Cold Case--A Jeff Resnick Mystery Read online

  COLD CASE

  by L.L. Bartlett

  Copyright © 2010 by L. L. Bartlett

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The Jeff Resnick Mysteries

  Murder on the Mind

  Dead In Red

  Cheated By Death

  Bound By Suggestion

  A Leap of Faith

  "A compelling mystery that will grip you tightly and not let go--even after you've finished reading."

  ~ Leann Sweeney, nationally best-selling author of the Yellow Rose and Cats In Trouble mysteries

  L.L. Bartlett’s “Cold Case” tells the emotionally packed story of Jeff Resnick, a psychic, who is hired to solve the disappearance of a four-year-old boy. The conclusion to this story is bound to have you questioning those around you.

  ~ The Romance Readers Connection

  COLD CASE

  by L.L. Bartlett

  “You’re not the first psychic to come through Paula’s apartment, Mr. Resnick.”

  Hands on hips, Dr. Krista Marsh stood before me. Her heels gave her an inch or more on me. Blonde and lithe, and clad in a turquoise dress with jet beads resting on her ample breasts, she was the best looking thing in that lower middle-class apartment.

  “I don’t use that term. Con-artists, liars and frauds take advantage of people with problems. I’m just someone who sometimes knows more than I’m comfortable knowing.”

  Truth was, I hadn’t wanted to be there at all, giving my impressions on the fate of four-year-old Eric Devlin. He’d gone missing on an early-autumn evening some eight months before. One minute he’d been there—riding his Big Wheel in front of the apartment building—the next he was gone. Like every other good citizen, I’d read all the stories in the newspapers and seen the kid’s picture on posters and on TV. The only place I hadn’t seen it was on the back of a milk carton.

  I was there as a favor to my brother—actually, my older half brother—Dr. Richard Alpert, who’d joined me on that cold gray evening in early May. Richard was Paula Devlin’s internist at the university’s low-income clinic. He liked Paula and hated how not knowing her son’s fate was tearing her apart. He hoped I could shed some light on the kid’s disappearance.

  I’m not sure why Dr. Marsh was there. Maybe as Paula’s therapist she thought she could protect her patient from someone like me.

  So, there I stood, in the middle of Paula’s modestly furnished living room, trying to soak up vibes that might tell me the little boy’s fate.

  Paula waited in the doorway, looking fearful as I examined the heart of her home, which she’d transformed into a cottage industry, distributing posters, pins and flyers in the search for the boy—all to no avail. Vacuum cleaner tracks on the carpet showed her hasty clean-up prior to our arrival. Too thin, and looking older than her thirty-two years, Paula’s spirit and her determination to find her missing son had sustained her over the long months she’d been alone. The paper had never mentioned a Mr. Devlin.

  “I don’t know if I can help you,” I told Paula.

  She flashed an anxious look at Richard, then back to me.

  “Where would you like to start, Mr. Resnick?”

  “Call me Jeff. How about Eric’s room?”

  A sixty-watt bulb illuminated the gloom as the four of us trudged down a narrow hallway. Paula opened the door to a small bedroom, flipped a light switch, and ushered us in. “It’s just the way he left it.”

  I doubted that, since the bed was made and all the toys and games were neatly stacked on shelves under the room’s only window—not a speck of dust. A race car bedspread and matching drapes gave a clue to the boy’s chief interest—so did the scores of dented, paint-scraped cars and trucks. I picked up a purple-and-black dune buggy, sensing a trace of the boy’s aura. He’d been a rambunctious kid, with the beginnings of a smart mouth.

  “He was a very lively child.”

  “He’s all boy, that’s for sure,” his mother said proudly.

  She hadn’t noticed I’d used the past tense. Either that or she was in deep denial. I’d known little Eric was dead the moment I entered the apartment.

  I gave her a half-hearted smile, replaced the toy on the shelf. There wasn’t much else to see. I shouldered my way past the others and wandered back to the living room. They tried not to bump into each other as they followed.

  A four-foot poster of Eric’s smiling face dominated the west wall. He’d been small for his age, cute, with sandy hair and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

  An image flashed through my mind: a child’s hand reaching for a glass.

  I hitched in a breath, grateful my back was to Dr. Marsh. A mix of powerful emotions erupted—as though my presence had ignited an emotional powder keg. Like repelling magnets, guilt and relief waged a war, practically raining from the walls and ceiling.

  Composing myself, I turned, a disquieting depression settling over me.

  “Ms. Devlin—”

  She stepped forward. “Call me Paula.”

  “Paula. Did Dr. Alpert tell you how this works?”

  “He said you absorb emotions, interpret them, and that sometimes you get knowledge.”

  “That’s right.” More or less. “There’s a lot of background emotion here. May I hold your hand for a moment? I need to see if it’s coming from you, or if it’s resident in the building.”

  Without hesitation, she held out her hand, her expression full of hope. And that’s what I got from her: Hope, desperation, and deep despair. She loved that little boy, heart and soul. And there was suspicion, too, but not of me.

  I released her hand, let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Paula, ever heard the expression about a person taking up all the air in the room?” Her brows puckered in confusion. “You’re broadcasting so many emotions I can’t sort them out. I know you want to stay, but I can’t do what I have to if you’re here.”

  “But he’s my son,” she protested.

  Dr. Marsh stepped closer, placed a comforting hand on Paula’s shoulder. “You want him to give you a true reading.”

  I turned on the psychiatrist. “I’m not a fortune teller, Dr. Marsh.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend,” she said without sincerity.

  “I’ll go if you say so, Krista.” Paula grabbed her windbreaker from the closet and headed for the door. Once she was gone, my anxiety eased, and I no longer needed to play diplomat.

  “What’re you getting?” Richard asked.

  “The kid’s dead—been dead since day one. He wasn’t frightened either, not until the very last minute.”

  “You’re talking murder,” Richard said. “Not Paula.”

  “No. I’m sure of that.”

  Dr. Marsh eyed me critically, brows arched, voice coolly prof
essional. “Are you well acquainted with sensing death, Mr. Resnick?”

  “More than I’d like.” I glanced at Richard. “What’s this about a pervert in the neighborhood?”

  His eyes narrowed. “It hasn’t been reported in the media, but Paula told me about the cops’ prime suspect. A convicted pedophile lived three units down at the time the boy disappeared. They’ve had him in for questioning five or six times but haven’t been able to wring a confession out of him. How’d you know?”

  “From Paula—just now. She’s afraid he took her kid.”

  Dr. Marsh frowned. She probably figured I was just some shyster running a con. Can’t say I was sorry to disappoint her.

  “You got something else,” Richard said. He knew me well.

  “I saw something, but it doesn’t make sense.” I told them about the vision.

  “Close your eyes. Focus on it,” he directed.

  I shot a look at Dr. Marsh, saw the contempt in her gaze. Skepticism came with the territory.

  My eyes slid shut and I allowed myself to relax, trying to relive that fleeting moment.

  “What do you see?” Richard said.

  “A kid’s hand reached for a glass.”

  “Is it Eric?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Describe the glass.”

  I squeezed my eyes tighter, trying to replay the image. “A clear tumbler.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “Liquid. Brown. Chocolate milk?”

  “Look up the child’s arm,” Richard directed. “Can you see his clothes?”

  The cuff of a sleeve came into focus. “Yeah.”

  “The color?”

  I exhaled a breath. Like a camera pulling back, the vision expanded to include the child’s chest. “Blue...a decal of—” The image winked out. “Damn!”

  “Give it a couple of minutes and try again,” Richard advised.

  Uncomfortable under Dr. Marsh’s stare, I wandered into the kitchen again. I couldn’t shake the feeling of...dread? Whatever it was surrounded me, squeezing my chest so I couldn’t take a decent breath.

  Hands clenched at his side, Richard studied me in silence. We’d been through this before, and his eyes mirrored the concern he wouldn’t express for fear of embarrassing me. He knew just what these little empathic forays cost me.

  Turning away from his scrutiny, I went back into the boy’s gloomy bedroom. Though banished from the apartment, Paula’s anguish was still palpable. How many times had she stood in that doorway and cried for her child?

  I ran my hands along all the surfaces a kid Eric’s age could’ve touched. After eight months there was so little left of him. His clothes in the dresser drawers, neatly folded and stacked, bore no trace of his aura. I pulled back the bedspread, picked up the pillow, closed my eyes and pressed it against my face. Tendrils of fear curled through me.

  Airless.

  Darkness.

  Nothingness.

  Death.

  A rustling noise at the open doorway broke the spell. Dr. Marsh studied me as she must’ve once looked at rats in a lab. Her appraising gaze was sharp, her irritation almost palpable. Even so, she looked like she just walked off the set of some TV drama instead of the University’s Medical Center campus. I’d bet her brown eyes flashed when she smiled. Not that she had.

  “I understand you’ve done this before,” she said.

  “Define ‘this,’“ I said.

  “Helping the police in murder investigations.”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Are you always successful?”

  “So far,” I answered honestly and replaced the pillow, smoothing the spread back into place.

  “And what do you get out of it?”

  Her scornful tone annoyed me.

  “Usually a miserable headache. What is this, an interrogation?”

  “I’m merely curious,” she said. “My, we are defensive, aren’t we?”

  “I can’t answer for ‘we,’ but I’m certainly not here to fence with you, doctor. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Brushing past her, I headed back to the kitchen. The smooth walls and ceiling were practically vibrating. Eric’s childish laughter had once echoed in this room, though nothing of him remained there. I frowned; I still didn’t have the whole picture, and Dr. Marsh had rattled me.

  I opened all the cupboards. The remnants of Eric’s babyhood—plastic formula bottles and Barney sippy cups—had been stowed on the higher shelves.

  No Nestle’s Quik.

  “Any conclusions?” Richard asked.

  “Whatever I’m getting seems strongest in the kitchen.” I leaned against the counter, stared at the refrigerator covered with torn-out coloring book pages attached with yellowing Scotch tape. Something about it bothered me. I opened the door.

  Paula wasn’t taking care of herself. A quart of outdated skim milk, half a loaf of sliced white bread, a sagging pizza box and three two-liter bottles of diet cola looked lonely in the full-sized fridge. No chocolate milk. An opened box of Tater Tots, a sprinkling of damp crumbs, and a couple of ice trays were the only things in the freezer. Everything looked completely innocent, yet something was terribly wrong.

  “Think all the apartments are set up the same?” I asked Richard.

  He shrugged.

  Pushing away from the counter, I walked through the rooms one last time—just to make certain—then paused in the kitchen before heading into the building’s entryway. No trace of Eric, but something else lurked there.

  Hands thrust into her jacket pockets, Paula waited by the security door, looking pale and frightened. I couldn’t even muster a comforting smile for her.

  “Chocolate milk,” I said.

  She blinked.

  “Did Eric drink it?” I pressed.

  “He loved it, but was allergic to chocolate. I never had it in the house.”

  I glanced up the shadowy staircase. A wounded animal will always climb. Eric hadn’t been wounded, but something had lured him up those stairs. I took three steps and staggered against the banister when a knife-thrust of pain pierced the back of my head—fierce, but unlike the skull-pounding headaches these intuitive flashes usually brought.

  “You okay?” Richard asked, concerned. Was he feeling guilty for roping me into this?

  I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. “Who lives upstairs?” I asked Paula through gritted teeth.

  “Mark and Cheryl Spencer in apartment D. A retired widow, Mrs. Anna Jarowski, lives on the other side.”

  “They see Eric the day he disappeared?”

  Paula shook her head. “No.”

  I took another step. The heaviness clamped tighter around my chest. I’d felt something when I first entered the building, but I’d assumed it belonged to Paula.

  I’d been wrong.

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “They’ve been cleared,” Paula insisted.

  I didn’t budge.

  She bristled with impatience. “You came here to find answers about my son, not waste time questioning my neighbors. They’ve been cleared by the police, and badgered by the press.”

  “Paula,” Richard said gently. “It can’t hurt.”

  Finally she tore her gaze from mine, stormed back for her apartment, letting the door bang shut.

  Richard took the lead, leaving Dr. Marsh and me to follow. He went to knock on the first apartment door, but I shook my head. He gave me a quizzical look and I nodded toward the opposite door.

  Richard crossed the ten or so feet to the adjacent door and knocked. We waited. Were Richard and Dr. Marsh struck by the unnatural quiet in that building?

  The door opened on a chain. Steel gray, no-nonsense eyes peered at us. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Jarowski, I’m Doctor Alpert and this is Dr. Marsh,” Richard said with authority. “We’re from the University. May we speak with you?”

  Mrs. Jarowski blinked in surprise. “Did Dr. Adams send you?”


  Dr. Marsh gave Richard an inquisitive look, but he said nothing.

  Mrs. Jarowski looked at us with suspicion. “Can I see some identification?”

  “Of course,” Richard said, and reached into his coat pocket.

  “I left mine in my purse,” Dr. Marsh said.

  Mrs. Jarowski scrutinized Richard’s hospital security badge. “Please come in,” she said at last.

  I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be anywhere but this place that smelled of mothballs and sour cabbage.

  She ushered us inside, stepping into her kitchen. Anna Jarowski was a compact woman in her mid-sixties. Her short silver hair was caught back from her forehead with a barrette, like something out of the 1950s. Dressed in a faded housecoat, no make-up brightened her wan features, leaving her looking colorless and ill.

  She glanced at me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Jeffrey Resnick,” I said, forcing a smile, and shoved my hand at her.

  The woman eyed my outstretched hand, hesitated, then took it.

  Our eyes locked. Her hand convulsed around mine. Peering past the layers of her personality, I looked straight into her soul.

  A tremor ran through me. I pulled back my hand, my legs suddenly rubbery. Sweat soaked into my shirt collar and I took a shaky breath, hoping to quell the queasiness in my gut.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  She gestured toward the couch in the living room, but I lurched into the kitchen and fell into a maple chair at the worn Formica table. The others followed, leaning against the counters, looking like wallflowers at a dance. Mrs. Jarowski moved to stand in front of the refrigerator, arms at her side, body tense. The open floor plan allowed me to look into the apartment. Like the kitchen set, the rest of the furniture was shabby but immaculate. Mrs. Jarowski’s faded house dress was freshly ironed. She probably spent her days scrubbing the life out of things.

  I looked around the sterile kitchen, an exact replica of the room directly below us—the floor, the counters, the cupboards—everything, right down to the white plastic switch plates. Three embroidered dishtowels lined the oven door pull, Mrs. Jarowski’s only concession to decor. The tug of conflicting emotions was even stronger than downstairs. We looked at one another for a few moments in awkward silence.