Mother's Milk (21 page)

A cell phone rang. ‘Not me,' Barrett said, still wondering what ulterior motive Janice had in this sudden shift.

‘Mine,' Chase said, pulling it out of his jacket pocket. ‘I've got to take this,' he said, and quickly walked back into the small park across from the DFYS building. He stood behind the reddish trunk of a beech tree, his body mostly blocked from sight.

‘You were his counselor,' Barrett remarked. ‘He kind of argues against your point that the department can't help these kids.'

‘Touché, but Chase is unique. Have you known him long?'

‘No,' she said, again feeling that this was some kind of game, only she didn't know the rules, ‘just met this morning. He told me that he plans on going to medical school.'

‘Yes,' she replied, looking toward the park and what little of Chase she could see. ‘He's ambitious and has the brains to pull it off, that's rare.' She cracked a smile. ‘I bet you want to know if he's dating material or not.'

‘Too young,' Barrett said, struggling to find her footing.

‘Please, single men that good-looking, who aren't gay; I'd say if he's interested, go for it.'

At which point Chase emerged from behind the beech. Whatever the call had been had clearly upset him, even though Barrett could see he was trying to appear calm. ‘Trouble?' she asked.

‘One of my clients … I have to take care of this,' he said. He looked at Janice. ‘Please don't rat me out.'

Janice looked at Barrett. ‘You want out of here too, don't you?'

‘I do,' Barrett said.

‘Fine, you did your duty. I'll get Hugh to carry the torch.'

Barrett's impulse was to say, ‘Hell no,' but with Jerod on his way back to the city and someone after him she wasn't about to argue.

‘Which way you heading?' Chase asked. ‘Maybe we could split a cab,' and before she could answer he'd spotted one and ran to flag it.

‘Dr. Conyors … Barrett,' Janice said, ‘I hope everything works out with Jerod.'

Barrett's every instinct was that something was way off with Janice, and she had to think it had something to do with Chase. Obviously the two had a history, but it wasn't that. She tried to put words to the fuzzy impressions racing through her brain.

A yellow taxi pulled up and Chase held the door. As she slid in, she caught a worried expression on Janice's face in the passenger-side mirror. She had mouthed something at Chase, the lines around her lower lip pulled taut.

Barrett twisted on the bench, trying to get a better look, as Chase scooted in next to her. ‘What was that about?' she asked.

‘What?'

‘What you just said to her.'

‘An old joke,' he said. ‘She's a great lady, and if it wasn't for her … well, she was a big help to me when I really needed it.'

Barrett looked back as the cab pulled away. Janice was on the sidewalk staring at them; she caught sight of Barrett and quickly smiled.

Yes, Barrett thought, Janice was worried about something and the plastered-on smile seemed fake. She mulled over one of her favorite truisms – a gift from Hobbs –
when things don't add up, there's always a reason.

‘So I was hoping,' Chase said, ‘that we could clean up our respective messes and maybe get together after work, have some dinner. As I recall you'd left things at “maybe”. Can I push that into a yes?'

‘Why not,' she said as the cab crossed Houston.

‘You like ethnic?'

‘Love it.'

‘Indian?' he offered.

‘That would be nice,' and they made plans to meet at one of the popular Indian restaurants in the East Village.

‘You can drop me here,' he told the cab as they headed up 1st Avenue and hit 14th Street.

As he got out, leaving Barrett with one of his cards that had his cell phone and office numbers, she realized that something else didn't fit … and Chase's list was growing.
How the hell did he know that sharing a cab would work?
Had she told him that the forensic center was also on the East Side, had he guessed, or had he known?

‘I'll see you at eight,' he said, giving her a smile so dazzling that it momentarily wiped doubt from her mind … a brief moment, and as the taxi moved toward her 34th Street office, timing the lights as only a seasoned cabbie can do, she knew there was more to Chase than a handsome face, and as seductive as all his pieces were, like Janice's pasted-on smile, something didn't fit.

C
hase's thoughts raced wildly; he felt excited, on fire. Bits of plans slid into place, new contingencies flashed through his mind only to be replaced by other options as he entered the dingy regional DFYS office building. One false step over the next few hours could destroy everything he had spent the last twelve years building. He would need to be seen throughout the day and evening to create a seamless alibi – every moment of his time accounted for. He smiled and briefly flirted with Nadine, the pretty half-Asian secretary assigned to him and half a dozen other counselors. He retrieved his phone messages, and flipped through them, deciding which would be turned into the emergency he'd used as an excuse to leave the conference. ‘This is a real mess,' he commented to Nadine, holding one of the message slips. ‘We're going to end up having to find a safe home for Danielle Waters before the weekend. I really hoped this one was going to work out. Oh, well …'

‘Again?' Nadine replied, as she leaned forward, letting Chase get a view of her firm breasts, sweetly framed by the outer edge of a lacy lavender bra. ‘Didn't you just place Danielle a couple weeks ago?'

‘It's not working … crap. Well, there goes
my
afternoon.' He retreated to his office at the end of the hall. He closed the door, pulled out his cell, and booted up his computer. He pictured his ladder, having somewhere read about the importance of visualization; his goals were clear and solid in his mind. The next rung – medical school – was almost in his grasp, and as he'd needed to do before, everything below had to be cut away. It had been true for Janice's husband, for Dom, and now for everything and everyone that could connect him to the mess with these kids and the dope. It was turning into a nightmare, and for what? So Janice could keep working through her issues with her dead husband, stockpiling cash, so that she'd never be at the mercy of anyone ever again.

The call that had made him leave had been from Marky; once again Jerod Blank had escaped. The more Chase thought about this, the more he realized that Jerod, who had never met him, was not the problem; it was Marky. And Janice was wrong about Dr. Conyors … Barrett. She was beautiful, intelligent, and could be his next meal ticket –
out with the old, in with the new
. He unlocked his desk drawer and looked at the framed photo-montage he'd taken from her office. The only image of her was in the center, holding her newborn, her dark eyes looking lovingly at her child, her bangs cutting a shadow across her exquisite cheekbones. He studied the surrounding pictures of the baby, blue-eyed and perfect. He wondered at her dead husband, a musician whose pictures he'd looked at on the Internet – not blond, not blue-eyed.
What have you been up to, my lovely?
He envisioned his upcoming dinner with her, he would become the man she'd always wanted, he'd make her feel desired, special. He played back their conversations at the conference, the ease with which she'd opened up over coffee. What would it be like to feel her full lips pressed against his? He stared at the picture and imagined the baby was theirs – he'd be in the picture, by her side, two gorgeous parents and a beautiful child. Janice wanted her dead; jealousy had clouded her judgment. It was Janice who was the liability. She'd given him all that she intended to, and now she just used him for sex and as some kind of lackey; there was no equal exchange. Yes, she'd helped him immeasurably, but lately … not so much.

On impulse he picked up and dialed his grandmother's nursing home. He asked for her aide. ‘Dorothy, could you put the phone up to Grace's ear?' he asked, having done this before, knowing she could understand, but not communicate, other than through blinking. He waited until the aide had done as instructed. ‘Grandma, it's Chase. I have good news and you were the one person I wanted to tell. I've found the woman I want to marry. I'll tell you all about her when I come out this weekend. She's a doctor and she's beautiful and smart and she's the one I want; she's perfect. Her name is Barrett, and I know you're going to love her.'

He heard movement over the line, and then Dorothy's voice, ‘That's great news, Mr. Strand.'

‘Any reaction?' he asked, picturing his grandmother, in that dreary room.

‘She's blinking,' Dorothy said, ‘just once … and once again. I think she's happy.'

‘Thanks, Dorothy,' and he reminded himself to put a couple hundreds in his wallet before his weekly visit. ‘Dorothy, do you ever do private-duty work?' he asked, a new possibility flashing to mind.

‘Some,' she said, ‘you thinking of breaking Miss Grace out of here? You know she'd need twenty-four–seven care and Medicaid won't pay for that in the home.'

‘I know, just a thought for the future.'

‘Well, count me in,' she said, ‘I just love our Miss Grace … she's no problem at all.'

As he'd been talking, he'd punched Jerod Blank's name into the department's database, entered his security code, and printed out several typed summaries. He'd pass these along to Barrett at supper. She probably already knew the contents, but he'd said he'd help. He needed to show good faith. She needed to see his caring, concern, and intelligence. He stuffed the pages into a folder and dropped them into his briefcase. Next, he dialed the female director of one of the three local safe houses used to hold kids for brief periods after they'd been pulled from their families, or from foster settings that hadn't worked. As a counselor he was skipping steps and going straight to the top, but the few times he'd met the house's director – Jocelyn Flanders – she told him to call her ‘any time if you need help'. In a few brief moments he'd completed a complex bureaucratic transaction that would normally take weeks. The safe house had a female bed, and they'd hold it for Danielle. In the next hour, Chase dove through a stack of paperwork, made calls back to Nadine, the safe house, and arranged for Danielle's transportation later that afternoon. ‘A fine day's work,' he whispered, again dialing his secretary. ‘Nadine, there's no way I'm getting out of here before eight tonight, can you let security know I'll be up here working?'

‘Poor Chase,' she said, ‘do you want me to order Chinese?'

‘Naah, I'll grab a sandwich at the deli at some point.'

‘Chase, you are so committed to these kids. I hope Gretchen appreciates all you do for them. You know, I'd be willing to stay and help out …'

‘Nadine, that is so sweet, but it's just a lot of phone calls and paperwork. There's really nothing anyone else can do, but thanks.' And he hung up, before she could create another possible reason to stay, or meet after, or …

For the next three hours he worked feverishly to ensure that everything was done perfectly with the transfer to the safe home, and in between he set up the rest of his evening.

He started with a call to Janice, still at the conference. ‘I can't talk,' she said, and then called him back fifteen minutes later.

‘Marky has become too much of a problem … he let the kid get away again. I've got it under control, but I can't deal with this level of incompetence,' Chase said.

‘Agreed,' she said. ‘Handle it.'

‘Of course. I'll stop by your place around … five-thirty? Does that work, pick up some of the special F – I gave the last of it to Marky. Maybe a little visit?'

‘I'd like that,' she said, ‘it's been one hell of a day. You get anything out of Dr. Conyors?'

‘No, but I'm working on it … I'm meeting her for dinner.'

There was a long pause.

‘You still there?' he asked, knowing that the mention of his dinner with Barrett had thrown her.

‘What are you playing, Chase?'

‘Nothing. Don't get paranoid.'

‘Dinner? What, you're going to fuck me and then go for her? Two in one night, is that the plan?'

‘Janice, sometimes you're out of your freaking mind. You wanted me to find out what she knew. This is the way I know how to do it. If you've got a better solution, by all means tell me. I have no intention of sleeping with her, but we need to know what happened with those cells.'

After hanging up, he brought a stack of paperwork to Nadine. ‘Could you copy these for me, three sets, and put them into some kind of folders?'

‘Sure.'

Back in his office he called Marky, who was still on the road. ‘Hey, doll, sorry I got all over you about that kid. Any chance you've found him?'

‘Not yet, but I will. I promise, Chase, I'm so sorry.'

‘Sshhh. It's OK, end of the day, what does he know? Hung out with a couple dead junkies. No biggie.'

‘He knows me,' Marky said nervously. ‘He knows I'm the one who hands out the stuff and gets the cash. I mean he could point me out or something. I should have done him. I should have just done him and made sure.'

‘Can't change the past,' Chase said, realizing how much of a smoking gun Marky was, how reckless this whole enterprise had become. ‘You can only change the future. If you see him you know what to do. And if you don't he's probably gotten his ass far out of town and out of our hair. Either way, problem solved. Life goes on, business goes on,' and dropping his voice, ‘love and sex and rock 'n' roll.'

‘Can I see you, Chase?'

‘Sure, I'm at the office. I got the stuff for the week and I've also got a little side job I want you to do. Low risk, high yield, but I'll tell you about that later. Where are you right now?'