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“My God!” said a muffled female voice.
“Do you know who this child belongs to?” Decker asked.
“Know the kid, Jen?” the man asked gruffly.
The door opened all the way.
“You found him outside my house?” Jen said. She looked to be in her early thirties, her hair dark brown, pulled back into a knot. “Why he’s just a baby!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Decker. “I found him or her on your swing set.”
“I’ve never seen the kid before in my life,” Jen answered.
“The neighborhood’s crawling with rug rats,” the unshaven man said. “All I know is he’s not one of ours.”
“There’re lots of new families in the area,” Jen said. She shrugged apologetically. “It’s hard to keep track of all the kids.”
Decker said, “No sense waking up the entire neighborhood. I’m sure we’ll get a panic call in the morning. The baby will be at the Foothill station. Spread the word, huh?”
“Sure, Officer, we will,” Jen said.
“I’m goin’ upstairs,” said the husband. “Back to sleep!”
“Goodness.” Jen shook her head. “That little cutie was right outside my house?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jen chucked the child’s chin. “Hi there, sweetheart. Can I give you a cookie?”
Decker said, “I don’t think we should feed the child right now. It’s a little late.”
“Oh yes,” Jen said. “Of course, you’re right. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”
“Thank you but no, ma’am.”
“What’s a baby doing out in the middle of the night like that?” Jen chucked the child’s chin again.
“I don’t know, ma’am.” Decker gave her his card. “Call me if you hear of anything.”
“Oh, I will, I will. The community’s still pretty manageable. It shouldn’t be too hard to locate his parents.”
“Jennn!” screamed the husband from upstairs. “C’mon! I gotta get up early.”
“What will you do with him?” Jen asked quickly. “Or maybe it’s a her. Looks like a little girl, don’t you think?”
Decker smiled noncommittally.
“What do you do with stray kids like this, poor little thing?”
“He or she will be cared for until we can locate the parents.”
“Will she be put in a foster home?”
“Jennn!”
“That man drives me nuts!” Jen whispered to Decker.
“Thanks for your time, ma’am,” Decker said. The door closed behind him, the chain was refastened to the post.
Decker looked at the toddler and said, “Where the heck did you come from, buddy?”
The child smiled.
“Got some teeth there, huh? How many do you have? Ten maybe?”
The child stared at him, played with a button on his shirt.
“Well, as long as we’re up so late how ’bout you coming to my place for a nightcap, huh?”
The child buried its head in Decker’s shoulder.
“Rather sleep, huh? You must be a girl. It’s the story of my life.”
Decker headed toward the unmarked.
“Lord only knows how you escaped. Your mom is going to have a fit in the morning.”
The toddler tucked its arm under its body.
“Snuggly little thing, aren’t you? How the heck did I notice you in the first place? Must have been the shiny zipper on your PJs.”
“Pee jehs,” said the child.
“Yeah, PJs. What color are they? Red? Pinkish red, kind of. Bet you are a girl.”
“A gull!” mimicked the toddler.
Decker’s smile faded. Something in the air. He smelled it now—the stale odor on its hands, on the front of its pajamas. Clotted blood. He hadn’t noticed it at first because it had blended with the color of the child’s sleepwear.
“Jesus!” he whispered, his hands shaking. He clutched the toddler, ran back to the unmarked, and unlocked the door.
Where the hell was the kid bleeding from!
He placed the baby on the backseat and unzipped its pajama sleeper. He shined the flashlight on the little body, the skin as smooth and pink as a ripe nectarine. Not a scratch on the chest, back, or shoulders. The forearms and wrist were spotted with a small, dry rash, but the rest of the toddler’s skin wasn’t cut, cracked, or punctured. Decker turned the child over. The back was clear as well.
He held his breath, praying that this wasn’t another ugly sexual-abuse case. He undid the diaper. It was soaked, but as far as he could tell, the child was unscathed. It was a she, and no blood was flowing from any of her orifices. He refastened the diaper as best as he could, then checked her throat, her head, her ears, her nose. The kid endured the impromptu examination with stoicism.
No signs of external or internal bleeding.
Decker exhaled forcibly. He swaddled her in a blanket, pulled out an evidence bag, and dropped the pajama sleeper inside. He buckled her in the backseat as tightly as he could, then drove to the station.
2
Marge Dunn hummed out loud as she walked into the detectives’ squad room. Her cheerful mood was immediately silenced by a grunt and a sneer from Paul MacPherson. She frowned and brushed wisps of blond hair from her round, doelike eyes. A big woman, tough when she had to be, she didn’t like crap first thing in the morning.
“What’s eating your ass?” she asked him.
“One doesn’t whistle at seven in the morning,” answered MacPherson. “It’s profane.”
Marge sighed. MacPherson . He was constantly forced to prove himself, and playing supercop got old very fast. Marge could understand that. Being the only woman detective was no picnic, either. MacPherson spent long hours at work. Made him good at the job, but gave him a problem ’tude. He was also constantly on the prowl.
“You been up all night, Paulie?”
“Gang shoot-out, two A.M., with bad-breath Fordebrand in Maui, guess who caught the call? Two DBs and a six-year-old in intensive care with a bullet in her brain—it made the headlines of all the morning papers, Marjorie. Don’t you read?”
“Not if I can help it,” Marge answered. “Paul, my man, you’re so pale you’re starting to look white. Go home and get some sleep.”
“‘To sleep, perchance to dream …’” Paul raised his eyebrows. “I just got my season tickets to the Globe Theater in San Diego. First production’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Come with me, my sweet, and I promise you an extraordinary experience.”
“Pass.”
“Come on, Marjorie,” Paul said. “Expose yourself to culture.”
“I have culture.” She reached inside her desk and pulled out her flute case. “This is culture.”
“Culture is for yogurt,” said Mike Hollander, lumbering in. He settled his meaty buttocks on a chair and pulled out a pile of papers from his desk drawer.
“Good morning, Michael,” said Marge. “Did you get the invitation to my next recital?”
Hollander tugged on the ends of his drooping mustache and gave her a sick smile. “Mary and I will be there.”
Marge gave him a pat atop his bald head. “For that, I’ll serve you coffee.”
Hollander smiled, genuinely this time. “You can toss me that old doughnut, Margie. No one else seems to be eating it.”
“Righto.” She aimed and fired. Hollander caught it in his right hand.
MacPherson said, “You’re actually going to her recital.”
Hollander whispered back, “The sacrifices one makes for friendship.”
“You’re an asshole,” MacPherson said. “You listen to her produce squeaky noises and I ask, what’s the payoff?”
“It makes her happy,” Hollander said.
“Makes her happy?” MacPherson said. “I don’t believe you said that, Michael.”
“I heard that, Paul,” Marge said.
“Mea culpa, madam,” said MacPherson. “I apologize. I don’t pick fights with women who outweigh me by twenty-five pounds.”
“Twenty,” Marge said. “I lost some weight since I broke up with Carroll. God, what an appetite that man had. I never realized how much the two of us ate.” She went over to the urn and poured two rounds of coffee, one in her unadorned mug, another in Hollander’s—a ceramic cup fronted with two 3-D breasts, the nipples painted bright pink.
“Done with the paper work yet, Paulie?” Hollander asked. “Shit, that must have been bad.”
MacPherson said, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the DBs. Both of the punks were subhuman. It’s the little sister that burns my butt.”
“She get in the way of cross fire?” Marge asked, handing Hollander his cup.
MacPherson shook his head. “Get this. She was trying to protect her older brother—the punk. Such a sweet little thing. What a waste!”
“Where’s Decker?” Hollander asked. “He’s late this morning.”
“He took the day off,” Marge said.
“Oh, that’s right,” Hollander said. “He mentioned he was meeting some old army buddy that got himself in a jam.”
MacPherson said. “Rabbi Pete’s upstairs committing an immoral act with a minor.”
Marge smiled and sipped.
“I shit you not,” MacPherson continued. “He’s in the dorm sleeping with a kid under two. As a matter of fact, Margie, you’d better wake him up. Some dumb social worker’s going to see him and the kid together, and poor Pete’ll be charged with sexual abuse.”
“What happened?” Marge asked.
“The rabbi found the kid wandering the streets in that new development about one this morning. Brought her into the station house.”
“Which development?” Hollander asked. “There’s been a bunch of them lately. Assholes gerrymander the district, and we’ve got all these rich boys coming in and building all over the place.”
“Manfred and Associates,” MacPherson said. “You know. The one where all the streets are trees or states.”
“The one above the old lime quarry,” Marge said.
“You got it,” MacPherson answered.
“Decker call IDC yet?” Hollander asked.
“Nah,” MacPherson said. “Too early for that. He just filled out the forms and placed her under protective custody. The kid probably climbed out of her crib and escaped through a doggy door. Pete’s hoping for a frantic call any moment.”
“I’ll go wake him,” Marge said. She placed her mug on her desktop. “Enjoy your coffee, Michael.”
Hollander said, “Thanks. It’s as close as I’ll get to tit this morning.”
She walked out of the squad room into the front reception area. A middle-aged Hispanic was gesticulating to the desk sergeant. He was beanpole-thin, his face etched with deep sun lines. The sergeant looked bored, his chin resting in the palm of his hand, his eyes looking over the head of the Hispanic to Marge.
“Yo, Detective Dunn.”
Marge waved and said, “Sergeant Collins.”
