Suffer the Children Read online

  This time her sniff had nothing to do with grief.

  Chapter 11

  Maggie’s coworker Josh had arrived with the extra lab equipment and he and Maggie had divided the work. She set up the portable superglue chamber and put the amoxicillin bottle and the glass from Damon’s bedside inside it, then placed a foil dish of powdered cyanoacrylate on the hot plate. While that fumed she texted her brother that while she loved Disneyworld as much as the next Mouseophile, she would have to check the on-call schedule.

  The iodine processing of the other bottles took place in a small venting hood. If prints appeared in a purplish color she photographed them, then passed the finished item to Josh. He would count the pills, capsules, and ounces of medication remaining, then examine the records and the calendar to determine if these counts were short. They worked in silence, broken now and then by Josh’s Bluetoothed conversations with his fiancée about wedding cake flavors and when his crazy Uncle Leo should be cut off from the bar.

  Even without this the area didn’t prove very quiet. Because the infirmary sat next to the reception room, there seemed to be a constant flow of adults and children in and out of the building. Now that Damon’s body had been removed Maggie left the door open for the detectives to return. Nurse Brandreth had been persuaded, without much difficulty, to take a break and sit next door with the receptionist, to whom she could be heard recounting the entire day thus far in excruciating detail. A health inspector had arrived to be escorted throughout the building; the kitchen staff took delivery of another gross of unbreakable plastic plates, questioning whether “unbreakable” was really supposed to mean “unbreakable” because so far many had not lived up to this description; and the mother and father of one Marlon Butts arrived in separate visits to demand that the county relinquish custody of their child since they had been released from prison, and not to listen to the boy’s grandmother as she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, dementia, delirium tremens, and/or antisocial personality disorder and besides had never liked them. During both visits the receptionist had had to call one of the building’s two security officers, and Maggie wondered why she had not met these officers previously. It turned out that they needed to stick close to the several consistently violent residents in the building and since Rachael’s death had appeared to be an accident and Damon’s a medical event their presence had not been required. Or requested. “Doc Palmer keeps us on a pretty tight leash,” the officer told Maggie after sticking his head in to see what was up. “These poor deprived children don’t want us pigs around. Probably because most of them have a record as long as your arm. And if you don’t mind my asking, what the hell are you doing?”

  She laughed. After placing several prescription bottles inside an acrylic case that sucked fumes up through a particulate filter, she had filled a glass tub with iodine crystals and glass wool. It looked like a cigar tube, but open at both ends. One end had a stopper with a small open tube through it, to let the fumes out, and the other had a stopper attached to a rubber hose. Maggie would blow into this end of the rubber hose, which would push the iodine fumes from the crystals out through the other end and onto the pill bottle. Her hand around the tube would warm the crystals so that they sublimated, or turned into gas without melting into liquid first. She explained this, then admitted that it did look funny.

  “It looks like you’re smoking a hookah. But if anyone asks, I’ll tell them you didn’t inhale.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that. The iodine fumes are, um, slightly carcinogenic.”

  The eyebrows on his round, black face crept upward and he made no attempt to come any closer, leaning against the doorjamb instead. He nearly filled the entire opening, and she expected he could subdue unruly residents without much difficulty. His name badge read, COGLAN. “Proving once again that OSHA doesn’t care about us public servants.”

  “The fume hood catches it all … I hope. It may be an old-fashioned technique but it works, and it works on almost all surfaces, even problem ones like money or painted drywall. On top of that it disappears in a few hours, so the nurses won’t have to deal with a bunch of dirty medicine bottles.” She moved a fumed bottle to where she’d placed her camera on a short tripod, to photograph the print. The curved surface wasn’t helpful, so she took several shots, rotating the bottle. A program could “stitch” them together into a flattened version of the print if necessary, but unless Damon turned out to have something called risperidone in his system, she would be disregarding this bottle’s prints anyway.

  “Disappears,” Officer Coglan mused.

  “Which also makes it handy for use in IA or other hush-hush investigations.” She meant Internal Affairs or spy-type things, where the cops could go into an office or home and process the area for prints, but when the target arrived hours later all trace of the processing would be gone.

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind.” He asked what had happened to Damon, and she told him they didn’t know yet.

  He said, “Not surprising. Not often we get a kid who literally bounces off the walls. We’d have to hold on to the back of his shirt like you’d hold a dog by his scruff. Went through at least seven of his shirts that way. Had to—couldn’t grab his hair. That had had to be shaved because of the lice.”

  “I heard he was quite a handful.”

  “Eh, I didn’t mind him. He was easy to figure out once you realized he was like a squirrel you’d cornered in your garage. And he didn’t talk, which also made him a hell of a lot easier to get along with.”

  Maggie laughed and passed the bottle off to Josh, still discussing cake frosting with his girlfriend. He had started out by insisting he didn’t care about flavoring as long as it wasn’t lemon, but then had some objection to every suggestion offered. Strawberry was for little kids. Licorice was weird. Vanilla was boring.

  Coglan said, “I couldn’t get too mad at him for being what he’d been raised to be. A lot of the other kids here, though … it gets hard to feel real bad about anything you do to them.”

  “How so?” Maggie asked, wanting to know what might be “done” to them.

  He rubbed his face and his voice lost its boisterous quality. “Most of them think that if they ask you to pass the salt and you say there isn’t any on the table, the logical response is to beat the shit out of you. Simple as that. Normal teenage trash-talk is grounds for instant retaliation. Last week we had one girl choke another because the first implied that the second’s shirt might be a little too small. It took me and another guy to pull her off.”

  Hmm, Maggie thought. Dr. Palmer and Ms. Washington hadn’t seen fit to mention that when asked about recent violence. “That wouldn’t have been Rachael Donahue, would it?”

  “Scanning the memory banks … don’t recognize the name … oh, is that the chick that did a header in the stairwell last week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nah, I hadn’t run into her.”

  The iodine smoke raised a good latent on a nearly empty bottle of Ritalin, and Maggie placed it under the camera.

  Officer Coglan continued to shoot the breeze, taking advantage of a new grown-up on his beat. “I decided to work here because, well, I got sick of the prison, but mostly I thought I could give back a little. I grew up in a crappy neighborhood, I ran with a gang, I got arrested at thirteen. I thought I could say that I know where these kids come from, show them that I could pull myself out so they can, too.”

  “That’s a great thing.” Maggie finished with the Ritalin. Behind its spot sat a yellow box of EpiPens. It had no sticker to indicate that they had been prescribed to someone in particular, so they were probably kept on hand as a general first aid item. Oddly, the box had been opened and the pens protruded from its top.

  “Yeah, except—some of the stories behind these kids make my hair curl. They can look at you with eyes so dead it gives me the creeps. I get that these kids have bad things behind them, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re as sneaky and lying as a guy who�
��s done twenty on death row. They’ve been in the system long enough to learn what to say, how to act in front of who. With each other they’re all the baddest mother in the valley. With their social worker it’s all wah, wah, my daddy beat me. In court they’re deprived and depraved and have deep mental issues, anything to stay out of adult court. Usually kids are bad liars, even ones who have been arrested and NTA’d out the wazoo.”

  He meant issued a Notice to Appear, a “ticket” for minor offenses like small drug possession or traffic fines. It gave the person a court date to go in front of a judge, but the person wasn’t officially arrested, fingerprinted, or detained.

  The EpiPens distracted her. They came four to a box, snug in their outer cases, and not looking much like pens at nearly half a foot long and as big around as a quarter. She breathed iodine onto the box. Nothing.

  “But every kid in this building can look you straight in the eye and convince you the sky is green. It’s scary. They’re scary. And as many hours as Doc Palmer and all the shrinks and substitute moms and dads put in here, they can’t fix that. Once a kid has been programmed to never give a shit, they aren’t going to turn into some sweet, caring type. They’re going to rob, beat, rape, game the system, take drugs, sell drugs, and generally be a toothpick in everyone’s eye until they overdose in an alley somewhere, and the only thing we can do is hope that happens sooner rather than later.”

  An accurate assessment, Maggie suspected, but the human being in her didn’t want to admit it. So she said nothing, occupied with the obviously used EpiPens. The outer carrying case of each pen had a flip top that had been opened—and had to stay open since the pen tips had been extended and were now too long to fit. That happened when an injection was made. The needle retracted after use but the orange tip mechanism remained extended. The opposite end, missing its blue safety cap, protruded from the carrying tube and in turn the box.

  In the doorway, Officer Coglan shifted and his voice took on a less personal quality. “Mrs. Sherman.” A female voice answered him, but Maggie couldn’t make out the words.

  Why keep a box of used EpiPens?

  “Family counseling is part of the program,” she heard Officer Coglan saying, in a stilted way that implied he had had this conversation before, and more than once.

  Perhaps the nurses kept them to remember to reorder, or as part of some inventory tracking system. But she hadn’t run across any other empty items, and there were no fresh EpiPens to be found. Only a still-sealed box of EpiPen Jr.

  “Got no right to keep my kid.”

  “Your kid nearly killed someone.”

  “He didn’t have no choice, that other boy comin’ at him. You still got no right to lock him up—”

  “The state says we do.”

  “—and tell me I’m a bad parent. I raised four other kids and half of my sister’s—”

  “And three of them are in jail. Just sayin’.”

  Maggie glanced up to see her now, in the hallway, a bundle of swaying cloth and scarves, hair curled to a perfect coif atop her head.

  The foam in Damon’s mouth could have come from a heart attack brought on by a large dose of epinephrine. Or maybe from anaphylactic shock, as the throat closed up and breathing got difficult.

  In the hallway Mrs. Sherman said, “So I’m a bad person, now? I’m the villain? I gots to have some little college intern telling me how I ought to run my house?”

  Coglan’s voice leaked a pained patience. “Everyone can use help in raising kids. I’ve got two myself, and there’s lots of things I could have done better—”

  But, Maggie knew, anaphylactic shock typically brought on vomiting and skin changes, and Damon hadn’t shown any signs of that. And the ME investigator hadn’t seen any signs of injection. She held one of the pens inside her fume hood while trying to juggle the iodine wand and its hose with her free hand.

  “I don’t need no help. My mama raised me the same way and I turned out all right.”

  “Um, yeah—”

  “People in my neighborhood tired of the county tryin’ to tell us who we gots to be.”

  “I get that. But this is about what’s best for your son, right?”

  “I’m his mother. I know what’s—” Mrs. Sherman insisted, and then her voice became lost in the hum of the fume hood as Maggie processed both the pen and its protective outer tube with iodine.

  No fingerprint ridges turned brown for her. She tried the other tubes and their pens. Nothing.

  Maggie pulled off her gloves and called the ME’s office, where a kindly diener told her what he could.

  Officer Coglan reappeared in the infirmary’s doorway. “Once again the world should be safe from the wrath of the Sherman Tank for the next half hour or so. She’s shut in a room with the therapist and her kid, and whatever they pay that therapist, it ain’t enough. I know it ain’t easy to let someone tell you how to be a parent. I’ve been there—though usually it’s my own mother telling me, so I guess that’s different… or maybe just as annoying but in a different way. But you gotta do it. You gotta listen. Because it’s amazing how much a little family counseling can make a difference in what a kid is doing. Being aware of the problem is half the solution and that sort of—”

  “Do you know where the detectives are?” Maggie asked.

  “No, I don’t. Want me to find ’em?”

  “Yes, please,” Maggie said. “I need them. I need Jack.”

  Chapter 12

  At that moment Jack and Riley were hanging around Melanie Szabo’s door like two tardy students who needed a permission slip signed. A few minutes after the half hour the door opened and the tiny girl who had been sitting on the floor in the fourteen-to fifteen-group room came out. She froze when she saw them, fight-or-flight instincts clearly battling. To judge from the expressions flitting across her face she assumed they had come for her, then doubted, then felt sure of it—

  “We’re here to see Dr. Szabo,” Riley assured her.

  That didn’t seem to comfort her any, yet with a glance back into the room behind her, she squared her shoulders and stepped closer to them. The tiny gesture made Jack respect the kid; he hoped she could defeat whatever demons had hounded her into a life of violence.

  “Rachael had a boyfriend,” she whispered.

  And before they could follow up she had skipped away, as lightly and abruptly as a deer in the woods.

  Melanie Szabo appeared in her doorway. “Detectives? Can I help you? I heard about Damon—that’s awful. Poor kid.”

  Riley did his usual glad-handing, sorry-for-interrupting intro.

  “No worries. My next appointment is a dawdler. He’s probably still perfecting his jump shot.”

  Riley explained that they had heard about the house-tree-person test and would like to see Rachael’s. The therapist seemed surprised by the request but promptly found Rachael’s file in her overstuffed cabinet. It rested in a corner of the room next to a small desk that looked more like a drafting table; it held a laptop and monitor. Some thought had been given to making the therapy office nonconfrontational. No large desk for her to sit behind as they conversed; two padded office chairs faced each other over a circular throw rug, with a third and fourth chair tucked against the wall if needed. No framed diplomas on the walls, only an abstract poster in muted colors. A box of tissues and pads of paper and pens for those residents who found it easier to write than to talk and a blue recycling bin. But no personal items, no family photos, knickknacks, stuffed animals, takeout menus. Jack wondered if it had been designed to keep the child’s focus on their own personality rather than the therapist’s. More than one therapist used the room, so maybe they weren’t encouraged to tailor it to their own tastes.

  And perhaps the doctors kept the surroundings generic for more practical reasons. Perhaps they had learned from prison guards that anything learned can be used against you. Never let them know where you live, what you drive, who your family members are, where your kids go to school.

 
; Or they didn’t want to leave objects around that could be easily picked up and thrown.

  While he puzzled this out, Dr. Szabo spread a piece of white copy paper on the table for their perusal.

  Rachael had used a pencil to sketch a two-story house with columns flanking the entryway. Windows had four panes and shutters and curtains hung inside them. The door had panels and an elaborate knocker. Several trees with big fluffy tops flanked it. A girl stood beneath one, with long hair and a long dress, both of which blew in an unseen wind. One spiny hand rested gracefully against the tree trunk.

  “Huh,” Riley said.

  “What does this mean?” Jack asked the therapist, to cut to the chase. Playing amateur psychologist had never interested him. Actions were much more important than thoughts.

  “Good question. This test can get harder to interpret the older the subject is. Teens, especially, can be unpredictable. Some resent doing it at all because drawing pictures seems like little-kid stuff, so we let them pick their own paper and writing implements. No crayons, that’s too babyish. I give them colored pencils. The colors can be significant.”

  “So we heard,” Riley said.

  “Some get sneaky and try to draw what they think you want to see. Whatever will make us go away and get off their back. Some leave things out because they don’t think they have much artistic ability and don’t want to be embarrassed.”

  “Okay. So what did this test tell you?”

  Szabo hemmed and then asked what they noticed, ever determined to teach.

  “It looks fine,” Riley said. Jack refused to play.

  “Exactly. It’s perfect. Beautiful house, beautiful lawn. There’s a chimney with smoke coming out, which indicates a warm, inviting home. There’s a knob on the front door, which could mean she wants to go in the house. The windows are uniform. If one was colored in with black or red, that could indicate abuse occurred in that room but the rest of the house was okay. On top of the nice, warm home we have a pretty girl with nice hair and clothes. Even a sun shining in the sky. I’m surprised she didn’t throw in a unicorn.”