“Oh, boy,” she muttered to no one in particular.
Until now she had been trying to avoid actually looking at the baby, but when the infant began to chatter incoherently again, Claire had no choice but to turn her attention to the little cherub. She had no idea how old the tiny thing was, but the baby was smiling and attentive and making a lot of noise, so she must be several months old, anyway. As Claire watched, the infant’s mouth formed a near-perfect O, and she released a long, lusty coo. Then she laughed, as if she’d just made a wonderful joke, and for a moment—just a moment—Claire felt sort of, kind of…warm inside, and she smiled back.
Then she remembered she had no idea how to care for this child and that ripple of panic began to surge up inside her again.
“Police,” she whispered aloud, as if needing an audible reminder. Surely the police could send someone over right away, someone who knew what to do with abandoned babies, someone who could see to this particular baby’s needs better than Claire could herself. Because although there were a lot of things in her life about which she felt uncertain, of one thing she was absolutely sure. She was in no way cut out to be a mother. Nuh-uh. No way. No how.
As if she needed to be reassured of that fact—which, of course, she didn’t—when she reached in to lift the baby out of the basket, it immediately began to howl. Loudly. Lustily. Lengthily.
Okay, Claire. You can panic now.
Oh, boy, she thought. It was going to be a long night.
Nick Campisano was just leaving his favorite liquor store with a six-pack of his favorite brew when his pager went off.
Great, he thought. He should have realized there was no way he’d be allowed to enjoy what was left of New Year’s Eve. Hey, he hadn’t been allowed to enjoy Christmas Eve, had he? Or Christmas, either. Or Thanksgiving, for that matter. Or even Halloween, dammit. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to have an entire holiday off at all. So why should tonight be any different?
Because he needed a break, dammit—that was why. He needed a little time to step back and reevaluate, and try to remember why he’d become a cop in the first place. Something about wanting to make a difference, he recalled from some vague, dark, corner of his mind. Something about wanting to be a role model for kids who didn’t have any in their lives. Something about wanting to help people—help kids—get themselves straight and stay that way.
Yeah, right, he thought now. As a narcotics detective, all he seemed to succeed in doing lately was watch the problem get worse. Too many kids—good kids, at that—were taking drugs, selling drugs, dying from drugs. Oh, yeah. Nick had made a really big difference for them.
And tonight—like every other night—he needed some time to unwind and relax, some time to think about life. Some time to help him remember what living his life was all about. Yeah, life, he echoed derisively to himself. He was gonna have to see about getting himself one of those real soon. All work and no play was making Nick a very cranky boy.
He sighed with resignation when he noted the number on his pager, then made his way slowly back to his big—and very dated—Jeep Wagoneer, where he’d left his cell phone for the few minutes he’d be inside Cavanaugh’s Liquors. Sure enough, the word Called appeared in the readout. Clearing it, Nick punched in the number he’d been instructed to return—the number of his workplace—and after hearing a feminine voice greet him blandly at the other end of the line, he snarled, “Campisano. Whaddaya want?”
“Woooo, those are just the words a woman wants to hear in the middle of the night from a big, strong man like you,” the sultry voice at the other end of the line said, punctuating the observation with a wry chuckle.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Nick said—even if it was without a trace of apology. Suzanne Skolnik was, after all, his boss, but she wasn’t so far removed that he couldn’t voice his irritation at being summoned during his off-hours. “Whaddaya want?”
“Where are you?” she asked without preamble.
“Halfway home. Soon I’ll be all the way home,” he added pointedly. “Why?”
But instead of answering his question, she said, “Define ‘halfway home.”’
Nick growled under his breath. This didn’t sound good. “Cavanaugh’s Liquors on Route 30,” he told her. Then he asked again, “Why?”
“So you’re skirting the wilds of Haddonfield, right?”
Nick growled again. “Yeah. Why?”
“And you got four-wheel drive in that big bucket of yours, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
But he still didn’t get a response to the one question he really wanted answered. Not a response that he liked anyway. Because his superior asked another question of her own. “You know a lot about kids, don’t you, Nick?”
As questions went, it wasn’t that unusual a one for a man in his line of work to hear. “I know enough,” he said. “Why?”
“Don’t you got, like, a lot of nieces and nephews?”
“Eighteen, last count,” he replied. “Why?”
“That’s right,” Lieutenant Skolnik said thoughtfully. “Your sister Angie just dropped two last month, didn’t she?”
Nick was fast losing patience with this interrogation. Not just because he seldom indulged in chitchat with his boss, but because he was cold, and he was tired, and the snow was coming down harder and at least two of the six bottles of Sam Adams in the seat next to him were calling his name.
“Uh, no offense, Lieutenant,” he said slowly, “but, um…I’d appreciate it if you could tell me just where the hell this line of questioning is going.”
“I need you to answer a call for me in Haddonfield,” she said finally.
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, even though he knew it was pointless to try. “I just pulled a double shift, and I haven’t had a day off in two weeks. I’m supposed to have three days off solid. You promised, and I earned it.”
“I know, Nick, and I’m really sorry,” she said, her voice conveying her genuine apology. “But you’re the only one who can take care of this.”
He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. Then aloud he said, “Define ‘this.”’
“We got a report of an abandoned baby in Haddonfield,” she told him. “And we got nobody in the area who can respond right now. Since you just left here twenty minutes ago, and since I know your proclivities regarding Cavanaugh’s,” she added parenthetically, “I figured I could catch you in the area.”
Before he could object further, she gave him the exact address, and Nick whistled low. “That’s a pretty primo rent district. Who’d be abandoning a baby there?”
Wryly his lieutenant replied, “Gee, just a shot in the dark here, but…maybe somebody who can’t take care of it and wants it to have a better life?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Even if it means breaking the law to get it?”
“Yeah, well, believe it or not, Nick, there are some people out there who hold the laws of our great state in contempt. I know that comes as a shock to a guy like you, but…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “So, why do I get the assignment? I kinda had other plans.”
Not that those plans consisted of anything major, he conceded to himself. Just a little sleeping and eating and watching what was left of Saturday Night Dead with Stellaaaa—not necessarily in that order. But there was no reason his lieutenant had to know that.
“You get the job,” she told him, “because, like I said, between the New Year’s revelers and the snow, we can’t get anybody else out there tonight. And nobody at Social