Bobby called to tell her that he’d checked in with the pharmacy where Mrs. Catlett got Forrest’s insulin. She purchased a month’s supply at a time. The school had some on hand. She was missing a little over a quarter of her stash. A week’s worth. And more than enough syringes to deliver it. That was cause for celebration.
“Look for prints on the remaining syringes,” Grace advised.
His doctor was an older man, maybe sixty, with very silvery gray hair, named Dr. Salzman. He ushered them into his office—drawings by kids on the walls, comfy leather chairs, a big wooden desk with lots of files and a computer.
Grace filled him in quickly. “Some insulin is missing from the house. More than a quarter of the total. So we’re going on the assumption that it’s with Forrest. So that gives us a week, right?”
“Which kind?” the doctor asked. Grace blinked. She looked over at Ham, who shrugged.
“Forrest takes two kinds of insulin. Most children with Type One diabetes need a sort of foundational insulin that keeps their blood sugar levels low on a constant basis. Then they take a bolus insulin—something that acts fast—to lower blood sugar levels when they eat.”
Grace took that in. Bobby hadn’t differentiated the prescription, but he would know to ask. If he said a week, he meant a week.
“I’ll write down his standard dosages for you, and you can compare them with what’s in the house. Another factor is what he eats. The more carbohydrates he eats, the greater his need for insulin.”
“Okay, yes, please do that,” Grace said, handing him her notebook.
“I’ll call Bobby and put him on the line,” Ham said.
Grace turned her attention back to Dr. Salzman. “We’re trying to determine if Forrest was taken, or if he ran away,” she informed him.
“I see.” He sounded guarded.
“Do you have an opinion about that?”
Turned out he did. Even with the diabetes and a confirmed diagnosis of celiac disease, he agreed that Mrs. Catlett held on too tightly.
“Once we knew it was celiac—an inability to absorb nutrients—we could work with that through his diet. And he’s a great candidate for an infusion pump,” Salzman told her. “It would make him more independent. I’ve told Roberta numerous times that I thought he should have one. But she was scared that it would fail. They’re simple to monitor; we’d know right away if there was a problem—”
“What about at school?” Grace asked, wandering over to a bookcase featuring pamphlets covering just about every childhood illness and malady known to man. Lice … yup. Pinworms … yup. She remembered them both from Clay’s childhood years.
Diabetes for Teens. “Does he have to get any injections at school? He eats lunch, needs the mealtime injection, right? The second kind of insulin?”
Grace became aware of his silence. She turned and looked at him. He smiled grimly.
Grace was boggled. “His mother goes to school to give him his injections.”
“I’m afraid so. There’s a trained caregiver there. She could monitor him giving himself an injection. We recommend that diabetic patients take over their injections at fourteen. Many do it younger.”
“He’s fourteen,” Ham said, covering the phone. “If the other kids know his mother sticks him in the butt with a needle every lunch period …”
“He was using his thigh. And Forrest was positive that no one knew,” Salzman said. “They thought his diet and occasional hypoglycemic symptoms were from the celiac disease. On the other hand, sometimes the friends of diabetics protect their secret.”
Grace opened the pamphlet. Happy, smiling teenagers. Something about Planet D. Special summer camps. “Did Forrest ever confide in you, tell you how he felt about all this?”
“Forrest Catlett is still in my care. I need to honor doctor–patient confidentiality.” He hesitated. “But diabetics as a group have a higher incidence of depression than the general population.”
“If I had a chronic illness, I’d be depressed, too,” Grace said. She didn’t think Bobby was, though. But he was a grown-up, used to having diabetes.
A chime sounded, and Dr. Salzman pulled out his cell phone.
“You’ve got a patient,” Grace guessed.
“I have time for you.” He sounded very kind. She liked him.
“Glucagon,” Grace said, holding up the pamphlet. “Give him sugar asap. May I take this?”
“Take whatever you like.” The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s been a bit of a vicious cycle. She’s afraid for him to take part in many activities. So she hovers.”
“Helicopter parent,” Grace said.
The doctor inclined his head. “Exactly. Forrest feels uncomfortable. As a result, he’s dropped out of most of his activities. He used to be in Little League. He got hit pretty hard with a ball and she went cra—she got very upset. There’ve been fewer and fewer things he’s been interested in.”
“Depression,” Ham said. He pointed to the phone. “Bobby says about a quarter of the Lantus was missing, too.”
“That’s the basal insulin.” Salzman nodded. “So you were right. You’ve got about a week.”
Good. Good, good, good.
“Do you think Forrest was uncomfortable enough to run away from home?” Ham asked.
The doctor looked uneasy. “That’s hard to say. He was private with me. I did suggest therapy.”
“For him? Or for his mother?” Grace wasn’t big on it, herself.
“Both, but it didn’t happen.” He looked down at his desk. Grace traded looks with Ham. They both fell silent. Silence bothered some people.
They both waited.
“Forrest had an older sibling. The baby died of SIDS when he was about a month old.”
“Crib death,” Ham said. “Yeah, I had a friend who lost a kid that way.” He glanced at Grace. “Friend of Darlene’s,” he amended.
“Whoa.” Grace processed that. Not the bit about Darlene and Ham’s friend—although that was too bad—but somehow, she’d imagined that Forrest’s brother had died later, like in a car accident or something. It continually surprised her how many preconceived notions she had about things—assumptions she didn’t even know she’d made.
“That would make me clingy,” Ham said.
You’re clingy to start with, Grace thought, taking her notebook back and jotting notes. “So SIDS, no other cause of death?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I wasn’t their pediatrician back then,” Salzman said. “They moved here from Texas after their first child died. There’s a good support group called Empty Cradle. They have meetings all over the country. I mentioned it a couple of times. I don’t think she’s ever gotten over the death of that child.” He grimaced. “If something happens to Forrest …”
Grace currently couldn’t care about Mrs. Catlett. She didn’t have enough bandwidth. Maybe an angel could do it.
But she was no angel.
“We’re going to ask the media to run a piece on this,” Grace said. “Would you be willing to be interviewed? We want to broadcast information about his treatment and care. What to do if he goes or is found unconscious.”
“Yes, of course.”
“We’ll have them call you, if that’s all right,” Grace said.
He inclined his head. “I’ll do anything to help.”
Except tell his mother she has to step out of the picture and let him man up.
As they left, she whipped out her phone and called Butch. “Kendra’s gotta sell this to her producers,” she said. “Or you gotta cut her off, man.”
CHAPTER
TWELVE
There was another drive-by that afternoon, but for once it wasn’t a kid. It was Carlos Santander, head of the Cholos Ricos. Before his body was cold, the CRs had retaliated against the 13X Boyz, and the Briscombes’ block was on fire—collateral damage, as they lived in 13X Boyz territory.
Grace’s firefighter brother Leo was working the fire; during a break for hydration, he called Grace
and told her that everything the Briscombes had owned was gone.
Jamal would never go back to his grandfather’s apartment again.
Two hours after the fire started, someone had dangled a noose from the limbs of the Survivor Tree. Attached to the noose was a sign:
We will not stand by.
Two hours after that, someone tagged Emmanuel Synagogue on Northwest 47th Street, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Oklahoma City, with a row of swastikas six feet tall.
All within the space of about five hours.
Meanwhile, Rhetta said the scrapes on Forrest’s bedroom window were consistent with hauling a weight of approximately 130 pounds out the window.
According to Dr. Salzman, Forrest weighed 128 pounds at his last doctor visit. So had he been knocked out and dragged away? A kid could have climbed out the window without a rope. Why not just lift him up and hand him off to a confederate—unless someone had been working alone, and didn’t want to hurt him or call attention to themselves by pushing him out the window and letting him land in the grass?
Now Rhetta was running the handprint through IAFIS to look for a match. There were fifty-five million prints in the international database. There were over three hundred million people in the United States alone.
Grace was worn out and overextended. Her knees were scabbing up and the skin pulled tight, a reminder of her vow to Haleem to find his killer and bring him to justice. Poor Haleem; he was farther down on the list than ever. If she could just get one case closed …
“So how’s it going in here?” Grace asked Rhetta as she came through the door of the Crime Lab. Grace had just gotten word that Kendra was going to do the piece at the top of the news hour. Dr. Salzman would go on the air with her.
Rhetta was radiant. She had little piles of evidence in tidy rows all over her table and she twirled in a little circle and curtsied like a ballerina.
“I am amazing,” she crowed. “You will never guess what I found.”
“A cure for Type One diabetes,” Grace said.
“Well, no,” Rhetta said, the wind temporarily knocked out of her sails. “But I did find a bullet on that rooftop. That had not been shot.” She did a little balletic hop. “And guess what was on the casing.”
Following her train of thought, Grace also made a little ballerina circle and a bow. “Oh, dear God, tell me it was a fingerprint.”
Rhetta leaned her head back. “I am so awesome.”
“You are.” They high-fived. “So how do you figure? Jammed in the chamber, so the shooter knocked it out?”
“That’s how I figure. And I got a great print, Grace.” She took off her glasses and set them on the crown of her head. “I’m running it through now. No match yet, but we can hope.”
“And save it for later. Those sons of bitches jaywalk, I’m printing every last one of them.”
Rhetta kissed Grace’s cheek. “Down, girl. By the rules, remember? We want everything to go well in a court of law.”
“A print is a print, Rhetta. You can’t argue with a print.”
“You can argue with how you got it. Don’t you watch Law and Order?”
“Only when Barry Switzer’s on it.”
They chuckled. Grace cricked her neck. “On top of it all, I gotta go to Paige’s for dinner.”
“At least she’s a good cook,” Rhetta said, going for an encouraging smile.
“Yeah, if you’re a rabbit.”
“And you are, Grace.” Rhetta’s smile turned bright.
“Thanks. Paige is all freaked out about, y’know, half of Oklahoma City going up in flames today. She wants to talk about it.”
“Is her book group going to be there?” Rhetta asked. “Because you remember what happened last time.”
Grace smiled fondly. “Yeah. I got half of them roaring drunk and we did the limbo. Good times, good times.”
Holding back her hair, Grace peered through Rhetta’s microscope. “I always hated that coffee table anyway. Kokopeli is so last decade. Is this saliva?”
“Church rummage sales can be dangerous,” Rhetta concurred. “And yes, it’s saliva.”
“Buying each other’s crap. It’s ridiculous. Maybe I’ll stop and get her a present. Like a fifth of bourbon.”
“Is it just you and them? Her family?”
“God, no. That would be too pleasant. It’s Johnny and Doug, too.” Grace straightened. “Saliva, ear wax, semen. How do you keep it all straight?”
“Is your mother coming?”
“Paige didn’t mention it.” Grace swallowed hard. “But then, she wouldn’t, if she wanted me to come.” Grace pressed her hands together. “Pray for me, Rhetta.”
“I do.” Lovingly, Rhetta looped some of Grace’s errant curls behind her ear. “Every single night.”
“I love you.” Grace kissed her check.
“I love you, too. Go with an open mind. You might actually enjoy it.”
Oh, yeah, I’m enjoying this, Grace thought, as she sat in one of Paige’s stiff-backed cane chairs facing Doug, who was making faces at her. She tried to kick him under the table and succeeded only in ramming her foot against one of the table legs. It shook, but Paige and Johnny were too engrossed in prayer to notice. Father John the Blabtist finished his long version of the blessing and Grace was set to dig in, but Paige cleared her throat and everyone froze in position.
“And please protect each and every member of our family,” Paige said, intent on having the last word, as she often did, even though their brother was a professional praying machine.
“Amen,” Johnny said, and they crossed themselves.
“Especially Leo, who is putting his life on the line even now,” Paige added.
“Amen,” Johnny said.
Paige was not finished. “And please watch over—”
“Amen,” Grace said. “Jesus, Paige, I’m about to die of starvation.”
“That’s no reason to be inappropriate,” Paige snapped.
“Amen,” Johnny said, crossing himself.
Grace looked down at the baubles of food: two tastes of chicken, a smidge of mashed sweet potatoes, and three toothpick-thin string beans. Grace wondered if they were being punked. This could not possibly be their entire meal.
Clay and Paige’s kids had it made—they were upstairs eating gobs of pizza, drinking soda, and playing video games. Leo was still out fighting the fires, and his daughter, Sayre, was doing whatever teenage girls did these days when Daddy was not home. Grace tried not to go there.
As for Grace herself, she would rather eat ground glass than attend a family powwow, but as Grace had told Rhetta, Paige was scared. Smart Paige.
“It’s just … so many bad things are happening all of a sudden,” Paige said as everyone tucked into their miniature versions of food.
Grace took a nice swig of wine. She was going to have to drink a vat of the stuff if she ever hoped to wind down from the day she’d had.
“Shit,” she said. She’d forgotten about the title report for the Sons of Oklahoma property. She put it on her mental to-do list. Reaching again for her Chardonnay, she saw that everyone was looking at her. “Sorry,” she said, and then she realized that she had accidentally commanded their attention. She took another hefty swallow. And the glass was half empty.
Make that completely empty.
“Here’s the thing. Crime is sky-high and it has been for a while now. Things on the street have been getting worse, not better.” She looked at their bewildered faces. “We don’t know how the mayor manipulated the stats but he had to have done something because that report Kendra Burke gave is total bu—wrong. And you should all be real careful.”
“Marc-Alain was right,” Paige breathed, taking a minute sip of her wine. At least three molecules passed from the glass to her lips.
Grace pondered the personality makeup of someone who ate and drank like Paige. All she could come up with was tight ass.
“Who’s Marc-Alain?” Doug asked.
Paige
put her napkin to her lips. The napkins were cloth, of course. Paige was all about civilized behavior.
“My tennis coach. He said Oklahoma City is an incredibly violent place. When I told him about that piece Kendra did, he said it was a whitewash because of the mayor’s reelection campaign.”
Smart Marc-Alain.
“Why do you have a French tennis coach?” Johnny asked her.
“I need help with my serve,” she retorted, but she looked a little flustered.
Maybe to get back at her husband for banging the owner of that chichi little bookstore, Grace thought. Said husband being MIA for this dinner, by the way.
But she didn’t say anything. No one knew that she knew Buck was screwing around. Except Buck the Shithead Cheater himself.
“But that would be shoddy journalism,” Paige argued. “To let herself be fooled like that?”
“Yeah, speaking of ol’ Kendra. Where’s the remote?” Grace scooted back her chair.
“Grace, please stay focused.”
Grace ignored Miss Prissypants. Top of the hour. Kendra had promised. Grace walked out of the dining room and into the living room, locating the remote on a Tuscan-style coffee table. She aimed it at the huge plasma TV, and fired.
There she was. The love of Butch’s life. Heavy makeup, long face.
“Tonight, all residents of Oklahoma City are urged to call the Oklahoma City Police Department if they have any information as to the whereabouts of Forrest Robert Catlett.”
The photograph Mrs. Catlett had supplied appeared behind Kendra. Forrest looked better in the photo than Grace had ever seen him in real life. She hoped that wouldn’t make him harder to recognize.
A crawl along the bottom of the screen gave out the police department number. There was a pool on how many crackpot false leads they were going to get. If Butch won this one, too, Grace was going to have to do something desperate.
“Forrest has been missing for approximately ten hours. He’s a diabetic and he’s overdue for a dose of insulin. It is extremely urgent that he be taken to the nearest medical facility for treatment, as soon as possible. Here’s Forrest’s pediatrician, Dr. Herman Salzman, with more information.”