Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

“Guess we’ve both been through the ringer.”

“I feel like I’m still in the ringer,” said Willow with a chuckle.

“I heard that. When the dust settles, let’s grab a drink. Not a drink ,” he revised, in a nod to Willow’s sobriety. “Dinner. Play some catch-up.”

“I’d like that, Charlie. It’s been too long. You still enjoying your whiskey?”

“It’s wine now. My cardiologist insists,” he winked.

“We used to do our shifts half-drunk,” said Willow nostalgically.

“Half? I don’t think so, Dubya.”

“Maybe you’re right. It did make the time pass, didn’t it.”

“Not fast enough,” said Charlie. “Kinda sweet to have the dysfunctional Dream Team back, cooking on a burner or two.”

“We can thank Papa Caplan for that.”

“Oh, I thank the man every single day—say my prayers to him at night too. Owen Caplan saved my life—I’d have been home on the porch, waiting to die. Probably dead already. He’s the best man I know.”

Willow said that he wanted to take a look at the basement storage on his own, and Charlie gave him the key. “The files were just transferred so it’s a bit of a mess down there.”

“We’ll sort it out,” said Willow.

As the old friends parted, they shook hands.

“Charles in Charge,” said Willow, in an affectionate adieu.

He began to hear a low chorus the moment he pressed B, and when he stepped from the elevator it was loud as a church choir. The cacophony of blended children’s voices was manageable and didn’t frighten him, as it had on first exposure to the Spirit Room in Manhattan. There was nothing to prove anymore and nothing to run from; at least that’s how it felt in this moment. (He knew all moods and feelings were subject to sudden, radical change.) The sheer blueness of the space came back to him, the same mordantly transcendent, otherworldly color and the attendant feelings it evoked, feelings he’d made it his life’s work to suppress.

This time, he surrendered.

There were haphazard stacks of cardboard boxes marked by county names, surnames, case numbers. Closing his eyes, the detective (for that’s what he was again, officially) stood and swayed, unpacking at last the psychic gifts he had stowed away as a young boy, unspooling them with the steady, battle-scarred hands of a man who’d paid a heavy price for denying them. He didn’t bother to look through any of the files. Nor did he desultorily examine the plastic bags harboring swatches of stained fabric, human hairs and crime scene photos—bodies in forests, bodies in automobiles, bodies in open fields—the effluvia of cases so cold and forgotten, they were deader than the victims themselves.

He closed his eyes and stood straight as an anchor’s chain, formally assuming the position of choirmaster.

4.

When he got home, Willow went straight to work.

A virgin wall meant only one thing: mural-time!

Some folks took pictures; others threw pottery or played chess online. The more adventurous took tango classes, dancing with like-minded strangers on a Saturday night.

Hell , said Willow. I’m just gonna paint my walls .

It was a perfect time to pour himself a drink, but he resisted.

This time, he’d bought oils and watercolors at an art store in Mount Clemens. His apprenticeship with crayons and Sharpies was over.

He was just finding his groove when he got the text from Adelaide: uhm, still coming, dub? He’d completely forgotten about the late-afternoon shindig at Macomb County General that she invited him to. He couldn’t blow it off—it was important, for lots of reasons, that he attend. He set down his palette, already van Gogh–thick with ocean waves of color, grabbed his coat and dashed.

He knew it was a little paranoid, but on the drive over all he could think of was bumping into the cute little RN neighbor. He pictured Addie introducing them (“Willow, meet Dixie, my bestie!”) and then raising an eyebrow when Dixie said, “Oh my God, your ex just moved into my building! Isn’t that funny?” He was starting to feel his sap rise for the first time since he left the Meadows and didn’t need any complications. Willow had big plans for him and Nursie—shitting where you eat be damned. He made a mental note to ask Dixie what hospital she worked at the next time he ran into her, so he could stop obsessing over the unforeseen.

The lobby swarmed with visitors. Trays of cheap crudités circulated, and cheap wine too. Willow clutched a can of half-cold Diet Coke.

“There you are!” said Adelaide. She was out of her nurse’s uniform.

“Hey there, Addie. Don’t you look chic. Owen make it?”

“He’s around here somewhere.”

“What’s the occasion again?”

“We’re just thanking some folks who do a lot around here for no pay. Doing amazing shit for love, not money—what a concept, right? Hey, how’d it go today? Wasn’t it your first day at school?”

“It went really, really well.”

“How’s Sterling Heights? Are you settling in?”

“Oh yeah. Just got my Casper. Thank you for that.”

“Awesome! Still in the box?”

“It has been freed.”

“ Excellent. And how do you like your digs—I mean, your Cold Case digs.”

“The place isn’t turnkey but I like my office quite a bit.”

“Well, look at you!” she said proudly.

“Charlie Powell showed me around.”

“I guess it’s old home week.”

She saw someone across the room and grabbed Willow by the hand. When they got to the woman, Adelaide said, “Willow Wylde, meet Annie Ballendine—World’s Greatest Volunteer.”

Annie blushed. “I don’t think that’s true but you’re very sweet, Adelaide.”

“It is true. But I probably shouldn’t say that too loud or the others’ll get jealous. Annie… this is my ex-husband, believe it or not.”

“Oh my goodness!” she said. “How nice to meet you.”

He smiled and shook the volunteer’s hand. She seemed to wince at his touch before flashing a warm smile. Willow swore that she muttered It’s you under her breath.

Afew hours after José received his birthday cake, he had a massive heart attack and died at home, in the middle of watching Dancing with the Stars . Despite their best efforts, paramedics were unable to bring the engineer, known outside Annie’s Meetings as Tim Norris, back to the land of the living. It was Tim’s habit to unwind in front of the television from 8:00 P.M. to 11:00 while his wife sat beside him, catching up on old New Yorker s.

Only after he passed did certain things begin to nag. In the last three months, she noticed a change. Some of it was just silly—like Tim’s newfound love of Frosted Flakes in the morning (he was always a no-breakfast guy), an anomaly that she wrote off as a quirk of middle age. And those songs he’d started to sing, in Spanish no less, in a funny, childish voice. He said that a Mexican coworker had been giving him lessons. But some of the changes had a darker feel, like when she called his name and he wouldn’t answer and she’d find him sitting in the basement rec room, brooding in the dark. And the “work-related” day trips he’d taken to Lansing, Flint and Battle Creek, in the ten days preceding his death—what was that about? He was employed by the City of Detroit and had told her that his bosses wanted him to do a little “fact finding” to see how other cities and townships conducted their business. Fair enough, she thought at the time.

Another strange thing was that Tim somehow got it into his head that he had a drinking problem, which was absolute nonsense. He never drank hard liquor and only had a half-glass of wine a few nights a week. But one day (and yes, she thought it was three months ago) he announced that he’d be attending AA meetings two or three times a week, not far from the house. She did her best to interrogate him about that, jokingly asking if he’d been stashing bottles of liquor like Jack Lemmon did in one of their favorite movies. He was closemouthed and adamant about his decision. She never liked interfering in his private life and thoughts—oh, they talked a lot about mutual interests and worries; it wasn’t like they hid things from each other—and in the end, she thought, Who am I to say? If Tim thinks he has a problem and if those meetings make him happy, I’m all for it. And they did make him happy; whenever he returned from AA, his mood seemed buoyant, lighter. She loved having dinner ready for him when he got home, with the kids already in bed. It felt romantic.