Something had to give
I woke late to my phone ringing under my pillow. I reached for it.
Ollie.
“Well,” he grumbled, “you wanted something big, you bastard. You got it.”
I thought he meant the night before. I thought I’d be in trouble. “Just a flesh wound,” I said, looking at the bandage on the back of my hand.
“What? I mean case number ten. It just came through. Get this. Seven years old. I just got a visit from the boss.”
Dr. Chalmers didn’t come down to The Pit, as we called it — the windowless basement offices of the building — except for promotions and firings.
I sat up. “What’d she say?”
“Nothing. She asked where the hell you’ve been and told me the news.”
I looked at the clock. After 10:00. “When did it happen?”
After my little outing, I let the Jersey police know what I had found at the apartment complex. Then I went to the ER, which took most of the night.
“Boy was admitted to the hospital late last night,” he said. “I was about to head over. Thought you might like to join me.”
I told him I’d meet him there. I hung up.
Shit.
Seven years old.
I looked at my phone. I had unread messages. From Amber.
Dr. Massey.
NO LUCK ON YET ON ALONSO FILE
HOW IS THE CASE GOING?
I looked around the room. I didn’t like waking up in the hotel. It was the worst part of my day. There was always that moment just after sleep but before I was fully conscious where it seemed like I was back home and my dirty clothes would be on the floor and Marlene would be making racket with my daughter in the bathroom.
But there was none of that.
If my wife had seen how I lived those months in New York, she probably would’ve been upset. It wasn’t just that it was clean, which the housekeeping staff saw to regularly. It was tidy. I picked up after myself like I never had at home. Mostly because I wasn’t taking turns feeding Marigold or putting her down. I wasn’t sneaking away to catch up on my reading, neglecting the dishes, because now I had time. All I had was time. And with no reason to hurry, there was no reason not to tidy up.
And I suppose some part of me knew that if I didn’t do it, no one would.
The effect, week after week, was to make the place look unlived in, and waking up to that — and the quiet — amplified my sense of isolation. I was always happy to step out of the elevator and back into the noise of the world.
I texted Dr. Massey from the train.
NOT WELL. THERE’S A NEW CASE
JUST GOT WORD. 7 YEARS OLD
She texted back right away.
SEVEN?? THAT’S TERRIBLE!!!
Then, a few minutes later:
I’LL HAVE JAIME CHECK STORAGE.
ALONSO FILE MIGHT HAVE BEEN
ACCIDENTALLY ARCHIVED
THANKS
I got off the train and moved to a different platform, heading northbound. I was waiting for the train when my phone dinged again.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
WHAT ABOUT ME?
KIDS ARE HARD
JUST CHECKING
YEAH
I had almost arrived at my destination when she finally asked.
NEED A LITTLE SUPPORT?
GUESS WE’LL FIND OUT!
I walked into the hospital. Oliver was nowhere to be found, so I went right up.
We’re not supposed to use patients’ names — to protect their privacy. So I’ll call this little boy “Alvin.” Good kid. Stayed with a neighbor on those nights his mom worked a double shift. She could pick up extra money cleaning the big corporate offices in lower Manhattan, but only when there was a no-show and her employer was shorthanded. She’d work most of the night, get three hours’ sleep, and be back at her day job the following morning.
“Alvin” came home to the babysitter’s apartment, just down the hall from his own, and said he was tired and didn’t feel good. He said he wasn’t hungry. He fell asleep on the couch. Woke up later to vomit. It happens. Kids get sick, as any parent knows. When he did it again and lost consciousness, the neighbor called his mom, who rushed home and found him catatonic. He got lucky and was admitted to a good hospital sometime after midnight. None of the adults had any idea where he’d been playing around the public housing block they called home.
By the time I saw him, he was isolated behind a plastic barrier, which was unnecessary. But then I suspect it had psychological value — for the staff, maybe. He looked blighted, like he was suffering an Old Testament plague. His skin was turning to ash right there in the hospital bed. He was wheezing. His gums were weeping. His hair had thinned to a sparse brown fuzz. His eyes were cracked open, and I could see them turning deliriously under his lids. His young mother was hunched over his bright, starched sheets like a nun at prayer. She had plump cheeks and colorful beads in her hair. She’d tucked his bedding so tight it pinned him down. Like she was worried he might float away. She dabbed the drool from his mouth with a damp cloth.
I picked up a small stuffed bear that had fallen to the floor. She smiled at me weakly then, with bloodshot, too-dry eyes. As if she’d cried all she could. I smiled back and set the bear next to some flowers on a side table. The little card poking from the top of the bouquet suggested they were from her employer. APEX Commercial Cleaning. It was, I imagined, a programmed response from a human resources staffer who had never met this woman. Or her dying son.
Organ failure is sort of like having a body full of wobbling dominoes. As the liver starts to go, toxins build up in the blood, putting more stress on the kidneys and the GI tract and the rest. If they’re damaged as well, the body struggles keep up, and all it takes is one more good jolt and the dominoes start to fall.
After a few moments, Oliver appeared at the door and waved me into the hall. “Chalmers has our colleagues going over the housing complex right now,” he said in a whisper.
I turned back to the room. I shook my head. “They’re not gonna find anything.”
“Oh? And here I thought I was the veteran and you were the rookie.”
Oliver was from a middle-class neighborhood in Rhode Island. I didn’t feel like explaining the ghetto to him. “If it’s not a waste of time, then why aren’t you up there?”
“Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”
I made a face. “And there’s no one straighter.”
“You wanna tell me what happened?” He motioned to the bandaged cut on my hand, and then to the dark bruise on the side of my face.
“Fell down some stairs.”
“Doing what?”
“My job,” I answered.
“We should get going.” He motioned to the elevators and started walking. “Did you find anything while you were out working hard?”
“Not yet.”
“Ever the optimist,” he quipped.
“I could be a callous cynic like you.”
“I’ll have you know that Cynicism was a proud school of ancient Greek philosophy.”
“Oh yeah? What is it now?”
He smiled and hit the down button. “You sure do know how to make problems. Day before yesterday, I thought I had a shot at getting caught up this week.”
“Make?”
“I meant find.” He looked at me again and saw something he didn’t like. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Why? Worried?”
“Maybe.” He studied my face. “Kid’s gonna die, you know. You need to be ready for that.”
I scowled and turned to make sure the boy’s mother hadn’t followed us and overheard. “Fuck, man . . . we just walked out of his room.” I felt like I had to whisper.
He didn’t. “All the more reason for you to face it.” Once a child died, he said, the whole city would go nuts. Parents would pull their kids out of school. There’d be calls. Probably an inquest — after the dust settled. “If it gets worse, maybe even charges.”
“Charges?”
“Negligence. For starters.”
“That’s crazy.”
“That’s politics. It’s about the threat and getting the story on the news, where it damages opinions, more than the real chance of conviction. But if it sticks, all the better.”
The elevator dinged and I walked away, down a different hall.
“Where you going?” he called, hand on the door.
“Somewhere I can think.”
“Chalmers wants us at the housing complex with the others,” he called. “I’m supposed to bring you.”
“Tell her I fell down some stairs.”
I stopped around the corner and checked my email. I wanted the preliminary report on the undocumented Chinese to be waiting in my inbox with a nice little note from ME. But there was nothing. Not even an acknowledgment of the request I had sent the day before. Just a passive-aggressive note from Tucker Davis, PhD, updating me on yesterday’s activities. All samples were at the lab. Nothing noticeably out of the ordinary.
I saw my message app.
I opened it.
I tapped the phone icon next to Amber’s name.
She answered almost immediately. “Hey, you. I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah.”
She waited a moment for me to elaborate. When that didn’t come, she said “Well, I guess now we know the answer to my question.”
“Just . . . Do me a favor and tell me I’m not screwing this up.”
She made a noise like that was the stupidest thing she ever heard. “Oh please, you are not screwing this up. You’re busting your ass! They are so lucky to have you.”
I felt weak and stupid for calling.
“You can’t do it by yourself,” she said.
“I’m not. There’s a whole team over at — ”
“That’s not what I meant. And you know it.”
I paced in a circle in the hall, head low. I ran my fingers through my beard.
“Look. Kids are the hardest.” She said it like she had experience. “You need someone to talk to. If not about the little boy, then about anything and everything else. Just so you can feel normal and get up the next day and keep fighting. Okay?”
I nodded. As if she could see me.
“I still owe you dinner,” she said.
Amber had offered dinner and a little tour around the city at our second encounter. I had politely demurred.
But I hadn’t said no.
“Please?” she said. “We’re both adults. It’s just fucking dinner.”
I knew that was a joke. It wasn’t like her to swear.
“I don’t know if I can get off tonight,” I explained. “Sounds like we might be working late.”
“Tomorrow then.” She wasn’t gonna let me put her off a third time. “My treat.”
I was going to argue that, but she cut me off. “Don’t you dare, Doctor.”
“I thought I wasn’t a real doctor,” I said. “I’ll text you. Later. After I figure out my schedule. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough. And, you know, call before then if you need to.”
“Thanks.” I hung up and looked at my phone again.
Down the hall, a man was arguing with a nurse about his sick wife. I couldn’t get the details, but I could tell he was very good at it. Well practiced at being the squeaky wheel. Probably because he needed to be.
I turned around and walked back to the boy’s room. His mother was still there. No one else dared get close. They seemed like such a lonely pair. I knocked gently.
She turned.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” I said. “My name’s Dr. Alexander, by the way.” I held out my hand.
She took it. “Nicki.” She seemed so young. “You don’t look like a doctor,” she said.
I smiled. Spiky hair. Bushy beard. Thick-rimmed glasses. Jeans. “You got me. I’m not a real doctor,” I explained. “I’m an epidemiologist.”
I nodded toward her son, like she should look.
She turned and she caught the drool that was running. “A what?” she asked.
I thought about how to explain it. “Doctors worry about the health of their patients. Epidemiologists worry about the health of the community. The folks here are trying to make him better. I’m trying to find what made him sick.”
I waited to see if that made sense, but she gave no indication. “I don’t suppose you could share a picture of your son.”
She looked at me. It took only a second, but I knew I was getting the lie detector test. Folks from a certain part of town grow up with a healthy suspicion of everyone. They have to. Because everyone has a hustle.
I must have passed because she reached to her purse on the floor and produced a phone. The particular model she owned was at least five years old — bought for pennies second-hand, probably. Maybe from a store. Maybe off the street. The screen was badly cracked, but it worked.
Like most parents, she had no shortage of photos. She scrolled through them, one after the other. “How many you want?” She asked, making fun of herself.
I showed her my phone. All pictures of Marigold. “Same.”
She smiled and turned the screen in my hand to see it better. “She pretty.”
I pointed to a photo in her gallery. It seemed like it had been taken by the boy’s school — a close-up of his face and torso. He was beaming. Big bright dimples on a brown cherub face.
She sent it via direct connection and I thanked her as earnestly as I could. I took a step back. It seemed like I should say more then, like ‘We’re gonna figure this out.’ But that felt like a lie. So instead I came back with the stock “We’re doing everything that can be done.”
She nodded.
I don’t think I passed that time. I excused myself and went right for the taxi stand.
I didn’t want to be a liar.
The cab dropped me in front of a building lined in aquamarine tile. Thin metal letters in a 1940s-style font were pinned to it.
CITY OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER
I signed in and was admitted to a back office where a bespectacled woman named Shirley promised she’d be right with me. I was eventually taken to an older, more spartan office just outside one of the examination rooms. A white board covered in colored writing summarized the work in progress. There were at least two dozen bodies at various stages of the autopsy process. My five hadn’t even been added yet, but Shirley confirmed they had arrived and were in the lockers.
I waited by myself for another twenty minutes before a tall, balding, bearded man with a full protruding belly came in and introduced himself as Dr. Pratt. I shook his hand, which felt like it was twice as big as mine. I explained why I was there, and he told me that even if they put a rush on the work, it would take several days at least.
“I don’t need a full autopsy,” I said, trying not to sound frustrated. “At least not right away.” I had a damned good idea of what killed them. I just needed to know what they ate. “Stomach contents,” I said. “And blood work,” I added.
He scowled at me and said my request was duly noted. Dr. Pratt had the manners of a man who spent more time with the dead than the living. He walked to the back without a farewell. I heard the electric lock on the door click as it shut. There was a key pad next to it. No going that way. I was being brushed off.
I stormed into the hall and around to a long stretch of glass used for identification. That’s where the scared and grieving people stood when men like Pratt rolled up the gurney and pulled back the sheet and changed their lives forever. Right now it was empty. It smelled like old carpet.
There was a curtain on the other side of the window, but it wasn’t drawn. I saw Dr. Pratt in the middle of the room, his face buried in a clipboard.
I slammed my phone to the glass. “Alvin’s” smiling, dimpled face.
Dr. Pratt turned.
“Seven years old,” I said as loud as I could without yelling.
His eyes caught the picture for just a moment. He scowled and turned back to his work.
“He’s dying in a hospital,” I said. “Right now. The dead folks in that room with you can wait. He can’t.”
Pratt didn’t look at me. He kept checking boxes on his clipboard form. But he nodded slightly as if to say “All right, all right.”
“Thank you,” I called sternly through the glass. I knocked on it twice in solidarity and walked outside.
I realized just then how tired I was. My knee still hurt from the day before. I felt queasy and realized I hadn’t eaten yet. I’d even foregone my mandatory morning cup of coffee.
I sat on the curb. I still had my phone in my hand and I flipped through pictures of my daughter. I read an email from my wife that included the direct number to Mom’s hospital room and a mostly patient reminder that I said I’d call. People came and went around me and didn’t pay any mind. Everything was going on pretty much as it does.
So here’s the thing. Statistics works. There are a bunch of people in life who say it’s just a fancy way to lie, but it’s actually a really powerful tool. It can be abused. That’s true. But then that’s true of any tool. We don’t burn baseball bats every time some asshole takes one to his wife’s lover. The thing about statistics that gets it into trouble is that it’s not as intuitive as a baseball bat, and regular people tend not to trust anything that can’t be grasped squarely with two hands.
By the numbers, whatever I was chasing could only be one of two things: something completely new to science, which was extremely unlikely — on the order of winning the Powerball — or an oversight, something so rare we just hadn’t considered it. Case #1, Alonso White, was missing. Cases #2 and #3 were dead and buried. It would take a court order to have them exhumed. Jayden Cavett was the responsibility of the State of New Jersey and didn’t have a New York case number. And anyway they’d already cremated her. They don’t fool around these days. It costs upwards of $200 (or more) just to show up and claim a body from the coroner. Burial and funeral expenses fall on top of that. That’s more than some folks can afford.
That meant we only had the little boy and the Chinese immigrants.
And I was out of ideas.
Something had to give.
I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming hardboiled occult mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018.
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You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta
The next chapter is here: (not yet posted)
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