Kevin’s Story: Part Two

 

Welcome to The Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is: you are home alone watching TV. The phone rings. Phil Yeats wrote this week’s story.

In April, 2024, he published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, and The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

 

Kevin’s Story: Part Two

by Phil Yeats

 

On the day before the start of my annual summer vacation, I looked back on the past two years with conflicting feelings of true accomplishment and deep sadness.

Many factors, including the writing group I’d joined three years earlier and a little girl, Madelyn King, helped propel me from my life as a skilled technologist to a more well-rounded scientist with greater responsibilities in the hospital’s pathology laboratory. I now had a nine-to-five job monitoring the quality of the results produced by the three shifts in the path lab and investigating any deterioration in laboratory performance. I had a subordinate, a technologist who worked on improving laboratory procedures, and this summer, a math and computer science student who was updating our approach to laboratory quality management.

My sadness developed from the days two and a half years earlier, when circumstances placed Maddy in my care. We had two delightful days celebrating Christmas together before the city’s social workers took her under their wings. My frustration and sadness grew when the ‘system’ refused to allow me any contact with the lonely little girl. I couldn’t even send her presents at Christmas or on her birthday.

Her tear-filled wail when they took her away tormented my dreams. ‘But I like it here with Kevin, and Mummy will know where to find me. This was the best Christmas ever,’ were words seared into my brain.

That evening at the start of my summer vacation, I was watching some mindless drivel on the TV when my phone’s ringtone brought me back to the here and now.

A breathless childish voice exclaimed, “Yo, Kevin, the door’s locked. You have to let me in.”

She didn’t identify herself, but I knew at once the caller was Maddy. And if she was outside the front door of the old house that contained my apartment, she must have run away from her foster home or wherever else she may have been living.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I yelled as I shoved my feet into my shoes and rushed out my door, down the hall, and then the stairs to the front door. She slid inside and dropped a small but bulging backpack to the floor.

I pointed at a device on her wrist. “Is that your phone?”

“Yeah, isn’t it cool,” she said as she scampered up the stairs. As far as I knew, she hadn’t been in the building for two and a half years, but she knew the way. I picked up her pack and followed. She turned at the top. “The nice police lady gave it to me. Said I was only supposed to use it in a ’mergency.”

“So, this is an emergency,” I said after we entered my apartment?

“Two bad guys arrived at the front door and started arguing with my latest foster parents. When they said my name, I ran.”

“What then?”

“I grabbed the special backpack the police lady gave me, shoved in my favourite dolly, and ran out the back door.”

“Did you phone the nice police lady?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t answer, so I came here?”

“Okay, let’s try calling her again.”

She fiddled with her phone for a few seconds and touched the screen. We could hear the ring tone and then Constable Meadows’ voice. “Hi Maddy, what’s up?”

“Bad guys were after me, so I ran away?”

“Where are you now?”

“Kevin’s.”

“Good girl. You did the right thing. I’ll phone Kevin and we can sort this out.”

Seconds later, my phone chirped, and we sorted things out. The solution for Maddy and I was a two-week vacation at the seaside, with safe accommodation paid for by the police. Not what I planned for my two weeks off, but getting away from the city with my favourite ‘niece’ and free accommodation was something I could handle.

Around ten, when Madelyn was safely tucked away in the bedroom of the little guest cottage they reserved for us for our first night about two hours from the city, Constable Meadows tapped on our door. Inside, she slumped into an armchair. She looked like she’d been up for hours and through a wringer.

“Everything’s sorted,” she said. “I’m sure you got away unnoticed, but just in case, two constables from the RCMP will keep watch overnight and make sure no one follows you in the morning. Maddy’s mother was a key informant for a sting of a drug smuggling gang that went down today. It was going like clockwork until we realized someone had leaked the identity of Maddy and her mother to the gang.”

“Do you know who?” I asked.

“We suspect someone in Social Services. That’s why I was so relieved when she contacted you rather than Social Services.”

“But her phone only has your number, my number, and the one for her foster parents.”

“Perceptive bugger, aren’t you? That’s why my boss, the inscrutable Detective Twist, had it in for you.”

“Water under the bridge. What happens next? We need someone, you, to look after Madelyn for the next two weeks while we generate a longer-term solution and sort out the leak in Social Services.”

“And her mother?”

“Back in rehab with our support. If all goes well, we can get Maddy and her mother reunited in the next few months.”

She sighed as she stood and headed for the door. “Back to the fray. We must find the leak and tie up the loose ends in our case against the smugglers. Have a good vacation, and please, do what you can for Maddy. She’s a spunky little kid who deserves a better chance.”

Not so little, I thought as I closed the door behind Constable Meadows, but a resourceful nine-year-old who deserves any help we can give her.

 

*****

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/