Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [82]
“Do we need a lawyer? How does this work?”
“Don’t answer any questions you don’t want to answer, and advise the rest of the staff to do the same. Showing up at one-thirty in the morning. Assholes.”
“I think Sergeant Warren considers that a compliment,” I said. As if summoning the Devil, Warren appeared at the end of the hall.
“We’d like to start with you,” she said: a command, not a request.
“No shit,” I muttered.
I hung up the phone. As the most senior person on the floor, I would have to shoulder this load and play nice with the detectives. Lucky me.
“Fine,” I said.
“Good,” Warren returned.
“Just gotta grab a glass of water.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Make yourself comfortable.”
I turned away from the detective and headed for the kitchenette. At the last minute, however, I continued down the hallway to Lucy’s room. I peered in, expecting to see Lucy sleeping in a corner.
Instead, she was dancing.
She moved around the room in graceful circles, swooshing from one moonbeam to the next. The oversized surgical scrub shirt ballooned around her as she twirled, leaping across her mattress, then pirouetting in front of the windows.
She was a cat again, moving in the languid style of a feline. Maybe she was trying to catch moonbeams in her paws. Maybe she simply liked the way it felt to sway to and fro. She hit the windows, placed her hands open-palmed against the glass. Then she stilled, and I knew she saw my reflection.
Was she angry after our last confrontation? Fearful, defiant?
Lucy turned away from the glass. Slowly, she meandered and twirled her way toward me. At the last minute, as I felt myself tense, she held out her hand, pale fingers extended. She dangled a tiny ball of string, something she’d fashioned from rolling together loose carpet fibers. A homemade cat toy.
I hesitated. She jiggled it again.
I accepted her gift, closing my fist around it as she swooped away, long pale limbs flashing silver in the moonbeams.
I tucked her peace offering into my pocket and returned to Sergeant Warren.
I’d just entered the classroom when I realized I had forgotten my water. I returned to the kitchenette to fetch a glass, and Greg found me. Benny and Jimmy still couldn’t settle. I poured out doses of Benadryl for the two kids. Greg took the Benadryl, then I headed back to the classroom, where the look on Sergeant Warren’s face told me I still didn’t have water.
I returned to the kitchenette again, this time finding a glass and banging on the tap. The other detective, LeBlanc, poked his head out of the Admin area. Copier had run out of paper.
I reloaded the copier, glancing at the records he’d already duplicated. I offered to carry the copies to the classroom, but he refused. I shrugged, and since he appeared done with Tika’s original file, I took that for myself to use as a reference.
I made it all the way to the classroom; then, right outside the door, I realized I’d left my water glass sitting next to the copier. Back to Admin I went, grabbing my water, and making it to the classroom with everything in hand.
Sergeant Warren glanced at her watch as I took a seat. She was flanked on either side by a detective.
“Always take you fifteen minutes to grab a drink?” she asked me.
“Oh, sometimes it takes twenty. Tonight I was lucky; I only got interrupted four or five times. Don’t worry, someone will need something shortly.”
“Crazy night,” the detective on her left commented. I recognized him from the first visit. George Clooney playing the role of a Boston cop.
“Birthday party,” I said. “Does it every time.”
“Birthday party?” he asked.
“Priscilla turned ten. We had a celebration for her after dinner. The kids made cupcakes; we hung streamers, handed out party hats. The kids got very excited, which, for our crowd, has consequences.”
“Then why have the party?” Sergeant Warren asked, with a frown. I could see this woman running the Gestapo. She’d be good at it.
“Because most of these kids have never been to a birthday party,” I explained. “They’re either too poor or too