Invisible Boy (6 page)

My imaginary composite had one detail correct, however. The woman had twenty years on me, but she was still a jock to the
bone.

I pegged her for field hockey once upon a time. Good shoulders on her, if a bit slight for defense. Narrow hips and some meat
on the back of her thighs: a sprinter.

“Yo, Opie,” she said, snapping her fingers at our young cop.

Her voice was fast, clipped Queens, that definitive outer-borough twang, like she had gravel in her sinuses.

“The fuck you waiting on,” she said, “second coming of Christ? Get your butt over here.”

He hustled to comply, and she was right in his face, cocking one hip as she tapped his badge with her finger.

“Albie,” she said, “that what they call you when you’re awake?”

He blushed and nodded but she’d made him smile, too.

Neat trick, to bitch someone out and win him over simultaneously.

“So, walk me through this,
Albie
,” she said. “We got a body outside, and we got a bunch of nice people sitting around inside, and you’re empty-handed—no clipboard,
no pen. As a highly trained detective, this tells me you know exactly what took place here and I can go home already, because
you stole the collar right out from under my ass before I even showed up—am I right?”

He shook his head, blushing deeper. But she’d made him laugh.

“So what can you tell me?” she asked. “You got any leads on who’s in charge here?”

He pointed at Cate.

“Excellent,” she said. “Now, who found the scene?”

He pointed at me.

“Keep this up,” she said, “they’re gonna make you commissioner.”

He smiled, and Skwarecki told him to get the kids’ names and contact info, then send them home.

She gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder, turning toward me and Cate.

S
kwarecki told us her first name was Jayné, pronounced Jen-NAY.

“My mother was some kind of French,” she said, and shrugged. “But no one ever calls me that.”

She’d brought Cate and me back outside.

The medical examiner’s van pulled up, and a grim-looking guy climbed out of it with a large black case. Giving Skwarecki a
dour wave, he ducked under the crime-scene tape and disappeared into the bushes.

“You gotta be anywhere?” she asked. “I’d like to bring you both down to the precinct.”

Cate told her no and I said not really, but that I’d like to call home.

I felt in my pocket for change. “Okay if I run out and find a pay phone?”

Skwarecki was cool with that, so I started toward the cemetery’s gate.

Dean picked up when I dialed the apartment.

“Yo,” I said, “Intrepid Spouse.”

“What’s up? You sound kind of bummed.”

I sighed. “I might be late for dinner.”

“Do tell.”

“I’m at the cemetery. With a homicide detective.”

“Bunny, you okay?”

Here’s the great thing about Dean: he doesn’t get freaked out by much. This has proved to be a necessary attribute in a person
who finds himself married to me.

“I found a skeleton,” I said.

“In a cemetery.”

“It’s a little kid,” I said. “And it doesn’t look like it was ever buried, so, you know, we called the cops and stuff.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Kind of.”

“You sound shaky,” he said.

“More sad,” I said. “The kid was
really
little.”

“You want me to come out there?”

“That’s okay, but I appreciate the offer.”

“We’re supposed to have dinner with Nutty Buddy.”

“Crap,” I said. “Astrid.”

“Want me to postpone it?”

I looked at my watch: just after five o’clock. “I think I could make it by eight. Can you call her?”

Dean said he would and I thanked him and placed the phone back on the hook.

I’d just stepped onto the sidewalk across from the cemetery when a second dark Crown-Vic-esque sedan pulled in behind the
ME’s van.

As I crossed the street, the driver’s door opened, disgorging a hard-ass-but-elegant-looking African American chick in crimson
lipstick and a chalk-striped navy power suit.

The woman wore her hair short, her neck graceful as an egret’s. She had feline cheekbones and a complexion the color of strong,
clear tea—richly brown and gold and red, all at once.

She glanced around for a nanosecond, fists on her hips, then made the proverbial beeline through the gate for Skwarecki.

I watched the muscles of her long stocking-sheathed calves bunch up as she shifted her weight forward to keep her spike heels
from sinking into the crabgrass.

Shoes that expensive, she had to be a lawyer.

I followed her through the gate.

Ten feet in she stopped walking, calves still clenched as she balanced on the balls of her feet.

I ducked past her, trying to act unobtrusive until I pulled up alongside Cate, who was looking down at the clipboard in Skwarecki’s
hands and nodding while the detective jotted down notes.

The elegant attorney called out, “Yo, Jayné!”

Skwarecki lifted her head. “You get dragged into this
mishegoss
already, Bost?”

The chic stranger shrugged. “Yeah, right?”

“ME hasn’t weighed in a hundred percent yet,” said Skwarecki.

“You know the drill. Your guys call my guys. My guys call me. I go, ‘How high?’ ”

Skwarecki nodded. “Looking like we maybe got
something
.”

“Nice day for it.” The woman rested her knuckles back on her hips. “You planning to introduce me?”

“Like you need some engraved invitation?” asked Skwarecki.

The attorney started picking her way across the grass toward the three of us, hands held out a little for balance.

“Behold Louise Wilson Bost,” said Skwarecki, “assistant district attorney for the Borough of Queens—top prosecutor in our
homicide division, but she dresses way too girly for the job.”

Bost-the-Best shot me and Cate a wink and a smile. “Pay no attention to Detective Skwarecki, ladies. She can’t hack the competition.”

“Hand to God,” said Skwarecki. “My next paycheck? I’m buying Louise here a pair of sneakers.”

Bost waved a hand in Skwarecki’s general direction. “Such a kidder, this one. Laugh? I thought I’d never
stop
.”

She teetered up to us, a little out of breath. “I came straight from court, and I want to look nice for my clients. They’ve
got it hard enough.”

Sobering thought: dressing well for her clients was a show of respect for the dead.

Skwarecki said, “This is Cate Ludlam, in charge of the preservation efforts here.”

Bost reached to shake Cate’s hand.

“And Madeline Dare,” Skwarecki continued, “who discovered the child’s remains.”

“A pleasure, Ms. Bost,” I said when she shifted to grip my hand in turn.

“
Louise
,” she replied. “Let’s not stand on formality. I’m sure this hasn’t been an easy day for the two of you, and if the ME
does
weigh in a hundred percent, we may be spending some time together.”

No sooner had she said that than the man himself climbed out of the bushes. He stood up and removed his thin gloves with a
snap.

From the grim look on his face, a hundred percent was the least of it.

T
he ME took Skwarecki and Bost aside to talk. They stepped into a spot of shade just inside the chapel’s doorway.

We could see their faces again, now, and the conversation was obviously a grim one.

“Those are not happy people,” said Cate. “Not by a long shot.”

“I wonder what he’s telling them,” I said.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”

The ME finally peeled off from the trio and climbed into his van.

Bost wasn’t worried about her shoes anymore when she and

Skwarecki started back toward us.

“Ladies,” she said, “we’d like to drive you down to the precinct house now, if that’s all right.”

“They don’t give you guys air-conditioning?” I asked Skwarecki, cranking my window down as she pulled out onto the boulevard.

Bost and Cate followed in separate cars.

Skwarecki snorted at that. “Half the time you’re lucky these crates have
wheels
.”

She drummed her fingertips along the top of the steering wheel, already impatient with driving slow enough for the entourage
to keep pace.

“Big engine, though, huh?” I asked.

Skwarecki smiled. “Big enough.”

“Slap that cherry on the roof, I bet you could haul
serious
ass in this thing.”

“Got
that
right.”

She checked the rearview mirror, making sure we hadn’t lost Cate and Bost.

“Crap,” she said, impatient. “Make way for
ducklings
.”

We pulled into the One-Oh-Three and Skwarecki led us upstairs, into a warren of glossy, institutional-green hallways. We wandered
down them single file behind her, twisting and turning past windowed door after windowed door.

Most of these bore a department title—
FRAUD
or
SPECIAL VICTIMS
or
ROBBERY
—with butcher paper taped to the back of each glass panel. You couldn’t see a goddamn thing beyond them.

Bost obviously knew her way around as well as Skwarecki did, but I was getting more disoriented by the second, sneakers squeaking
against the highly polished linoleum.

We skidded to a halt in front of a door marked
HOMICIDE
.

Skwarecki ushered us over the threshold and into a bright, noisy bull pen crammed with desks.

I looked at my watch again: just after five.

“You have to be somewhere?” asked Skwarecki, pulling up a couple of chairs for me and Cate.

“I’m supposed to meet people around eight,” I said, “but I can blow it off. No biggie.”

“We should have you out of here by then,” she said.

Bost looked at her own thin watch but didn’t sit down. “I need to make a call. May I get anyone some water?”

Cate asked for the ladies’ room, and the two of them walked away.

“I take it the ME’s news wasn’t good?” I asked Skwarecki.

“It wasn’t, no.”

“Could he tell how old the kid was?”

“Around three.”

“
Three
,” I said, “Jesus. And you guys think this was a homicide?”

“Skeletal remains, you can have trouble with cause of death, but the ME seems pretty certain in this case.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just… looking at the rib cage.”

Skwarecki nodded. “We’ll know more when they finish the postmortem, but there were a number of badly healed fractures.”

My throat went all tight. I winced and shook my head, raising my hands up like I could keep the images of suffering at bay.

“You okay?” Skwarecki asked, voice quieter, tough-chick edge fallen away when she saw my eyes tearing up.

“Okay? Yeah,” I said. “But really,
really
pissed off.”

“Good for you.”

I wiped away the incipient tears. “I mean, what the fuck is
wrong
with people, you know?”

“I know,” she said.

“A little
kid
?”

“Preaching to the choir,” she said.

“Does it get to you?”

“Every damn time.”

“I can’t imagine what kind of balls this job must take.”

“They’re not all this bad,” she said. “Most times, it’s bad guys killing bad guys, you know? But a kid…”

“Does it get easier?”

She shook her head. “No. Never.”

“Does it help if you nail who did it?”

“Sure,” she said. “That’s what keeps me going. What makes me love this job. I get up every morning and I know I’m going to
spend my day trying to do something that
matters
, you know?”

“And this one—you think there’s any chance?”

“A kid this age, I doubt we’re going to have dental records to go on. And
proving
cause of death…?” She shook her head again.

“Where do you start?” I asked.

“We pull missing-persons reports. Hope we get a hit.”

“What are the odds of that?” I asked.

“Crappy,” she said. “There’s forty thousand sets of unidentified remains in the United States—Jane and John and Baby Does.”