Black Fall Read online

  Back when I went to the University of Miami, I once used the principle of psychic surgery to remove a card from a guy’s stomach during a college psychology class presentation. I’ll never forget his high-pitched scream when he looked down and saw all the blood. I’d thought he was kind of cute. Not after that.

  “Not that I know of,” I reply. “She mainly lights candles and waves crystals around.”

  “You seeing anybody special?” Grandfather asks out of nowhere.

  I ignore the question. We’re in a good place right now, but I’m not at the point where I’m ready to talk to him about the men in my life, or the lack thereof. “We might send one of our agents in.

  There’s a woman in narcotics with a treatable lymphoma. She’s recovering, but still looks underweight.”

  “Your father is up for the Academy of Magical Arts lecturer of the year,” he says, trying again to take the conversation into personal territory.

  “Do you know anything about candle magic?” I reply. I’m still thinking about my grandfather’s psychic surgery question, remembering the relighting candles and the ones with colored flames I played with in my room as a little girl. They looked almost like a living thing, not a blatant magic trick. McGillis’s clientele are largely too sophisticated for psychic surgery and gypsy stunts, but might be persuaded by something like that.

  “You can scry with a candle.”

  “Scry? Like see into the future?”

  “Yes, or just see images. Stare at a candle long enough and you’ll hallucinate. There was a yogi out here who was running an ashram in the basement of a producer at Paramount. He used to get people high on mushrooms and then have them stare into the flame.”

  “Interesting.” I hadn’t thought about a drug angle.

  “You should think about coming to the awards show for your father. He’s got a new girlfriend, by the way.”

  “That’s great,” I say, without any additional comment. I really want to avoid another conversation about my own personal life. My mind is racing on to something else. “Ever hear about a healer using a hallucinogen in a tea?” McGillis could be adding a little extra kick, like ayahuasca, to her herbal teabags. We might be able to get a felony drug charge this way. That would be something at least.

  “You kidding? Out here in LA? I can’t imagine what they haven’t tried.”

  There’s a knock at the loft’s front door. I ignore it. Even though our cover story is that I’m a software consultant renting a room from two other freelancers, our policy for this stakeout is to not answer the door if we can avoid it.

  McGillis and Martine move out of view. If she is using some kind of drug in her therapy sessions, her assistant would probably be the one procuring it. If we can catch him red-handed, we might be able to turn him against her. A few years ago, I never would have thought about prosecuting a case like this that way. My boss, Dr. Ailes, says I’m learning to think laterally.

  Another knock. I check the monitor for the hallway camera, which is aimed at the door. A young woman in a blouse and jacket, holding a small bundle in her arms, is standing there. Underneath her red hair and dark, almost black, lipstick, she looks distressed.

  I rap my fingertips across the table, debating if I should answer the door. McGillis isn’t visible at the moment, but I don’t want to step away. I decide to keep ignoring the woman, hoping she’ll give up.

  She knocks again. “Damn it!” I grumble.

  “Something wrong?” Grandfather asks.

  “I’ll call you later.” I hang up and grab my University of Miami hat and nerd-girl glasses.

  The woman knocks a fourth time. “Hold on,” I call out, tucking my sidearm into the waistband of my jeans under my sweater.

  I unlatch the door, pretending to wipe sleep from my eyes, and the woman gives me a small smile.

  She adjusts the weight of the bundle in her arms. She seems to be holding a baby. “Hello, neighbor, I was wondering if I could talk to you for a moment?”

  I don’t recall seeing her around. She could be someone’s guest. “I’m sorry. I’m a little busy,” I reply, forcing a smile, trying not to be too terse.

  She’s pale. Her red hair is pulled tightly into a bun, and plainly visible around her neck is a chain necklace made of red links. I try to get a glimpse of the baby’s face, but she’s holding it tightly to her chest. “I just have a question,” she says.

  The cop in me decides to take the upper hand by responding to a question with a question. “Boy or girl?” I ask.

  Without looking down, she replies, “Girl.” Her tone is almost lyrical, her words spilling out like a well-rehearsed song. “Have you noticed how turbulent things have been lately in the world?”

  Oh great, a religious freak. “Not really,” I reply, trying to shut her off. Grandfather would have said he was a ghost and told her to go away.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you about your personal salvation.” She absentmindedly raises an arm, letting the baby almost slip.

  I saved the Pope, I think to myself. What more do I need to do to get salvation? This conversation got real nutty, real quick. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to talk about Jesus right now.” I’m about to shut the door, but I keep staring at the bundle. Her baby is quiet. I haven’t seen her stir once. Even swaddled, she seems so small.

  “I’m not here to talk about Jesus.” The woman’s eyes bore into me.

  Then who, Cthulhu? “No?”

  The woman reaches into the blankets and I catch my first glimpse of the baby’s face. She’s blue. She’s so unnaturally blue I don’t see the woman pull something shiny from the folds of the blanket.

  “I’m here for your soul, Jessica,” she snarls, raising a knife into the air.

  Instinct kicks in. I grab for the infant and kick the woman hard in the stomach. As she falls backward against the hallway wall, the child begins to slide from her arms.

  My left arm reaches out and catches her. My right hand goes for my gun.

  The woman looks up at me, rage in her eyes.

  “Drop the knife!” I shout, pointing my pistol at her chest.

  She gets to her feet and glares at me, trying to figure out what to do next. I’m trying to keep the baby from slipping out of my grasp, and while I can’t disarm the woman without dropping the child, I could shoot her.

  “It’s coming, Jessica!” she screams, and then she runs away down the hallway.

  There’s no time to worry about how she knows my name. I want to give chase, but I have this child in my arms. I glance down. Glassy eyes stare up at me. Red veins feather her bluish skin.

  This baby isn’t breathing.

  Chapter Three

  Hummingbird

  You don’t stop to think at a time like this. You act.

  Everything is a blur. I lay the child down and make sure her airway is open. Two of my fingers rapidly press on her chest thirty times. When I first started volunteering at the children’s hospital, teaching the kids magic to take my mind off my own stress, I took an infant and child CPR class. Being around so many vulnerable children, I felt it was my responsibility, even though we’d learned the adult basics in the FBI. But compared to the rigid practice dolls, under my fingertips this baby feels like a hummingbird. Her skin is soft, but cold. Her bones are fragile, as if they’re made of thin porcelain. I breathe into her tiny mouth, afraid I’ll somehow break her. Her small chest rises. I breathe into her again.

  Thirty taps, breathe, breathe.

  Again, I force my fingers down on her chest. Another thirty taps, breathe, breathe.

  The children’s hospital was where I met Elsie, a young girl brutally scarred after her abusive mother threw a pot of boiling water at her. Now, after a hard year of plastic surgery, and because of her resilience, the scars have faded and she’s like every other tween. Her Instagram feed is filled with smiling selfies and photos of her crushes. Her terrible past is more and more just a bad memory.

  I don’t even know this baby�
��s name.

  I don’t know if she’s going to be okay.

  Thirty taps, breathe, breathe.

  She’s still cold.

  She’s still not breathing.

  Please breathe, little thing. Please. Please!

  Someone grabs my shoulder. I look up as two paramedics push me aside to treat the infant. I don’t remember calling them, but my phone is on the ground next to the child. The 911 operator is on speakerphone. Instinct. You drill something into your head until you don’t think about it. That’s the point of training.

  I follow them into the ambulance, my hand cradling the child’s head as the paramedic continues CPR.

  Thirty taps, breathe, breathe.

  His hands push forcefully into her chest and I want to shout at him to be gentle, but he knows what he’s doing.

  I just caress her head and whisper that she’s going to be okay. I tell her she’s safe.

  Even as I say it, I know it’s a lie. Nobody is safe in this world.

  As an only child in a dysfunctional family of traveling magicians, I was always taking in small animals and trying to save them. I think I was trying to re-create my own little nuclear family unit with whatever balls of fur or feathers I could find. I hid mangy cats, retired show rabbits. When I was nine, I even rescued one of my grandfather’s doves after it was hurt in a performance. He’d produce a dozen of them from a glowing Chinese lantern, and then they’d fly out over the audience to applause. But this time, perhaps confused by the bright lights and unfamiliar stage, one of the doves struck a pipe and fell to the ground offstage near my feet.

  Its wing badly crumpled, the dove looked up at me with fearful eyes. I carefully picked it up and rushed it to the dressing room where, among my books and suitcase, I made a nest out of crumpled newspapers. Father wanted to put it out of its misery, but I cried, throwing myself in front of the wounded bird. He relented, knowing he was no match for the force of my will, and let me try to nurse it back to health. I named it Hummingbird. An odd name for a dove, but I was an odd child.

  I took Hummingbird with us from town to town, feeding her sunflower seeds by hand, coaxing her to walk. But her wing was too badly broken to set right and she could never fly again, so she spent most of her time sitting in my newspaper nest, staring out the window. It was a sad life, but I refused to let her go. Grandfather and my dad gave up trying to persuade me to let them take care of her. I knew Grandfather’s promise to take her to the vet really meant shoving her into a garbage can on his way to the bar.

  “She’ll learn,” was my grandfather’s last comment on the matter after a half hour of arguing with me. A stern and impatient man, he liked to believe everyone who disagreed with him was due karmic retribution from the universe.

  Back home in California, I fashioned a cage for Hummingbird out of a discarded rabbit hutch. I put her on the crooked back porch of Grandfather’s grand but ramshackle mansion. I wanted her to be happy, and I figured she’d be happier outside in the Los Angeles sunshine.

  But when I woke up the next day and went to refill Hummingbird’s water dish, I found the cage smashed on the ground and the chicken wire ripped open, blood and pearly gray-white feathers stuck to the torn mesh.

  One of the coyotes that prowled the grounds at night got to her.

  I’d saved her, but for what? To die a horrible death? In my childish desire to help, I’d prolonged her suffering only to leave her to a worse fate. What kind of person does that?

  I lean against the wall of the corridor outside the operating room. A nurse tries to get me to wait in the reception area. I flash her my badge—and a glare that tells her no one is moving me.

  Two orderlies rush past pushing a large machine into the operating room. It looks like a ventilator. A doctor, a compact man in his fifties, strips off his white coat as he enters the prep room to throw on scrubs, then stops and shoots me an accusing glance over his shoulder. “You the mother?”

  “I found her,” I reply weakly, still too numb to say anything else. All my energy is in the operating room with that child.

  He waves me off and disappears through the door.

  “Agent Blackwood?” someone says.

  I turn to my left and see a gray-mustached man in a police captain’s uniform. He must be the senior officer at the hospital. “Yes?”

  “We’ve got your description out now.”

  I don’t remember calling in a description of the woman. But I don’t remember a lot of what had just happened. All I could think about was trying to get the child to breathe. Getting air into her lungs was my only thought.

  “She was kidnapped from here a few hours ago.” He points down the hall. “They pulled her right out of an incubator.”

  Good lord! Who could even consider such a thing? I just nod my head and stare back through the glass window of the operating room door as men and women in blue scrubs race back and forth.

  “If you don’t mind, we can wait in the lobby. She’s in the right hands now.”

  “Is she?” I lock eyes with him. “Where were you when she was pulled from the incubator? Was she in the right hands then?” My anger is barely contained.

  “That’s not—”

  His words are cut short by a low rumble. The floor underneath our feet trembles. He looks at me in surprise, as if I have an answer. The lights flicker, then go dark. I feel the pit of my stomach sink. Something horrible is happening. Again.

  Shouts echo from inside the operating room. I push past the captain and through the doors. The medical team is trying to keep the equipment from sliding around. A florescent light fixture snaps free and dangles from its electrical cords. I lunge forward and brace my body over the small shape in the middle of the operating table.

  The world shakes again. Something breaks, slamming into my spine. A doctor yells as a rack crashes down. Nurses try to keep the carts from spilling surgical instruments to the ground. Someone brushes debris off my back. The emergency lights flicker on.

  “We’re good now,” says a middle-aged doctor in blue scrubs with bushy eyebrows beneath his skull cap. He gently grasps my shoulder after the rumbling stops. “We need to work. There’s still fluid in her lungs.”

  “Is she . . . ?” I rise slightly, to make sure I’m not crushing her.

  “She’s going to be fine, but we need to keep going,” he tells me firmly.

  In the faint glow of the emergency light, I can see the child looking up at me. Her tiny hand is wrapped around one of my fingers, squeezing it. Holding on. Not letting go.

  I glance around at the doctors and nurses in their blue scrubs and masks, then down at my hoodie and jeans. The butt of my pistol is poking out from my side. I feel so out of place, so unclean.

  “You did everything right,” the doctor continues. “Any longer . . .”

  I pull away from the baby, even though her hand still firmly clings to my finger. The nurses quickly get the operating room back together as orderlies rush in to clean up the chaos.

  Her tiny eyes are still staring at me. She’s alive.

  A nurse, clearly frustrated by my presence, touches my elbow. “Let’s go into the hallway.”

  I don’t know if she can even see me. But she knows someone is there. I caress her head with my free hand. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  I lift my finger away. Her hand reaches out as I tear myself away from the table, letting the doctors and nurses surround her.

  I step back outside to the hallway and wait. The lights come to life as the regular power kicks in. Hospital staff run back and forth making sure everyone is okay.

  Someone turns the volume up on a television at the nurse’s station. Images of the damage appear, buildings with fractured windows, a collapsed parking garage, with more reports flooding in. A newscaster says a train may have been derailed.

  I’m still trying to wrap my head around the last hour. I don’t know how to process any of it. I’ve been so numb since I saw the flash of the knife. N
othing is real.

  The doors to the operating room burst open, revealing two orderlies pushing the cart that carries the baby. The doctor who pulled me aside earlier strips off his gloves and gives me a thumbs-up. Then he follows the others down the corridor.

  Over the PA a woman asks all visitors to clear the hospital so they can make room for incoming victims. The floor trembles again and my knees buckle. Aftershock. Fortunately it’s a mild one.

  The stairs are a madhouse, but I make it outside. Broken panes of glass stand out on the hospital’s exterior like spiderwebs. Wailing ambulances converge from every direction.

  My phone rings. It’s my father.

  “Jessica? Are you alright?”

  I catch a glimpse of a frightened face in an ambulance window.

  It’s my own.

  “I’m fine, Dad. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  Chapter Four

  Revelations

  My boss, Dr. Jeffery Ailes, gives me a long look before asking if I’m okay. His eyes are more tired than they were when we first met two years ago, and the gray at his temples seems more severe. It stands out against his dark skin, and instead of making him look older it makes him simply look old. Stress ages men differently than it does women. It’s the way they carry themselves.

  Over the last year, he’s been dealing with his wife’s ailing health. He’s a compartmentalizer who would never let what’s going on at home blow over into work—at least, he would never take it out on anyone else. But it’s becoming apparent that the compartment for his personal life is weighing heavily on him.

  Weary or not, his eyes still look right into you, and he has the calm, deliberate manner of someone who thinks deeply about what he says and never says anything just to fill the air. He and my grandfather, for better or worse, are probably the two most influential men in my life. The contrast couldn’t be greater. Whereas Grandfather would look at you in a way that suggests you’re being assessed and not measuring up, Ailes sees potential. He sees what you can be. As a special appointment to the FBI, leading our island office of misfit toys and assigning us cases that don’t fit into the usual categories, finding untapped potential is what he does.