Joie went back to her plaster. “I have a cousin like that. She’s broken practically every bone in her body, and she’s barely forty. I told her she needed to roll herself in Bubble Wrap.” Joie peeked around again, this time with a devilish grin. “She told me to go fuck myself.”
Amelia picked up a brush, letting it breathe in her hand, then she approached her canvas, deciding where to start. “Family, huh? Can’t live with them—”
Joie chuckled. “Can’t strangle them for the insurance money.”
Amelia took a bead on her feelings, then lightly dipped her brush in gray paint. She thought about Bodie, still rudderless at their age. She thought of the old Am and their house of secrets. It was a wonder she and Bodie had survived to do as well as they were doing, but that just showed how resilient people could be. Life always found a way. Amelia painted a small padlock, then moved back to assess it. There were many locks in the painting. She gently dipped her right index finger into the paint and smeared crimson against her thumb, then stepped forward again and pressed her finger lightly to the canvas. Then she painted a door around the mark. There were also many doors.
If she closed her eyes, she knew she’d see what she always did. A woman. The basement steps. The stillest, bluest eyes and hair like fire. She hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the unimaginable—severed feet and hands, a savaged middle, and blood snaking down the basement drain. Her father’s doing. A father to whom she and Bodie were inextricably bound. A father who killed for sport. Could a healthy tree grow from a twisted root?
“Families are complicated, that’s for sure,” Amelia said as she wiped her fingers off against her thigh. “Some more than others.”
Joie peeked around her work in progress, her eyes blinking inside the goggles. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” Amelia said, sweeping her brush over the image of the door, watching the mark disappear. “Just talking to myself.”
CHAPTER 6
Foster and Lonergan swept into the ER and badged their way through to the treatment area. They were feeling a bit raw, having just come from the home of Peggy Birch’s parents to notify them that their daughter, their baby, was dead. Foster could still hear Peggy’s mother’s wailing in her ears and see the ruined look on her face. No one wanted to be the cop who relayed the news that would cripple a person forever, but it came with the job. And it had to be done delicately, with compassion. It had surprised her that Lonergan had managed to do both, that his heavy-handedness and assholery had limits. They hadn’t spoken in the car, not wanting to move on from the Birches’ misery quite so quickly. Instead, they’d sat in the moment, giving solemnity its due and bracing for the next hard thing.
Ainsley had been placed in a back bay as far away from other patients as the crowded, busy space would allow. There was an officer standing in front of the drawn privacy curtain when they approached. He hopped to, ready to give his report.
“The doctor’s in there with him now,” Officer Morton said, his hazel eyes sharp and tuned in. “Evidence techs were in gathering up his clothes, taking photos. They left about a half hour ago. Kid was slow to wake up. He was really out of it.”
“You get anything out of him?” Lonergan asked.
“Not much. Don’t think he was sure where he was. He obviously got a bad batch of something. I’ve seen a couple of these. It’s not booze. It’s gotta be drugs.”
“That your medical opinion, Officer Morton?” Foster asked pointedly.
Morton pulled up. “He’s not my first blissed-out druggie. But you’re right. I’m not the doc. Could be a lot of things.”
The beeps and pings and blips from the machines underscored the hurried medical inquiries from harried nurses and doctors speeding from bay to bay, trying to do fifty things at once, knowing there was a full waiting room outside.
Foster stared at Morton. “We’ll see.”
A Hispanic doctor stood at the bedside, shining an ophthalmoscope into the eyes of a young Black man sitting up in bed. He was wearing a mint-green hospital gown. Foster’s breath caught. Ainsley was a boy, a kid, with big brown eyes, tawny beige skin, and short curly hair. For a moment, she saw her son lying there as she’d seen him countless times in similar faces on the street and in the grocery store and in sappy TV commercials. But this moment was particularly glaring. Ainsley was nineteen, as Reggie would have been in just over a week. She was acutely aware the day was approaching, that the passage of time was as steady and foreboding as the measured sweep of a metronome’s needle.
Foster stepped closer to the bed and addressed the doctor. “We’d like to talk to him, if he’s up to it.” She glanced down at the doctor’s ID hanging from a lanyard festooned with bits of tape, pens, and clips. He was Raphael Santos, the attending physician. “Dr. Santos.”
Santos stepped back, peeling off his medical gloves, tossing them into the biohazard bin behind him. “He’s awake but foggy. Up to him if he talks. I’ll leave you to it, but I’d appreciate some efficiency here. Your techs were buzzing around here like crazy, now you guys. Last thing we need is a circus, all right?”
Lonergan, who’d eased in behind Foster, nearly growled at Santos. “It’ll take what it takes, Doc. You don’t see us tellin’ you how long to take to yank an appendix out, do you?”
“Just keep it down,” Santos said, uncowed. “It’s a hospital, not the county jail. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have patients to see.” He sneered at Lonergan before walking off.
Ainsley’s eyes darted around the room as though he were trying to orient himself to where he was and how he’d gotten here. He looked scared, small in the bed. This was the unconscious man with blood on his jacket?
Lonergan moved around to stand on the opposite side. It must have been an intimidating flank to the kid, and as she looked over at Lonergan’s full-on cop face, she was sure he meant it to be just that.
She cleared her throat. “Keith Ainsley? I’m Detective Foster, Chicago Police. This is my . . . partner, Detective Lonergan. We’d like to ask you a few questions. Are you okay with that?” She was aware she had stumbled over the word partner and looked up to see that Lonergan had noticed.
Ainsley fixed glazed eyes on her, his face a wall of confusion. “I guess. What’s going on? Why am I here? Why’s there a cop outside, and why were they taking my picture?”
“There’s been an incident,” Foster said. “We’re hoping you can help us clear it up. Okay?”
He flicked a frightened look at Lonergan. “What kind of incident?”
“Where were you last night around midnight?” Lonergan asked.
“Did somebody jump me? Is that it?” Ainsley asked, his voice cracking. “Where are my clothes? Did they get my wallet? My phone?”
Lonergan frowned. “Jumped you?”
Foster shot Lonergan a warning look and gave a slight shake of the head. She didn’t want him antagonizing the kid, shutting him down. Lonergan scowled and let her take the lead, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Do you remember being on the Riverwalk?” she asked. “Maybe meeting someone there?”