Jo Leigh - Little Girl Found

Haggart was an old-timer who’d never managed to pass the sergeant’s exam. He’d gotten Jack out of a scrape or two through the years, and while Jack didn’t consider him the brightest bulb in the chandelier, he was a good cop who understood the street.

“Bored, were you?” Haggart said as he gave Roy’s body a once-over.

“Yeah,” Jack said, wishing like hell he could sit down. “Finished all my crossword puzzles.”

Jack didn’t know the driver of the patrol car well. Fetzer was his name. Paul Fetzer. Young guy, Nordic-looking with his white-blond hair and pale skin. Jack had heard he was a hot dog, looking to get into homicide, but just like everyone else, he needed to do his time. Putting him with Haggart was probably good for both of them.

“What happened?” Paul asked, moving next to Haggart. “You know him?”

“He lives in the building,” Jack said. “I’ve seen him around.”

“You see who did this?” Haggart asked, his voice dramatically sharper now that Paul was listening.

Jack decided right then that he wasn’t going to tell them about the unmarked car. He wasn’t sure why, just a feeling. He’d learned to listen to his gut reactions. At least most of the time. The bullet in his hip was a good reminder of what happened when he didn’t. “I saw a car. It was too dark to make out anything much. It was a sedan, late model. They used a silencer. I heard two shots.”

“They?” Paul repeated. “There was more than one?”

Jack nodded. “Driver and passenger. Both males. I couldn’t see if they were Caucasians. The light hit the car wrong, and all I got were shadows. I couldn’t run after them to get the license plate.”

“Pardon me for being blunt,” Haggart said, “but you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it. The ambulance should be here any second. Maybe you should let the paramedics take a look at you.”

“I’m fine. You might as well call them off. Get someone from the medical examiner’s office down here.”

“Did you touch anything?” Paul asked as he moved closer to Roy and crouched down. He pulled out his flashlight, and focused the beam on Roy’s chest. It looked to Jack like it had been a large-caliber weapon. There was a hell of a lot of damage.

“I touched his neck for a pulse,” Jack said. “That’s it.”

“How’d you happen to see this?” Haggart asked.

“Insomnia,” Jack answered, not lying exactly. Just not telling the whole story.

“Out for a walk at this time of night?”

He shook his head. “I heard something. I came outside, saw the car, heard the shots. By the time I made it down the stairs, Roy here was dead and the car was long gone.”

“Roy what?”

“Chandler. I think he lived on the second floor. Around back.”

The ambulance came screaming into the parking lot, but the driver cut the siren immediately, filling the night with an echo of sadness. Jack shifted a bit, which was a mistake. He winced and sucked in a sharp breath.

Haggart moved closer to him, probably worried that he was goning to fall on his face. “Why don’t you go on up,” he said, his voice concerned. “We can take care of things down here. We know where to find you tomorrow.”

Jack didn’t take long to decide. He needed to sit down. Take a pill. Make sure the kid upstairs hadn’t fallen off the couch. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be around.”

A female paramedic Jack didn’t know circled the police car and knelt beside Roy. She put her kit next to her knee and gestured to Paul to back off. The young cop did as she asked, but he didn’t seem real happy to be brushed aside.

Jack didn’t give a damn. He had his own problems. He nodded to Haggart, then started the long voyage home. Walking across the parking lot was hard enough. The stairs were going to be murder.

THE KID WAS STILL SLEEPING when he got back. After three pain pills and about half an hour of sitting still on the lounger, Jack was able to stand again. He crossed to the girl, noticing for the first time that she had a doll clutched in her right hand. It wasn’t a very nice doll. The hair was all ratty, with big holes in the scalp where the strands had been tied. One eye was open, the other closed in a perpetual wink. There was a stain on the doll’s cheek that looked like blue ink.

What a damn mess. He didn’t like dirty cops, and he didn’t like cryptic deathbed messages, and he didn’t like the fact that the sun was going to rise any minute and he hadn’t slept. The kid was going to wake up eventually, and she’d want to know where her parents were, and she’d cry and carry on and…oh, hell. Jack made it back to the lounger and sank gratefully onto the cushion. The smart thing to do was call family services as soon as possible. Go to the captain and tell him what he heard and what he saw. End this thing before it went any further.

Even if there was a crime to be solved, he wasn’t the man to solve it. Not anymore. Not with this body. All he was good for was watching daytime television.

HE WOKE UP to a pair of blue eyes. Big round blue eyes, inches from his face. The kid was up and she’d climbed onto his lap, somehow avoiding his bad hip. One inch to the right, and he’d have been one sorry ex-cop.

“Where’s my daddy?”

The girl had her doll under one arm and her quilt under the other. She looked amazingly calm, as if she woke up in a stranger’s house all the time.

“I have to go potty.”

Perfect. She had to go potty. He had no idea what that entailed—well, except for the fundamentals, of course. Was he supposed to help her? Lead her to the bathroom and leave? Change her diaper?

She wasn’t wearing a diaper. He could see that from the way her Little Mermaid pajamas fit. “Climb down,” he said. “Carefully.”

She obeyed him, moving slowly and cautiously until she stood next to the chair, but she never took her eyes off him, not even for a second.

“Can you do it by yourself?”

“What?”

“Can you go potty by yourself?”

She nodded, the curls on her head waving with the movement.

Jack pointed to the hallway. “It’s right over there,” he said. “Just walk down the hall.”

She blinked at him, then turned, her quilt trailing behind her as she padded toward the bathroom. He focused on his own problem: getting up and making coffee. He swallowed another pill, then went to the kitchen for a water chaser. His leg felt stiffer than usual, but he expected that. The doctors had said the pain would be temporary, lasting just a few months. In his opinion, four was more than a few. So when was this miraculous recovery supposed to kick in?

At least he’d gotten his morning routine worked out. He’d set up the kitchen to require the fewest steps necessary. Coffee, filters, the machine, all next to the sink. After he finished pouring and counting, he checked his watch. Seven-thirty. He’d call family services at eight.

He heard a shuffle and looked in the living room. The girl stood by the hallway, staring at him. “Where’s my daddy?” she asked again.

He didn’t know what to say. How to say it. The kid was so young.

She blinked a few times, as if she was trying to get him into focus. “I want Hailey,” she said.

Hailey. Who the hell was—“You mean that woman down the hall? The blond lady?”

The girl nodded. “Hailey. She’s my baby-sitter.”

“Hailey,” he repeated, thinking about where he’d seen her. In the laundry room, that was it. A couple of months ago. With the kid. She’d helped him carry his clothes upstairs. “Let’s go see Hailey, okay?”

The kid nodded. “Is my daddy there?”

“We’ll see,” he said, chickening out. He started toward her, and she went to the door. She put her doll on the floor and grasped the doorknob. It took her a few tries, but she got the door open, and then she picked up her doll again. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look scared. She waited patiently for him to reach her side and then closed the door behind them.