Bullets & Bonfires

Detach.

Facts.

“Dad says she hit her face on a dresser last night when she was jumping on the bed. Didn’t bring her in until this afternoon. Claims his mom is a nurse and he took her there instead.”

Jesus. I need a second to process the information. Who the fuck smashes a four-year-old in the face? Why?

Stupid question.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know I’ll never receive an answer that makes sense.

Brady speaks up first. “You suspect the dad?”

Linda hesitates. “Well, when he left the room, I asked her if anyone hurt her and she said ‘Daddy did it.’”

Not all that compelling. Children that age are notoriously unreliable witnesses.

Brady opens the door and steps into the hallway, but Linda blocks my exit. “So are you and the little princess together now?” she asks.

“Seriously? We have an injured child and you’re playing jealous ex?” I growl out each word and brush past her.

“Does Vince know?” she persists, following me into the hallway.

Is she really doing this now? “Mind your own business.”

“That’s a no. Well, call me when he kicks your ass. I’ll patch you up.”

Brady hides his smirk behind his hand.

Their cavalier behavior is the result of too much detachment. You see enough of this shit and after a while you’re not trying to help people anymore, you’re just trying to make it through your shift.

Linda leads us down the long hallway. At the end, a large, angry, tired-looking young woman sits on a chair outside the last room on the left. The little boy in her lap keeps struggling and squirming to break loose.

“Dad’s live-in girlfriend,” Linda mutters. “And the patient’s half-brother.”

“Bio-mom?” Brady asks.

Linda shakes her head.

I stop and jot down a few notes and when I’m finished, Linda pushes the door open and holds it for Brady and me. A dark-haired little girl shrinks back against the white hospital bed. The young man standing next to her jerks his head in our direction, his mouth opening but no words coming out. He barely looks old enough to drive but has a four-year-old daughter.

A clear picture of what happened forms in my head.

“You called the cops?” he asks Linda, who snuck into the room behind me.

“It’s standard procedure,” she replies, completely unruffled. “Deputy Hollister and Deputy O’Connor, this is Allison’s father.”

We’re running out of room in here, so Linda ducks outside. I approach the bed slowly and use a lowered voice. “Hey, little miss, you must be Allison?”

The girl slowly lifts her head, and I swallow hard. Struggle to keep my face an expressionless mask while I mentally catalog her injuries. Bruising around her swollen-shut left eye. A cut directly below that was bad enough to require stitches. My jaw clenches and I exhale slowly through my nose to calm myself and not scare her.

No child should suffer an injury at the hands of a person whose duty was to protect them.

Dad stands there, gaze skipping from Brady to me.

Outside the room, a shriek echoes down the hallway. “That your little brother out there, Allison?” I ask.

She shakes her head in response and her dad sighs. “He’s her half-brother. Mine and Nancy’s son.”

“That’s Nancy out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s Allison’s mother?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Probably some crack house.”

Wonderful. Perfect thing to say in front of your daughter, asshole.

Brady and I exchange a silent look. He doesn’t have to say a word. We’re both thinking the same thing. A side effect of working many long hours together over the last few years.

“Allison has a speech delay, so I don’t know what you think she can tell you,” Dad says.

“Do you go to school, Allison?” I ask.

She shakes her head and glances up at her father, but doesn’t seem to be afraid of him.

“Excuse us for a second, Mr. Davis.” Brady and I step outside the room, leaving the door open.

Nancy marches over as soon as she spots us, attitude and defiance written all over her face.

“I need to get my son home,” she snaps.

I point her in the direction of a quieter location that’s still in plain sight. “I understand. Can you tell me what happened?” I ask in my calmest, most reasonable tone.

“Well, Allie’s real rambunctious,” she hedges, eyes darting around, never actually looking at me. “She was jumping on the bed. I heard a thump and then she started crying.”

“Where were you when this happened?”

“She ain’t my kid. I have enough to do watching my own son.” She jerks her head toward the little boy who’s now showing Brady his stuffed dinosaur.

I pause to calm myself before asking the same question in a different way.

“Were you in the bedroom with her when it happened?”

“No. I was in the living room.”

“Where was Mr. Davis?

“The bathroom. The door was closed. But that’s where he was,” she insists. Obviously someone already questioned her version of the story.

“Why didn’t you take Allison to the doctor last night?”

“His mother used to be an ER nurse. We thought she could treat Allison and not have to drag her down to the hospital. Then this morning, it looked so much worse that she forced us to at least take Allison here.”

My radar’s pinging like crazy. Sure, these are two stupid kids playing house. Unfortunately, they have children themselves. The way Nancy went out of her way to distance herself from both the girl and the incident bugs the hell out of me.

Overtaxed young mother.

Caring for someone else’s daughter.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to piece together what could have happened. I’m trying to keep an open mind. Not jump to the most cynical, jaded conclusion here.

Brady and I offer Nancy a ride home. In a hurry to leave, she accepts. The entire way home, she coos and fawns over her son. To someone else it might seem sweet, but it gives me the creeps.

Or maybe I’m just pissed that she didn’t bother to say goodbye to Allison.

Stay objective.

My memory flashes back to Bree when she was little. No more than eight or nine. Red tear-stained cheeks and bruises circling her upper arms when one of her mom’s boyfriends got carried away with the discipline aspect of parenting.

Shit. How did I forget that?

My father drove right over to the Avery house and had a not-so-friendly chat with the boyfriend.

Bree’s mom didn’t appreciate the interference. Vince and Bree stayed over at our house a lot until that boyfriend finally left for good.

Brady elbows me and points out the turn up ahead. Shoving those memories back to the past isn’t as easy as I’d like.

The house is so far out by the county line, jurisdiction may end up being a question.

“Do you mind if we come in and take a look at the dresser she hit her head on?” Brady asks.

I quirk an eyebrow at the request but don’t say anything.

“Uh, well the house is kind of a mess. But sure.”

“We can do it later,” Brady says, even though he’s already halfway out of the car. As if he isn’t as eager as I am to look at the scene before Nancy has a chance to clean it up.

“No. No. It’s fine,” she says, waving us inside.

Messy turns out to be an understatement. The house reeks of hell only knows what. Dirty dishes, laundry, diapers. Take your pick. The filth invades every inch of the house.

Nancy kicks toys, garbage, and assorted junk out of the way to lead us into the bedroom where Allison supposedly hit her head.

Only a grungy, faded pink comforter carelessly tossed over the bed indicates the room belongs to a little girl. White particleboard makes up

the cheap dresser on the opposite side of the room from the bed. How the hell did the little girl go from jumping on the bed to hitting her head on the dresser?

I glance around the filthy, cluttered room. Plenty of things for a little girl to hurt herself on. A metal chair with rusted edges, wire hangers strewn all over the floor, a pair of scissors. She would have encountered any one of those items before the dresser.

“What made you so sure she hit her head on the dresser?” I ask.

Nancy shrugs. “She said so.”

I lead her back into the living room, while Brady whips out his phone to grab a few pictures of the room. No doubt CPS will be called in here next, but just in case things are disturbed before then we’ll have a record.

I almost step on something hard and plastic in the hallway. Bending down, I see it’s an old, cordless handheld phone. The perfect circle of the earpiece looks awfully similar to the perfectly circular bruising around Allison’s eye.

Slapping my hand against my chest, I let out a few phony-as-fuck coughs. “Nancy, would you mind getting me a glass of water?”

“Uh, sure.”

The minute she turns her back, I take out my phone and snap a few pictures of my own.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Hours have gone by since Liam left the house.

After we made love for the first time.

He didn’t ditch me. It was work. I understand that.

I do.

My stomach rumbles, leading me into the kitchen, humming a mindless tune. Kimber follows behind me, silently begging for treats with the power of her soulful eyes. The limited diet instruction is so not her jam.

Liam didn’t give me any details about why he got called in. His pinched expression spoke volumes, though. His job has to drain him at times.