its pace.

He had worried about exactly that possibility.

He steadied his voice: “A camera in the park?”

“No, across the street from her building.”

For the first time that day, Sam felt beyond nervous, beyond anxious, and deep into frightened. When he shook hands in farewell, he hoped his palm wasn’t as sweaty as he feared it was.

At the last minute, he found the nerve to ask, “Have you looked at it yet?”

“The video?” The cop shook his head. “No, but I hear it’s good stuff. See ya, Doc. You gave me good stuff, too. Thanks.”

Sam got his breathing under control and then called home just to hear his wife’s voice. She was an architect, working from their house.

“How’s tricks?” she answered, their habitual query.

“Okay. How are you and Eric?”

They had a ten-year-old son, the light of both of their lives.

He would have been adopted if they’d gone through proper channels, if Sam hadn’t put the proper papers under his patient’s nose and whisked them away to be shredded after Priscilla signed them. No one was ever supposed to know her baby was a child of incest; Eric was only ever supposed to know that he had been loved by a young mom who couldn’t keep him. And when the time came for him to ask about her, she would have vanished into bureaucratic thin air. He would never know where she was, she would never know where he was, and everybody would be happier for it.

Priss had named him Dustin.

Of course, he would be on her bucket list.

Of course, she would want to see him once more before she died, if only from a painful distance. That’s what Sam’s wife Cassity had predicted when he told her about Priscilla’s diagnosis. His wife, so smart, so empathetic, had immediately cried, with desperation and doom in her voice, “She’s going to want to see him, Sam! It’s going to ruin his life!”

And ours,
Sam had realized at that moment.

At first, he’d tried to convince himself that nothing could happen, for Priscilla couldn’t find any of the information she might seek; she didn’t possess copies of the paperwork and had been too young to know to ask for them.

But he realized that if she were as determined as he knew she was
capable of being, she would then come to him, asking for the information:
Where is my child?

What would he tell her? He could lie, but that would only lead her to an adoption agency that had never heard of her. He could tell her the truth—that he had fooled her and taken her baby—a revelation that could spiral into disaster.

Maybe she’ll be happy I did it,
he’d tried to convince himself.
Maybe she’ll think it’s all for the best.

But what if she didn’t? Could they take that chance?

They could lose Eric.

Losing his medical license would be the least of Sam’s punishments; losing Eric would be the very worst. Between those two consequences would be kidnapping charges against him and his wife.

“Honey,” Cassity said, interrupting his terrified thoughts, “he’s still at school. Are you so busy you’ve lost track of time?”

“I guess so. Speaking of … gotta go. Love you guys.”

“Ditto, Doctor.”

The dog lady couldn’t get her terrier to shut up.

The dog barked. His owner yelled at him. The dog barked again because the owner yelled. The owner yelled again because the dog barked. And around and around they went, barking and yelling, all because of a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” she screamed at her apartment door.

“Police!” a male voice called back.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Buddy, be quiet!”

As she unlocked and opened the door with one hand, she held onto the dog with her other arm. “Hang on. Let me get his magic collar and he’ll shut up. I guess I’m going to have to keep it on him all the time.”

The thick-set man in a blue suit stood in the doorway as she picked up the little dog and scurried to her tiny dining room, where she picked up a collar and struggled to get it onto the pooch.

“It’s eucalyptus!” she said to the cop at the door. “Just watch!”

Somehow she got it fastened onto the dog.

Buddy started to make a ferocious charge toward the door, opening his mouth to bark, but a second in he stopped barking.

“See?” his owner crowed. “Magic, I’m telling you.”

“What the heck?” the blue-suited cop asked as he stepped inside. “Why’d he stop barking?”

“The collar lets out a spray of eucalyptus scent! He hates it.”

“I never heard of that. That’s amazing. Where’d you get it?”

“My neighbor, that poor sweet girl, gave it to me the day before she got murdered. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To ask me about Priscilla? She was lovely. I know Buddy’s barking drove her mad. It drove me crazy, too. But she found out about these magic collars and gave one to me.”

“I’ve got to get one for my dog.”

“They’re expensive, and it doesn’t work on all dogs, I hear.”

“It sure works on this one.”

“Oh, yes. And Buddy’s a barking demon.”

The cop, who had crouched to take a look, stood back up. “Yeah, I heard him.”

“I don’t know anything about her getting killed except that it was horrible, and I’m just broken up about it.”

“Did she say anything about being stalked or followed?”

“Oh, my word, no. I never heard anything like that. Was that what happened?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “I’ll tell you what I did hear, though. When she came down to give me the collar, she was jittery, and she told me she was going to do something she wasn’t sure she should do.”

“What?”

“She told me she’d had a baby when she was only sixteen, and her parents had kicked her out of the house, and by that time it was too late for an abortion, and she’d put it up for adoption, and she was going to try to find the baby and just get a look at him. That’s all she wanted, she said, just to see him one time before she died to make sure he was
taken care of. She told me she had cancer. Isn’t that ironic? That she had only a short time to live anyway, and then some monster kills her and takes away her only chance to see her only child. It’s just so sad and awful. She had the worst luck. Seems so unfair for such a nice person. I’ll think of her every time Buddy doesn’t bark.”

With a shaking hand, Sam laid his keys on the little curved table in the foyer of his home.

“Cassity?” he called out to his wife. “I’m going to change clothes. Then let’s go for a run.”

“Okay!” she called back from her office.

Minutes later, they met in the foyer, and she smiled a welcome home for him. It looked forced; there’d been a brittle, frantic quality to her since Priscilla’s murder. It hurt his heart to see it in her face and hear it when she spoke to him. Only with Eric did she still seem like herself.

She was tall and athletic, with college-shot-putting shoulders and legs that could pound down tracks as if Olympic medals were at stake.

“I’m rarin’ to go,” she said, though she sounded weary.

She had on running shoes, pants, and a top; her long dark hair was pulled into a ponytail at the top of her head.
She’s so beautiful,
Sam thought,
and such a wonderful mother.
They’d both married late and then waited for many fruitless, disappointing years for the child they both wanted. Nothing had worked, but somehow their marriage grew deeper in a situation that would have weakened many others. He loved her fiercely, thought her brave and tender, brilliant and wonderful. He had felt guilty through all the years of trying to have a baby because it was his biology that failed them. When they finally agreed on adoption, enough years had passed that their ages became a problem on applications.

When fate delivered a chance to give her what she wanted so much, and to do what looked like a good deed in the process, Sam had grabbed
it—baby blanket, warm baby, and all. And now his heart felt sick as she yelled toward the back of the house, “Eric, sweetie, your dad and I are going for a run, and I’m going to beat him as usual! Don’t go play next door without leaving us a note, okay?”

“Duh, Mom!” their son yelled back. “Go, Dad!”

“We love you!” Sam called with an aching heart. “Go over to the neighbors’ now, so we don’t have to worry about you!” He waited a moment. “Eric? Yes?”

“Okay, parental unit!”

He nodded, turning toward his wife.

“New running duds?” he asked.

She pirouetted in front of him. “You like?”

“Nice on you. Where’s your old gray hoodie?”

“In the trash, where it should have been long ago.”

“What about those navy sweatpants you love?”

“Out with the hoodie! Too many holes. You ready?”

She jogged past him and was down the front walk before he got the door closed and locked. As he turned toward her, he thought,
They’re going to take Eric away. They’re going to tell him the truth about how he came to be, and how he came to be with us. He’s going to be thrown into the path of those terrible people. I’m going to prison for kidnapping a baby. She’s going to prison for killing his mother, who was dying anyway.

He heard himself making excuses for Cassity.

“Let’s run by the river,” he said as he caught up to her.

Night was falling, and soon there would be long, dark spaces between the streetlights.

He couldn’t allow these terrible fates to happen; and most of all, he couldn’t allow Eric to know the truth about himself and his birth family. Even to be left alone in the world would be better than knowing all the horrible things he might otherwise have learned about
both
of his families.

Sam’s cell phone rang. He nearly ignored it, but the long habit of being a doctor awaiting the birth of babies made him stop and turn it on while Cassity jogged in place by his side.