Chapter Eighteen #2
Gabriel tapped pause. “Do you have the phone? You can get the location from the data.”
“We do have the phone,” Candace said. “The bill is under someone else’s name, so we need a warrant. We’re trying to track that person down, and we’re waiting on the judge to say we can open it. Since we don’t have the code, even once we have the search warrant in hand, it might take a while.”
Gabriel tapped the video back on.
“No, I found her,” the man said.
“What’s your little bird’s name?” Nurse asked.
“Little Bird,” he said.
“We need to make sure your little bird has food and water while you're in the hospital. Is there someone I can call to have them go over and take care of Little Bird?” she asked.
“I’m not planning on being here that long,” he said.
“Sometimes the doctors have to give you some drugs that make you sleep, and we don’t want to forget your Little Bird. What’s the address just in case?” she asked.
“Just up the street from where I found her. Water’s no trouble. Food might be,” he said.
A doctor came in. “Dr. Brachman. I came to check on you.”
Candace leaned in and whispered, “That’s the psychiatrist.”
“Can you tell me why you came to the hospital today?” Brachman asked.
“My pet dragon magicked himself up my nose and into my heart. I can feel him breathing fire in there.” The man rubbed his chest. “I need a doctor to cut me open so my dragon can get back out.”
“He wouldn’t come out on his own?” Brachman asked.
“Normally, I shake a bag of dragon treats and use a high-pitched girly call, Here, draggy!” he said. “Right now, he’s breathing fire in my chest, and it’s real uncomfortable. I need him out.”
“Yeah, well, that or an antacid,” Gabriel muttered.
“We were talking about his Little Bird,” Nurse said.
“Good for you,” Gabriel exhaled.
“Did you drive yourself here?” Nurse asked.
“Nah.”
“Your bird is around here?” she asked.
“Nah, I’m not dumb.”
“After we get the dragon out of your chest, and you go home to feed your bird, how long would it take you to get there?”
Brachman glowered at her.
“A good while,” the man said. “That’s why no one can help me feed her. So you need to get the dragon out of my chest so I can get to it.” He turned to Brachman. “Don’t hurt my dragon, mind you. Just remove him real gentle.”
“Does your dragon talk to you?” Brachman asked.
“He’s my best friend. We talk all the time.”
“After we remove the dragon from your chest, how are the two of you getting home?” Nurse asked. “Walking?”
“Tenacious,” Candace said.
“My dragon would probably fly. It’s easier.”
“If you were going home to feed your bird, would you walk toward the city or the park?” Nurse tried.
“Has anyone ever talked to you about hallucinations? Brachman asked.
“He didn’t hallucinate those bite marks on his arms.” Nurse pointed.
“We’ve got it from here,” Brachman said with a dismissive wave.
And that was the end.
“I hate that video you just showed me.” Gabriel put the phone down.
“It exists,” Candace said.
Gabriel glowered down at the screen as he moved back to the picture of the room with the window to see if there was anything he missed.
“It exists, and I know it exists,” Candace said, “and so I try to save one little bird.”
“Tracking people isn’t my role,” Gabriel said, coming to the conclusion that there was nothing for him to work with. “My role is to find the source and hand it off.” He focused on Candace. “I wish there was something. I couldn’t do what you do, Candace. You have my utmost respect.”
“Everyone has their specialties. Am I in the muck kicking around looking for victims? Yes. And that’s one kind of psychological blow.
You take a different kind of blow from the images we bring you.
Then there are the people who show up, kick down the doors, and pull the victim free.
They don’t have the scope of the investigation in their brain.
Their job is to get the result, the satisfaction of pulling someone out of their current nightmare. ”
Gabriel pushed her laptop closer to her, thinking about the kids Whiskey had found on the mountain. He didn’t feel satisfied because he wanted to do more; he’d wanted to care for them and make it all better. But the circumstances said that what he wanted wasn’t in their best interest.
“You said autopsy?” Gabriel asked.
“Psych thought the pain was a hallucination, so they took the guy up to the ward; the man coded and died.”
“You know this, but I’m going to say it so I feel better.”
“Go.”
“Check the missing persons from three or four months ago looking for a child of about this description. He said she was near where he found her. Check the time he walked into the hospital, check the security cameras for how he arrived. If it was a car, get the license. If it was a taxi, get the pickup point. If he walked, get people’s doorbell cameras.
Ask the public, put out an amber alert. Get loud.
The loudest loud you can get. Plaster the guy’s face up.
Someone lives near him and has seen him around their neighborhood.
If he thought she’s a bird, he might be feeding her birdseed and a little water in a bowl.
She looks damned dehydrated as well as starved. She’ll die of thirst first.”
“Okay.” Candace gathered her laptop. “I’ll run ‘loud’ by my supervisor. I’m telling him it came from you. It usually works out better when suggestions come from XY chromosomes.”
“Sorry about that,” Gabriel said. “Use my name in any way that helps this girl. But do me a damned big favor.” He jotted his cell phone number and “Atworth” on a piece of paper, tore it from the pad, and handed it to her. “Tell me if they find the bird.”
“Okay.”
“Candace, she’s got to be close to that hospital.”
She stood and walked out of the room.
Gabriel shut the door and went to sit next to Whiskey.
Squeezing his eyelids tightly, his tears were hot and salty along his lashes.
He wasn’t opposed to men crying—it could be cathartic—but it wasn’t a good look in the Hoover Building.
His therapist said he should let his emotions bubble up and spill over.
Gabriel had explained that wasn’t part of his day-to-day.
So he was told to go out into the wilderness where he liked to challenge himself, and there his challenge should be to howl to the moon and yell at his fire, to find ways to express his grief for Daniel and all of his military brothers killed or severely wounded from their days at war.
Now that Gabriel had a bloodhound, he felt less ridiculous doing just that.
Gabriel scratched behind Whiskey’s ears. “Maybe we can make our way up into the mountains this weekend. I bet we can find someplace secluded enough we can let loose without frightening anyone.
That was a good plan.
Get away. Get outside beneath the trees.
Focus on something other than the underbelly of humanity.