For Want of a Memory

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1-2 | 3-4 | 5-6 | 7-8 | 9-34 & Epilogue Available On

PLEASE NOTE: This is a preview of this novel. It is available for purchase in its entirety via

Chapter Five

Jim Harper surveyed the woman who was surveying him.  She was a tasty dish, no doubt about that.  He wondered if the techs recording everything through the one-way mirror on the wall behind him had repositioned their cameras, like they sometimes did when a good looking woman was being interviewed.  He couldn't see Mrs. Custer's legs, but if she wasn't careful, the techs would find out if she was going commando or not.  He didn't need that kind of crap, so he adjusted his chair to one side, to block the camera's view, in case the techs had been so idiotic as to try that.  He knew a filing cabinet prevented them putting the camera low on the other side.

"I'm Jim Harper.  Thank you for being so gracious about all this," he said, opening the interview.  "I'm sorry to have had to ask you to come in for a statement."

She waved a hand in the air, and then settled long, sculptured nails down on the tabletop again, with a series of audible taps.

"I never mind doing my civic duty," she said, blinking at him several times.

"I'll try to make this go as quickly as possible," said Jim.  "If this goes to court, you'll be called to testify, of course, but your statement now will help the prosecutor plan his case."  He leaned back, signaling her in body language that she wasn't being pressed.  "Just tell me what you remember."

"And so I defended myself," said Jean Custer.  "I took off my other shoe and hit the miserable man with it to make him leave me alone."

Jim held up a hand, trying to stop her.  She was talking about Larry.  She had already described how she had stomped Curly's foot, apparently unaware that the spiked heel of her shoe had gone completely through his foot.  She had also described how she had kneed Larry in the groin.   

All that was fine, because when she took those actions, she really HAD been defending herself.  But when she took her other shoe to Larry, he'd been down, helpless, unarmed, and no threat to her whatsoever.  Technically, what she'd done to Larry with her shoe was assault, because she no longer had any need to defend herself.  She wasn't under attack at that point.  Furthermore, the six inch spike had torn Larry up enough that it could be viewed as a deadly weapon, which would make it aggravated assault.

"I don't need all that," he said quickly.

"Nonsense!" she said, her voice lilting.  She looked a little flushed...excited.  "I want other women to know that a woman CAN defend herself.  That miserable little man will think twice before attacking another woman.  I made him pay for what he tried to do to me."

She'd made him pay, all right.  She'd almost killed him.  The doctors still didn't know if they could save his left eye, and he was still on IV nourishment, because the hole she'd driven through one cheek hadn't healed enough yet to allow him to chew food.

Jean Chantal Custer insisted on making what was, in reality, a full and detailed confession to having committed aggravated assault on Larry Higginbotham.  Jim groaned inside.  If the defense ever heard this, there would be hell to pay.  He wondered who was on the other side of the glass listening to this.  That became clear when the door burst open and a somewhat wild-eyed Chief Hooks stood there, mouth open.  Harper did groan then, but what the chief said next wasn't what Harper had expected.

"I just want you to know, Mrs. Custer," he said breathlessly, "that we're doing everything in our power to identify and arrest the mastermind of this egregious infringement on your liberty."

"What?"  Jim looked at the man like he was crazy.

"You didn't catch them all?"  Jean Custer's voice held a mixture of concern and anger.

"Yes, we did," said Jim, looking at her and speaking soothingly.

"We'll find the man who planned all this and bring him to justice, along with his three underlings!" gasped Hooks, shooting a warning look at Harper.  "Detective Harper is unaware of recent developments, but you can be sure that you are safe and will remain so."

Harper's eyes went hooded.  If there were new developments, then he needed to get right on them.  Particularly if the Chief of Police thought it was important enough to disturb a formal interview.  He had pretty much everything he needed from the victim.  He had planned on just chatting with her, because she was definitely eye candy, but that was just fluff.  If there was another criminal to catch, he was interested in doing that.  He turned to Mrs. Custer.

"Thank you again for coming in.  You've been most helpful.  I'm sure Chief Hooks would be happy to see you back to your husband."

Outside the room, Harper approached Captain Hildebrand, who had been standing with the governor.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Why didn't you tell me there was a mastermind involved in this case?" asked Hildebrand.  "I got caught flat footed in the conference room!"

"What mastermind?"  Harper felt a tightness in his chest begin to develop.

"The chief says those three are too stupid to have planned this themselves," said Hildebrand.

"That's it?"  Harper's mouth fell open.  "He broke into my interview and said all that shit, because HE thinks they're too stupid to have come up with this by themselves?"

"He's probably right," said Hildebrand, defensively.

"He's a fucking moron," snorted Harper.  "I talked to those idiots-and I agree they're idiots.  In fact they're too stupid to take orders from somebody smarter than they are.  There is no mastermind, except for the one in Hooks' mind...and now in Mrs. Custer's mind, as well.  What a fucking mess!"

"Don't you take that tone with me, detective," said Lonny Hildebrand stiffly.  "You just get your ass out there and find a mastermind.  If the chief of fucking police says there's one, then there IS one, as far as I'm concerned, and you'd better fucking find him."

Harper looked at his boss like the man had sprouted a third eye.

"You're as fucking nuts as he is," he sighed.

"You take that back!" snapped Hildebrand.  "You take that back or you're fucking fired!"

Jim Harper was saved from an impossible situation by the approach of Jean Chantal Custer.  Her arrival caused a very sudden silence between the two men.

"Detective?"  Her voice was high and sultry, somehow.  "I meant to ask you about that man...the one who saved me.  Have you found him yet?"

"No ma'am," said Harper.  "We're still looking.  We have a few leads on his car."

"When you find him, I want to thank him personally," said Chantal.

"I can't really make you any promises that we WILL find him," said Harper.  "He seems to want to remain anonymous."

"My husband and I will offer a reward, if you think that will help," she said.

"A reward."  Harper's mind was whirling.  Who offered a reward for a witness?  The guys in the crime lab had come to the conclusion that the accident was just that...an accident.  There was no evidence that the mysterious driver had intentionally hit Moe in an effort to stop the kidnapping.  If anything, the evidence matched that of a hit and run type accident.  "The man may not know that he helped you," he said carefully.  It wouldn't do to let this woman know that if her "savior" was ever found, he might be arrested on a hit and run charge.  Not that it would go anywhere…but the wheels of justice were often in a very deep rut.

"Then we WILL offer a reward," said Chantal.  "That should get him to come forward.  He saved my life, Detective, and I take that very seriously."

Harper wasn't about to argue with Mrs. Governor, especially since her husband and the idiot chief of fucking police were standing ten feet away, watching the scene.

Kris looked at his tray again, but nothing else had magically appeared on it.  He turned off the TV.  He decided that, in the life he could no longer remember, he hadn't been interested in morning television.  It was mindless, vapid in a way that made him wonder why any advertiser would sponsor it.   

He was in the midst of hypothesizing that sponsors of morning TV had decided that anyone who watched it was such an idiot that they'd buy anything, when the door opened slowly.  A very odd looking young woman stuck her head in.

"Hi," she said.  Her voice was high and light.  It sounded more like that of a girl than a woman, though she was undoubtedly over twenty-one.

"Hello," he said.

She seemed to be looking at him like she wasn't sure she was in the right place.

"You're Kris...right?"  She confirmed his guess.

"That's what they tell me," he said.

She came further in, but still stood in the door.  She looked a little apprehensive.

"I'm Lou Anne," she said.

That didn't mean anything to him.  "Well hi there, Lou Anne," he said.

"You don't remember me, do you?" she suggested.

He examined her, briefly.  If he'd ever seen her before, he SHOULD remember her.  She was about five-ten, and slim, but curvy at the same time.  She was wearing a pink and white striped dress that was obviously a uniform of some kind and had on pink Converse high tops.  From the neck down, she looked like any other woman that a man would enjoy looking at.  She had curves in all the right places.  It was her head that made her look strange.  The sides of her scalp had been shaved clean, leaving a strip of hair about three inches wide down the middle.  It wasn't a mohawk in the normal sense, where the hair stood straight up.  Instead, the strip of hair fell down the right side of her head, to the top of her ear.  At that, it was longer in the front, because it also fell forward and almost obscured her right eye.  That hair was the color of black cherries, with distinctly red tones in it.  It wasn't the red of genetically red hair and obviously came from a bottle.   

The side of her head that was exposed looked like it belonged on a much younger woman, like her voice sounded too young.  The one dark green eye that stared at him was flanked by ears that glittered.  The left had two small silver hoops, with a silver ball on one and a black ball on the other, hanging from the lobe.  The right one, visible beside the hair that almost covered her right eye, had a silver hoop with a blue ball in the lobe and, higher up in the cartilage, a silver hoop with a silver ball.

She had the smoothest skin he'd ever seen, despite the sprinkling of light freckles that lay as if strewn there, from one cheek, across her nose, to the other.  The sweep of her jaw line made him want to touch it, because there wasn't anything angular about it.  Her neck looked long, but he couldn't decide if that had anything to do with the odd haircut or not.  What surprised him the most, for some reason, was that her appearance didn't put him off at all.  He thought she was cute, verging on something very close to disturbingly good looking.  There was no way in the world he could forget having seen this woman.  It suddenly occurred to him that she might be on the payroll of that policeman, who seemed so suspicious of him, and might be there to get information.

"I don't remember much of anything right now," he replied, vaguely.  

"I'm the one who found you," she said, taking another step into the room.  Still, she held the door open with one hand, as if she was ready to bolt at any second.  "On the road," she added.  "You looked a lot different then."

Kris spent a few seconds trying to dredge up some memory of anything that might involve this woman, but couldn't.

"I don't remember any of that," he said.  "But thanks for helping me."

"Oh!" she yipped.  "I didn't mind.  Anybody would have done it."

"Knowledge" leapt into his mind.  It was a story he'd heard as a child.  It was about the good Samaritan, from the Bible.  A rush of thoughts went through his mind as he remembered being confused when a woman whose name he couldn't remember told the story.  He had been in a dim room, with other children around him.  Sunday School.  He'd been in Sunday School.  His father was the minister of the church.  

He remembered how, in some recent past, he'd been in the car with his parents and they'd seen a man on the side of the road, with his arm out, and his thumb pointing skyward.  His father had been driving and had slowed down.  His mother had upbraided him and told him not to stop.

"You know better than to pick up a hitchhiker!" she had complained.  Then she'd turned to Kris.  "Don't EVER pick up a hitchhiker!" she'd ordered him sternly.  He'd only been about ten at the time, but her tone of voice had impressed him.

Then, within a week or two, the Sunday School teacher told them about the good Samaritan and, just as sternly, informed the class that it was ALWAYS their Christian duty to help those in need.

It had been very confusing.

"I just wanted to stop and say hi," said the young woman.  Her body language told him she was getting ready to leave.

"Don't go," he said suddenly.

She stopped, as if frozen.  "Oh?"

"You were a good Samaritan," he said.

She blinked.  Then she smiled.  It was a beautiful smile.  "I guess so, huh?"

"Won't you stay for a while?" he asked.

"I'm not actually supposed to be here," she said, apology in her voice.  "It isn't really visiting hours."

"But it's me you're visiting," he said.  "Shouldn't I have some say about that?"

"I have to go get some sleep and then pick up my little boy," she said.  "I work at night.  I just got off."

"Oh," he said.  "OK.  Well ... thanks."

"Anybody would have done it."

"But nobody else did.  You did.  So thanks."

"No problem," she said.  "See you later."

She turned to go.

"Hey."  His voice wasn't loud, but it stopped her and her head swiveled, so that she was looking at him over her shoulder.  His eyes slid down to a uniform skirt that was packed in the back with what looked like a very nice ass.  "Will I?"

"What?"  She looked confused.

"Will I see you later?" he asked.  "I'd like to ask you some questions, but I don't want to get  you in trouble with your husband."

She looked surprised.  "I'm not married," she said, as if it should be obvious.

"Oh," he said.  "I just thought..."

"Are you a mobster?" she asked suddenly.

"A mobster?"  His eyebrows went up.  Again, he thought about the policeman, and how she might be in league with him.

"Yeah, like in organized crime."  Her body turned just a little, but she still stood in the open doorway.

"I'm an author," he said, sure of that somehow.  "Why would you think I was a mobster?"

"Somebody shot you!" she said, looking surprised.  "Why would anybody shoot you if you weren't involved in some kind of funny business?"

"Somebody shot me?"  His voice was hollow.

Lou Anne felt exasperated.

"That's what the doctor said," she explained.  "Didn't they tell you that?"

"They haven't told me anything," he said.  "And they for SURE didn't say anything about me being shot."  He lifted his head and looked down at his body.  He lifted both hands, even though he'd already examined them.  "Where did they shoot me?"

"Jess said it was a head wound," said Lou Anne.  This felt all wrong, somehow.  Why hadn't anybody asked him who shot him?  Why hadn't they even told him he'd been shot?  "You have a big bandage...right there."  She pointed to the left side of his head.  He'd felt that bandage there, but there were bandages all over his head.

"Jess?"

"My best friend.  She's a nurse.  She's been taking care of you."

"The cute black one," he said, intuitively.  He couldn't see any of the other nurses hanging out with a woman who looked like this.

"That's her," said Lou Anne.  "Look.  Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.  Maybe they're wrong.  I have to go, OK?  Please don't tell anybody I told you about that...the shooting, I mean.  I don't want to get in trouble."

His worries about her being somehow involved with law enforcement flew.  If she was acting, she was a pro, and there was no way that she could be an actual law enforcement officer.  Not with that haircut.

"Anybody who tries to give you trouble will have to deal with me," said Kris, his voice strong.  "You did me a favor, and I remember things like that."

She looked at him oddly, as her head tilted.  The hair completely covered her right eye.  That would drive him nuts and he wondered how she stood it.  The other dark eye stared right at him, and for some reason he noticed she wasn't wearing any makeup.

"That's what they say about mobsters," she said softly.  "They remember people who do them favors."

"I'm not a mobster," he said firmly.  "I write books."

"Really?"  She sounded excited.  "I LOVE to read."  Then she jerked.  "I HAVE to go!  I'll see you later."

She was out the door, which sighed closed and then reopened suddenly.  That amazing head was thrust through.

"I WILL see you later," she said.  "Bye!"

Then she was gone again, and the door stayed closed.

Chapter Six

The news anchor's face lit up.  Her perfectly coiffed hair didn't move, even though her entire face changed.  Her bright red lips split into a cultivated smile and showed a row of perfect white teeth.

"And we have an update on the continuing saga of the attempted kidnapping on Governor Custer's wife."

She then went on to explain that the governor's wife was named Chantal, as if there actually might be some idiot in the viewing area that didn't already know that.  That was followed by a recap of the same news that had been splashed on every airwave and in every newspaper for three days, as if maybe the same idiot that didn't know who Chantal was also might not know that somebody had tried to kidnap her.

Oddly, perhaps, several million people who had heard it all before...again and again...leaned forward to listen carefully, instead of hitting the "Mute" button and talking with others nearby about something actually interesting.

"Chantal announced today that a reward is being offered to the man who saved her life on that fateful day, when three armed men tried to force her into a van while she was visiting a childcare center."

People leaned forward even farther and waved at others around them to hush.

"Chantal and the governor are offering two hundred thousand dollars for her savior to come forward, so that she can thank him."

The picture changed suddenly and there was Chantal, tall and lovely as usual, with a bevy of microphones almost obscuring her face as she spoke.

"His car was damaged in the act of saving my life," she said dramatically.  "We feel we owe it to him to offer some token of our gratitude.  People who act so heroically are an example to us all that, no matter who you are, you can impact other people's lives in a powerfully positive way."

The happy anchor took back over and, for possibly the hundredth time, told everyone listening that virtually nothing was known about Chantal's savior.

"Please come forward," she intoned, staring intently into the camera.  "All of us here at Channel 27 want to thank you as well."

Within a hundred and twenty seconds, the switchboard of every television station that had broadcast Chantal's offer-and that was all of them-was clogged with calls from people claiming to be Chantal's savior.   Women even called in, insisting that Chantal had it wrong...that it wasn't a man who had saved her, but a woman.

911 was instantly clogged with calls as well.  Over a period of fifteen minutes, while people continued to call the emergency number, fifty-four citizens who were in actual need of emergency medical response died.  Thirty people had heart attacks.  There were two fires, in which six people were trapped and burned to death before the firemen arrived, and fifteen collisions in which people were critically injured.  Three people died of self-inflicted injuries-two who overdosed on medications and then decided not to end it all after all, and one who slit her wrists and then changed her mind as well.

The administrative number at every precinct in the city wasn't immune either.  The class of people who called those numbers was a bit elevated, by comparison to those calling 911, but the result was the same.

Emergency services came to a screeching halt for half an hour, in a city with ten million people in potential need of those services.

Nobody actually cared that all the media outlets were swamped.  Stories would be written for days about the event and it would be weeks before the crush of people, all claiming to have been driving the car that saved Chantal from a fate worse than death, would be sorted out.  Most of that sorting was done simply by asking the claimant what color car he or she was driving that day.  Almost all the rest were discarded when they couldn't produce the car.  Many couldn't produce any car at all and, in fact, according to the division of motor vehicles, didn't even own a car.  Hundreds insisted that they had been worried about getting in trouble for some reason and had sold the car they'd been driving.   Twenty five people said they'd dumped the car in the ocean, but none could remember where, exactly.  One woman, in a fit of imagination, said she'd driven the car to California, where she'd sold it to a homeless man for ten dollars, because she'd felt sorry for him.

There could have been a doctoral thesis done on the whole situation, which illuminated the kind of greed that no one would have believed could exist.   Four cab drivers...of yellow cabs...claimed they were on duty when the incident happened and were owed the reward.   At least two hundred said they didn't care about the money, but just wanted to meet Chantal, or be invited to the governor's mansion for dinner, or some similar thing.   More than one said there hadn't been any car involved at all, and that they had wrestled Moe to the ground and then run away.

Jim Harper's world almost collapsed.  Captain Hildebrand was tearing his hair out, because Chief Hooks had dumped the mess in his lap.  He had tried to dump it in Harper's lap, but Harper had said he couldn't work on finding the mastermind if he had to deal with all the imposters.  Since Chief Hooks was asking Hildebrand three or four times a day whether the mastermind had been uncovered, he couldn't shit on Harper.

Instead, he drafted almost his entire force of detectives to weed through the unimaginable number of liars, cheats and outright bums who were trying to cash in.   It was catastrophic, in the sense that over the next week, while the crowd was being sifted through, three felony cases had to be dropped because of the speedy trial rule, setting the perpetrators free.  Hundreds of other cases languished, while witnesses' memories faded, or they moved without leaving a forwarding address, or even died.  Only the crime lab was happy, because they significantly reduced their backlog of examinations while new evidence was logged in, but no examinations of that evidence were requested.

As much of an uproar as was created, though, unless you needed an ambulance, or the police, or for some reason needed to communicate with the media, life went on without a ripple.

Two rather distraught businessmen did, in fact, need the police during that week, and their situations had interweaving ripples.

One came to work on Monday morning to find that his warehouse had been broken into.  His problem wasn't that anything was missing.  His problem was that somebody had parked a hearse in his building, complete with coffin.   None of the employees were willing to open that coffin to see what was inside it.

Another was the owner of the hearse, who had rented it to Larry Higginbotham, though that wasn't the name Larry had used.  The hearse hadn't been returned and it was needed for a funeral.

Because of the uproar in the law enforcement community, neither man could get anyone in law enforcement to do anything about their situations.  In the end, the owner of the warehouse got the name of the mortuary from the side of the hearse, called the funeral home, and basically said, "Get your fucking dead body out of my warehouse!"

The only bright spot in that whole exchange was when the coffin was opened and found to be empty, except for a roll of duct tape, which the Higginbothams had planned to use to restrain Chantal Custer with.

What was lost were the fingerprints that would have tied the Higginbothams to that hearse and the eyewitness testimony of the owner, who could have identified Larry Higginbotham as the man who had rented it.  

It would have played beautifully in a trial.

"I got rights!" squealed Curly.

"I already read you your rights," said Harper patiently.

"So where's my coffee and donuts?" whined Curly.

"You don't have a right to coffee and donuts," said Harper.  

Curly turned to the young man, wearing the threadbare suit, sitting beside him.

"You said I had rights," he complained.  "Ain't I got the right to make them feed me?"

"Um...I don't think so," said the public defender.  "Didn't they feed you in jail?  If they didn't feed you in jail, I can file a motion."

"Whose idea was it to kidnap Mrs. Custer?" asked Harper.

"Don't answer that!" barked Curly's lawyer.

"Where did the gun come from?" asked Harper.

"Don't answer that either!" yelped the lawyer.

"Look," sighed Harper.  "You're in deep shit here, Curly.  You're looking at life without parole, and if Moe dies, you could get the death penalty."

"Hey!" yelled Curly.  "I didn't do nothing to Moe."

"Yes, but if someone dies in the process of a felony kidnapping attempt, then those responsible for the kidnapping attempt are also responsible for the death."

"Don't try that bullshit with me!" yelled Curly.  "You know I didn't try to kidnap my own brother."

"Of course," said Jim smoothly.  "You were trying to kidnap Mrs. Custer."

"Don't answer that!" said the public defender.

"He didn't ask no question," said Curly, looking at the man beside him.  "He just said what we was trying to do."

"I can't help you," said Jim, standing up.  "You can help yourself, by cooperating with me, but if you don't care about going to prison for the rest of your life, that's fine by me."  He picked up the file.

"Hang on!" yelped Curly.

"Don't answer that!" intoned the lawyer.  Curly turned to him again.

"You shut your pie hole.  You couldn't even get me coffee and donuts, and there have to be a zillion donuts around this place somewhere, what with all these cops here."

The lawyer looked hurt.  "I'm advising you not to talk to this man," he said.  "I already inquired about pleading to a lesser offense and I hit a brick wall.  This detective can't do anything for you.  He's just on a fishing expedition."

"I hope your lawyer will be willing to bring you coffee and donuts in prison, Curly," said Harper softly.  "Because nobody else will."

He turned again, just as the door to the interrogation room opened.  Harper wondered if anybody in the entire fucking world was aware of what a breach of procedure that was.  You didn't just walk in on a formal interview.  He was faced with a slim, athletic looking black man, in a suit.  The man's hand slipped inside his suit and Harper tensed.  He wasn't wearing his gun...not for an interrogation.  Displaying a firearm had been used more than once to get a confession thrown out on grounds that it was coerced.

The man's hand came out with a small leather folder and Harper knew what that meant instantly.

"Richard Jefferson, FBI," the man said.

"The feds are taking this?"  Harper was clearly unhappy.

"We have primary jurisdiction in kidnappings," said the agent.

"Yeah, if they cross state lines," said Harper.

"The Department of Justice has determined that Mrs. Custer has special status," said the agent smoothly.  "I'll take that file, please."

He held out his hand.  Harper placed the file folder in it.  He wasn't actually all that upset, except for the principle of the thing.  The Bureau only took cases like this that were solved, so they could claim the prosecution.   It was chicken shit.   But ... on the other hand, now the problem of the "mastermind" was someone else's.  And all those gold diggers would be heaped on the FBI, too.   He smiled.

"Have a good time...Dick," he said.

"What the fuck is this?" asked Curly.

"Shit, shit, shit," moaned his lawyer.

"Mommy had an adventure today!" said Lou Anne to the little boy secured firmly in the car seat behind her.

"An adventure!" said the little boy excitedly.  An observer would have heard distinct similarities between his voice and hers, and the way his repetition mimicked her original excitement.

"Yes!  When I was on my way to work, I found a hurt man and I took him to the hospital."

"He was hurt?"

"Uh huh.  I think he was in an accident."

"CRASH!" yelled Ambrose from the back seat, smashing his hands together.

"Maybe you could draw him a picture when we get home, to make him feel better," suggested Lou Anne.

"OK," said the little boy.

When they got home, Lou Anne set about fixing Ambrose something to eat and then checked the mail.  She'd gotten the four hours of sleep that was usually all she seemed to need, and looked forward to spending time with her son.

Ambrose, though not planned, was the light of her life now.   It had been hard.  The pregnancy itself had been difficult, for a number of reasons.   Then trying to figure out how to be a mother had become the problem.  Things just hadn't gone like she'd thought they would.  She'd ached to breast feed, for example, but Ambrose had turned up his nose at her nipple.  He'd drank the milk, but he'd wanted it from something he could wrap his mouth around better than what nature had given him.  Pumping her milk had been a pain too, at first, but had then turned into something much more convenient when she'd had to go back to work.  She'd pumped enough for Roslynn to keep him well fed while she took care of him.   If she'd had to go feed him two or three times a shift, it would have bankrupted her.

She took him his food and saw that he was already bent over a piece of drawing paper.  He was using a pencil to rough out the drawing, but had crayons ready to fill in the colors.   He was making a surprisingly sophisticated drawing of a man, lying on a bed, all bandaged up.  One leg was up in the air, suspended from an invisible point, and obviously had a cast on it.  Ambrose surprised her like that all the time.  She had no idea where he'd seen an image of a man in traction, but it had stuck in his genius little brain somewhere and had now come out to play.

She just looked at him for a minute, her heart almost overflowing with emotion.  He was so precious.

His medium brown hair was cut in a bowl cut, because that made it easy to keep trimmed up.  His skin was as fair as her own, though slightly paler.  He had the same freckle pattern as she did as well-on his face, the tops of his shoulders, and along his arms.  Also like her, his eyes changed color, depending on his mood and any number of other circumstances.  Always some shade of blue, they were sometimes lighter and sometimes darker.   

He looked up, knowing she was there somehow.  His long lashes blinked as he smiled.  At four years old, the only trace of baby fat left on him was in his face.  He had cheeks a chipmunk would be proud of and a little round chin below pouty lips, also like hers.  Now she could see the faint freckles on his button nose and the little gap between his two front teeth.  He looked skinny, but she knew he had lots of muscle, to go along with a brain that routinely astonished her.

"What's his name?" asked Ambrose.

"Kris," said his mother.

"With a C or a K?"

"How did you know it could be spelled two ways?" asked Lou Anne.

"I don't know.  I just do."

"Well this one is with a K," she said.

She watched him scrawl the name at the bottom of the page.  Then, quite possibly because he didn't know if the man in question was white, or black, or oriental, he simply colored him blue.  He left the bed uncolored, but then scribbled an irregular border around the man and bed, using what appeared to be the first crayon that came to hand.  She marveled at how detailed the pencil work was and how lackadaisical he was at using color.  The tip of his tongue, none the less, was in the corner of his lips, as he intently finished his drawing.

"You hungry?"

"A little," he said, dropping the crayon.  "Will you give this to him?"

"The next time I see him," said his mother.

Special Agent Richard Jefferson stood beside the man in the bed and looked at him.  If he'd seen a certain pencil and crayon drawing, recently completed by a little boy in another state, suspicion would have flared in his mind.  One leg was suspended from a silver bar over the bed.  The face wasn't bandaged, like the one in the boy's picture, but the resemblance to this scene would have been eerie.

Moe Higginbotham was doped to his eyeballs with pain killers, but even so it didn't prevent him from muttering, "Fuck you," in an almost unbroken litany.  Jefferson knew he was pushing things by being here without the man's attorney present.  But no attorney had been appointed yet, and wouldn't be until there was an arraignment, so he took his chances.  His briefing about the case had included a very serious suggestion that there was a fourth man, who was still at large, involved in the conspiracy.  There was nothing in the local file about that...nothing whatsoever...but Harper had made sure he understood that the governor believed that, and so did the chief of police.

"What do you think?" Jefferson had asked the older man.

"I think you took jurisdiction and you have my file," Harper had answered.  Then he'd turned around and walked away.

Jefferson had tried to question Moe Higginbotham.  He'd rushed through the rights advisement, and asked the man who had done "this" to him.  He'd argued that while Moe was caught, and would certainly go to prison, whoever had put him up to it was going to get off scot free.  He'd suggested that wasn't fair to Moe.   All he'd gotten was eyes that glittered somehow, while being glazed over at the same time, and the words, "Fuck you, pig," over and over again.

Since then Jefferson had been feeling less and less positive about the whole stinking mess.  His first step after taking jurisdiction had been to visit the New York City crime lab.  His first question had been about the pistol Moe had been found with and two bullets recovered from the scene.

"Have you checked the ballistics against any other unsolved major crimes?"

The tech had actually laughed at him!

"Well, it's a .45 caliber bullet, so we don't have all that many of those we COULD compare them to," he said.  "Just off hand I'd say there are somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred.  And...oh, I don't know...maybe twice that many shell casings.  I'm sure the director would be happy to put four or five of us on it full time...assuming, of course, that the bureau will pay for it."  The man grinned.  "This isn't CSI, like on TV, you know.  We don't have some fancy imaginary automated computer system that will do that."

Dick Jefferson had been an FBI agent for three years, but he already knew how expensive that would be...and how long it would take.

"I may have our lab do something with them," he said.

"Knock yourself out," said the tech.  "The detective that was working on this has us looking at a few things.  If we find anything, we'll notify him and I'm sure he'll notify you.  Just let the evidence custodian know which ones you want.  If any of them are the ones we're working on, I'll be happy to turn them back in to the evidence locker so he can ship them to you."

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