“Bingo! Any idea when it’ll be fixed?” Remy asked, more out of curiosity than anything. He really wasn’t affected by temperature, be it hot or cold.
The McNulty guy smiled, shaking his head. “Haven’t a clue. We’re gonna have to order some parts—could take a few days.”
Another McNulty employee, a disgruntled look on his face, came up from the building’s basement.
“What’s the verdict?” the first asked.
“Put a fuckin’ bullet in it,” he grunted. “Gonna need a whole new unit.” He kept right on walking through the doorway and out to a van parked in front of the building.
“There you have it,” Remy’s new friend said with a shrug.
“Guess so.” Remy turned toward the stairs.
“What, you’re still going up?” the repairman asked from the doorway.
“Yeah, probably push some papers around and take an early lunch.”
“Better you than me,” the man said, letting the door close as he left to join his partner. “It’s gonna be hot as Hell up there.”
Remy continued up the stairs to his office, letting the man’s words bounce around inside his skull. He was tempted to explain that Hell was actually a place of extremes—of both intense heat and numbing cold—but he doubted the repairman would have really much cared, and then of course, he would want to know how Remy knew so much about the infernal realm.
He chuckled out loud and unlocked his office door. But still he couldn’t help wondering what was happening in Hell. After usurping Heaven’s power there, the Son of the Morning had begun to reshape the realm. What had once been prison to those who had followed him in his rebellion against Heaven was slowly becoming Lucifer’s twisted version of the Eternal Realm. And how exactly did Heaven plan on dealing with that?
Remy shook his head. Those were matters of the damned and the divine, with humanity caught square in the middle.
He stepped into his office and realized the air-conditioning repairman had been right. It was stifling in the room. He closed the door and went directly to the window, opening it wide in the hope of catching a breeze to air out the stale, musty smell.
Then he checked his phone for messages and, finding none, decided to spend the morning working on invoices and paying some bills. But first there was a mighty need for coffee.
He had just filled the machine and set the carafe to collect the elixir of life, when there came a knock at the door and a woman cautiously entered the office.
“Hi,” Remy said cheerfully, moving toward her in greeting. “May I help you?”
The woman was wearing a dungaree jacket and skirt, and a bright red T-shirt. She was about five foot six, with bleached blond hair, and looked at first to be in her late thirties, although as Remy drew closer, he realized her eyes didn’t seem as old as she appeared.
The woman closed the door behind her, nervously moving her bag from one shoulder to the other.
“Umm,” she said, uncertainty in her tone. “You’re Remy Chandler, right? The private investigator?”
“Yes, I am,” Remy said, smiling kindly. The woman looked about to snap. “Is there something I can do for you, Ms. . ?”
“York,” the woman replied, her sandaled feet scuffing across the hardwood floor as she stepped farther into the room and extended her hand toward him. “Deryn York.”
Remy shook the woman’s warm and clammy hand.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Ms. York.” He directed her toward the chair in front of his desk, then headed back for the coffeepot.
“Coffee?” he asked her. “I’ve just made it.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, pulling at the front of her skirt so it just about touched her knees.
Remy realized he had only one clean mug, the other one being sort of dusty.
“Let me just rinse this out,” he said, going to the tiny bathroom across the room. “It’s really warm out there today,” he said, raising his voice over the water in the sink.
“Yeah,” she answered, “hot as Hell.”
“It certainly is,” he replied instead as he left the bathroom. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Oh, just sugar, please.”
“How many?” he asked, pouring her a cup, and placing it on the edge of the desk in front of her. He went around his desk and opened the center drawer where he’d recently seen a few packets.
“Do you have six?” she asked.
“Six?”
She smiled self-consciously and shrugged. “I like it really sweet.”
Remy counted the packets in his drawer. “I only have five,” he told her.
“That’s fine,” she said. “Five should be good.”
He set down the sugar packets. “Here you go,” he said.
“Thank you.” She immediately ripped open the packets one after another, pouring their contents into the dark brown liquid.
“So, Ms. York,” Remy said, sitting down in his chair and taking a sip from his mug with the picture of a black Labrador retriever, “what can I do for you?”
She sipped her own coffee and made a face. Obviously it wasn’t sweet enough.
“I called your home last night,” she said, setting the mug carefully down on the edge of his desk, “but I didn’t leave a name. . or much of a message really.” She laughed nervously.
“I thought that might have been you,” Remy said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know what to say, and I had no intention of even coming here, but. .”
“But here you are,” Remy finished for her.
“Exactly,” she responded. “You’re all I have left. . my last resort.”
“Okay then.” Remy grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. “What’s brought you here, Deryn York?”
She took another sip of coffee, perhaps to fortify herself, before starting to speak.
“My daughter,” she said, her eyes becoming misty. “My daughter, Zoe.”
“All right,” Remy encouraged her. “Take your time and tell me what happened.” He was trying to make her feel comfortable; the tension was spilling off her in waves. “Are you from this area?”
Deryn shook her head. “Originally I’m from South Carolina, but we moved to Florida about five years ago.”
“You and your daughter?” he probed.
“And my husband,” she added, reaching for the coffee again. “We’ve since separated, but I can’t seem to get rid of him. He insisted on coming here with Zoe and me, even though I didn’t want him to.”
“So you’ve moved here from Florida?”
“Not permanently,” she quickly corrected. “I hate the cold, but I heard the best doctors are here, so I didn’t really have a choice. As soon as they figure out what’s wrong with Zoe, we’ll go right back home.”
Remy nodded, taking a drink of his coffee. “Your daughter is sick then?”
Deryn stared down into the contents of her mug. “The doctors in Florida say she’s probably autistic,” she explained quietly, then looked up at Remy. “But Carl wanted to be sure, and he said the best doctors are here. He’s from here originally.”
“Where were you taking her?”
“Franciscan Hospital for Children.” She stopped, reaching down into her bag and removing a pack of cigarettes. Without even asking Remy if it was okay, she placed one between her lips and lit it with a disposable lighter.
“I can’t believe how fucking stupid I was,” she said, dropping the lighter and package of smokes back into her bag. “Oh, is this all right?” she asked, suddenly conscious of what she was doing.
“It’s fine,” Remy said, not wanting to upset her. They were finally getting someplace, and he didn’t want to cancel the momentum. “Why do you say you were stupid?”
“Because I trusted him,” she said angrily. “I let my guard down.” Deryn feverishly puffed on the cigarette, forming a toxic cloud around her head in the too-warm office. “I wasn’t feeling well, so I stayed at the hotel and let Carl take Zoe to an appointment. And that’s the last time I saw them. It’s been six days.” Deryn choked back a sob, bringing a hand to her mouth.
“There hasn’t been any contact with Carl since he took Zoe?” Remy asked.
“No,” she said miserably, finishing the smoke and dropping the butt into her coffee mug where it hissed faintly.
“Have you contacted the police?”
“Yes, once I realized what the son of a bitch had done. There’s a warrant out for his arrest.”
“And you have no idea where he might have taken your daughter?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
Remy stood and grabbed his mug. “Would you like another cup? I can rinse yours out.”
“No, no thanks,” she said with a nervous shake of her head. “I’m good.”
Remy refilled his cup and returned to his desk. “So tell me about your relationship with Carl,” he began. “Was it an amicable split or. .”
“We only stayed together as long as we did because of Zoe,” Deryn explained. “We thought a baby would help us, but with her being different and all. .” Her voice trailed off and she looked as though she had the weight of the world upon her shoulders.
“Does Carl have any history of violence?” Remy asked. “He wouldn’t want to cause Zoe any harm, would he?”
“Oh no,” she said quickly. “Carl really is basically a good guy. We both had kind of screwed-up childhoods, but we managed to get beyond that. We were good parents, Mr. Chandler.”
“Except that Carl has taken your daughter.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “But maybe if I had paid better attention, this could all have been avoided.”
“Ms. York, you can’t beat yourself up about—”
“I need to show you something, Mr. Chandler,” Deryn interrupted, pulling her bag up onto her lap.
Remy leaned forward, curious, as she withdrew a handful of folded pieces of construction paper from inside the bag. Carefully she unfolded them, looking at each before handing them to Remy.
He looked at the first. It was obviously a child’s drawing, done in crayon, crudely depicting a little girl and a man leaving what appeared to be a hospital. The next picture was of the same girl and man, only they were in a car. The man was in the front seat, driving, while the child stared out the back window, yellow circles beneath her eyes—probably falling tears, Remy guessed.
“Zoe did these?” he asked, looking up at Deryn.
