Comfort Me Read online

  “So, he’s okay?” Jeremiah asked.

  The doctor hesitated. “He’s not entirely out of the woods. The next forty-eight hours will tell.”

  “So, what’s wrong with him?” Jeremiah asked.

  “We were able to get the bleeding stopped. There’s been extensive trauma to his spleen as well as some trauma to his liver. There is hope that the injury to the spleen can heal, but we have to monitor him. If his blood pressure drops too low or there’s more internal bleeding, we’ll have to do another surgery to remove it.”

  Jeremiah nodded. He knew a ruptured spleen could kill a person.

  The doctor continued, “Other than that he has five broken ribs and the left arm is fractures. He has a concussion. It looks like he was hit with something heavy in the back of his skull. Scans haven’t revealed any signs of permanent injury or acute trauma to the brain, fortunately.”

  “Is he going to regain consciousness soon?”

  “There’s no reason to think that he won’t as soon as the anesthesia from surgery wears off. We’ll keep him medicated to control the pain and to keep him from moving around too much until we see how things are looking.”

  “Thank you,” Jeremiah said.

  The doctor nodded. “I’ll be in later tonight to check on him.”

  The doctor left. Jeremiah pulled out his phone and called Rebecca, who answered before he even heard it ring.

  “He’s out of surgery and in recovery. He can have visitors in about an hour,” Jeremiah said without preamble. “The doctor said that there was damage to both his spleen and liver and the next forty-eight hours will be crucial. He should be awake a little later, though.”

  “Okay,” she said, voice trembling.

  “How are things at the shop?” he asked.

  “We’re still going over things here,” she said.

  He wasn’t surprised. He knew from experience that the process of giving a simple statement to police could take an hour or more. With anything more complicated it just ballooned.

  “Okay, let me know as soon as you need picked up,” he said.

  “Thanks, but I’ll make one of them drive me to save time,” she said.

  “Sounds good. I’ll let you know when I know the room number.”

  As soon as he hung up with her he called Mark. The detective sounded beyond frazzled but hopeful.

  “Everything okay there?”

  “Yeah, I’m wrapping up for now. We’ve got our suspect in custody. I’ve got to do a bunch of stuff at the station this afternoon. I want to see Liam first, though.”

  “How about I pick you up and take you to lunch? Then we can see him and afterwards I’ll drop you at the station.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  Jeremiah was relieved at the prospect of not having to eat at the hospital cafeteria. There were a lot of places close by where Mark and he could grab a quick bite. He headed outside, breathing in deep of the fresh air.

  Mark was waiting for him outside the crime scene. He got in the car and they headed off.

  “So you caught the killer?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Looks as though.”

  “You’re not completely sure?”

  “When do we ever get that luxury?” Mark asked with a sigh.

  More often than not from Jeremiah’s perspective. He decided that saying so might be less than helpful at the moment so he stayed quiet.

  “I mean if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...” Mark started then drifted off.

  “Well, it’s nice to have a quick resolution.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, still not sounding wholly convinced.

  Jeremiah decided not to push. If Mark wanted to discuss it he would start talking about it on his own.

  “Where do you want to eat?”

  “Anywhere but Chinese food. We’ve had Chinese three nights in the last week.”

  “Okay, how about Italian?”

  “Sure.”

  Jeremiah drove to Rigatoni’s and a few minutes later the two of them were at a table waiting for their food.

  “It really is straightforward,” Mark started.

  “What is?”

  “The case. Developmentally disabled teen with autism, has a tantrum and kills his parents. Takes a baseball bat to each of their heads. Not just any bat either, a valuable one, signed by Babe Ruth.”

  Jeremiah raised an eyebrow. “Even I know that name.”

  “I would hope so. Apparently they were baseball fans and it was the couple’s prize possession, yaddah, yaddah,” Mark said.

  “That would make sense.”

  “Well, now it’s a bloody mess is what it is. I don’t envy whoever has to clean it up when this is all over.”

  Jeremiah had cleaned up worse than that in his day, but refrained from saying so.

  “It’s good to have an open and shut case. Well, not good. People are dead, still. The kid’s traumatized. So is his sister. She doesn’t want to admit that her brother did this.”

  “Do you?” Jeremiah asked.

  Mark looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  “You keep saying the case is so straightforward, like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

  Mark blinked at him.

  “Sorry, I know you’re tired, stressed about Liam, you’re just talking out loud,” Jeremiah said.

  “What if he didn’t kill his parents?” Mark asked.

  “Did he say he did?”

  “He hasn’t said anything yet. Just kept cradling that bat. The doctor had a devil of a time getting him to let go of it before they took them both to the police station.”

  “Why aren’t you at the police station?”

  “I’m not sure he’s going to say anything meaningful for a while. And, if he does, there’s dozens of cops right there ready to witness it. I’ll go in after I check on Liam and see how things are going, write up my notes, get ready to have the kid formally charged.”

  “What happens with a case like his?”

  Mark shook his head. “That’s for the district attorney and the doctors and his lawyer to figure out. Given the state he’s in now I have a hard time seeing them being able to do anything but perhaps commit him to a mental institution for a couple of years. I don’t know. Not my problem.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jeremiah said.

  “Unless he didn’t kill his parents. Kid like that has tantrums, both his sister and the doctor said so. Throws things sometimes.”

  “Okay,” Jeremiah said.

  The waitress dropped off their orders and Jeremiah picked up his fork and plunged it into his bowl of chicken fettuccine alfredo. Mark picked up his own fork but it hovered in the air above his spaghetti and meatballs without actually descending.

  “So, I get it. He gets mad, frustrated, picks up the nearest thing he can find and throws it. Who hasn’t thrown something at some point?” Mark mused.

  “Probably a lot of people,” Jeremiah said.

  “Yeah, but, grab, throw, that’s an impulse.”

  “It is.”

  “March into the other room, smash a case, grab a baseball bat, come back and bash your parents’ heads in, one at a time, that takes more than a second. That takes fifteen, twenty seconds. More, maybe.”

  “It’s certainly not throwing something either,” Jeremiah pointed out.

  “There was a 911 call placed. No talking, screaming, anything, just silence from what I understand.”

  “Your point?”

  “You see your kid coming at you with a baseball bat and have enough time to pick up a phone you also have enough time to, I don’t know, run, fight back, raise your arm to block the blow.”

  “I take it none of those things happened?”

  Mark shook his head. “Not a one.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Unless neither of them were
the one who placed the call.”

  “The kid?”

  “On the floor rocking and moaning. I don’t think he had the capacity at that point to dial the phone. Even if he had I think they could have heard him moaning or something.”

  Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Sounds like you’ve got a problem.”

  Mark swore. “I’ve got a big problem.”

  “The kid’s not your killer.”

  Mark swore again.

  ~

  Cindy was out of patience. It was well after lunchtime and she was on her sixth revision of the stupid memo. She was about to start screaming. It didn’t matter who wrote a line, her or Mr. Cartwright. As soon as it was in black-and-white he hated it. She had no idea at this rate how either of them would accomplish anything ever. She couldn’t believe that one single page memo a day was an acceptable output for either of their job descriptions.

  Just breathe, she told herself as she stood, waiting for him to drop the axe on the latest version. He seemingly read it over three times. He picked up a pen on his desk and put it down half a dozen times. Finally he handed it back to her and glanced at his watch.

  “I have to leave now for a luncheon. I won’t be back today so this will have to do.”

  “Okay,” she said, forcing herself not to give a shout of joy that it was over and that he was leaving for the day.

  “Make copies and distribute them in all the mailboxes downstairs,” he said as he stood up.

  “Where are the mail-”

  “Downstairs. They’re impossible to miss,” he said in an irritated tone. “Make sure you do that immediately. They need to see these memos as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll do them right after my lunch break,” she said.

  “Now,” he barked.

  She wanted to punch him in the nose. For the life of her she could never remember wanting to hit another human being as badly as she wanted to hit him. Not even Kyle.

  I think I have a new face for my dartboard at home, she told herself. She felt a smirk creeping over her face and she turned quickly to hide it.

  She took the paper and found the copy machine. Once there she realized she had no idea how many copies she needed to make. She dropped the memo off on her desk and turned to Leo who had been back from his lunch break for a while.

  “Do you know how many mailboxes are downstairs?” she asked.

  He frowned. “No. I didn’t know we had mailboxes downstairs.”

  “Oh good, so then you can tell me where to find them,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t envy you. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  She headed for the elevator and made it down to the first floor. Once there she stayed close to the wall to avoid being run over by any equipment. She left the entrance alcove which didn’t have anything more than the elevator and a time clock and entered the main floor. All around were shelving units and crates and forklifts moving in seemingly random patterns across the floor. She hugged the wall and began to work her way clockwise, hoping to run into someone she could ask about the mailboxes.

  Finally a man in a hardhat with the name Bob on his nametag walked by.

  “Excuse me!” she shouted to make herself heard.

  He turned and looked at her.

  “Hi, I’m new. Could you tell me where the mailboxes are?” she asked.

  He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and then kept walking. Well, at least she was going in the right direction. She kept walking until she made it to the corner of the building. There she found another alcove, this one had doors that led into two offices and a wall with what looked like nearly a hundred mailboxes on it.

  She resisted the urge to check and see if Leo’s name was on one of them. If so, it would certainly be a surprise to him.

  She counted and discovered that there were actually 108 mailboxes, although ten of them had no names on them. Presumably they didn’t belong to anyone so she had no need to put the memo in those. That left 98 copies to make. Armed with that knowledge she turned and traced her way back to the elevator.

  Twenty minutes later Cindy was back at her desk. She’d made the copies, hastily stuffed one in each mailbox and made it back upstairs. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was after two.

  What a waste of most of a workday, she thought to herself.

  The good news was that after her lunch she’d have less than two hours left in the hateful place. At least, for the day. She was not looking forward to coming back the next morning, particularly since her boss would be in.

  She hadn’t brought a lunch with her and she hadn’t noticed any obvious places to grab a quick bite as she drove there this morning. She’d planned on figuring out where her coworkers were heading and following them to lunch. She stood up and looked over the wall at Leo.

  “Where is a good place close by to get something to eat?” she asked him.

  “Glad you’re finally getting to take a break,” he said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “There’s a burger place across the street and down half a block.”

  “It’s good?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said, curling his lip. “Down on the second floor there’s a lunchroom. There’s some soups and things like that in a vending machine.”

  It was her turn to curl up her lip.

  “I know. I tend to bring my own.”

  “Fun,” she said.

  Lately getting away from work for an hour was usually the highlight of her day.

  “Do you have to get grilled by the guard going and coming?”

  He nodded. “Even if you walk. It’s one of the perks of working here.”

  “Vending machine it is,” she said with a sigh.

  “When you get off the elevator turn right and then take another right.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cindy took the elevator down to the second floor. She was a bit relieved that when the doors opened it looked like a normal office building and not another warehouse type floor. She turned right and came to a hallway where she took another right. At the far end of it she could see an open door and glimpse a table and some chairs through it.

  Encouraged that she was heading to the right place she picked up the pace. As unappetizing as vending machine soup sounded, she was getting really hungry and was ready to eat just about anything.

  As she neared the room she could hear someone talking. There were pauses, but whoever they were talking to she could only hear the one voice. Just as she was about to cross the threshold into the room she heard something that made her freeze in her tracks.

  “I’m telling you. Rose just disappeared.”

  8

  “Why can’t anything ever be simple?” Mark asked with a sigh.

  “You really don’t want me to answer that,” Jeremiah said with a smirk.

  “Thanks,” Mark said sarcastically. “Man, this day just keeps getting better and better. Liam picked a helluva day to get the crap kicked out of him.”

  Jeremiah raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

  “So, how do two people get their heads caved in without trying to get away or defend themselves?”

  “Sounds like their killer took them by surprise,” Jeremiah said.

  “And I’d like to know how they were caught completely off guard if they’d just heard the glass case break. If anything you think they would have headed in there to see what happened.”

  “Maybe they were heading in there and they started in another part of the house,” Jeremiah suggested.

  “No, I don’t think they were facing the dining room. If they were, they would have seen it coming. And the blows were to the backs of their heads.”

  “So, they didn’t hear the glass case break,” Jeremiah said.

  “Meaning it happened earlier. The killer was probably waiting for them.”

  “Expensive murder weapon.”

  “Y
ou’re right,” Mark said. “Unless, the killer wasn’t intending to kill them.”

  “You mean, they caught him or her by surprise?”

  “Exactly. Heck, maybe it was a robbery gone wrong. Killer grabs the bat. Before he can make his getaway he hears them in the kitchen. He sneaks in, kills them in a panic, then drops the bat, also in a panic, and runs.”

  “It could happen. How do you explain the 911 call, though?”

  “Maybe he was hiding in some other part of the house when they came home and discovered the bat missing.”

  “And the call center doesn’t pick up the sound of the caller being hit or falling to the floor?” Jeremiah asked.

  Mark winced. “I don’t know. But, I need to find out if they’d left the house this morning or not,” Mark said, reaching for his phone.

  ~

  Cindy forced herself to step into the lunchroom. Once across the threshold her eyes locked onto the sole other occupant, a man with sandy colored hair a couple of years younger than her with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his tie askew. He was on his cell phone and turned to look at her.

  She forced herself to smile at him. She turned and walked toward the vending machines against the wall.

  “I’ve got to go, we’ll talk later,” he said.

  He ended his call and then scurried from the room before she could say anything to him.

  Curiosity was burning within her. Was he talking about the Rose who used to sit at her desk? Whoever it was he seemed concerned about them and the fact that they’d vanished. Her mind raced, wondering if it was the same woman. It seemed likely to her, but she tried to tell herself she was jumping to conclusions. The only mystery here was what she was going to find in these vending machines that was even remotely edible.

  Her eyes drifted to the machine with the chips and candy bars and she forced her attention back to the one with the soups. At least they were microwave soups of recognizable brands, so less suspect than she’d feared. She finally chose a cup of ramen. She added water from the sink at the other end of the room and then popped it into the microwave.