Toys - A Novel Part 28

I saw Brady through the walls of his cube. His white-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore a shoulder holster over a starched blue cotton shirt that stretched across his ma.s.sive chest.

He looked up and signaled to me to come to his office. As I got there, he hung up the phone. Reaching across the desk that was once mine, he shook my hand and congratulated me.

"Are you using Boxer or Molinari?" he asked me.

"Boxer."

"Well, have a seat, Sergeant Boxer," he said, waving me toward the chair across from his desk. "I got a call from Major Case Division about ten minutes ago. They're short on manpower and asked for help. I want you and Conklin to check it out."

"The case is a homicide?" I asked.

"Could be. Or maybe not. Right now it's an open case. Your open case."

What kind of bull was this?

Step out of line for a couple of weeks and the only open case was a spillover from another unit? Or was Brady testing me-alpha-dog management style?

"Conklin has the case file," Brady said. "Keep me in the loop. And welcome back, Boxer."

Welcome back indeed.

I showed myself out, feeling like all eyes in the squad were on me as I crossed the room to find my partner.

DR. ARI RIFKIN was intense-and busy, judging from the incessant buzz of her pager. Still, she seemed eager to brief me and my partner, Richard Conklin, aka Inspector Hottie. Conklin scribbled in his notebook as Dr. Rifkin talked.

"Her name is Avis Richardson, age fifteen. She was hemorrhaging when she was brought into the ER two hours ago," the doctor said, wiping her wire-rimmed specs with her coattail.

"From the looks of her, she delivered a baby within the last thirty-six hours. She got herself into grave trouble by running and falling down-too much activity too soon after giving birth."

"How'd she get here?" Conklin asked.

"A couple-uh, here are their names. John and Sarah McCann. Found Avis lying in the street. Thought she'd been hit by a car. They told the police that they don't know her at all."

"Was Avis conscious when she came in?" I asked Dr. Rifkin.

"She was in shock. Going in and out of lucidity-mostly out. We sedated her, transfused her, gave her a D and C. Right now she's in guarded but stable condition."

"When can we talk with her?" Conklin asked.

"Give me a moment," said the doctor.

She parted the curtains around the stall of the ICU where her patient was lying. I saw through the opening that the girl was young, white, and had lank auburn hair. An IV line was in her arm, and a vital-signs machine blinked her stats on a monitor.

Dr. Rifkin exchanged a few words with her patient, then came out and said, "She says that she lost her baby. But given her state of mind, I don't know if she means that the baby died, or that she misplaced it."

"Did she have a handbag with her?" I asked. "Did she have any kind of ID?"

"She was only wearing a thin plastic raincoat. Dime-store variety."

"We'll need the raincoat," I said. "And we need her statement."

"Give it a shot, Sergeant," said Dr. Rifkin.

Avis Richardson looked impossibly young to be a mother. She also looked as though she'd been dragged behind a truck. I noted the bruises and sc.r.a.pes on her arms, her cheek, her palms, her chin.

I pulled up a chair and touched her arm.

"Hi, Avis," I said. "My name is Lindsay Boxer. I'm with the police department. Can you hear me?"

"Yuh-huh," she said.

She half opened her green eyes, then closed them again. I pleaded with her under my breath to stay awake. I had to find out what happened to her. And by taking this case, Conklin and I had charged ourselves with finding her baby.

Avis opened her eyes again, and I asked a dozen basic questions: Where do you live? What's your phone number? Who is the baby's father? Who are your parents? But I might as well have been talking to a department-store dummy. Avis Richardson kept nodding off without answering. So after a half an hour of that, I got up and gave my chair to Conklin.

To say that my partner has "a way with women" is to play up his charm and all-American good looks, and cheapen his real gift for getting people to trust him.

I said, "Rich, you're on deck. Go for it."

He nodded, sat down, and said to Avis in his calm, manly voice, "My name is Rich Conklin. I work with Sergeant Boxer. We need to find your baby, Avis. Every minute that pa.s.ses puts your little one in more danger. Please, talk to me. We really need your help."

The girl's eyes seemed unfocused. Her gaze shifted from Conklin, to me, to the door, to the IV lead in her arm. Then she said to Conklin, "A couple of months ago... I called the number. Help for pregnant girls? A man... he spoke with an accent. French accent. But... it wasn't authentic. I met them... outside my school..."

"Them?"

"Two men. Their car was a blue four-door? And when I woke up, I was in a bed. I saw the baby," she said, tears gathering in her eyes and spilling over. "It was a little boy."

And now my heart was breaking apart.

What the h.e.l.l was this crime? Baby trafficking? It was outrageous. It was a sin sin. Make that a lot of sins. I tallied up two counts of felony kidnapping before we even knew the fate of the baby.

Conklin said, "I want to hear the whole story from the beginning. Tell me what you remember. Okay, Avis?"

I couldn't be sure, but it might have been that Avis Richardson was talking to herself. She said, "I saw my baby... then, I was on the street. Alone. In the dark."

I STAYED AT Avis Richardson's bedside for the next eight hours, hoping she'd wake up for real and tell me what had happened to her and to her newborn. Time pa.s.sed. Her sleep only deepened. And every minute that went by made me more certain that this girl's baby would not be found alive.

I still didn't know anything about what had happened to this teenager. Had she given birth alone and left the baby in a gas station bathroom? Had her child been s.n.a.t.c.hed?

We couldn't even get the FBI involved until we knew if a crime had been committed.

While I sat at Avis's bedside, Conklin went back to the Hall and threw himself into the hands-on work of the case. He reached into the missing-persons databases and ran searches for Avis Richardson, or any missing Caucasian teenage girls who matched her description.

He interviewed the couple who had brought Avis to the hospital and established the approximate area where they had found her: Lake Merced, near Brotherhood Way.

Working with the K-9 unit, Conklin went out into the field. Cops and hounds looked for the blood trail Avis Richardson had surely left behind. If the house where she'd given birth could be located, there'd be evidence there-and maybe the truth.

As the hounds worked the scent, the crime lab processed the plastic raincoat Avis had been wearing. It would hold prints, for sure, but a few dozen people at the hospital had handled it already. It also didn't make any sense that she was wearing a raincoat but no clothes.

Another mystery.

I kept vigil with a sleeping Avis. And the longer I sat, the more depressed I became. Where were the worried friends and parents? Why wasn't someone looking for this young girl?

Her eyelids fluttered. "Avis?" I said.

"Huh?" she answered. Then she closed her eyes again.

I took a break at around four in the afternoon. I pushed dollar bills into a vending machine and ate something with peanut b.u.t.ter and oats in it. Washed it down with a cup of bitter coffee.

I contacted a dozen hospitals to see if a motherless baby had come in, and I called Child Protective Services as well. I came up with nothing more than a mounting heap of frustration.

I borrowed Dr. Rifkin's laptop and logged onto ViCAP, the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension program database, to see what they had on the abduction of pregnant women.

I found a few crimes against against pregnant women-domestic violence, mainly-but no cases that resembled this one. pregnant women-domestic violence, mainly-but no cases that resembled this one.

After my fruitless Internet crawl, I went back to the ICU and slept in the big vinyl recliner beside Avis's bed. I woke up when she was wheeled out of the ICU and down the hall to a private room.

I called Brady, told him that we were still nowhere. My voice sounded defensive to my own ears.

"Anything on the baby?"

"Brady, this girl hasn't said boo boo."

When I hung up with Brady, my phone buzzed with an incoming call from Conklin.

"Talk to me," I said.

"The hounds found her trail."

I was instantly hopeful. I gripped my little phone, almost strangling it to death.

"She bled for about a mile," Conklin told me. "She put down a circular path at the southernmost part of Lake Merced."

"That sounds like she was looking for help. Desperately looking."

"The hounds are still on it, Lindsay, but the searchable area is expanding. They're working a grid on the golf course now. The gun-club area is next. This could take years."

"I haven't found anything in missing persons," I said.

"Me neither. I'm in the car calling people with the name of Richardson in San Francisco. There are over four hundred listings."

"I'll help with that. You start at A. Richardson, I'll start at Z. Richardson, and we'll work toward the middle," I said. "I'll meet you at the letter M."

When I hung up with Richie, Avis opened her pretty green eyes. She focused them on me.

"Hey," I said. "How are you feeling?"

I had a white-knuckle grip on the rails of her bed.

"Where am I?" the girl asked me. "What happened to me?"

I quashed the words Ah, s.h.i.t, Ah, s.h.i.t, and told Avis Richardson what little I knew. and told Avis Richardson what little I knew.

"We're trying to find your baby," I said.

About the Authors

JAMES PATTERSON has had more New York Times New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977, James Patterson's books have sold more than 205 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls Kiss the Girls and and Along Came a Spider Along Came a Spider. Mr. Patterson also writes the bestselling Women's Murder Club novels, set in San Francisco, and the top-selling New York detective series of all time, featuring Detective Michael Bennett.

James Patterson also writes books for young readers, including the award-winning Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch & Wizard series. In total, these books have spent more than 200 weeks on national bestseller lists, and all three series are in Hollywood development.

His lifelong pa.s.sion for books and reading led James Patterson to launch the website ReadKiddoRead.com to give adults an easy way to locate the very best books for kids. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family. to give adults an easy way to locate the very best books for kids. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.

NEIL MCMAHON is the author of several thrillers, including Dead Silver Dead Silver. He lives in Montana with his wife.

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