The Arx by Jay Allan Storey Page B

squad room. I could have told you how that would turn out. It’s probably one of your biggest psychological triggers.”
    “Don’t start with that psych-” A sudden throb of pain expanded into his skull. He thought better of what he was going to say. “Sorry about the place,” he said instead. “I’ve been meaning to clean it up.”
    “Yeah,” she said, scanning around the room. “It’s got that classic Downtown Eastside crack-house ambiance. I hope you won’t fly off the handle if I tell you that it’s standard for someone with your condition.”
    Frank’s hands were still shaking. He pulled a kitchen chair out with his foot, flopped down on it, and sat his cup on one of the few clear patches on the table.
    “I’m still working on the case,” he said. He looked up at her. “I know it’s not really a case – I know I’m not really a cop at the moment…”
    “I’m sorry, Frank,” she said, smiling. “Maybe I was a bit hard on you. I’m still upset about what happened to Gloria and her baby. Counselors can have emotional problems too, you know.”
    “But you should be able to cure yourselves.”
    “Yeah, that’s right,” she laughed and her face seemed to light up.
    “I guess I kind of overreacted,” Frank said. “I’ve been on edge for a while now, with the drinking, and not getting enough sleep…”
    He patted the pile of debris on the table for his cigarettes. Rebecca tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. She was holding the pack.
    “On the counter,” she said, nodding toward it.
    Frank’s hands shook as he extracted one, lit it, took a puff, and exhaled a large blue cloud. Rebecca screwed up her nose.
    Neither spoke for a few seconds. Finally Frank said, “I've got some new information, if you’re interested.”
    “Of course I’m interested.”
    “Maybe you should sit down,” he said. She poured herself a coffee and sat on a chair opposite him.
    "Gloria's baby isn't the only one missing," he said.
    “What?”
    “You’re going to think I’m paranoid, but something’s going on here – something beyond one kidnapping.”
    He took a puff on his cigarette. “What kept bugging me was the plausibility of the case against Gloria. I never believed she was guilty, but she looked guilty – almost like it was planned; like it was a setup. And then there was the thing with the baby in the car not being hers.
    “She didn’t seem to have any enemies. My nose kept coming back to some kind of conspiracy. I got ahold of the statistics on children under the age of two that disappeared in the past fifteen years.”
    “And?”
    “There’s at least five I’d put in the same category as Gloria’s. Funny thing is, they’re all similar, but at the same time all different – almost like they were planned to be that way.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He told her about the case he’d been involved in, with the mother and children on a picnic.
    “In another one,” he said, “the mother murdered her own baby then committed suicide.”
    “That sounds more like Gloria.”
    “Yeah, only this time it all happened at once. The baby’s body was never found, but there were traces of blood around the apartment. They figured she’d disposed of the body somehow, then felt remorse and did herself in.”
    “Were all of the women single mothers?”
    “The one at the picnic – she was married, though I don’t think the husband was there. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern that way. Another mother was pushing her baby daughter in a cart through a crowded fairground. She turned around for a second and the baby was gone, and again, it was never found.”
    Rebecca’s hands tightened around her coffee cup.
    “They all could have happened according to the official line,” Frank continued, “but there’s a thread of similarity. If you were in the business of kidnapping babies and you wanted to make sure the kidnappings went under the radar, you’d arrange them to be different enough that