Low blow, D.D. had thought at the time. Though the truth was often like that. So: Project Dog. For her over-the-moon beautiful little boy. And her quite charming and still-had-the-moves husband. Fine print: They all had to agree on the mutt in question.
Personally, D.D. had no interest in a cute, squirmy puppy that would eat everything in sight. A mature, solemn-eyed pit bull, however . . . She admired their loyalty and fierce spirit. A female pit bull, two to three years of age, she’d already decided. Young enough to play with Jack and bond with the family, old enough to understand her immediate responsibilities to serve and protect. D.D. pictured herself and this theoretical pit bull reaching a silent agreement on how to guard the boy at all times.
Perfect fall day. Apple picking to be followed by Dog adoption to be followed by complete madness and mayhem, which was about exactly right for a family with a five-year-old boy.
Meaning, she’d no sooner reached for her favorite caramel-colored leather jacket than her BPD-issued cell phone sounded. Then her personal one. She glanced at her department issue first, then her private mobile.
“Sh—” She caught herself. “Shrimp.”
Jack stilled in their tiny foyer, lower lip already jutting out mutinously. Alex’s look was more sympathetic.
“Red ball,” she mouthed to him. The text on her professional phone—homicide-speak for all hands on deck. As in, whatever bad thing had happened at the address already being transmitted to her cell required every single Boston homicide detective in immediate attendance.
In this day and age, her first thought was terrorism. Her onetime squad mate and now reporting detective Phil, however, had sent a corresponding text to her personal phone. A note of warning and empathy from one parent to another.
Domestic, he’d typed. Then, more pertinently: Kids.
Perfect fall day.
She should’ve known better.
? ? ?
D.D. SENT ALEX AND JACK off to do the apple picking, Dog selecting. Which, of course, would now be one more addition to a family that was never quite hers. Because even after falling in love and then, surprise of surprises, giving birth, she remained at heart the woman she’d always been: a homicide detective, wedded first and foremost to her job.
Alex, older and wiser when they’d met, swore he understood. Claimed to love her just the same. Little boys, D.D. was coming to learn, were harder to convince. Jack didn’t have years of experience to fall back on. He was five, he loved his mother, he hated it when she left.
The promise of Dog had headed off most of his tantrum, which should’ve made D.D. feel better but only made her feel worse. That she could be replaced so easily. That this Saturday would be yet one more day her husband and son would experience together, while she got to view the photos later.
Whoever said you couldn’t have it all had been telling the truth.
And yet . . .
Yet she felt her pulse quickening as she headed, lights on, straight into Brighton, Mass. There was dread, yes, because now that she was a mom, anything involving kids was that much harder to take. But it was a red ball. A call demanding all hands on deck, meaning by definition it had to involve more than just a potential family annihilation or murder-suicide, whatever phrase the criminologists were using. Red ball meant large scope, urgent deadline. A crisis still in the making.
She couldn’t help herself. As Alex understood and appreciated, she lived for this shit.
Saturday traffic in Boston was notoriously thick. Exiting the Mass Pike onto the winding streets of densely populated Brighton required gratuitous use of her horn and flashing lights to get anyone to budge. Even then, several of the other drivers (Massholes, they were rightly called) flipped her off.
D.D. worked her way past street after street of tightly packed row houses and apartment buildings. Brighton had once been known as the Little Cambridge of Boston. Even now, it was mostly white, fairly young, and well educated. And yet, like all overcrowded urban environments, it was also a microclimate of winners and losers. From tree-lined streets of restored town houses that went for seven figures to dilapidated triple-deckers, sagging on their foundations and sliced into tiny apartments that still probably went for two to three times D.D.’s mortgage out in the burbs.
The heart of the area was St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, which D.D drove toward now. One more left turn and then the pileup of police cruisers and detectives’ vehicles marked her destination. She didn’t even bother to turn down the narrow street. A uniformed patrol officer was already standing in the intersection, directing traffic. She pulled up, flashed her shield.
“Next block over,” he advised. “Take any available sidewalk space.”
D.D. nodded. Sidewalk parking was a time-honored tradition for Boston cops.
She hit the next street, wedged in between two police cruisers, then took one last moment. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
Whatever she was about to see, it was not her job to feel. It was her job to fix.
She popped open her door and got on with it.
? ? ?
THE HOUSE IN QUESTION WAS EASY to find, the yellow crime scene tape being one hint. The ME’s vehicle parked directly in front being the other. In the winners-and-losers department, the house wasn’t coming out on top. A small two-story, with faded green vinyl siding, it was dwarfed on both sides by more impressive homes. The property was hemmed in by chain link, a rarity in these parts given the microscopic yards. The fence featured multiple signs declaring Beware of Dog.
Great, she thought; now her day had a theme.
She had to wade through a crowd of milling gawkers, then presented her credentials a second time to the uniformed patrol officer standing outside the rusted chain link. He dutifully logged her into the murder book. Phil was already waiting for her, standing just inside the open front door.
“Family of five,” he announced the second she was close enough to him for her to hear. “Two adults, three kids, two dogs. Call came in shortly after nine, reports of shots fired. Responding officers found four bodies. Oldest kid, a sixteen-year-old female, and two dogs still unaccounted for.”
“Maybe the girl took the dogs for a walk?” D.D asked with an arched brow. “That’s why they’re missing?”
“Possible, though it’s now been a bit for a girl and two dogs to be taking a stroll. I issued a BOLO for the girl, Roxanna Baez, five one, Hispanic, long dark brown hair. And what the hell, the dogs, as well, two elderly Brittany spaniels, which, just to keep things interesting, are both reported to be blind.”
D.D. blinked. “Okay.” She glanced at her watch. Nearly ten A.M. now, almost an hour since the initial call of shots fired. Did seem a long time for a teenager and two old blind dogs to be walking. Plus, you’d think all the police cruisers and flashing lights might catch the girl’s attention.
“Uniforms are canvassing the streets,” Phil continued, “looking for the girl and dogs, while all detectives have been assigned to door-to-door sweeps. You know how it goes.”
D.D. did. In a situation like this one, with a missing youth who might have simply stepped out or might have been abducted, they had to cover all bases as quickly as possible. The uniforms would be their foot soldiers on the ground, looking for a teenager who might be walking her dogs, might be hanging with friends, or might be whatever. While the detectives had the trickier job of knocking on doors and politely but firmly demanding entrance for a quick visual search. Anyone who refused would be marked for further investigation later. Assuming, of course, the girl didn’t magically reappear, wondering what the police were doing in her home.
And D.D.’s job in this madness? To assess and strategize. Did they have a contained situation, where four members of a family had been tragically murdered while the fifth luckily escaped? Or did they have an ongoing crisis, four dead, one abducted—in which case Phil’s “Be on the Lookout” would be escalated to a full Amber Alert, with every law enforcement agent in New England joining the fray?