Suffer the Children Page 26

  “But, Maggie—”

  “I can’t even put into words how much I don’t care.”

  Jack said, “Get out of here, Gardiner. You—”

  “No,” Maggie said. “Stay.”

  This silenced both men, albeit briefly.

  Rick said, “You have to tell me what’s going on with him.”

  Jack said, “Gardiner, just because you’re off on some tangent—”

  Maggie said, “Someone in this building is killing kids, and right now this building is full of agitated, unstable, frightened persons, one of whom is very guilty. We need all the manpower we can get. Dr. Palmer, the EMTs have got Trina. You need to get everyone to the visiting area and away from the kitchen before anyone else gets hurt.”

  “But what happened? Is she going to be all right?”

  “She’s going to be fine. But they need to transport her now.” Maggie herded the fussing older man and the rest of the staff out of the infirmary door, as Jack stared and Rick continued to sputter about personnel records. Dr. Palmer told his assistant director to take the guests to the visitor’s area and start the presentation. He would reset the breaker so that the projector would work and meet them there.

  Maggie shut the door behind them and turned. “Rick, stay with Trina. Don’t let anyone other than hospital staff come near her, got it?”

  “But his file—”

  “Still don’t care.”

  “You have to listen to me!”

  “And I will. Just not now.”

  “But—”

  “Her!” Maggie said, grabbing his arm and wheeling him around to look at the tiny form now being lifted onto a gurney. “She’s only fourteen years old. Someone just tried to kill her, and she knows who that person is. Now whatever you do, keep her alive.”

  Her ex-husband groaned with frustration. “Fine. Okay. But this is not over.”

  “Yeah yeah, I know.” To Jack she said, “You, come on.”

  They escaped into the hall. Firemen were arriving to deal with the kitchen, but the horde of staff, visiting adults, and select teenagers had moved away.

  “What is Rick talking about?” Maggie asked as they hustled up the west staircase.

  “It might be a problem,” he said, and even with so much else to think of, his words terrified her. She got that tingling at the nape of her neck, that patch of skin that recognized mortal danger when it approached.

  Then he asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Who just tried to kill Trina,” she told him. “I think I know who it is, too.”

  Chapter 32

  The visitor’s area, lit almost brightly by the emergency light units, thronged with people. Those in suits or dressy versions of business casual numbered perhaps ten, plus double that number of staff and fifteen resident children whose expressions veered from fear to worry to a trembling excitement. Justin Quintero tried to get the guests to sit in the neatly aligned seats but like cats they didn’t want to be herded.

  He stood in the center of the room apologizing for the disruption. “The explosion created a small fire but it’s already under control. There’s no problem in any other part of the building. We’ve lost the last tray of hors d’oeuvres, I’m afraid, but that’s all. One of our students was injured but she is receiving medical care.”

  That’s a sunny outlook, Maggie thought. With Jack on her heels she glanced at the crowd from the stairwell.

  Even in the midst of chaos, Quintero had not lost sight of his overall goal for the gathering. “I’m afraid this only illustrates the sad condition of this old structure. This is why we need a complete renovation, so we can provide a safe, efficient, and healthy environment for the reemergence of these young people while still complying with all judicial mandates. Now we’re going to hear from two of our young people. Gentlemen, will you come up here?”

  “But what happened?” one of the suits asked, refusing to let dogs and ponies distract him from the drama.

  “Some malfunction with the kitchen equipment, I suppose. The fire marshal will have to determine the cause.”

  The suits, staff, and children in the room erupted into questions. Maggie kept going, up the next flight of stairs to the third-floor landing. Emergency lights burned dimly in the offices along the hallway but she ignored them and pushed open the door to the roof. Instantly the night turned black and quiet, the din of the crowd cut off by the heavy metal door. The missing section of fence that had plunged with Quentin to his death left an inky black hole in its place. The only light out there, other than that of stars and distant skyscrapers, came from a small flashlight that Dr. Palmer used to see inside the mechanical room.

  Maggie strode over to it, kicking a lonely basketball out of her way, Jack at her shoulder.

  She heard a loud click and light flowed out of the office windows behind her, illuminating the roof just enough to avoid basketballs, but not enough to prevent startling Dr. Palmer when he emerged from the shed, the breaker reset.

  “Oh, my!” he said. “Oh—Miss Gardiner, and … are you all right? I feel so terrible about—”

  “Trina told me.”

  This silenced him for a moment. “I don’t know what you—”

  “Trina was meant to be the scapegoat for all the deaths, and that would be so much easier to pull off if a homemade IED in your kitchen took her out. You told Justin to send the rest of the staff to the reception, then went in and set up the bomb. Trina told me a doctor had done that—”

  “I’m not the only doctor in this building! There’s Justin. There’s—”

  “She didn’t know who Quintero was. She hadn’t become a patient of Bellamy’s yet. And she calls Dr. Szabo ‘Melanie.’”

  The man grew stern, as if Maggie had flubbed an easy question on a pop quiz. “You remember that I told you Trina suffers from psychosis.”

  “That doesn’t mean she hallucinates.”

  “That’s exactly what that means.”

  Maggie ignored this. She repeated the theory she’d outlined to Jack. To keep the resident-to-staff ratio at the correct proportions, to give every child the space and attention he or she needed, Palmer had decided to separate the chaff from the wheat. They were getting nowhere with Rachael, too damaged to repair, or Damon, too damaged to develop. “You keep complaining about the lack of security measures, but these kids are kept on a pretty tight leash. They occasionally move from place to place unaccompanied, but not often. It would be impossible for Trina to slip out enough times to tip Rachael over a railing, inject Damon, slip high-powered heroin to Derald, and unscrew fence brackets on the roof to kill Quentin without anyone noticing. But you could. You’re all over this building the whole day long, overseeing every aspect.”

  The man audibly scoffed. “Trina nearly killed you without anyone noticing. You really think it would be that difficult? This is ridiculous. I’m calling your superior right now.”

  “Go ahead. It will save me the trouble.”

  But he didn’t move, didn’t try to push past Maggie to the roof door.

  Jack stirred at her elbow, but said nothing, letting her play this her way. She had already jumped in with both feet and now he just had to hope she provoked a confession, because proof wasn’t exactly lying around loose on the ground. So she kept talking. Anger wouldn’t have let her stop.

  “Derald was the first, right? He wasn’t some poor, neglected, traumatized child of his circumstances. He was a friggin’ spoiled brat, as sociopathic as they come, and unlikely to change. Why should he? Mummy and Daddy would keep him out of jail and he could continue his criminal activity as long as he pleased, provided he took care not to get arrested after his eighteenth birthday. You couldn’t have slipped him the drugs, that would be too risky. He could have told someone, bragged to the other kids—he had nothing to lose, after all. My guess is you simply left them in his room.”

  Even in the minimal lighting she could see his eyes widen. She had guessed right.

  “You knew the bo
redom would be driving him out of his mind and he’d jump on that little baggie like a drowning man to a raft. He had no way of knowing the dose was overpowered.”

  He tried to rally, clearing his throat. “That’s a complete guess, and an insulting one. Where would I even get heroin?”

  “Oh, please. You run a boarding school for juvenile delinquents.”

  He snapped, “They’re not delinquents!”

  “Rachael was,” Maggie said. “Wasn’t she? A messed-up kid, ping-ponging between Pollyanna and Lolita, refusing to even consider facing reality. Did she run into you in the stairwell, maybe come on to you? Or did you wait there for her, knowing she had to emerge for kitchen duty? Did you push her or just pick up her ankles and swing her over?”

  He said nothing, the night breeze lifting his shaggy locks, the light too dim for her to tell if he was even breathing.

  “Then there was Damon.”

  His shoulders slumped under the worn blazer.

  “I’m sure you felt very sorry for Damon, but really, what could have been done with him? He’d most likely never learn to speak, much less read. Custodial arrangements for the under-twelve set are few and far between and most are priced out of range for anyone except the very wealthy.”

  “You have been listening to me.” He gave her a weary smile, and almost seemed genuinely pleased.

  Still Jack said nothing. She could feel the slight warmth from his body along her back. She was spouting off a bunch of stuff she probably couldn’t prove, and he was letting her do it. He didn’t point out that she might be endangering any case the police department tried to bring, that Palmer hadn’t been advised of his rights, that any spontaneous utterances would be called into question. Perhaps, like Maggie, he just really wanted to know for certain who had killed those children.

  Or perhaps he didn’t expect a trial to be necessary.

  She kept going.

  “You’re often in the kitchen, concerned about safety and keeping the kids on a schedule and keeping the two giggly girls in there on track. You picked up a brownie, heard Nurse Brandreth rushing out to the little kids’ play area. You went into the infirmary. This center is your life, you oversee every aspect—so who else besides the nurses would have known about a stock of EpiPens?”

  “Now, really—” he protested, but weakly.

  “You gave Damon the brownie, which distracted him long enough to jam in the first, maybe the first and second at once. Did he make that grunting scream? Did he try to run away or did the sudden pounding of his heart keep him in place? Then two more. It was quite a risk. You couldn’t have known if it would even kill him, or if the nurse might return at any moment or if the receptionist might pop in or maybe a kid with a paper cut. But one thing you were sure of. He couldn’t tell on you.”

  Even in the dark she could see that his eyes had grown moist.

  “Damon—” he began, then stopped.

  Maggie took a breath, which of course made her cough. She glanced at Jack. His expression told her nothing, but he turned up a palm as if to say, Go on.

  “You had to put the caps in your pocket so we wouldn’t connect the EpiPens to his death, but then tossed them into the recycling bin, probably on your next trip through the visitor’s area. You really believe in recycling, don’t you? Everyone here does, but at your direction.”

  He murmured something she had to strain to hear. “It’s such a habit.” Not an admission of guilt, exactly, but getting there.

  “Quentin didn’t require a lot of debate, did he? Rachael and Damon were unfortunates, but Derald and Quentin, they were just plain evil. Anyone who could shoot another boy in the face in cold blood, in your schoolroom, well, no sense wasting a bed on him. And he was the easiest to figure out of all.” She pointed to his dark office window, which reflected back her own image against the black night. Her hair unruly, her hand outstretched, she looked like an avenging angel demanding justice. Or a witch laying a curse. She did not know which would be more appropriate.

  “You watched him play every day. You knew of his habit of jumping on the fence. You told Justin Quintero to keep him on the roof, isolated from the other kids—a way of locking him up without locking him up. You knew Justin wouldn’t go close enough to the edge to notice a wobbly bracket. All you had to do was give Quentin a ball, and wait.”

  Palmer swayed on his feet, running his hands through his hair. He took a step to the side, then back again, as if trying to walk away from her voice and knowing he couldn’t.

  Jack leaned forward and whispered into her ear, “How did he get the bolts—”

  “He climbed,” she said aloud. “He can’t weigh much more than I do, maybe less. The metal mesh would have easily held him; the links would only bend a little at his footholds. And he would know when all the other staff would be tied down to bedtimes or punched out. The dedicated doctor works late nearly every night.”

  Thin fingers swept over the doctor’s face, temporarily smoothing out the wrinkles.

  Maggie waited.

  “You can’t prove it,” was all he said.

  “We can. There’s something called touch DNA. We can obtain a genetic profile from a fingerprint, or skin cells, or sweat. You wiped off the pens and the box, but you had to have thrown away those caps with your bare hands. You wouldn’t have been walking around the building in latex gloves—that would attract attention.”

  Even in the dark haze, she saw him blanch. He moved again, walking toward the roof edge, where the gap in the fence left an area open to the night.

  Maggie shouted a short exclamation and she and Jack both advanced on the man, but he held up a hand as he turned to face them. “I’m not going to jump, Ms. Gardiner, Detective Renner. I just want to sit down.”

  And he did, a slight oof escaping as he lowered his hips to the brick wall. He slumped forward, elbows on knees, shoulders sagging.

  Maggie did not let up. “And the gloves as well. We routinely get DNA from used clothing now, and I’m sure your hands were sweating as you clung to that fence. I know mine were and I had a ladder.”

  He looked up, then, light from the far windows illuminating his face just enough to show her the hopelessness. He knew now that he had been caught in his own web. He would not get out of it.

  “Trina, of course, Trina had to go. She would be your scapegoat. You put us all in the visiting area so that you’d have time to plant your gloves in her room when you went there to warn Ms. Washington of the impending search. Then you had her put on kitchen duty, knowing that the reception would tie up the kitchen staff—on your orders—so that she would be alone in there. One pass through the kitchen with a makeshift bomb and everything could be blamed on Trina. As an added bonus the explosion would force the state to come across with the funding to renovate the kitchen. Win-win.”

  He sighed, or perhaps it was only the wind. “I felt bad about Trina. I’m glad she’ll be all right.”

  Maggie opened her mouth to say that could not be certain yet and then snapped it shut so hard her teeth rattled. She wanted the guy to believe Trina could identify him as the one who put the foul-smelling bomb into the oven. She wanted him to believe that he had been found out and she could prove her theory, even with an emotionally unstable witness and the ofttimes insufficient type of DNA known as “touch.”

  “But my assessment is correct, I’m afraid. There is no cure for Trina’s psychosis. We can try to minimize it, but she will shuttle back and forth between institutions for the rest of her life. How much more sensible to expend our resources instead on a boy like Luis or a girl like Martina. She came to us as a bundle of violent impulses at war with each other, and now she can learn to control them and channel them in constructive ways.”

  “She didn’t seem much of a sweetheart to me,” Jack said, “when she was beating the crap out of Dr. Hunter in the under-twelve unit yesterday.”

  Palmer switched his upturned gaze to Jack. “We’re not trying to turn her into Sandra Dee, Detective. We have
to keep our goals reasonable. If she can function in society, hold a job, maybe even raise a family someday, that is a triumph.”

  “You’re triaging,” Maggie said.

  His eyes lit up, as if delighted with the term. “Yes! That’s it exactly. We can only do what we can. I—I simply wanted to do the most we could for the most children.”

  “But your victims,” Maggie said. “They were children, too.”

  The doctor gazed up at the night sky. “I’m well aware of that, Ms. Gardiner.”

  And then lifted his feet and fell backward over the low wall, into the night.

  Chapter 33

  Maggie jumped for the edge, and so did Jack. But he didn’t grab for Palmer as she did; he grabbed Maggie, making sure that momentum would not carry her over.

  Neither could have caught the man anyway. He was already gone.

  He fell in silence. No scream, only a faint thud when he hit the pavement. He had executed a perfect backward dive, taking no chances, aiming to end up as dead as Quentin had. She looked down on the small form, motionless in the street, searching for any sign of movement or suffering. She saw none.

  Jack was there, of course, speechless with shock, just as she was. After they gazed over the side they looked at each other, helpless, angry, and accepting all at once.

  Trina, at least, would be safe. If she survived.

  Maggie moved to slump onto the low brick wall. Perhaps Jack thought she might faint like some kind of Victorian maiden because he grasped her shoulders and asked if she was all right, and though she did not feel the least faint she let herself lean against him. Completely unnecessary, but she snaked her arms around his waist and pressed one ear to his chest to feel the comforting solidness of him. She could let herself have one moment of peace before the all-night processing, the reporting, the affidavits, the hundred myriad tasks that make up a crime scene. Just one.

  “I knew it!”

  She opened her eyes, and past Jack’s elbow saw her ex-husband step onto the roof.