The Toddler's Tale

Chelsea assumed he’d heard the wind, which had been buffeting the truck, but she rolled down her window all the same. Gust-driven raindrops pelted her face.

She shivered from the wet cold and started to roll it up again when she heard crying. At first she thought it must be a cat in distress, but the more she listened, the more human it sounded.

“That’s a little child’s voice!”

“You’re right,” he murmured, “but where?”

Sensing a mystery, Chelsea opened the door to investigate. Before her new Italian leather heels touched the ground, she could see a woman beckoning to them from across the road, shouting frantic cries for help. Her body was nothing more than a silhouette in the downpour.

Max levered himself from the cab, their personal war put on hold in the face of this unexpected crisis. Chelsea chased after him. In case she couldn’t get to the station in time to report the story on Camille and the baby, maybe she’d find nuggets of a new drama unfolding here.

Arms flailing, a panic-stricken young woman no more than twenty-one, twenty-two, met Max halfway. Water ran down her pretty features and dripped off her dark blond braids. The rain had plastered the corduroy jumper against her thin body, revealing every shiver.

“Thank heaven y-you heard me!” she cried. “I need h-help!” Her hands gripped his hard-muscled forearms. “My baby wandered away from me and f-fell through some boards. I tried to go after her, but the framework is c-crumbling. I’m afraid to make a move or everything m-might cave in on top of her!”

Another trapped child.

As the sickness welled up in his gut, Max closed his eyes tightly for a moment.

Chelsea watched his reaction, stunned by the distinct pallor of his complexion and the way his body had tautened. Something earthshaking was going on inside him. But what?

“It’s going to be all right,” she heard him murmur at last. “What’s your name?”

The mother seemed to hesitate for a moment before she said, “Traci Beal.”

“Traci? How long has your daughter been down there?”

“I d-don’t know. A half hour m-maybe. You’re the first p-person to stop.”

The poor woman’s teeth were chattering. This was the perfect heartbreaking child-in-distress story, but a lot of good it was going to do Chelsea without a camcorder. She flashed him a look of outrage for destroying her camera. But his attention was focused on the mother.

“You haven’t phoned for help yet?”

The young woman shook her head. “I don’t h-have a phone and didn’t dare leave the baby to run to a neighbor’s house. Please…you’ve g-got to help me!” She sounded on the verge of hysterics. “If anything happens to Betsy…”

In the next instant Max left them to climb inside the excavation, where the child’s incessant crying was louder. Chelsea noticed that no matter how much care he took, more material caved in.

As she watched him move around and lift debris, Chelsea held her breath. She couldn’t think of another man who would dive into a precarious situation like this with no thought for his own life.

When she reflected on the constant stream of disgusting men who had flowed in and out of her mother’s world, living off her money, she couldn’t imagine one of them putting a child’s crisis ahead of his own selfish needs.

After a few minutes Max climbed back to them, his face grim as he addressed Traci. “She’s crawled into a main drainage pipe for the subdivision. It’ll take a team of experts to help me reach her. But your daughter has a powerful set of lungs. As long as she’s crying like that, you know she’s all right, just frightened. I’ll call for help from the cell phone in my truck. We’ll get your daughter out safely.”

Of course! Chelsea could phone her office and ask her boss, Howard Percell, to send someone out here on the double with a camcorder. They could still get the exclusive scoop if she acted fast!

Unmindful of the rain, she wheeled around and hurried across the road. Max called to her, but she ignored him. It was vital she tip off her boss before Max tied up the phone. She had an idea he probably kept it in his glove compartment.

No sooner had she opened the passenger door to reach inside it than Max flung open the door on the driver’s side. After sending her a murderous glance, he pulled the phone from the top of the sun visor and started punching buttons.

His mouth had formed into a tight line of anger. Despite the heavy tension between them, she observed that even in the rain his brown hair, dark as rich loam, stayed in place. Like James Bond, he managed to look quite splendid no matter how harrowing the moment.

“Spare me the lie that you were going to call nine-one-one.” His voice grated.

She stood her ground. “With your links to the police department, I planned to leave that up to you. I only intended to take a few seconds to let my office know where I am.”

Lines darkened his face before he let go with a string of colorful swear words. “It’s shot!” The phone landed on the seat between them. “I’ll have to find another one. While I’m gone, you’re going to do something unselfish for once in your life and offer support to Traci until help arrives.”

So many stab wounds in one day had cut Chelsea wide open.

Using her superior tone she said, “When there’s a breaking story right here, why would I want to go with you?”

His head reared. “Why, indeed.”

She enjoyed shutting the door in his good-looking face. But when she came around from the back of the truck, she received a surprise. He shoved a folded camper-green tarp into her arms.

“There! That should give you some protection while you’re both waiting.”

“How thoughtful! Thank you.”

Though she almost staggered from the weight of it, she refused to let him witness her struggle as she crossed the road.

MAX PUT his truck in gear and barreled down the road in search of a house or a business of some kind. Whatever came first. With a tiny child’s life at stake, there was no time to lose.

Haunted by Betsy’s cries, which still resounded in his head, he increased his speed on the isolated road. To his relief the rain had turned to drizzle. The idea of a frightened little girl caught and possibly lying injured in cold water plus who knew what else left a pit the size of a boulder in his gut.

Was it asking too much to come across a road crew with a phone? Maybe plane radar would pick him up and put a patrol car on his tail.

Tears smarted in his eyes as he remembered the little boy who’d died inside a laundry chute last year. Neither Max nor his partner, who’d been on duty with him, had been able to save the toddler. Since then, the joy had gone out of his life.

The media had sensationalized the tragedy. As usual, Chelsea Markum had been one of many TV reporters who’d criticized the police department’s response time in getting to the scene of the accident.

Though he and his partner had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the horrific incident had caused a blackness to creep into Max’s existence until he’d doubted his ability to be a good cop. Once his confidence had deserted him, he’d felt immobilized and took a leave of absence from his job.

During the time off, he’d gone for professional counseling to deal with his grief. Though it was pointed out to him there was nothing he could have done to prevent the boy’s death, Max didn’t believe it. A little child had died under his watch. He couldn’t handle it.

After a month, he’d still been too shaken by the experience to go back on active duty. Despite the urgings from his superiors to remain with the department and take a desk job for a while, he couldn’t see himself sitting at a computer eight hours a day. Not when it was his nature to live life on the edge.

Eventually he resigned from the force and went to work as a PI. It meant he could handpick cases in which children weren’t involved. Or so he’d thought.

He pressed on the gas, realizing he might have to drive all the way to Reiser to find a phone. The unincorporated hamlet of less than two hundred people had a German pub. On more than one occasion, he and his best friend, Michael Lord, had driven out here for a beer on their off-duty time as police officers—before Michael had gone to work for Maitland Maternity Clinic. It had been a great place to kick back, shoot a little pool.

At moments like that they’d shared a few laughs and talked shop. The subject of women was taboo. Michael was a confirmed bachelor. As for Max, the high school sweetheart he’d planned to marry had been killed in a car accident.

That painful period eventually passed, but it had left him changed. Though he enjoyed women as much as the next man, he had no desire to settle down. After working so hard to save the little boy who’d died despite all efforts to save him, Max had been running on automatic pilot.

As the memory of that failed rescue attempt assailed him once more, he broke out in a cold sweat. He still suffered nightmares because he’d reached the child too late.

Evidence of civilization ahead jerked his torturous thoughts to the present. A tiny general store with one lone gas pump materialized on his right, and he pulled in.