Chapter 9:

Demons

The demons were back full force the next night. By two o'clock the next morning Moyer had finished up all the paperwork and puttering she could and was waiting impatiently for Sanchez in the division ready room.

"He's at the hospital," Provenza finally told her when he realized why she was stalking back and forth.

"What?! Why?"

Flynn held up his hands in surrender. "The softie told him to stay with the boy. Sanchez said that the boy's story is as harsh as the rest of it. Apparently the mother - - or the woman he knows as his mother - - travelled with them to Mexico several years ago and they came back without her."

Moyer contemplated the possibilities. They were nearly endless. And nearly all horrific.

"Name? Family name? Birth certificate? INS? Has he heard from her since? Grandparents? What?"

Provenza came around his desk to perch on the work table. "All we know is what he told Sanchez. The mother went to Tijuana with them and they came home without her."

"Damn Fritz," she muttered.

The others in the room shook their heads. They understood the frustration. A van-full of women who didn't know anything and a child with only half answers. The only one with the full story was laid out in the morgue awaiting ballistics reports from an FBI rifle.

"It was a hell of a shot," Provenza said in an effort to lighten the mood. Moyer nodded absently. She was tired. More, she was mentally exhausted. She'd take another round at the women over the next couple of days, but she didn't expect much. She and Brenda together might be compassionate and sincere, but they were terrified. She wondered if bringing Michael in on the interrogations would help. She fully intended to get scene shots to show them that the monster was dead. It would have helped her. Unless there was more than one person in on it from that side, she thought. Damn.

"Michael's been interviewing that child this whole time?" she asked suddenly.

Provenza shook his head. "It bothered him that the boy would go into the system. He figures he'll get lost there and that any inquiry into next of kin will be put on the back burner since he's of questionable status."

"If they ever start one. The kid'll be old enough to go out on his own before Children's Services spends that kind of money," she interrupted.

"Yeah, well." Both men sighed . "It seemed like it would do them both good for him to stick around for a while, so that's the assignment I gave him."

Moyer leaned forward and pecked his cheek. "You are a softie. Thank you."

They watched as she gathered her bag and windbreaker and locked her gun and badge in her desk drawer. She didn't like to take them anywhere she'd be tempted to misuse them and she never left them in her car. A friend had had his stolen once inside his brand new Mustang and it had made quite the impression on her.

"See you tomorrow," Lt. Gregory said softly as she slipped past.

"Bright and early," she assured him.

At the hospital she wandered the halls a bit, waiting near the nurses' station for the officials from immigration and children's services.

It would break her heart to watch Michael attach himself to the young boy they'd rescued. Break both their hearts when he was taken away.

The night his mother arrived Michael invited her to stay at their home with them. After bidding her good night and bedding them down in guest room and on the pull-out sofa, he curled around his wife in the darkness of their own room.

"Help me understand this," he begged. "Help me make sense of it."

Tanner turned, tears wetting her own cheeks as she cradled his face in her hands.

"I wanted him to stay with us," the man she loved confessed. "I wanted him for our own."

"I know," she whispered. "I know."

She had known. Right or wrong, she'd watched him grow more and more attached. No. That wasn't true. He'd been instantly attached to the boy. And charmingly so.

But what was in her that hadn't taken the steps to safe-guard him against just this? Why hadn't she warned him, counselled him against too close a kinship?

Because she wanted him to be happy, she told herself. Who knew investigation would come through like that? The boy's mother had certainly been wronged. God knew that. She couldn't imagine the heartache of being powerless to enforce a reunion with her own child. Because we would have stopped at nothing to get him back. No law, no border, nothing would have kept either of us from getting back here and finding him, if we'd had to dig a tunnel beneath the river and knock on every door in California.

I can't dwell on that, she ordered herself. I have to put that demon to bed.

Instead she petted the man she held. "I know," she whispered. "I know."