Minka
MINKA
I ’m in my office approximately four hours after my kitchen counter nap, my computer screen spun on my desk, Archer and Fletch standing guard by the door, Aubree draped haphazardly on the couch so the glitters of her shoes flicker in the sunlight fighting through the clouds outside. And I… well I sit in my visitor’s chair, my spine ruler-straight, my hands clasped tight in my lap, my heart pounding faster than it should, and my eyes plastered to the screen that just so happens to be split in two.
I have no clue how it’s been done, and I couldn’t explain how I’ve dialed into two different body cams at the same time—Sophia Solomon said she’d take care of it, and rarely does she fail to deliver. But the screen labeled one on the left is a far clearer image than any of those Cato and I watched in the last twenty-four hours. I’m met with Gloria Donohue’s friendly smile. Her neat hair tied in a ponytail, and her face as fresh as they come.
No cosmetics or skin creams for her.
And on the screen on the right, labeled two , is a shaky view of a lower-income neighborhood in New York, each side of the street filled with established trees and junker cars. Trash cans put out for collection, a kid’s bike dumped on the sidewalk, and a half dozen police cruisers parked to close off street access.
Officers wait in silence, preparing to breach a home the moment the order is given, but brutally aware they can’t move until word travels down from the brass.
“Can you describe his eyes, Ms. Donohue?” A sketch artist’s voice echoes through my screen speakers. But so does Paxton’s constant, measured breathing from the other camera.
Wherever he goes, we’ll follow.
“Not the color,” the artist murmurs. “I mean the shape. How close they are together or how far apart. Heavy eyelids on top, or not so much?”
“Um…” I don’t know if she allows her voice to shudder because she wants to appear nervous or if she genuinely is. But she anxiously plays with her fingers, the rub of her dry hands like a beacon for me to focus on. The peeling of skin I doubt others even notice, like a glaring neon sign and monkeys with cymbals to my brain. “They’re not really close together,” she explains. “But not far apart, either. They’re normal.” She closes her eyes, the shadowing from her swollen lids playing across the tops of her cheeks. “His nose was wide, I guess. Nothing crazy. Just…” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “The rest of his face was kind of slim, so that made his nose stand out a little more.”
“Can we get eyes on Lachlan Donohue?” Pax’s voice burns hotter than Gloria’s, the slight movement of his camera drawing my attention back to a neighborhood not a hell of a lot different from the one I grew up in. “Chavez?”
“No eyes in the last fifteen.”
“Jackson?”
“Last contact at fourteen-oh-nine,” another gritty voice answers. “Movement in the kitchen, then he exited south side.”
He went into the basement.
He’s with her, right now, while Mommy is away.
And perhaps that’s why Gloria is uneasy.
“They suggested she bring him to the station, right?” Fletch paces by my office windows. “She wouldn’t bite?”
“No.” Archer folds his arms, his shoulders bristling with secondhand adrenaline. “Gilbert didn’t wanna spook her, so he put the offer out and mentioned showing the boy around the station for fun, but she didn’t take him up on it, and he didn’t wanna push. He’s in the house. If he’s our guy, then Janiesa’s in there, too.”
“His eyes were a little longer than that.” Gloria peeks over the sketch artist’s lap at a drawing that bears a horrifying resemblance to Archer’s face. She knew who I was when I called the other night, mentioning the similarities between her neighborhood and the one I grew up in. Which means she’s following this case as closely as the rest of us. It means she looked me up and dove down a rabbit hole of publicly available information. Worse, in my mind, she looked my husband up. Now, she sits in a police station and describes his eyes to a man whose literal profession is to sketch criminals. “A really nice green,” she coaches. “But longer than that. And a heavier brow.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t make a fuss about what she asks him to draw. He merely tweaks and runs a pencil over paper. “Longer eyes. Heavier brows. What about the shape of his face?”
“It’s been sixteen minutes since last visual confirmation.” Another cop—Chavez, maybe—grows antsy. “He might not come up again for a while.”
Go, I think to myself. Get in there before he hurts her.
“Alright.” Pax’s breath comes a little faster. His heart pounding against his diaphragm until it becomes an audible relay through my screen. “We’re gonna run out of time if we’re not careful. So let’s get it done. Remember your objectives, men. One male inside the home, approximately two hundred and fifty pounds. Five feet, eleven inches. He won’t be reasoned with, and he may become aggressive once he notices we’re here. Suspected female victim inside, possibly in the basement. Possibly bound. Five years old, approximately forty-one inches and thirty-five pounds. Black hair, blue eyes. Missing two front teeth. She may be in bad shape, may be nonambulatory. We don’t know if she’ll be conscious or stable enough to move. Priority one is to neutralize Donohue and extract the girl for handover to paramedics. If we cannot extract her safely, we secure the scene and bring medical in. I want a final check-in before we go .”
“Chavez, ready to go. ”
“Tyson,” another voice rumbles, “ready on go.”
“Jackson. Ready on go.”
“Lieutenant Curby on scene. This is your show, Detective Gilbert. You take the lead.”
“Thank you, sir.” Pax noisily swallows and shifts on his feet to get a clearer view of where he’s going, eyeing the street and the shady spots as New York enjoys a sunnier day than typical for January. Snow still sticks to the gutters, and the trees are all but bare of leaves.
I catch a haunting view of the corner of the park from my dreams.
The girls were so close all along, and yet, too far for their families to find them.
“Detective Gilbert?”
“Yep.” Pax pulls back and bounces on the balls of his feet, preparing to run toward God-knows-what. He’s like a fighter at the edge of a boxing ring, nervous but ready. He knows what’s going to happen. Even the boxer who wins in the end walks away with bruises and a limp in his stride. Pain is inevitable. But he shifts, his body cam following the movement, then he steps out of the shadows and starts forward. “We’re rolling.”
“What about his jaw, Ms. Donohue?” The sketch artist holds Gloria’s attention securely inside a boardroom within the NYPD. He runs a light line of lead across a thick, porous page. “Sharp? Square?”
I swallow and glance across my office.
“More square,” she responds. “With stubble.”
Archer’s eyes flicker to mine, strong and sure. Glittering with anticipation while his jaw firms. He knows what she’s doing, and yet, he doesn’t take it personally. He doesn’t even seem mad.
So I twist in my seat again and split my focus between two halves of one screen.
“Chavez to bravo,” Pax orders on a quiet rumble. “Jackson and Tyson with me.”
The camera picks up the shadow of cops in Pax’s peripherals. The barrels of their guns. The high stretch of their boots when they step forward. Unlike Archer’s daily wardrobe of jeans and a shirt, these men wear bulletproof vests and helmets. Earpieces and, in Paxton’s case, gloves .
Their footsteps are like a march, synchronized and fast.
As one, they cut through the overgrown grassy yard of the neighbor next door, then over the low chain-link fence, their long strides making the climb easy.
The neighborhood is all but silent. Traffic has been diverted, and if there were kids playing in the park, the swings are still now.
Pax communicates instructions with just his hand. A gesture to the left, and then another toward the front. Two men break away to circle the house, while two others march ahead and stop at the Donohues’ front door.
The wood is chipped. The paint is flaking.
A window to the right is held together with gray masking tape, and beside it, ratty and torn fly screen flaps in the gentle breeze.
“We’re in place,” Chavez reports, his voice barely more than a hum through my speakers. “Ready on three.”
“Alright.” While Jackson and Tyler frame the door, their guns by their chests and their eyes pointed this way, it’s Paxton who steps forward in silence, carefully reaching out and testing the door handle.
I guess I expected it would be locked, which would mean kicking it in and entering the home amongst a barrage of noise and panic. But the handle twists easily, the catch releasing and the door inching open with a soft creak that may as well be the screech of a heavy train on rusting tracks.
“Soft entry,” Pax murmurs, stepping forward and gently pushing the door wider. “We’re not busting it in.”
“Confirmed,” Chavez murmurs. “Back door is locked. Give us twenty seconds and we’ll get it open.”
Pax enters the house first, the silence like a thousand cannons bursting overhead. His heart pounds and his breath is a constant whistle through the speakers. But there’s no hesitation in his steps. No concern for his own safety as he clears the door and emerges into a pristine kitchen. The countertops shine with cleanliness. The floors glisten from a fresh mop.
“Stinks of chemicals in here.” He sniffs quietly and looks toward the door on the far end of the room. The handle jiggles and the locks release, then two cops step in, nodding to confirm they see Pax and everyone is on the same team. “Main floor is likely empty,” he reports back for the camera. “Jackson and Tyler on sweep.” He gestures through an archway that leads to the living room, reorienting my mind so now I understand we’re on the opposite side of what I saw on the phone a few nights ago.
Wordlessly, cops fan out, searching the living room, and then into a hall that, in theory, leads to bedrooms.
“Chavez,” Pax gestures in a different direction, “with me.”
They move through the home, passing an old box television and a couch covered in clean sheets. A row of shoes line the wall by the door, and a tub of dolls stands out like a flashlight in the night.
Wild hair cut at varying lengths. Some with messily drawn red lips. Others wear dresses, while a few are naked. One is missing an arm, while another seems perfectly cared for, including shoes, a clean outfit, ribbons in her hair, and a bonnet-type hat nestled on top.
Her perfection, in contrast to her tub-buddies, sends a bolt of nausea to the base of my belly.
“Main bedroom is clear,” one voice declares.
“Second bedroom is clear,” comes another. “Bed is made, closet is organized and clean. Floors are freshly vacuumed. Male occupant is not here.”
“Uh, Gilbert?” Chavez’s voice crackles with uncertainty. “You might wanna check this one.”
“How old do you think this man was?” The artist continues his task, asking questions, if only to stop Gloria from getting up and leaving. “Twenty-five? Thirty-five?”
“Thirty-five, maybe?” Her eyes flicker between the paper and the artist’s body cam, her nervousness growing with each glimpse toward what is probably a glowing red dot. “Could be forty?”
“I don’t look nearly forty, do I?” In my peripherals, Archer looks down his body, attempting to break the tension holding the four of us captive. We’re inside a building brimming with medical examiners and dead bodies, and yet, we’re glued to a tiny screen and watching an operation take place on the other side of the country. “Forty is pushing it,” he murmurs. “Forty is unkind. ”
“I think that’s pretty close.” Gloria inches off her chair and leans over the paper to confirm. “That’s him. I should probably get home to?—”
“What about his ears?” Smooth, the artist messes up the lines, essentially forcing her to correct him or admit she’s full of shit. “Pointed near the top?”
On the right-hand side of the screen, Pax moves through a shadowed hall toward his men and turns at a bedroom door, allowing the camera to take in all things pink. Curtains, bed spread, carpet, and rug. The walls are pink, though the lampshade is white… with pink tassels. “For fuck’s sake.” He inches across the threshold to discover a small writing desk with a heart-shaped mirror and plastic makeup palettes, the kind little girls use when they want to dress up but aren’t allowed to use the real thing.
Carefully, he runs a gloved finger across the shiny desk and brings it up in search of dust.
“It’s like a time capsule,” he rumbles. “But it hasn’t been forgotten. The place is spotless, but,” he picks up an American Girl magazine and brings it closer, “dated ‘95.”
“Jesus,” Aubree groans. “She didn’t change a thing in all this time.”
“The room is stuck in the nineties,” Pax murmurs, “but it wasn’t closed off and ignored. It stinks of chemicals in here, too. And there isn’t a speck of dust.”
“Do you hear that?” Chavez’s eyes narrow to thin slits, his head tilting fractionally to the left. “Is that music?”
Pax turns and quietly creeps back into the hall. “I know that song.”
“It’s The Magic School Bus,” I whisper, the words crackling along my dry throat. “They’re watching cartoons.”
“Sick.” Fletch runs a hand through his hair and tugs just hard enough to feel something other than torment. Anxiety. Anticipation. “They snatch this baby from her home, dump her somewhere else, and when they’re not fucking torturing her, they’re trying to entertain her?”
“He’s stuck in the past,” Aubree explains. “He’s not capable of doing anything else. And she’s not Janiesa in his mind. She’s Serena. Watching cartoons together is probably completely normal to him.”
“Let’s go down,” Pax whispers, gesturing along the hall. “Main floor is clear. Heading to the basement. ”
“Be careful.” I bounce my foot and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. “She’s going to be small and weak. He could kill her if he panics, and he probably wouldn’t even mean to.”
“I think it’s time for me to leave now.” Gloria packs up her oversized purse—miraculously, the same one in every screenshot Cato took from the footage overnight—and hugs the leather to her chest. Her eyes are shifty, jumping from the camera to the page, to the artist’s face, then down again. “It’s been so long since I saw that person,” she explains. “Years. But I think that’s pretty close.”
“Can we discuss his walk?” The artist readjusts in his seat, flipping pages to start again. “A man’s walk can be quite distinctive. The way he rolls his shoulders. The way his foot comes off the ground.”
“No, I?—”
“You wouldn’t have even noticed these things consciously. But subconsciously, the details will be tucked away in your mind. If you could give me just twenty more minutes, we’ll have a pretty accurate idea of who we’re looking for.”
“Approaching the basement door,” Paxton murmurs, the words so quiet, it’s hard to make them out. “One entry, one exit. No windows large enough for a body to crawl through. We’re going silent once I make the order. Ready on go?”
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” I bounce my knee and nibble on my thumbnail, only to startle in my seat when a hand drops to my shoulder. Like an animal caught in a trap, I wheel around in horror and find Archer’s kind gaze.
“Try to breathe through it.” He circles my chair and perches on the edge of my desk. He doesn’t block my view of the screen, but he forces himself into my vision. “This is almost all over.”
“What if we’re too late?” Horrifying tears burn the backs of my eyes, stinging and turning my vision blurry. “What if the last thing she ever knew was three weeks without her mom, torment, starvation, and worse?” Emotion backs up in my throat, threatening to choke me if I’m not careful. “What if we do find her alive, but he’s already stolen her innocence?”
“What ifs don’t count when we’re doing the job.” He pries my hand from my mouth, cupping it between his palms and blowing warm air between them. “What ifs serve nothing but to distract a man when he needs his senses and take away from a job well done.”
“Archer—”
“This is the closest anyone has ever come,” he argues. “In twenty-four years, this is the closest we’ve gotten to making this better. For the girls.” His eyes flicker between mine. “For you.”
I swallow the painful lump of anxiety nestled in my throat, groaning because the slide hurts.
“Tearing yourself apart with what ifs changes nothing. Trust Pax to do the job and bring her home.”
“Let’s go,” Pax whispers, carefully twisting the door handle, slowing the action when a squeak echoes through the speakers. But The Magic School Bus grows louder, too. The happy chatter of a character readying to explore the human body.
With the world’s slowest turn, he releases the catch and drags the door open, then lifting his weapon so our view is essentially along the barrel, he moves onto the stairs first. One foot, as he tests his weight and experiments with the sound of old wood under a two-hundred-pound man. But when all remains silent, he slowly continues down.
I don’t see his squad mates, since he’s in front. For all I could prove, Pax is going down alone. Though my rational brain knows better.
The television grows louder, and the click-hum of someone’s tongue becomes the new sound rolling through my speakers.
“That’s a nervous tick,” Aubree murmurs. “An attempt at regulation.”
“Him or her?” Fletch wonders.
“He’s probably not feeling so great,” I rasp past an achingly dry throat. “Mom isn’t home, and he’s alone with the sister. Not his actual sister, but the replacement. And we already figure we know what happened that first time.”
“No.” Shaking her head, Gloria anxiously bundles her jacket and takes a step back when the artist sets his pencil down. No longer the cool, collected woman I spoke to on the phone. She’s nervous without her son. Erratic when she hasn’t got eyes on him. “I don’t know how he walked, and I’m tired now. I need to go home to rest.”
On Pax’s side of the screen, he approaches the bottom step and bends to get a clearer view beyond the wall that shields the room. A television much like the one in the living room sits atop an old brown cabinet, the screen facing us, which means its viewers have their backs to us.
“There he is,” Fletch grumbles. “Just a boy, in a grown-ass man’s body.”
Lachlan sits cross-legged on the rug, his back arched and his elbows on his knees. He plays with a small toy ship, whistling while he acts out the ship’s speed through invisible waters. His hair is longer now than it was in his earlier years. Past his ears and a little matted in the back, and because he rocks while he plays, his shirt rides up to reveal skin patchy with dermatitis.
She probably makes him bathe in bleach.
“To the right.” Aubree straightens on the couch, leaning forward to see the screen better. But I’m closer, so I narrow my eyes and spy the small bundle curled up on a beanbag. Unlike Lachlan, whose attention is firmly on the television, Janiesa’s sweet eyes clock Pax in an instant. Spilling over and dancing with a million cries for help.
But he brings his gloved hand up, pressing it to his lips so even a five-year-old could understand.
Quiet.
“She’s not getting up.” I choke down the lump in my throat and attempt to tug my hand from Archer’s. “She’s five. She shouldn’t be able to sit still and follow Pax’s order like that.”
“She’s a very brave five-year-old,” Archer counters gently, holding my hand while I, too, rock forward. “And she’s in survival mode. She’s not a standard five-year-old anymore. She’s grown and smart, and she’s kept herself alive for almost a month already.”
Pax gestures with his hand, circling it. But if I thought to wonder what that might mean, his men respond quickly, fanning out on either side of him to form a line.
“I don’t feel so well.” Gloria fans her face and shuffles toward the door. “I feel quite ill. So I’m leaving now.”
“I’ll call you an ambulance.” The sketch artist jumps to his feet, setting his book and pencils aside, and strides across the small room to take her arm in his hand. “I can’t leave you alone when you’re under the weather, Ms. Donohue.”
“I don’t need an ambulance! I need to go home.”
Paxton crooks his finger, pointing toward Janiesa, then gesturing back in his direction. Come to me . But every move she makes, every muscle she tenses, is highlighted by the crunch and crinkle of the beanbag chair. So she gently shakes her head, fat tears dribbling from her eyes and trailing across her face.
“I could lose my job if I let you leave in this state, Ms. Donohue.” The artist opens the door, allowing light and noise and the rest of the world in, when before, it was just them and a pencil. “If I let you out of my sight and you fall because you’re unwell, I would be in a world of trouble.”
“I changed my mind.” She tears her arm from his grip and charges into the bullpen. “I don’t feel sick. I just feel like I no longer want to help.”
“But Ms. Donoh?—”
On Pax’s side of the screen, the cop I think is Tyler, slowly marches forward, his gun up, his cheek nestled on the stock, and his eyes on Lachlan. But his boot makes contact with a toy. The cry of a ‘ mommy !’ from the soundbox is like cannon fire in the night. Then the cartoon playing on the screen pauses for an ad break, the screen going black and creating what may as well be a fucking mirror.
Startled, Lachlan jumps and spins, his eyes wild with terror, his face dirty with dust and old food. His clothes are too small, so a portion of his stomach hangs over his shorts and droops lower than his shirt can cover.
Then he panics and swings toward Janiesa.
“Hands up!” Five separate, distinct voices shout at once, though Pax’s is the loudest, the most distinguishable to me. “Put your hands in the air, Lachlan Donohue!”
Janiesa screams, finally. It’s a bit like a child immediately after birth, I suppose. Silence. Shock. The infant doesn’t cry the moment they leave their mother’s womb. It takes a moment for reality to settle in, for their lungs to open, and the penetrating shout to be freed.
She rolls in the beanbag, the chair more than three times her size, so it’s like swimming through foam. She fumbles and climbs, searching for a firm handhold, only for the chair to collapse in on itself.
Her movements grow more frantic when Lachlan’s shout joins the fray. His booming shriek. His terrified eyes. He looks at Janiesa, then to Pax. The guns. Even the TV again. He’s like a wild animal caught in a dozen headlights, no clue which way to turn, but brutally aware his favorite toy is readying to flee.
“Hands up,” Chavez repeats, stepping closer. “Turn around, lie on your stomach, hands behind your head!”
Lachlan cries out, fat tears tracking over his cheeks. He’s lost. Overwhelmed with noise and movement and strangers in his home.
“Reeny!” When Janiesa scrambles from the beanbag, Lachlan shrieks. “Reeny, no!”
“I’m leaving!” Gloria snaps. “I’ll make my own way home.”
“Hands up!” Pax shouts, edging closer to the little girl. “Lachlan! You need to put your hands up, or we’ll shoot.”
Lachlan’s horror makes way for anger. Fear makes way for fury.
This is the trigger switch his mother spoke of, the same one that landed Andy with a black eye and a new report stashed in his files.
Lachlan’s pale cheeks turn to a tomato red when Janiesa collapses to the floor. She scrambles to her hands and knees, a feral snarl tearing past her lips as she crawls for freedom.
But he dives for what he believes is his. He’s acting protective, even. Or that’s what his warped reality convinces him.
“No!” Pax shouts. “Hands up?—”
I startle in my seat when the boom of a gun tears through my computer speakers. When the man—the boy—a victim too, in a way, is slung backward, slamming against the cabinet and knocking the TV to the wall. His arms splay outwards, his eyes open and unseeing even as he crumples to the dirty floor and the cord from the television whips free of the wall.
Four gun-wielding cops charge forward, but Pax stays back, releasing his weapon and preparing to catch the little girl who works on getting her feet beneath her. Her legs are weak, her knees trembling. She chokes on her tears and fights for forward momentum, though her tiny body needs rest .
“It’s okay.” He scoops her into his arms, whipping a blanket from the back of a chair and draping it over her body. But she screams louder, kicking the fabric away and almost toppling from his arms when she scrambles too fast. Too frantic. “Shit. Okay. Okay! You’re okay. Suspect is down,” he barks for the record. For the ambulances waiting outside, probably. For anyone else listening. “Vic is alive, awake, and breathing.”
“Bring her upstairs,” his lieutenant commands. “Medics on standby.”
“Ms. Donohue?” A half dozen cops step in front of the woman, all caught in the artist’s body cam, and sweep her bag and jacket from her hold in one swift move. Then they turn her, pressing her already fragile body to the wall and catching her wrists in a pair of cuffs with blinding speed.
“Suspect is down,” Chavez reports through the radios while Pax’s camera bounces, muffled and half-covered by a little girl who fights his hold. He bounds up the basement stairs, gripping her tight or he risks dropping her. But she screams and kicks. Scratches and bites. She sobs, but with every heart-wrenching cry is a shrill, animalistic snarl.
Like he’s the enemy, too.
Like she’d rather be alone, than risk another man hurting her.
“I’m coming out!” Pax’s steps turn to a sprint, bursting into the upstairs kitchen and cutting right to explode through the door. Already, the street is filled with cars. Ambulances. Paramedics rushing forward. Except the fastest one is male, and Janiesa’s scream of terror grows louder. Frantic.
So a female paramedic hurries to the front of the pack and takes control, sweeping the little girl up and spinning to take her away.
A part of me expects to stay with her. To be carried to the stretcher and rushed through a million medical checks before they clear her for transport. But of course, we stay with Pax, his heart pounding and our view transforming from the street to just his feet. His hands on his knees, and his lungs heaving for air.
Adrenaline fights with common sense. The job battles humanity. “Fuck me.” He pants for fresh air and spits onto the grass, if only to combat what I wonder is a sickly roll of his stomach. “Fuck. Jackson?”
“Scene is secured, boss.” His breath comes faster, too. Just like mine. Just like Archer’s. “Suspect is down, and he’s not getting up. ”
“It’s time to search the house now,” Aubree whispers. She pushes up from the couch and wanders around my desk. She doesn’t sit in my chair, but she pauses in front of it, pressing her hands to my desk and pinning me with her eyes. “It’s time to look for Serena.”
“And Alana’s baby.” I tug my hand free of Archer’s hold and sit back, dropping my head back and closing my eyes. Tears burn and escape from the corners, the hot liquid tickling my temples. “They’ll be in the house somewhere. No way she buried them or tossed them in the trash. She bagged the others and returned them to their moms.”
“Serena and the baby came from the basement,” Fletch cuts in, his voice crackling with a deep ache. “It’s where they’ll still be.”