Chapter 2

The police stations was busy. It was filled to capacity. The voices around him hummed loudly. Gilmore found it annoying and irritating. He was quickly growing to hate this place. It wasn't the place really, but the people in it.

Gilmore opened the bottom drawer of his desk then slammed it shut. Then he opened his file cabinet and slammed it shut. He riffled through a stack of papers on his desk but couldn't find what he was looking for.

In frustration Gilmore slammed the palm of his hand down on his desk.

Everyone stopped and stared. He ignored them.

Frantically Gilmore began shuffling through the thick wad of papers that littered the top of his desk once again. When he still didn't find what he was looking for Gilmore went back to searching through the bottom drawer of his desk nearly tearing it apart in his haste.

Finally anger got the best of him. Usually he was the one always calm and in control. But ever since Eloise Singleton had been found stabbed to death, everything seemed to trigger his anger and frustration.

Maybe it was all the recent ridicule he'd been subjected to lately. He'd been insulted and provoked by a number of his fellow officers until he'd finally exploded in rage. He needed to get a grip on his emotions. He was a police officer and was expected behave rationally and professionally in all circumstances regardless of the pressures of a given situation. At the moment he was doing neither.

“Lord, Give me strength for I am weak. Give me patience and understanding of others that I might forgive them for what they have done. Amen!”

“Has anyone seen my file on Carly and Eloise Singleton?” Gilmore questioned irately.

“Yea,” another officer replied. “The captain has it in his office. He wanted to talk to you about it.”

In a fit of temper Gilmore stormed across the room and into Captain Morgan's office. He slammed the door shut with as much force as he could muster. The glass rattled and threatened to shatter. It wasn't often that Gilmore demonstrated such uncharacteristic behavior. It was surprising even to himself. But it felt good. He needed to release the pent up rage building inside of him.

Captain Morgan came to his feet immediately. He was in his late fifties, overweight, with gray hair and a slight bulge at his waistline. He was short, but despite that fact, he could be intimidating. He glared down at Gilmore with beady brown eyes.

“Is there something I can do for you officer?” Morgan asked with a stern voice. “I don't usually let my subordinates barge into my office like this.”

“I understand you have my file on Carly and Eloise Singleton,” Gilmore stated as if he hadn't heard a word that had been spoken. “I'd like to have it back.

Captain Morgan lowered himself into his chair and leaned back. His expression was cool and aloof. His eyes seemed to penetrate Gilmore to the depths of his soul. The captain held the file up and whisked it back and forth, then gently laid it back down on his desk.

“I've just been informed by internal affairs there will be an investigation into Eloise's death.”

Somehow this didn't surprise Gilmore. He had half expected it. He was young, inexperienced. He didn't have what it took to be a police officer. He never would. They should just relieve him of his duties now and save the time and money it would take to investigate the incident.

“Have a seat, officer,” Morgan commanded waving his hand toward a chair in front of his desk.

Gilmore did as he was told and remained silent.

“Do you understand what that means to your career?” Captain Morgan asked on a serious note.

Gilmore shifted restlessly in his chair feeling at a slight disadvantage. “I believe I do sir. I could be suspended without pay until the investigation is through. It also means, I could lose my job.”

Captain Morgan peered over his desk at Gilmore. His eyes glimmered with warmth and sympathy.

“Internal Affairs wanted to suspend you today,” Morgan admitted. “But I was able to convince them to keep you on while the investigation is under way.”

In disbelief Gilmore asked, “How'd you do that sir?”

Without expression the captain replied, “I told them that you were the only one that would be able to find that woman's killer. I told them you had inside information because you were personally involved. They didn't like it. But they accepted it. It took a lot of convincing. I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off, but, fortunately for you, I was.”

“I don't know what to say, captain,” Gilmore responded.

A strained silence filled the air. Gilmore felt the stress and tension in every muscle of his body. Captain Morgan got up from his desk and walked around in front of it. He perched on the corner letting one leg dangle in mid air.

“I know this hasn't been easy for you,” Morgan admitted sympathetically. “You're new on the squad. You get teased and pushed around. I know it's not fun and the past few days have had its bearings on you.”

Officer Gilmore looked down at the floor in shame and embarrassment. “I'm not sure I'm cut out for this kind of work, captain” he said shamefully. “You should have fired me. It's what I deserve.”

“Son,” Captain Morgan said with an air of confidence in his voice, “you're young and you lack experience. But when I look at you, I see a man who's going to make a fine police officer one day. You have determination. There's something that you possess, that ninety percent of the men and women out there don't have. That's compassion, understanding, and a strong sense of responsibility. Those are all good qualities. So you made a mistake . . . “

“I made a mistake that cost a woman her life.” Gilmore gripped the edges of his chair in an attempt to maintain control. He felt his teeth grinding together.

Captain Morgan stood and walked back to his chair. As he sat down he picked up Carly and Eloise's folder and handed it to Gilmore. The officer eyed it skeptically before taking hold of it.

“I read the file, Officer Gilmore. You wanted to give Eloise Singleton the benefit of the doubt. You wanted to believe there was something good in her. And Carly. You felt sympathetic toward her and you didn't want to be responsible for taking her away from her mother. The only sure thing she had in her life.”

Officer Gilmore looked up with evidence of tears in his eyes. “I walked into a situation I didn't know how to handle, captain. My instincts told me to do one thing, but my heart told me to do something else. I listened to my heart, now a woman is dead.”

“Sometimes listening to your heart isn't always a bad thing.”

Gilmore sighed. “In this case, it was.”

“Yes, it was,” Captain Morgan replied. “But next time you'll think twice before making the same mistake again. I think you're under a misconception. Being a police officer doesn't mean you'll never make mistakes. We're all human. It's how you deal with those mistakes that build you up or tear you down. Only you can decide which it's going to be.”

Gilmore was speechless. He allowed the captain's words to play around in his head for a few minutes. What he said made absolute sense. He looked up at the captain with eyes full of doubt and fear.

“What do you think will happen with internal affairs?”

“I believe everything will turn out to your advantage, Officer Gilmore. If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now. I'd have you clear out your desk and I'd be escorting you out the door.” There was a pause, then Morgan continued. “I believe you have potential. You just need to learn how to direct your thoughts and feelings and intuitions and make something positive out of them.”

“And how do you suppose I do that?” Gilmore asked.

“Through experience,” Captain Morgan replied. “To be quite frank with you, you have a lot to learn. But I also know you aren't going to learn it all in one day. It takes time, energy, and extreme effort. But you have to be strong and be able to tough it out. Otherwise it will all be for nothing.”

Again there was a thick silence that lingered in the room.

“I know you feel responsible for what happened to Eloise Singleton,” Captain Morgan said. “Personally, I believe that Carly killed her mother, regardless of the fact that she is only six years old. With the amount of drugs found in her system, it is possible that Carly was, indeed, capable of stabbing Eloise Singleton to death. Most of those sitting out there at those desk believe it to.”

“It's impossible?” Gilmore snapped. “You're right, Carly is only six year old.” He waved her picture in front of the captain's face. “She didn't have the strength to stab her mother hard enough to kill her. And how could she have started that fire when she was full of drugs? It goes against all logic. There had to be someone else in that house that night.”

“You have to be reasonable. The only finger prints on the knife were Carly's. And there are no witnesses that could put anyone else in that house at the time of the killing.”

Gilmore snorted in disgust. “Excuse me. There are witnesses. They just choose not to speak right now. But someone knows something. And I'm going to find out what it is.”

Gilmore stood up. Anger shook his body.

“Are we done?”

“Yes,” Captain Morgan replied. “But let one thing be understood. I'll be watching every move you make. If I find you're getting in over your head, I'm pulling you off the case. Do I make myself clear?”

“Very clear, sir,” Gilmore replied as he stepped from the office and returned to his desk. He felt everyone's eyes following him as he walked across the room.

At the age of twenty-three, Officer Gilmore was tall and slender. He had short brown hair neatly cut around the ears and across the back of the neck. He had bright green eyes that could soften with compassion at the slightest incentive. Staring down at Carly Singleton's picture, Gilmore knew, deep in his heart, he would never succeed as a police officer. As he had said earlier, he wasn't cut out for this kind of work. Despite what the captain had said, Gilmore didn't have the heart or the stomach for it. He was too soft and empathetic. Because of that he was unable to rationalize well with situations. He couldn't read people either. In his line of work, it was crucial to know at all times who and what you were dealing with. He'd failed in that regard.

With Carly Singleton he'd made a mistake, one that could cost him his job. He knew for certain now that there was going to be an inquiry by internal affairs into the events leading up to Eloise Singleton's murder. Every detail would be picked apart until there was nothing left to uncover. Luckily for him, Captain Morgan had saved his job for now.

Gilmore felt that the captain had been more than generous.

After all, he had failed to protect a small child. He should have gone with his instincts and called Child Protective Services last week when he went to her house. But he hadn't. Because of his careless decision a child's mother was dead and Carly was in the worst place in the world with no hope of ever getting out.

Looking back over the last few days Gilmore couldn't understand his decision. It haunted him every waking moment. Three days had past and Gilmore couldn't remember having slept a wink since that horrifying night. He kept seeing Carly's face every time he shut his eyes.

He was angry. He blamed himself for the tragic death of that woman. He was a trained officer for God's sake. He was trained to see signs of neglect and abuse. Carly was a classic case of both, yet he had done nothing to protect her. He deserved to be reprimanded, even to have his badge stripped from him and his gun taken away. He had lost all honor and dignity. He was prepared to take whatever punishment he was given.

Only six months out of the police academy, Gilmore knew he didn't belong in a place like this. In fact, he'd been at odds with the entire police department since the first day he'd come to work there. He felt out of his element. He had yet to find his nitch or to develop any close friendships with those he worked with. He felt himself to be an outsider and an outcast. He hated his job.

Gilmore had joined the police force in order to make a difference to society, yet he had failed miserably. He found no joy or satisfaction in his work. Each day he went home to his one bedroom apartment feeling disappointed and disgruntled. Where had he gone wrong?

Gilmore stared down at Carly's picture. He had familiarized himself with every single detail about her. From her height, weight, the color of her hair and eyes, even every piece of clothing she had on.

As Captain Morgan had said, everyone believed Carly was guilty of killing her mother. Everyone but him. Because of it he had been harassed and tormented by his fellow officers. His life had become miserable. He could hear the snickers and the laughter behind his back. He pretended that none of it mattered to him. But deep down, it destroyed a little piece of him at a time. Soon there would be nothing left of him.

Gilmore knew that Carly's life lay in the palm of his hand. If he weren't able to find the person responsible for her mother's death, Carly would be sentenced to a death of her own.

Gilmore couldn't understand what it was about Carly that touched him this way. He'd become obsessed with her. She consumed his thoughts day and night. He knew it wasn't rational. It went against all the training he had received in the academy. The first thing you were taught was to never get personally involved. But Gilmore was. He had been from the moment he'd stepped into that house over a week ago.

He just couldn't help himself. Because of his actions Gilmore felt completely and utterly responsible for Carly Singleton. It was because of him that she was in this hopeless situation. He had to clear her name or she'd never have any possibilities of living a normal life.

Gilmore placed Carly's picture inside of a manila folder and gently closed it. He had already prepared his report of the murder and the fire. Inside the folder were pictures of what was left of the murder victim after the fire, the blood splatters, and the condition the room had been left in after the fire.

Gilmore hadn't expected to find much when he'd returned to the house. But what he'd discovered was monumental. It proved without a doubt that Carly Singleton did not kill her mother. There was no possible way. Even drugged, a girl her size and strength could not have overpowered a woman twice her size.

There had been evidence that a struggled had ensued. The dining room table had been overturned, along with the chairs. A lamp had been shattered on the floor and a picture had been knocked off the wall. There was no possible way that Carly could have overturned the table.

With the placement of the blood splatters and the depth of the knife wounds, it had taken someone of great magnitude to kill a woman like Eloise. Possibly a man. Her lover, her husband, maybe her dealer. Gilmore wasn't sure which was the most likely suspect. He didn't know much about Carly's mother other than the fact that she was an alcoholic and drug addict, that she had been arrested for two misdemeanor convictions for shoplifting. There had been no reports of a husband or a current boyfriend when he'd been summoned to her house a week ago.

He'd been told it was a routine check up. Now it seemed anything but routine. He was investigating a murder and an attempted murder.

Carly's tox screen showed that she had been poisoned with amphetamines and barbiturates, the same street drugs her mother had been taking. Someone had set the fire in an attempt to frame and kill the only living witness. Carly. The story couldn't get any more gruesome than that.

The fire department hadn't released their findings yet as to what exact chemicals were used in order to start the fire. Whatever it was, it had been highly combustible and had spread rather quickly. The house had gone up like an inferno. It hadn't been meant for Carly to survive.

It was only by chance that Gilmore had been in the neighborhood the night of the fire. He was doing a follow up on Carly to make sure the child was alright. As he had approached the house that night, he had seen the smoke rising from the attic. Gilmore assumed that's were the fire had originated. He also believed that gasoline had been poured on the walls, the floor and in the kitchen to help the fire spread in the quickest way possible.

The lab had found evidence of gasoline in Carly's clothing when they had been removed and confiscated them at the Mannerly Psychiatric Hospital where Carly had been taken the night her mother had been murdered.

Gilmore hadn't gone to see the child yet. But he was going to soon. He'd wanted to give her a few days to get the drugs out of her system and for the shock to ware off. He wasn't sure she'd be able to give him any of the answers he was looking for. He was afraid she might be too traumatized to even talk. But right now, she was the only one that could possibly tell him what happened that night.

He'd questioned the neighbors but no one was speaking. In a run-down, lower-class neighborhood like that, everyone tended to mind their own business. It wasn't safe to get involved in other people's problems because you might end up dead if you did.

Gilmore understood their way of thinking. He didn't necessarily agree with it, but he accepted it. For now he wouldn't push. There would come a time for that later.

For now he stored the pictures and his report in a bottom drawer of his desk and he locked it with the only key in the department. He had scanned each photo and the report on his personal computer at his apartment in case anything came up missing some where down the road.

At this point, he didn't trust anyone.

Gilmore turned his attention to small stack of notes he had printed off his computer. He'd gone to a website to get some information about the hospital where Carly had been taken. When she'd been admitted that night, he had gotten a glimpse of what the place was really like. And to say the least, he was not impressed. He had known facility had a bad reputation, but he'd never expected this. He couldn't believe that placed like that still existed. Places that were cruel and barbaric and treated people like that were nothing but mere animals.

He scanned a newspaper clipping for the second time that afternoon. His stomach turned at what he read.

The Mannerly Psychiatric Hospital was an institute established over fifty years ago by a man named Russel Mannerly. His mother had been diagnosed with chronic depression and he had seen first hand the struggles she had had to face on a daily basis.

At one time she'd been outgoing and vigorous. But over the course of time she had changed. She had become moody, irritable, and sometimes she'd slip into a state of detachment. She close herself off from her friends, family, and loved ones. For weeks and months she would have fits of uncontrollable crying.

Russel had found it hard to understand his mother. And taking care of her during those periods in her life had become almost impossible, not to mention unbearable. He hadn't had the knowledge or the experience to deal with someone with such a disease.

His mother was unpredictable. Definitely unstable. Not to mention unbalanced.

On a daily basis she became worse. There came a time when Russel was forced to make a decision about his mother. But by then it was too late. She had committed suicide.

For years Russel Mannerly had grieved for his loss. It had nearly cost him his own life. In an effort to overcome his loss, he had built the Mannerly Psychiatric Hospital in his mother's honor. He had hired some of the most prominent Psychotherapists in the world and had brought them to the institute in order to help others just like his mother.

His goal had been to provide quality care and a place someone could come to on a temporary basis to deal with their mental health crisis in order to prevent a tragedy such as his mother's.

At first the institute had succeeded in providing the medical care necessary for those suffering depression. But later things began to fall apart. The physician's and staff were forced to deal with situations that were out of their control. They were forced to work extremely long hours in which their work began suffer. The conditions deteriorated in such a way that those living there were starved, neglected and even tortured.

Soon people were dying. The death toll began to accelerate forcing authorities to look at their means and methods of treating the mentally ill. Five years after its induction, the Mannerly Psychiatric Hospital was shut down.

Three years later James Young had purchased the building and re-opened its doors. Gilmore wondered if the quality of care had improved any. He was doubtful.

He felt the tears spring to his eyes. From now on, his only priority was finding a cold-blooded killer and keeping Carly safe. He'd failed her once. He wasn't going to let that happen again. He was possibly her only ally. Certainly no one in a place like Mannerly would care about her. Her father most obviously didn't. Everyone's feelings on the police force were tainted. Despite the plausibility, they were all convinced that Carly had killed her mother. Even the captain of the police force was convinced of it. He had suggested that the case should be closed. But Gilmore had stood up for what he believed in and refused.

If, for any reason, Gilmore was removed from the case, no one else on the police force would ever make a concerted effort to discover the truth. Then Carly's life would be ruined. If it hadn't been already.

He wondered how she was going to cope in a place like Mannerly. She was so small, thin. And fragile. Would she ever survive? If anything were to happen to her, he'd never forgive himself. Never.

Inside the Mannerly Psychiatric Hospital

The walls were white and the lights were bright. They stung Carly's eyes. The surroundings were sterile and pristine. There was a horrible smell of alcohol and pine cleaner mixed with ammonia that burned Carly's nose and made her eyes water.

She wore a white gown that opened at the back and hung to her knees. She hadn't had a bath since she had arrived several days ago and she felt dirty. Her face was caked with soot and her mother's blood. Her blond hair was a tangled mess.

A man and woman held each of her arms down on the bed. Carly began kicking and screaming just as she did each time they tried to give her those pills. The last time someone had forced her to take pills her mother had been stabbed to death. No one talked about that night, but Carly remembered it. At least parts of it. Everyone believed she were responsible. They didn't say as much. But she could see it in their eyes.

No one understood her. Carly hated this place. She hated it almost as much as the home she had grown up in. In the middle of the night she could hear children like herself screaming down the halls. She could hear little girls crying for their mother's or their father's or someone they loved.

But Carly had no one. She was alone and afraid. For a moment she had been reminded of her father and how he would hit her. Sometimes for no reason at all.

In her tantrum Carly lifted her leg and struck the edge of her lunch tray sending it toppling to the ground. It crashed with a earth shattering thud. Chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and pudding scattered across the floor in her room.

This upset one of the orderlies. She was a sixty year old woman with gray curly hair. Her name was Gladys. She wore a white uniform and white closed-toed shoes and white stockings. She scrutinized Carly up and down with eyes that were filled with fury. She raised her hand to strike Carly. Carly flinch pulling up her arms to shield her face from the blow. Then for some unexplained reason the woman lowered her hand and without a word she left the room. The other two followed behind her, leaving Carly alone.

She jumped off the bed and crawled to a corner in her room. She drew her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth, just as she had the night her mother had been murdered.