Summary: "Henry has a panic attack; Lucas learns of Abe's affliction." That's the original summary for Chapter 5 of the original story, Stopped Clock. It's the next day and Henry explained to Lucas why he appeared so sleep-deprived. He had let it slip that "Abraham was rather upset last night—understandably so—so I had to spend my time comforting him and helping him settle in. We'd never planned to have a child staying at the shop." Lucas had helped him through the panic attack and Jo had joined them in the morgue. Henry, still recovering from his panic attack, requested that Jo fill Lucas in on the impossible situation, which she did. Lucas, of course, was totally awed by all the amazing information and now joins the two detectives, their lieutenant and the immortal ME on the baffling case of the de-aged children that might be connected to the murder of Lydia Andrews. Also, Jo had announced a meeting in minutes in Lt. Reece's office regarding the case and since Lucas was filled in, he could attend, as well.
vvvv
"Good morning, everyone," Lt. Reece said, scooting her chair in closer to her desk. She looked over the small group in her office that now included Lucas. They each returned her greeting, Jo and Henry seated in the two available chairs and Hanson and Lucas choosing to stand. "Mr. Wahl. Welcome." He sheepishly grinned but said nothing. "Since you identified the phenomenon Dr. Morgan's elderly son and the others are experiencing as de-aging, I wondered if you had any additional information to share?"
Lucas stood a little taller and glanced nervously at the others then back at her. "It's usually a result of either science or magic." He chuckled softly and admitted, "I guess we can rule out magic." He shot a look at Henry and cleared his throat. "I think." He cleared his throat again and added, "But I've ... read a lot on the subject and in the end, the process has almost always been successfully reversed."
"Almost always," Reece repeated, working to hide a faint smile. "Well, let's hope for a successful reversal in this case." She turned her attention to Henry. "How are you feeling today, Doctor?" she asked, genuinely concerned.
He wanted to say a lot of things like if an alien had sucked his brain out he'd consider that a good day compared to what he and his son were dealing with now. Instead, he smiled and replied, "Fine, considering."
"And our little guest?" she asked with a faint smile and raised an eyebrow.
Henry smiled broader. "He's actually getting along quite well. Considering. Thank you for asking."
"Where is he, by the way?"
Hanson spoke up first. "He's with the Forensics Artist giving a description of his abductor. " Reece advised him to go and check up on their progress. "Sure," he replied and left the office, closing the door behind him.
"He was also able to give us a little more information about where they were held and while he says he didn't see a whole lot of the place, he described the sound of some kind of machinery," Jo added.
"Good," she replied. "Any leads yet in the Lydia Andrews case?" She directed her question to both Henry and Jo.
"Yes, the weapon she was killed with was a butcher knife common in kitchen cutlery sets," Henry replied. "Although no prints were found on the handle sticking out of her back, the blade had recently been used to slice cheddar cheese and red apples. And she bled out in another location; her body was dumped where it was found."
"The only family we were able to find is an 88-year-old older sister named Helen DeKamp, but she suffers from Alzheimer's and has been in a nursing home upstate for the past eight years." Jo bit her lower lip and sighed.
"So she can't be of any help," Reece concluded. Then she frowned and asked, "Who reported her missing last year?"
"It was actually Abe - " she paused and glanced at Henry. He pursed his lips but remained silent. She turned her attention back to the Lieutenant. "When she failed to show up for one of their dinner dates, according to the report, he 'tried several times to reach her by phone but was unsuccessful'. Since she was an adult, he'd been advised that only after 48 hours could an MPR be filed and actively investigated."
"I recall that time," Henry whispered. He uncrossed his legs and sat forward in his chair. "He was very upset and I ... I had told him that he'd merely been stood up." He sighed and continued, "She was most likely abducted while on the way to their dinner date."
"Well, that would give us a general location, anyway," Jo speculated. She looked from Henry then to Reece. "It's not much, but it's something."
"Do you think it's possible that your son may have seen something that put him in danger resulting in his own recent abduction?" Reece asked Henry.
He shrugged and opened his mouth several times. "Anything's possible. I simply don't know." A frown deepened on his face as he recalled how upset Abe had been as he'd paced with his cell phone to his ear trying to reach Lydia and then trying to convince the police that she would never have stood him up, that she was in some kind of danger. Several hours later Henry had accompanied a very frustrated Abe to Lydia's apartment on East 65th Street. He'd sheepishly produced a key from his pocket, managing to avoid the scrutiny of his father's gaze. He'd unlocked the door and they'd entered.
"There was no sign of her in the apartment, no sign of a struggle, so if she had been abducted from there ... " He turned to Jo with dawning realization on his face, "would mean that she knew her abductor." At that time, they'd assumed that she had left and something happened to her en route to the restaurant. Now, the possibility that she'd known her abductor was intriguing.
The tiny lines between Jo's eyebrows appeared more prominently as she processed the new information. "Of course, that's possible, but there's a lot of real estate between her apartment and the restaurant. After more than a year, though, getting surveillance footage to help pinpoint her movements that evening are zero and none."
"We keep both avenues of investigation open, then," Reece informed them. "Maybe not surveillance footage but how about taxicab records?" She directed her question to Jo. "Find out if she made it as far as being able to take a cab."
Jo nodded, biting her lower lip and added the order to her notepad.
"Dr. Morgan, is there anything else you can recall from your visit to her apartment?" Reece asked him in full 'just-the-facts' mode.
He searched his memory, eyes darting up and around. "No," he sighed. "I seriously doubt if I could recall the actual apartment number or even the floor it was on."
"Information easily obtained from the building management, I'm sure," Jo said.
Henry and the Lieutenant both nodded. Then Henry slowly rose to his feet and began to slowly pace over to the door and back to Reece's desk, his eyes widening as he recalled something. "Abe was never satisfied with the slow progress of the investigation into her disappearance. He told me that he'd revisited her apartment building and had spoken to a few of her neighbors. One, in particular, had regularly accompanied her to the bingo hall." He snapped his fingers. "Marjorie Stanton." He looked at Reece then at Jo and said, "I do hope that she still resides there."
"Should be easy to track her down if she's moved," Jo said. "At any rate, a return visit seems in order."
A single knock at the door garnered their attention. "Come," Reece said with a raised voice.
Hanson opened the door and allowed young Abe to enter first. He shyly beelined for his father, who guided him over to sit in the vacant chair next to Jo. The others watched the pair's parent-child interaction again with a mixture of both awe and gratitude. Also, pride, because the secretive ME had finally let down his walls of privacy and allowed them to view what they knew, was only a small part of his unreal world. The bizarre situation that confronted them with its fantasmal overlaps had overworked their normal thought processes. Because of this, they'd come to find it easier to treat the familial pair the same as they would any other: Henry, the concerned and protective parent and Abe, the confused and frightened child recently recovered from an abductor.
"Abraham, say 'Hello' to Lt. Reece. You remember her from yesterday, right?"
"Yeah, Pops," he replied. "Hello, Ma'am," he said with a smile.
"Hello, Abraham," she replied with a smile of her own.
"And this is my assistant, Lucas Wahl," Henry said, motioning to Lucas.
"Hello, Mr. Wahl."
"Hey, little guy," Lucas chuckled with widened eyes. This was his first time seeing the boy. He couldn't help but make a mental comparison between the boy and his elderly self. "Nice to meet ya." He grinned and shook the boy's hand. Then glanced quickly at Henry and withdrew to his spot where he'd been standing.
"I hear you've been keeping our Forensics Artist busy this morning." The boy nodded a couple of times.
"Abraham ... ?" Henry nudgingly reminded him.
"Sorry. Yes, Ma'am. But ... "
"But what?" Reece asked.
Abe sighed as if frustrated and set his lips against each other, pushing the lower one out a bit just as Henry often did. "She didn't understand how to, how to make him look ... right. Guess I couldn't describe him good enough."
Reece saw Hanson react but she kept her eyes on the boy. "Then tell us how he looked. Perhaps we can imagine it better than someone can recreate it on paper." He looked at his father first who nodded encouragingly, then back at Reece.
"He looked like Archie wearing Mr. Peepers eyeglasses. I told the lady doing the drawing, but she didn't know what I was talkin' about and she kept gettin' it wrong," he pouted. After reading the room, he realized the comparison was also lost on all except Henry.
"Archie Andrews in those old comic books. And Mr. Peepers was a TV show back in - he stopped himself and glanced down at Abe.
"It's okay, Pops, you can say it," Abe said tiredly.
"Mr. Peepers was a TV show in the 1950's," Henry finished explaining.
All of the adult's eyes landed on Lucas who shook his head and threw both hands up in surrender to clueless-ness. "Sorry, never heard of either."
Abe rolled his eyes and began describing the man. "He had kind of thick, red hair on the top of his head, parted down the middle, but close cut on the sides and the back. He wore these glasses with a black frame and round lenses." Abe licked his lips and shifted his weight in his seat. "A bow tie ... who wears a bow tie anymore?" he smirked. "And those sweaters with the crazy colors that don't match anything else you're wearing. He would talk to himself sometimes like he was having a fight with himself, then he'd kind of snicker. It sounded like one those squeaky toys. He didn't even speak with a real human being's voice; kind of like a cartoony voice." He shook his head. "Not real. And he'd be real nice then get real mad over nuthin'!" He began to frown at the memory and tightened his lips against each other again, shifting closer to Henry. "Um, it was just creepy seeing a real live person dressed up like a comic book character." He turned his frown up at Henry. "On top of that, what he did to us! He's creepy and crazy," he muttered angrily. Jo gazed sympathetically at him and patted his shoulder, as did Henry.
Hanson suddenly stiffened. "Wait a minute," he said, frowning then laughed, softly pounding his fist against his forehead. "Oh, boy, why didn't I see it before." He collected himself and waved an arm at the confused expressions on the others' faces. "Just a minute." He opened the door and closed it behind him leaving the others too confused to utter a word. The door quickly reopened and he reentered the room holding the drawing Abe had made the other day as he'd sat at his desk. He walked over to Henry and handed it to him with a grin. "I was gonna give this to you later, figured you'd wanna keep it as a memento," he said. "Turns out it might just be our biggest lead."
Henry and Jo stared with growing realization at Abe's drawing. He showed it to his son and asked, "Abraham, is this a drawing of the man you've been describing to us?" Abe nodded, glaring at the drawing. Henry smiled but it was evident his son was still a bit disturbed by his ordeal. "I'm curious, Abraham, why would you want to make a drawing of him after what he put you and the others through?"
Abe raised his eyebrows and replied, "Well, you always said that if something upset me, I should write it all down to get it out of my system." He shrugged and continued explaining, "This time I just chose to make a drawing of what ... of who upset me. Look," he said, pointing near the bottom of the drawing, "I gave him two left feet." A self-satisfied grin spread across his face as the adults quietly laughed.
vvvv
"Harvey Weingarten, 28 years old, some kind of biochemist, chemical engineer genius. MIT grad at 15," Hanson spouted as he and Jo breezed out of the bullpen towards the elevators. They both made sure their cuffs and guns were in their assigned places on their persons. "I texted you his last known address."
She glanced at her cell phone. "Got it."
"Did you let Henry know?" he asked as he impatiently waited for the elevator car to arrive.
"Yeah. I told him guns and badges only."
Hanson scoffed and twitched his head a little. "Bet he liked hearin' that."
"Lieu's right. He's too close to this," Jo replied. As much as she would like to have had him accompany them to question Weingarten, she had to trust Reece's judgment. And, especially since it was an order, she definitely had to obey that.
They were out of the building now, piling into Jo's assigned vehicle. After a traffic-challenged 25-minute drive, she parked in front of a towering condo high-rise on East 65th Street. As they stood in front of the building, they exchanged surprised looks.
"Something familiar about this place," Hanson remarked. He pulled out his notepad and flipped a few pages. Quickly skimming the notes, he sighed and closed it back up, sticking it back into his pocket.
"What?" Jo asked, craning her neck as her eyes traveled to the top of the building.
"This is Lydia Andrews' last known address, too."
xxxx
Notes:Original quotes from the original "Stopped Clock" by darklyndsea and betaread by superlc529:
"Henry has a panic attack; Lucas learns of Abe's affliction."
"Abraham was rather upset last night—understandably so—so I had to spend my time comforting him and helping him settle in. We'd never planned to have a child staying at the shop."