Everyone is changing
There's no one left that's real
To make up your own ending
And let me know just how you feel
Cause I am lost without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

Blurry- Puddle of Mudd

---

Taking one last look around, Detective Don Flack squinted against the bright light of the late-hour moonlight. He'd been out looking for this missing toddler since 6AM that day. It was well after 10PM, there wasn’t much more he could do until the next morning. He'd searched each and every building and room in a six block radius, and there was nothing to be found, except for the traces of blood in the apartment where the 911 call had been made, but the DNA results weren't back on it yet.

He knew just how much this must have been hurting the little girl’s mother. Seeing the photo in the apartment, he'd asked the girl's mother what her name was.

“Her name is Mary,” was the answer.

It made his blood run cold.

His own sister, also named Mary, had been playing with her dolls and had accidentally tumbled off a second story balcony three days after her 4th birthday. His mother, completely distraught, vowed that she would never live through that again. She had become extremely protective of Don and his older brother Eddie after Mary had died. It wasn't until both of them graduated high school that she had eased her up on her proverbial overbearing tendencies. When Don joined the NYPD she'd been elated, knowing that her youngest boy would be able to protect himself. Eddie had chosen to make his living as part of the LVPD bomb squad in Las Vegas. Dangerous careers, sure, but it was what they wanted to do, and she would have to live with it.

Every case he worked he reminded himself that even if they didn't get a thank you from those that he'd been able to help, he was doing the job because it was what he loved; it was in his blood. It could have also been that perhaps he did it for the time or two that someone actually thanked him for helping to find their son's killer. No one said that being a police officer was easy, especially with these kinds of cases.

Don went home that night and called his brother in Las Vegas. If anyone knew how tough this job was, it would be Eddie. Eddie had seen all kinds of horrors in the line of duty, including homemade bombs in fridges and hidden in closets. He'd told Don about a case where a dog had eaten a stick of dynamite, and the result of said endeavour was that the dog was now spread over a 2 mile radius. Delicious...

“Flack...” came the answer.

“Eddie, it's Don, how ya doin'?”

“Hi Don, what's up?”

“Got an interesting case today...”

“Oh yeah?”

“Kidnapping, four year old girl named Mary...”

Don heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Eddie had been ferociously affected by their sister's death, and even the mention of her name sent chills down his spine. Eddie, aged nine and Don, aged six, still had the image of seeing Mary's skull shattered on the pavement below burned into their memory. Still too young to fully understand what had happened, each of them ran to one parent in the house, and begged them to come see what had taken place.

As the minutes ticked by, and nothing being said, Don nonchalantly hung up the phone and went to the table where he'd set up his laptop. Sitting down and logging on to the internet, he searched for news articles from that day twenty seven years before. It just so happened that he found the article detailing his sister's tragic fall was the first article to pop up.

Four Year Old Perishes in Second Story Fall

James Dolan

Yonkers, New York:a four year old girl was left dead after a fall from a second story balcony left her with a shattered skull.

Mary Flack, four, was described by her mother as “a vibrant little girl who loved dolls and horsing around with her brothers”. One minute she would pull her favourite dress out of the closet and beg her big brother to have tea parties with her, and the next she was running through sprinklers and wrestling on the grass with both her brothers.

All that changed a few days ago, says her mother Elaine, when her second eldest son Donald Jr. came running in from outside begging her to come help because Mary was hurt. Upon seeing her daughter lying unmoving on the ground, Elaine immediately called her husband Donald Sr., who had come running with their eldest son Edward in tow.

It was a sombre scene as Mary was loaded into the ambulance and driven to the hospital. Upon arrival, she was pronounced dead and sent, with her parents' permission, to the morgue for an autopsy to determine cause of death.

The results of the autopsy have not been released.

“We take it day by day,” states Mrs. Flack, “nothing can ever prepare you for the loss of a child.”

The family has asked, in lieu of gifts, that donations be made to Bellevue Hospital Centre in their daughter's memory.

“No parent should outlive their children,” continues Mrs. Flack, “you always believe that you can give them the best, but in the end the small things are the things you cherish the most.”

Mary Flack had the best her parents could give her, and all it took was one misguided step.

Flack quickly exited out of the website harbouring the article and logged into another program which would highlight a tracking device that had been attached to the little girl's shoe. He'd had some of the program from work installed on his laptop, which gave him something to do at home if he couldn't work or if he was too tired to go any further.

As his eyes went back and forth across the screen, he began to notice little blips on the screen. Blip, blip, blip.

“There she is!” he whispered to himself as he called into work and alerted his supervisor. Racing to his squad car, he flipped on the siren and lights, driving until he found himself in the meat packing district, staring down the barrel of his own gun pointed at one Dante Fox. The man with a rap sheet longer than Don was tall. Fox was crazy though, and it didn’t help that the DNA results on that blood found earlier at the scene came back to him and low doses of an anti-psychotic medication was found left behind in the apartment. Dante Fox had been off his meds for quite a while.

“Hand over the girl, Fox!” Don shouted, his gun still trained on the criminal holding the girl with both hands wrapped around her, squeezing her as though she were a stuffed doll. His eyes blazed with hate, but also fear at the same time. His head rotated back and forth as we shouted at him to hand over the girl. He didn’t know what to do.

Dante Fox didn’t know what he was doing.

He was having a psychotic break.

Don had arrested the guy before, and knew that Fox heard a voice that went by the name of Alexander. The only way to get through to Fox was to appeal to what Alexander was telling him to do.

“Stand down!” he shouted to the other officers. It took three or four shouts before they listened, and Don put his gun back into his holster. Very slowly, he approached Dante, who still held the screaming girl in his arms.

“Dante…” Don very calmly addressed him. “Dante, what does Alexander say?”

He stopped moving. I’d gotten him exactly where I wanted him. If he thought I could talk to Alexander like he could maybe he would let the girl go.

“I have to protect her; I have to protect the girl…”

“Protect her from what?” Mike had one hand up to keep distance between himself and Dante, who clearly was babbling, not sure of what he was doing.

“He said I have to protect her… protect her… protect her…” he kept insisting.

“Dante, don’t you think that if the girl needs to be safe, she’ll be safest with her mother?” Mike pointed to the little girl’s mother, who stood behind them by the police cruisers. “Does Alexander say that she’ll be safest with her mother?”

“She’s mine!” he shouted, holding the girl closer, shaking her almost violently.

“Dante…” Don addressed him again. “Mary belongs with her mother. She’ll be safe with her mother.” He waited. “Even Alexander says Mary will be safe with her mother.”

Slowly, Dante nodded his head and let go of her. She wobbled toward Don, who picked her up and clapped Dante on the shoulder. “You made the right decision…” two other officers took over and got him up.

As Don walked toward the little girl’s mother with Mary in his arms, Dante was lead to the back of a police cruiser. The baby’s mother saw Don with her girl in his arms, unharmed.

Suddenly little droplets of rain began to fall, and by the time Don reached Mary’s mother and let the little girl envelop her mother again, it had flat out started pouring. He saw the tears well up as Mary’s mother kissed her baby girl.

Don glanced over at Dante Fox being driven away in a squad car to Central Booking, and then again faced the woman holding Mary.

Touching his arm, there were tears in her eyes.

“Thank you.”

What was that line again? “Maybe we do this job for the one or two people who actually thank us for finding their son’s killer.”

Well little Mary wasn’t dead, and he’d gotten a thank you. It made his job worthwhile.

Don Flack didn’t even feel the rain soaking through his clothes as he smiled, whispered a “Good Luck” to her and walked back to his squad car. Driving away, he glanced in his rear view mirror and saw Mary and her mother standing in the rain, Mary waving goodbye.