by Lisa Gardner
They wanted something from me. The question was what, and how much it would cost me.
“What do you remember?” Detective Warren asked me now. “About your childhood?”
I shrugged, gaze still on the closed file. “Not much. I can’t…I don’t…” I had to clear my throat, try again. “I don’t even remember a baby brother. Not a smile, not a whimper…Just, his body. His perfect little form, so still, like a statue.” I paused, cleared my throat again. Still wasn’t working. I looked away from both detectives, stared at the carpet. “I’m sorry.”
“Might be that you never saw him alive,” D.D. suggested. “ME’s office consulted a forensic anthropologist on the remains. Based on the size of the skeleton, the baby boy was approximately full term, but could’ve been born a few weeks premature, maybe even died in utero. Either way, let’s just say he didn’t make it long in this world.”
“Boys are icky,” I heard myself say. “Boys just grow up to be men who want only one thing from girls.”
Not my words, but the memory of an audio fragment, playing back. I caught myself, shook my head slightly, as if to clear the words from my brain. “When was he born?”
“Don’t know. No birth certificate.”
“His name was Carter. I know that, even if I don’t know how I know that.”
“It was written on the outside of the Tupperware container.”
I winced. “She killed him. Gave birth, killed him, that’s what you think.”
The older detective shrugged. “Technically, your mother was charged with abuse of a corpse and concealing the death of a child. Given the skeletal remains, there’s no way to prove if the baby was stillborn, or was killed after birth. Logic would dictate, however…”
“What do you think?” Detective O spoke up, her voice more demanding. “You lived with the woman. You tell us what might have happened.”
“I don’t remember a baby boy. Just his name. Maybe she told it to me. Maybe I found the container. I don’t know. I saw the body. I remember the name Carter. I took it, made it part of mine. My own way of honoring him.”
“But you just said you didn’t remember him.”
I looked up at Detective O. “It’s possible to lie to yourself, you know. It’s possible to both know and not know things. People do it all the time. It’s called coping.”
“Tell us about Rosalind,” the younger detective demanded.
“I loved her. She would cry, and I would try…I loved her.”
“Was she born first?” D.D. asked.
“I don’t know. But she lived longer. Right?”
“Probably a year,” the detective said quietly.
I resumed staring at the floor. Carpet wouldn’t come into focus. My eyes were swimming, turning the blue-gray Berber into a moving sea of regret.
“I was in the ER,” I heard myself whisper. “My mother had fed me a crushed lightbulb. I was in the ER, vomiting blood and there was this nurse, this kind-looking nurse. And I remember thinking I needed to tell her. If I could just tell her about the baby. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. My mother trained me well.”
The detectives didn’t say anything.
“I don’t understand,” I said after another moment. “My aunt is nice, my aunt is normal. I’m really fond of puppies and kitties and I’ve never played with matches. And yet my mom, my own mother…She did such horrible things to me just to get attention. And that still made me the lucky kid.”
“Is that how you view yourself?” Detective O pounced. “As lucky?”
I looked up at her. “What are you, fucking nuts?”
The young detective’s eyes widened in shock, then D.D. stepped between us, placing a hand on her colleague’s shoulder.
“What we’re both trying to understand here,” D.D. stated, with a pointed look at her partner, “is how you survived such a tragic childhood and how it might impact your current situation.”
I stared at her blankly, not following. “I don’t know how I survived. I woke up in a hospital, my aunt took me away, and I’ve done my best never to look back since. The few things I recall mostly come to me as dreams, meaning maybe they’re not even true? I don’t know. I haven’t wanted to know. The first eight years of my life I’ve purposefully blanked from my mind. And if that means the past twenty years are spotty as well, that’s just the way it goes. You rattle off your first day of school, the dog you had in third grade, the dress you wore to prom. I’ll do it my way.”
Both detectives regarded me skeptically.
“You really expect us to believe that?” Bad cop Detective O spoke up first. “You’ve blanked your entire childhood from your own mind?”
“Please, I’ve blanked most of my life from my mind. I don’t remember things. I don’t know how else to tell you that. The first week of my life, the last week of my life. I don’t know. I don’t dwell on things. Maybe that’s freakish, but it’s also worked. I get up each morning. And from what I do remember of the brief time before my aunt came to take me away, I didn’t want to get up anymore. I was alive, and I was deeply disappointed by that.
“Eight years old,” I whispered. “Eight years old, and I already wished I were dead.”
“Tell us about your dreams,” D.D. said.
“Sometimes, I dream about a baby crying. That one feels real enough. Last night, however, I dreamed of my mother digging a grave in the middle of a thunderstorm. And her hair was filled with snakes, hissing at me, and I grabbed a baby girl out of the hall closet and ran away. Except, obviously my mom’s hair wasn’t made out of snakes, and oh yeah, there’s no way a toddler can climb a tree holding a baby, not to mention that in the dream, the baby’s name was Abigail, when of course, it was Rosalind.”
“Abigail?” Detective O asked sharply. She and Detective D.D. exchanged a glance. “Tell us about Abigail.”
I shook my head, rubbing my temples where a headache had already taken root. “You tell me. Do you have a record of an Abigail? Because I mentioned it to my aunt, and she said no. There were two babies. Rosalind and Carter. No Abigail.”
“No birth certificates, remember? No way to be sure.” D.D. was staring at me as hard as Detective O. “In your dream, what did Abigail look like?”
“Like a baby. She smiled at me. Big brown eyes.”
“Brown eyes,” Detective O interrupted. “What about blue?”
“I don’t know. In my dream, they were brown. But…maybe. Don’t all babies start with blue eyes?”
“But you remember brown,” D.D. said. “Blue eyes could darken into brown, but a baby wouldn’t start with brown eyes, that then turned blue.”
I shook my head, confused by both of them and their intensity. “My aunt said two babies, that’s all the police found.”
“It’s possible there were other babies,” D.D. said softly. “According to the police report, your mother moved around a lot, rarely spent more than a year in the same area. Probably helped her disguise the pregnancies, while keeping people from asking too many questions. The officers searched former rental units, of course, but she might have buried other remains, disposed of them in the woods, that sort of thing.”
“What kind of woman does such a thing?”
“A psychopath.” D.D. shrugged. “Munchausen’s by proxy is all about narcissism, a woman objectifying, then harming her own child in order to receive sympathy. Infanticide isn’t that much different. She would’ve viewed the pregnancies as inconvenient, maybe even considered an infant as a rival for attention. She acted accordingly.”
“What do you think, Abigail?” Detective O spoke up.
“What?”
Detective Warren frowned at O, then turned back to me. “You ever try to find your mom?”
“No.” I hesitated, fingered my side. “I, um, I assumed something bad had happened. I know I ended up in the hospital, seriously injured. Then my aunt arrived. I never saw my mother again and my aunt never brought it up. I assumed…I assumed maybe I’d done something to her.”
“Police received a nine-one-one summons to the residence. They found you, covered in blood. Further search turned up two plastic bins with human remains in the hall closet. A warrant was issued for your mom, but she was never arrested.”
“But you said you found her.”
“You said you’ve been talking to your aunt,” O interjected, demanding my attention. “She here, visiting? Or did you talk to her by phone?”
“She’s here—”
“Where?”
“My room—”
“When did she arrive?”
“This morning.”
“What about last night?”
“What about last night?”
“Where’d you go after speaking to us yesterday? You talk to your aunt, hang out with friends, take the dog for a walk?”
“I went home. I’d worked the night before and I hadn’t slept. I was exhausted.”
“Was your landlord home?” D.D. spoke up, swinging my attention back to her. “Did she see you coming or going, can she vouch for you?”
“I don’t know. Wait. No. I had Tulip, and Tulip’s not allowed inside, but it was too cold for her outside so I snuck her in the back door.”
“Meaning no one saw you come home.” Detective O’s turn.
“That would be sneaking.”
“What about this morning?” Detective Warren again.
“I left at four—”
“A.M.?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Used to working nights remember? I went to the gym.”
“So at four A.M., people saw you.” Detective O. “But not before that.”
“I don’t know!” I threw up my hands.
“Yes, you do. You were trying not to be seen and you were successful.” Detective Warren. “Ergo, no one saw you.”
“You said you knew where my mother was!”
“I do.”
“Where?”
“She ever call you Abigail?” Detective O.
“What? No. I’m Charlene. Charlie. Just because I added two names doesn’t mean I don’t know my own.”
Detective O arched a brow. “Oh, seems to me there’s plenty you don’t know.”
“I want to know where my mother is!”
“Colorado,” D.D. said.
“You have an address?”
D.D., watching me. “In a manner of speaking.”
“I want it.”
“Don’t worry, she’s not going anywhere.”
I paused, regarded both detectives more warily. “Is it a prison? Did they finally catch her?” Then a heartbeat later. “No, because if she’d been arrested, there would’ve been a trial and someone would’ve contacted me. I would’ve been a witness.” Another hesitation, the wheels of my brain churning. “Mental hospital? She cracked, finally revealed her inner lunatic, and they locked her up.”
“You think she’s crazy?” Detective O asked.
“She hurt me. She killed two babies. Of course she’s crazy!”
“You didn’t even remember. What does that make you?”
I drew up short, staring at the young detective. And in that moment, I finally got it. Detective O wasn’t spending this conversation horrified by my mother’s actions. She was horrified by me.
The girl who lived it and barely remembered it. The girl who at least got to roam through a house, while her baby sister and baby brother lived and died in a coat closet. The girl who then stole her dead siblings’ names.
I’d spent my whole life fearing I’d hurt my mom. Now I wished I could go back and do exactly that. Maybe if I’d done such a thing, I would’ve had at least one moment in my life worth remembering, one recollection that brought comfort.
“She’s dead,” Detective Warren stated now. “Listed as a Jane Doe in Boulder. It occurred to me that she probably adopted an alias after the night she stabbed you—”
“What?”
Both detectives paused, looked at me. I placed my hand on my side, eyes widening in comprehension.
Detective O spoke up first. “Seriously? You were stabbed, and you forgot that, too?”
“I was in the hospital. They’d removed my appendix, some other…things. I remember the doctors talking.” I shrugged, feeling my inadequacy again, the depths of my self-imposed stupidity. “I understood that I’d been cut open, then stitched back up.” I shrugged again. “When you’re eight years old, does it really matter why?”
Detective O shook her head.
D.D. cleared her throat. “According to the police report, there was some kind of altercation in the house. You ended up stabbed. Your mother must have fled, because apparently you’re the one who dialed nine-one-one.”
That intrigued me, given my line of work. Again, a person can know and not know all at the same time.
“Doctors were able to patch you up, but your mother was never found. Now, given your mother’s history of moving, I figured she left the area immediately. Only way she could stay beneath the radar that long was if she adopted an alias. So I started with neighboring states and worked my way out, looking for a woman of the same approximate age and description as your mother, including a pineapple-shaped birthmark on her right buttock. Thanks to a federal initiative, descriptions of unidentified remains have been recently compiled into a national database. I found a match in Colorado. Of course, you should submit a DNA sample to be sure, but in addition to the birthmark, the body has two distinct tattoos: the name Rosalind and the name Carter, both scripted above the left breast.”
“I hate her.” The words left my mouth before I could catch them. Once said, however, I didn’t take them back. “How dare she? First she kills her babies, then she tattoos their names above her heart? As if she loved them? As if she deserves to keep them close to her?”
I was out of the chair, pacing the conference room. My hands were fisted, I wanted a heavy bag. I wanted to punch my fist through the drywall. With any luck, I’d find a wooden stud and shatter my wrist. At this stage, I’d welcome the physical pain.
“How did she die?”
“Unknown. Body had been dead for a bit before being found, making an official ruling on cause of death difficult. According to the note from the coroner’s office, however, most likely cause of death was complications from advanced alcoholism, for example, liver failure.”
“Did it hurt? Did she suffer? Were her last moments terrible and filled with agonizing pain?”
Detective O’s eyes had widened. She stared at me as if transfixed, then leaned forward. “You’re angry.”
“Damn right!”
“Feeling helpless?”
“’Cause I didn’t get to kill her first!”
“Wishing you could change the past? Maybe go back. Would you save your sister and brother this time?”
“Yes!”
“Maybe you could save other kids. Make sure they never have to suffer the way you and your siblings did.”
“It wasn’t right. She hurt me, she suffocated them, and no one helped us. No one did a damn thing!”
“How did you know they were suffocated?” Detective Warren asked.
“I mean, I’m assuming. That’s how women normally do these things, right?”
Detective O picked up the beat. “The police failed you.”
“Yes.”
“’Course, you work with the cops now. You know that in most situations, their hands are tied.”
“Yes.”
“I mean the calls you must get, night after night. Little boys getting beaten by their fathers, little girls molested by their caretakers. What can you do, what can anyone do? Take down their name and number. Hey, little kid, your life is a living hell, let me take a message for you. Bet by the time you go home at night, you’re all fired up, itching for action. Bet you’re thinking you’re not a cop, your hands aren’t tied. You can shoot, you can hit, you can run. You can make a difference.”
Too late, I saw the trap looming. Too late, I stopped talking. Backpedaled furiously in my mind, tryin
g to remember exactly what they’d asked and I’d answered. But, of course, I had a terrible memory and it was too little too late.
Detective O kept charging, full steam ahead. “When did you first make the decision that at least one scumbag deserved to die? How’d you pick the target? A call you took personally, a case that caught your attention? Maybe shop talk, a couple of officers, debriefing from a situation they’d encountered on duty. How little they could do, and how much it sucked, and you listened and you remembered. You knew what you didn’t want to know…your mother’s house, the containers in the closet, the way no one helped you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How did it feel afterward, knowing you finally saved a child. Must have been quite the rush. You can tell us about it you know. I mean, we’re detectives, but we’re people, too. We get what you’re doing, why it must be done.”
I pulled myself together, chin up, shoulders back. Detective O’s eyes were probing. I forced myself to meet her stare.
“You don’t know me.”
“Oh, but I do. The question is, how well do you know yourself?”
“I’m leaving.” I grabbed my messenger bag.
“Running away.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Avoiding. Fleeing. Doing what you do best.”
“I was just a kid.”
“So how did you know they were suffocated?”
I blinked, hands clutching the straps of my messenger bag, still poised for flight, except suddenly Detective O wasn’t talking to me anymore. She was talking to D.D.
“I’ve studied Munchausen’s by proxy. Never encountered a case where the mother abused one child for attention, while secretly killing others. However, in several instances, the mom made a big fuss over being pregnant. Milked it for attention. Then, when the babies were born, suffocated them in the middle of the night, and claimed crib death. Oh, the drama, the outpouring of public support, the endless supply of neighborly casseroles. You could see how it would work with someone of that psychological makeup. How they’d even feel compelled to do it again and again.