Where is the Baby? Read Online Free

tell DCF that he’d take her in. He couldn’t imagine that he and Janet wouldn’t qualify as foster parents. He knew Janet would be okay with it. When it came to kids, they were on the same wavelength. And Lucia would probably be thrilled to have a live-in playmate. Okay, it was a fantasy, but he hated the idea of this kid getting put into the system, maybe winding up in a situation as bad or even worse than the one she’d just escaped from. Granted there were some decent foster parents out there. But some of the people were pure scum, taking in kids just to get the monthly checks. Some of them did things that kept him up at night, sitting in the dark in the living room, trying to get the images out of his head and battling the urge to drink himself into oblivion.
    His second month as a cop almost seven years earlier, he and Chuck took a call from one of the worst downtown areas. ‘Anonymous female caller says there’s a kid screaming at this address,’ the dispatcher told them. ‘Caller said there’s always a kid screaming in there.’ Brian remembered what they had found as if it was yesterday.
    The battered and bloodied body of a skeletal seven-year-old on the front hall floor, limbs twisted in ways they were never meant to go. The skinny, ferret-faced, forty-something woman – whiskey voice and an aggrieved attitude – standing over the child, sucking on a cigarette, while Brian checked for a pulse he knew wasn’t there.
    â€˜Clumsy kid fell down the goddamn stairs again,’ the whiskey voice said conversationally.
    With open disgust, Chuck looked at the woman, saying, ‘Yeah, I can picture it. He fell. Sure. That’s what happened. You didn’t starve him or beat him or toss him down the fuckin’ stairs. You didn’t do any of that, no.’ Without taking his eyes from her, he said, ‘Bri, check see if there’s anyone else in this shithole while I give the homicide boys a buzz.’
    â€˜What’re you talking, homicide? What homicide? I told you. Goddamn kid fell. Was always falling, for chrissake.’
    â€˜Lady, you don’t want me tossing you down the stairs, shut the fuck up and sit your ass over there where I can keep an eye on you.’
    â€˜You can’t talk to me that way!’
    â€˜I am talking to you that way, you evil piece of shit. Sit the hell down there and shut your face!’
    She sat as told on an armchair just inside the dark, crowded living room, glaring at him: close-set eyes, hate-filled shiny beads.
    Upstairs, two more emaciated little boys in stinking underwear huddled together on the stained mattress in a tiny bedroom like a cell: no sheets, a torn blanket, peeling wallpaper, bare floor, some ratty, reeking clothes heaped on the floor. ‘Two more up here,’ Brian called down.
    â€˜I’ll get DCF in!’ Chuck called back. Moments later Brian could hear him on the phone.
    Then, as Brian brought the gaunt, trembling pair down the stairs – maybe five or six years old – Chuck squeezed the cuffs on the woman’s scrawny wrists, tight as they’d go. The smaller boy whispered, ‘She killed Paulie. Always kickin’ and punchin’ him. Him screamin’, beggin’ her to stop but she wouldn’t never, ever.’
    The other boy suddenly shouted, ‘ i hope you get beat and beat and die like paulie ! i hope they make you dead !’ Then he broke into noisy sobs. Two tiny, fleshless bodies shaking, hands clinging. Victims of an indoor atrocity.
    Later, after two women from DCF wrapped the pair in blankets and took the kids away, after the body was removed, the homicide guys were doing the scene. Brian and Chuck were ready to transport her for booking, and the woman complained about the cuffs. ‘Loosen these things! They’re too goddamn tight!’
    In a voice thick with feigned concern, Chuck said, ‘Oh, poor you! Does that hurt?’ and