Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(46)
“On the contrary,” Jack answered and left it at that.
After the rest of the family had gone to bed, Jack sat on the front porch pushing back and forth in an old rocking chair that had been there when they bought the house. In his mind he lined up his three children with scrubbed clean faces and shiny bright smiles, but before he could save the image a fourth child stepped into the picture: Jubilee Jones, a sad-eyed little girl who seemed as purposeful and determined as Olivia Doyle. No matter how many times he pushed her aside, she kept coming back. If he pictured his children reading a book or playing a game Jubilee was there on the sideline, not playing, but watching with melancholy blue eyes.
At twelve-thirty he tiptoed upstairs to check on the children. In the shadows of a darkened bedroom he thought he saw Jubilee sleeping between Sara and Jessica, but when he moved closer to look it was only Jessica’s brown teddy bear.
Jack got very little sleep that night, and by morning he had reached a decision. He was at the precinct waiting when Captain Rogers arrived.
“Got a minute?” Mahoney asked and followed Rogers into his office. Before the captain had time to set his coffee down on the desk, Jack launched into the argument he had spent the night thinking through.
“I know this is a little out of our jurisdiction, but I have reason to believe the missing woman is from this area.”
“A little out of jurisdiction?” the captain repeated. “It’s not even in the same county!”
“I know, but given the extenuating circumstances—”
“Hannigan is out sick and Peters is on vacation, so I’m already short two men.”
When it began to look like he was about to get a flat no, Mahoney played his ace. “I think this case might be related to the Doyle murders.”
“The Doyle murders?”
Mahoney nodded. “The Doyle file is missing from archives.”
“Hmm. Nobody signed it out?”
“Nope,” Mahoney answered. “Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
It was bad enough to have one of their own involved in something like the Doyle murder cover-up. It was even worse to think there might be something else to come. “Okay,” the captain said, “you can go. But until you get something more, work it alone.” He agreed to make a few phone calls so Mahoney would be granted access to whatever the Wyattsville station had.
“This better not be a crapshoot,” he grumbled as Jack was leaving.
It was ten-thirty when Mahoney arrived at the Wyattsville station house. Luckily Gomez was nowhere in sight, so he got to talk to Pete Morgan.
“Captain Rogers called,” Morgan said. “Thought your missing person might be tied to the Klaussner shooting. How so?”
“It’s possible this woman I’m looking for is the aunt of the kid who got shot.” Mahoney deliberately made no mention of Jubilee Jones.
“You know the kid’s name?”
“Not yet, but I’m hoping to talk to him today.”
“Lots of luck on that. Gomez has been working this for five days. Yesterday he talked to the kid and got nothing.” Morgan lifted a folder from the desk and handed it to Mahoney. “This is all we’ve got right now. Take a look.”
Mahoney took the folder and lowered himself into the available chair. In all it was only nine pages. It detailed the pitiful life of a small-time crook named Hurt McAdams. Mom left when he was twelve, father a racetrack junkie with ties to several bookies, the kid bounced out of school, spent seven years in a correctional institution. Plenty of disturbances; no visitors.
Mahoney shook his head sadly. “Guy like this never had a chance.”
“We’ve got an APB out,” Morgan said, “but my bet is he’s long gone.”
“What about the kid in hospital? Any prints tie him to scene?”
“No prints, but Klaussner put a bullet in him.”
“Ballistics indicate the bullet came from Klaussner’s gun?”
Morgan nodded. “Gomez said this one is a slam dunk. The kid’s guilty, period.”
“Klaussner identified him?”
“No such luck. Klaussner’s still in a coma.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Neighborhood woman, Martha Tillinger. Apparently she was in the back of the store and hid behind some cereal boxes when the shooting started.”
“So she identified the boy?”
“She didn’t see the shooter, just heard the shots.”
Mahoney began rubbing the back of his hand across his chin, the way he did when something was troubling him. “Any chance the kid was a bystander?”
Morgan chortled. “Not according to Gomez.”
Mahoney’s next stop was Mercy General Hospital. During the drive he ran through the details of the case. A ballistics match pointed to the kid being guilty; a witness who hadn’t heard the voices was a zero. The prints on the register tagged Hurt McAdams as the guy who grabbed the cash, but was he working alone or working with the kid? There were too many questions and too few answers. Mahoney kept wondering if the kid was with Hurt or simply standing in the line of fire. But the most troubling question, the one that pushed him to pursue answers, was the identity of the kid in the hospital.
If he was Jubilee’s brother that might tip the scales in his favor, not necessarily showing innocence but making him less likely to team up with someone like Hurt McAdams. The kid wasn’t in the system, which meant he had no priors. Hurt was from Pittsburgh. Jubilee Jones was from Coal Fork, West Virginia, a place so far out in the boonies you had to know it was there to find it. So where was the thread that connected McAdams to this kid? Too many loose ends—way too many.