The coroner looked up and asked, “You have anything more for me?”
“No,” she said. “The same early morning hours when we found this little girl,” she said, “I found a little boy alive, about an hour earlier.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “I have more than enough work of my own, you know?”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “I get it. Unfortunately there seems to be a never-ending supply of work for both of us.”
“Isn’t that a sad truth.”
“Do you have a cause of death yet?”
“Broken neck,” he said, “but she was a very sick little girl to begin with.”
“In what way?”
“She has damage to her pancreas and undiagnosed diabetes.”
“Interesting,” she murmured, looking down at the pale white skin of the little girl. “Do you have a time of death?”
“I do,” he said. “You’re not gonna like it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it was several days ago. I would say anywhere from forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
She stared at him in shock. “What?”
“Yes,” he said, “whoever had her, kept her for a couple days.”
She stared down at the little girl. “Why?”
“I don’t know why,” he said, “but her body sat in one position, seated, until rigor left,” he said. “We’ve still got a lot of lividity all around her lower buttocks and thighs, where she was sat up.”
“Sat up?”
“My bet would be that she was propped up on a chair or a couch.”
Just a vision of a dead child sitting on a couch with her gave her the creeps. She shot a sidelong glance at Rodney to see the same disgust on his face. “Anything else you can give me?” she asked Smidge. “What about the same mark?”
“Yes, a single line. Other than that there’s not a whole lot here to find,” he said. He looked down at the little girl, then back at Kate and said, “You better find this asshole.”
“I plan on it. I hope to not only find the perp but to add him to your work list,” she snapped. With that, she turned and headed over to the door, removing her gown. She put it into the laundry bin and stormed off. She didn’t care if Rodney followed or not. All she wanted was to be alone. Alone in a world where dead children didn’t stare at her and where loved ones didn’t cry out and reach for her.
As soon as she got outside to the fresh air, she stopped, took several deep breaths, Rodney calling out to her, behind her. She turned to face him. “What?”
He shook his head. “Why did you bolt like that?”
“Temper,” she said easily. “I want to find this guy, so I can wring his neck, just like he wrung that little girl’s neck. He doesn’t deserve more.”
*
Simon sat atthe breakfast table, the newspaper open in front of him. He had several monitors set up, facing him. He dealt in commodities, stocks, and real estate. After checking his regular reports, he went back to checking his emails. Always hundreds in a day. But then he had a lot of projects on the go, involving lots of people. He checked his watch, running late again. He tossed back his coffee.
Once dressed, he headed out again without breakfast. He’d tried to sleep, had woken up shortly thereafter, the same little boy screaming in his ears, followed by the little boy the detective had saved, as he’d seen on TV at the hospital this morning, then the little girl he’d found dead. All the time, he heard his ex-fiancée screaming about her nephew. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but his mind was focused on child to child to child.
Somewhere in there was the ghost child of the past; Simon just didn’t understand why now. What was it about these children that kept him awake at night? He pushed open the stairwell door to the lobby of his apartment building and strode to the front door. The doorman called out a good morning. Simon lifted a hand in greeting and stepped out into the street.
He was a couple blocks from Starbucks and a block over from a favorite sandwich shop. Contemplating a breakfast sandwich, he decided to hit his first building project.