Molly Brown (2 page)

The girl pulled hersel
f together and gave a final see-if-I-care shrug. “Who said I’m underage?” she said slowly and gave him a half-hearted come on.

Connell ignored it. “So she caught you wi
th some boy and was going to tell Mom?”

“Not exactly.”

“So tell me, exactly.”

The girl looked away, and though he couldn’t be sure, Connell thought she was blinking back tears. Her eyes were clear when she turned back.

“She wasn’t supposed to come out of her room. I told her not to - not when I had company.” She paused, dropping her gaze to her feet. “She’s only little ... in here.” She tapped at her head. “Like I said, weird. She’s not exactly sociable, gets scared at loud noises and crowds. I was going to have people over and have some fun, smoke a little, mess around a little, you know. Like I said, she was supposed to stay in her room and out of my way.”

“But she didn’t?” Connell was starting to see the picture and didn’t much like it.

“No, she didn’t. The battery in her flashlight died, she couldn’t read her book. She came in to ask for another - like I carry a package of batteries around with me.”

“And?”

“And she kinda interrupted us.” She gave him a knowing look and he ignored it. She was a child pretending to be a grown up. He found the whole situation disturbing. “She just stood there ... staring ... like she does, and Terry got mad and shouted at her. Scared her, I guess.”

“Terry?”

“Yeah.” She checked her pockets, seemed to realize he’d destroyed her last joint and crossed her arms nervously across her chest.

“Who’s Terry?”

“Just a guy.”

Just a guy - a guy who got off on scaring little girls.
Connell didn’t much like guys who scared girls, no matter what how little they were. “How old is this guy?”

“Huh?”

“How old is your boyfriend?” This was hard work. He bit at the inside of his cheek to sharpen his focus and to stop him from snapping back at her.

She shook
her head. “I’m not sure. He’s older than me.”

“You’re not sure? Well
, does he go to school, college? Does he work?”

“I dunno.”

Connell sighed. She didn’t know much about the guy she’d brought home. “Where does he live?”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t know much.”

“Whatever
...” she replied, bored again.

“Did you know him before you brought him home?”

“No. I’d seen him before, around the bar, but I didn’t know him.”

She had the grace to look a little shamefaced and Connell wondered if she had any idea how dangerous
the game she was playing actually was. Maybe he should take the time to explain. He checked his watch. Time was something he was short of and he doubted she would appreciate it anyway. He took a breath.

“So let me get this straight:
your mom and dad are out of town, you decide to have a party and you go out and score drugs. You pick up some strange guy in a bar you shouldn’t be in, in the first place because you’re underage, then you bring him home and score a little action while your little sister sits in the dark alone in her room.”

She hung her head, studied the cracked patent leather on her shoes and the chipped polish on her toe nails. “I guess.”

“Pretty shitty, huh?”

“I guess.”

He was glad she thought so, even if it was in hindsight.

“What did thi
s Terry guy say to her when she caught him with his pants down?”

She stifled a quick smile. Connell didn’t share the humor.

The smirk disappeared as quickly as it came. “He wasn’t very nice.”

“
He wasn’t very nice
,” repeated Connell, slowly. What was she doing with guys that weren’t very nice? He wanted to shake her but reckoned shaking wasn’t very nice either. “What did he say?”

She shot him a glance and
looked away again, to compose herself maybe? He wondered if she was actually as wrecked as she made out or whether it was an act she was hiding behind.

“Terry told her she was a little freak and he’d burn her books and slit her throat if she didn’t disappear.”

Definitely not nice
. “And do you think he would’ve?”

“Would’ve what?”

“Slit her throat.”

She shook her head. “Come on. It’s just some
thing you say when you’re mad, isn’t it?”

Oh sure, maybe in the world according to Lydia Brown, but not in any world he knew. He recalled wryly the times when Joe had interrupted
him at an inopportune moment. That little guy had built-in radar but slitting of throats didn’t come into it. “How’d he know about the books?”

“Huh?”

“How did he know about the books? Did he go into her room?”

She shrugged. “I dunno, I guess so
... I was pretty whacked out.”

Connell
started counting back in his head and tried to remain calm. He wasn’t sure whether his alarm bells were ringing because she was hiding something or simply because the whole situation stank.

“Did Terry stay all night? Was he still here when you noticed that Molly had gone?”

“I don’t know what time it was when he left. When he was done, I guess. I was high. It was about lunchtime when I realized she’d gone, and I gave her till dinner to come home. When it started to get dark, I began to get a little worried because Molly doesn’t like the dark.”

She didn’t like the dark and yet there wasn’t even a light bulb in her excuse for a room
. God, he knew deep down this could only get worse. He just didn’t want to think about it.

He thought instead of Lizzie and the feel of her warm restraining hand on his arm. He needed her, but maybe it wasn’t such a good idea t
o think of the love of his life when he was caught up in a case and hadn’t been home in four days.

He returned his attention to Lydia. “What about the other guests?”

“There were no other guests.”

“Some party
...”

She pulled a face. “We had fun.”

Oh sure, so much fun that she couldn’t remember any of it.
“You didn’t call your folks?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged again, a little sadly this time. “Because I don’t know where they are.”

Well that didn’t surprise him; she didn’t know much at all.

So, that was last night and Molly had probably been gone twelve hours already by then. He added it up in his head, whichever way you looked at it, that little girl had been gone a long time.

“You phoned the cops and they came straight over?”

“No,” she replied in a voice that suggested she though
t he was as stupid as her crazy little sister. “They came this morning, said they’d look out for her, and to let them know if she turned up.”

Connell had sat outside in his car and watched them leave. He’d assumed it was a return visit, hadn’t realized it was the first response. “They weren’t worried?” Since when did cops think it wasn’t a big deal when a child went missing?

“Kids go missing, most of them come home ... that’s what they said. Maybe there was a game on, or a sale at Dunkin Donuts. They were in a hurry.”

Oh yeah, they’d be in a hurry when he caught up with them.
“Did you tell them about Terry?”

She avoided his gaze.
“They didn’t ask.”

He glanced back at the pathetic little room and thought of the
child who’d slept in that bed, imagined how she must have felt curled up under thin dirty covers with no light and no comfort. He couldn’t bear the thought of Joe in similar circumstances.

But tha
t wasn’t why he was there or what he was getting paid for. He should just leave it to the locals and back off, but he’d never been very good at backing off, even when he’d been told to.

He turned back to the girl with a sigh.
“Have you been smoking today?”

“Some.”

“You need to stop now. You need to get your head in gear and go get cleaned up. You need to be ready when your sister comes home. Is there someone who can stay with you until your parents come back?”

“I’m doing okay on my own.”

Connell looked her up and down and shook his head sadly. “No, kiddo, you’re not.  You let strange guys into your home. Think about it, you let me walk in off the street and you still haven’t asked for ID. Strange guys have a habit of doing strange things and they usually won’t be good things. How long have your parents been gone?”

She shrugged, looked away and he realized they weren’t on a trip. They’d been gone for some time and Lydia had been playing mommy, unsuccessfully as it turned out. “Who’s been paying the rent?” he asked
, though he already knew the answer.

“I have,” she answered with a defiant glare.

“For how long?” Maybe Lydia wasn’t putting on an act. Maybe she had to be stoned to do what she’d been doing.

“I don’t know, weeks, months, maybe two months.”

Two months!
What’d they do, go out to the store for cigarettes and forget to come back? Okay, so it wasn’t uncommon for guys to run off and leave their women, or ladies to take off on their men, but it was unusual for both to walk out the door without saying goodbye to their kids.

“They happen to mention where they were going?” asked Connell and she answered with a shake of her head. “
… or when they’d be back?”

“They left in a hurry. I guess they’d had enough of her too.”

“Enough of whom?”

“The Bookworm, who else?
”

“And what did Molly think about it?” She was a kid. Her mom and dad had disappeared and her sister was probably a whore. He was getting a bad feeling about this whole situation.

“Molly doesn’t say much. Like I said, she reads a lot.”

“But she does understand that they’ve gone?”

“Who knows? She doesn’t exactly sit around making small talk.”

“Do you think she may have gone to look
for them?” It was a possibility but the thought of a little kid wandering around the city, looking for her parents, did things to his gut that hurt.

“I doubt it. W
e’re better off without them.” Lydia reached down, and with one hand securing her to the door frame, she undid her shoes, slipped them off and shrunk by four inches and a couple of years.

“W
hy? Because they’re bad parents or because they walked out on you?”

“Both.”

Connell acknowledged that she was right. Good parents didn’t walk out on their kids. Of course that was supposing they had walked out and weren’t currently laying unclaimed in a drawer at the morgue.

He shot a final glance at the little room. “Where do you think she is?”

The girl cocked her head and gave a sad smile. “Well that’s pretty obvious ... she’s off to see the wizard.”

“Huh?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? Didn’t you notice?” She gestured to the books. “Some cop you are ...”

“I told you already, I’m not a cop. What should I have noticed?”

“They’re all the same shitty story.” She tapped her head again. “Don’t you get it? Molly lives in a world of her own. Molly lives in the wonderful world of Oz. She’s off to see the Wizard.”

Chapter Two

Connell was doing this as a favor - a little quality control for his buddy Gerry Gesting - checking out a couple of cops who thought it was fine to take their pay check and simply go through the motions. Gesting figured that they might be getting an additional pay check from someplace else, but wasn’t sure and didn’t want to rock the boat until he was.

Gerry didn’t like bad cops -
he had dealt with a few in his time and knew that Connell had a similar distaste for them - but the department was currently stretched trying to track down a serial killer with a taste for sharp knives and dead cops. No one, including Gerry, wanted guys sitting on suspension for taking bribes when they were needed on the street. Gerry was a patient man, though, and with Connell’s help he would gather what he needed to know, and when the boys in blue had gotten their man, he’d step in and separate the gold on the force from the lead. It was what he did and he did it well.

Connell was about done with his own investigation on Detective’s Gibbons and Scott. He’d been observing them dis
creetly over a number of days: cases not followed up; witnesses who mysteriously withdrew their statements; and perhaps more significant, a substantial amount of missing time, time when they should have been doing their job but were too busy doing something else, someplace else. Connell wasn’t entirely sure what they were up to, or where they were up to it, but he figured that, yeah, they were definitely looking the other way, and if he’d had more time and a little more interest in them, he would have dug a little deeper.

Trouble was
, the deeper he dug into the shit left behind by crooked cops, the more he was inclined to stop digging. It left a bad taste in his mouth that he didn’t like. He’d been about ready to write up his report, hand it back to Gerry and go home, but then he’d followed them, gone into the room, and realized this case was something different. This was about a child and now that he was here, he didn’t feel inclined to pass it on.

Nobody was going to look for Molly Brown. She wasn’t the sweet, photogenic all-American kid t
he press liked. She was a weird little runt who reeked of neglect and freaked people out with her strangeness. Similarly, nobody would give a shit about her mouthy sister. She should be in school, making a future for herself; instead, she was selling herself to pay the rent. He thought about the parents and wondered if anyone had bothered to look into their disappearance or whether it had even been reported. Both girls were in danger. He couldn’t just look the other way, couldn’t live with himself if he did. It bothered him greatly that a child had disappeared. It bothered him almost as much that the two lousy cops in charge of the case had chosen not to follow it up.

He stood outside the building and looked at the street, at the route Molly would likely have taken had she left under her own steam. He hoped she had; he hated thinking about the alternative.

A poor neighborhood, the sidewalk was littered with uncollected trash bags and general crap. Molly would have needed to walk on the road. At night, in the dark, that would have held its own dangers. She had a flashlight, but as Lydia had already told him, the batteries were dead. So, if she hadn’t been sideswiped by a car and taken to the ER, then maybe some driver might remember trying to avoid her.

There was a gas st
ation at the end of the block. If she’d gone that way, she might have been caught on camera. The cops who’d called that morning should have been following this up. He knew they weren’t - didn’t yet know why - and the longer the trail was left, the colder it would become.

Giving a final glance at the shabby building
, he bent and unlocked his car. Slipping off his jacket, he threw it onto the passenger seat and slid in behind the wheel. He should head home. He’d been away longer than intended and had a long drive ahead of him. He smiled at the thought of the welcome he’d get when he eventually got there, but first he needed to speak to Gerry.

“What’s the real
story with your guys?” he asked curtly when Gerry answered his phone.

“Well
, hello to you too, Tommy. I see you left your manners at home again.”

Funny guy. Connell reached over to his jacket and pulled out the photo of Molly he’d swiped from the apartment. It was maybe a year old, taken at school. She really was a little squirt - looked about eight at the most. Her hair was pulled roughly into braids and her ears stuck out like handles. Staring blankly at the camera through dollar store spectacles, her eyes appeared to be looking in two directions at the same time, though that could have been a trick of the light. He was starting to see weirdness where there was probably none, but either way she was no beauty pageant contender.

“What do you expect? You said this wouldn’t take up much of my time. I’ve been on this four days and I’m still not done.”

“Hey, don’t forget, I’m doing you the favor. Don’t tell me you don’t need the money. I heard all about Lizzie’s plans for the house.”

“Oh yeah, plans for Parker’s house ...”

The old man had eventually
relented and sold them the farm, but Lizzie had gone all doe-eyed and said they couldn’t see an old man of ninety in a home for the almost-departed. She’d spent what money they’d had doing up the little house by the barn so Parker could stay in the place where he’d been born. As far as Connell was concerned, he was a sly old buzzard who was nowhere near taking his last breath, and he had Lizzie wrapped around his little finger. He figured he owed him one, though. Without Parker he wouldn’t have Lizzie.

“Yeah, that twenty million
is looking real attractive,” he added wryly.

Ge
rry laughed. “Forget about it. You always were an honest cop.”

“You think?”
Temptation was a terrible thing … so tempting. Never mind the twenty million, he was tempted to put his hands round Parker’s scrawny neck and help him with that last breath.

“I know it,” said Gerry.

“So, about these guys - what are you not telling me?” asked Connell. Gerry liked to play things close to his chest. Connell figured it was a control thing, a consequence of the spooky company he kept. Gerry would disagree.

“I only know what you tell me. You’re the one doing the digging.”

Connell wasn’t convinced. He knew Gerry too well but gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it. I guess I should be used to being the last one to know what’s going on.”

Gerry laughed again. “You work better that way, Tommy. When you know nothing
, you come up with possibilities. When you know everything, your mind shuts down.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“You decide.”

“Yeah, well, I reckon my mind is open for business and I’ve got a few possibilities to keep me thinking.”

“I’m listening.”

“Your guys; at the very least they’re not doing their job and they’re being paid to look the other way by criminals incorporated, identity as yet unknown. I should have that information soon. I tailed them last night to a very shady location, thought I’d take another drive by in daylight and see if the sun shines on anything of interest.”

“And at the worst?”

“At the worst, they may be mixed up in something serious.”

“Such as?”

Connell
adjusted his rearview mirror. He liked to know what was going on around him, even when he wasn’t paying too much attention to it.

“They came out on a r
eport of a missing ten year old at least twelve hours after it was called in. This little kid is vulnerable, Gerry. A little off, not quite all there, if you get my meaning, and for the last two months she’s been taken care of, if you can call it that, by her sixteen-year-old sister who’s prostituting herself to pay the rent. Your guys took one quick look, told her sister the kid would come home on her own when she was ready, and went off to watch the game.”

“Where was child protection
while all this was going on?”

“No idea, Gerry. At some fucking fundraiser with the mayor
, for all I know?”

“Okay, Tommy, rein it in
...”

Connell heard the disapproval in Gerry’s curt tone. He knew his tendency for over
-enthusiasm, and his unhealthy intolerance for officials, grated on the man.

“I’ll see those boys get what’s coming,” continued Gerry. “Just let me have your report and then you’re done. See, I said it wouldn’t take long. You’ll be back on the
farm, enjoying all things horse-related, before you know it.”

Connell stared a moment at the phone. “Is that it? What about the kid?”

“The kid’s not your concern, Tommy. Leave it to Missing Persons. Your job was to check up on wayward cops.”

“And that’s what I’m still doing. Gerry, think about it. Why would these guys turn a blind eye to a missing child unless they’d been told to, or paid to, by someone who didn’t want that ch
ild found? And why would anyone not want to find a child?”

“Are you sure you’re not just getting carried away with the moment, Tommy? It’s hard when a child is involved, particularly when you’ve got a kid of your own. How do you know they’re not checking it out?”

“Because they took less than ten minutes in the apartment. I know because I timed them. I sat outside the entire time.”

The phone stayed silent and Connell kn
ew that Gerry was considering, knew the way the man’s mind worked like the mechanism on a rundown clock, slow but sure. “Maybe they’re just busy with other stuff, the stuff you’re meant to be investigating,” Gerry eventually replied.

“Maybe, but that’s not all, Gerry. The parents have up and disappeared and no one is giving a shit about that either. Something’s not right here, Gerry. I can’t just leave it. This kid is weird. Nobody is
going to look for her. Nobody’s going to find her ...”

“You mean
unless you do it?”

“Maybe.”

Gerry’s sigh whispered down the line. “It’s not your job, Tommy. It could have been but you chose to turn your back on your badge.”

Connell recalled bitterly, the day he’d turned it in. He had no regrets. “Do you blame me, Gerry? I don’t exactly have confidence in the justice machine.”

“What can I say, Tommy? You were screwed. Nobody can say you sat back and took it. You shook the place up, righted a few wrongs, but it’s been almost two years. You need to leave all that behind now.”

“What do you think I’
m doing here? Righting wrongs. But I can’t do it on my own, Gerry. I’m not Joe. I haven’t got some secret Spidey suit on under my shirt.”

“What do you want me to do, Tommy? Missing kids aren’t my area.”

Connell gave an exasperated shake of his head. Missing kids should be everybody’s area. “Keep me on your special payroll a little longer and I’ll do some more digging on your two lame boys in blue, find out whose holding the end of their leash and make sure the kid isn’t forgotten.”

Gerry paused again and Connell imagined the cogs grinding. “I don’t know whether I can square that, Tommy. I don’t have the juice I used to.”

Now that he’d adjusted the mirror, Connell found himself distracted by what he saw in it. He listened to Gerry with half an ear as he watched the vehicle parked across the street, way behind him. The fact that it was there wasn’t the problem; the problem was the two guys inside who seemed particularly interested in what he was doing. He scrabbled in the glove box for a pen, squinted hard and jotted down the license plate on the back of an envelope. He pulled his attention back to Gerry when he realized he’d stopped speaking.

“Sure y
ou do, Gerry, you’re the man, the guy who recovered twenty million for the government’s secret slush fund. You can do anything.”

Gerry smiled and Connell heard the amusement in his reply. “You’re never
going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, sniff around, keep me posted so’s I can justify your pay, and Tommy ...”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful this time. You’ve been out of the loop for a while and there are some seriously messed up people in the big, bad city these days, not least this crazy cop killer who’s running around making a name for himself. You being a country boy, you gotta keep your wits about you.”

“Don’t worry, Gerry. I learnt my lesson. Lizzie insists that I wear protection.”

Gerry laughed. “Hey, I don’t want to know what goes on behind your closed doors.”

Connell smiled. “I’ve got a vest in the trunk of the car, Gerry.”

“It’s no good unless you’re wearing it.”

“Sure, Gerry, and if I was still a cop in this crazy town
, I probably would wear it to bed, but as I’m not, I figure it can stay in the trunk. I’ll catch you later. Let me know if you hear anything I might find useful.”

“Are you going
home tonight, Tommy? Even superheroes needed to rest up once in a while.”

“We’ll see,” replied Connell, with one eye on the mirror. His life wouldn’t be worth living if he didn’t.

Connell glanced back up at the building. First things first, there was no way he could leave Lydia alone in that apartment at the mercy of every Terry in the neighborhood. It was time to catch up with his buddy Marty, or more specifically, Marty’s wife Charlene. Not content with their own six kids, Charlene ran a shelter for at risk youngsters, kids who would otherwise end up on the streets. He was hoping she’d have room for Lydia. Charlene was a big woman and very persuasive. He was sure she’d be able to convince Lydia to take advantage of the opportunity.