Third You Die (Kevin Connor Mystery)

by Sherman, Scott

  Mrs. Merr was the co-anchor of a fluffy morning “news” program on a local station—Wake Up, New York! A second—probably trophy—wife, she was in her mid-thirties, a pretty if unremarkable bottle blonde with a sensible haircut and a perky voice perfect for tackling hard-hitting stories like “Finding the Best Manicurist in Your Neighborhood,” or “Online Dating: Web of Lies or a Connection to Love?” Ironically enough, the last segment of hers I remember watching (I swear, I was channel surfing at the time) was “Ten Fun Things to Do with Your Kids This Weekend.”

  Left off that list was her and her husband’s favorite activity: Lock him in a cage and raise him like an animal. That’s the sight that greeted the police when they paid a surprise visit to the chipper talking head and her equally famous husband.

  As far as anyone could tell, Adam had spent his entire life in a large dog enclosure. It was filthy, crusted with uneaten food and human waste. Although most two-year-olds are speaking in full sentences and can understand more, Adam didn’t have any usable language. Low muscle tone and a failure to reach physical milestones—he could barely crawl, let alone walk—indicated he hadn’t spent much—if any—time out of his crate.

  Adam was also covered in a collage of bruises, burns, and scratches that told a story that went beyond neglect into full-blown, systemic abuse.

  It was a tale of horror motivated by twisted impulses that would never be understandable by anyone normal. While evil doesn’t discriminate, it’s still somehow shocking to see this kind of insane abuse perpetuated by such seemingly mainstream, wealthy, successful, and, by conventional measures, intelligent and well-educated people. It spoke to a breathtakingly scary level of sadism.

  I can understand a crime of passion—the slap or shot that accompanies a moment of unexpected rage. It’s not okay, but it can be human nature to strike out when hurt. But what to make of two people who’d gone to the trouble and expense of adopting a healthy white infant (not a cheap or easy thing to do) for the sole purpose of torturing him? This involved planning, a long process of ongoing deception, and a complete lack of morality or empathy. Was this Dr. Merr’s prescription for good health—take out your anger on an innocent child? Raise a kid like a rutabaga and you stay cancer-free?

  After his adoption, Adam suffered two years of torment so pronounced as to be literally incomprehensible, both in motive and effect. Those are incredibly important years in a child’s development—what would become of this child, who’d learned nothing other than pain and how to endure it?

  Besides the Merrs, Adam’s birth mother, and the agencies that carried out his adoption, there was no record or report to indicate anyone even knew he existed. It was as if he’d dropped off the earth and directly into hell.

  I’d been thinking of Brent metaphorically as a Lost Boy, but Adam was the real thing.

  After the article described Adam’s horrific living conditions (and I suspected the genteel nature of the New York Times, along with the discretion of law enforcement, combined to leave out some of the more graphic details), it explained the Merrs were in custody, held with various charges related to child abuse, endangerment, and neglect, but none that promised a penalty that seemed harsh enough to match the severity of their crimes.

  Adam was alive. Unless they actually kill their kid, the law doesn’t have that much interest in going after bad parents—even the spectacularly bad ones. Oh, sure, Child Protective Services swooped in, and Adam will receive medical services and a new home. But losing custody of their son hardly seemed like sufficient punishment for the Merrs’ deliberate, soul-crushing depravity.

  Meanwhile, the Merrs hired some of the best lawyers in the world and weren’t talking. I had the sinking feeling that they were going to get off relatively easily.

  Given their celebrity status and the nature of the accusations against them, the Merrs were in solitary confinement. Flashing back to my memories of the HBO prison series Oz, I found myself hoping a guard “accidentally” released them into the general population, where the criminal code of honor dispensed some rough justice on accused child abusers. I wasn’t generally a vindictive person, and I didn’t believe in the death penalty, but that only applied to people. The Merrs sounded like monsters. I wouldn’t have minded if Buffy dropped by to slay ’em.

  Hell, I’d have handed her the crossbow myself.

  I shuddered and teared up a little. It wasn’t like me to consider violence. Monsters beget monsters.

  What would become of little Adam?

  It took me a minute to find my voice.

  “This is a terrible story,” I said. I looked over at Andrew and saw his eyes were just reaching the end of the article. It wasn’t that he was a slow reader—I’ve always been a fast one. Another thing I credit to my ADHD—typical of the syndrome, I find it hard to focus on one thing at a time. But when I do get interested in something, I hyperfocus. It’s like my superpower.

  Well, that and the sex stuff. I’m good at that, too.

  Andrew looked up. “So, what do you want to do?” he asked my mother. “Try and get the Merrs on the show? Or someone else to talk about the case?”

  I took it this was the kind of “hard-hitting” journalism my mother said she was looking for. Although, my guess was everyone was going to be all over this story in the coming weeks, and I wasn’t sure my mother’s credentials as a professional yenta would open any doors CNN couldn’t get through first.

  Her answer, again, surprised me.

  “Everyone’s going to be trying to interview the Merrs,” she said. “And their friends, families, neighbors. Not to mention every expert on child abuse out there. I don’t think we need to go down that road.”

  Wow. She just made sense.

  “Plus, you know what?” she continued. “Who cares what those people have to say? Can you imagine if I actually sat down with one of the Merrs, those fakakta pieces of dreck?” She was hauling out the Yiddish, once again, a sign she was getting upset. “A shandeh un a charpeh like I’ve never seen,” she spat. “Zol men er vern in a henglayhter, by tog zol er hengen, un bay nakht zol er brenen.”

  My mother’s Yiddish wasn’t perfect, and mine was worse, but I recognized some catchphrases in there. She was basically calling the Merrs crazy pieces of shit, the likes of which she’d never seen. That last part was a saying that roughly translated to “May they be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and burn by night.”

  Which wasn’t so far off from what I’d been wishing upon them.

  “No,” she continued, “I keep coming back to him. The child. Adam.” Her voice cracked. “As a mother, I can’t help but think of that poor, poor boy. And it makes me so angry.

  “Those pigs, the Merrs, they should be put down like dogs. But what about the other people involved?”

  “From the article,” Andrew observed, “there was no one else. Even their parents didn’t know they’d adopted. Their friends, their families and co-workers—the Merrs kept that child a secret from everyone.”

  “Not from everyone,” my mother said. “Someone gave them that child. Placed that boy into their care.”

  She took another folder from her handbag and passed out some more papers. Holy cow.

  “This is from the Web site of the agency that handled the adoption, Families by Design. Listen:

  “ ‘Adoption can be a difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating process. Finding the right child for your kind of lifestyle may seem impossible. But we’re here to tell you that families like yours never have to settle for less than a perfect match.

  “ ‘Let us find you the child you’re looking for, the one that fits in with your special family. Our exclusive network of social workers, lawyers, and doctors will help connect you with the child of your dreams. He or she is out there. We’ll bring him or her home to you.

  “ ‘Our assistance isn’t for everyone—only for the privileged few who demand—and deserve—the very best.

  “ ‘This unique combination of one-on-one a
ttention and access to only the crème de la crème of highly trained professionals isn’t for everyone. Our premium service is for the elite few willing to make a significant investment in that which we know to be more precious than rubies or gold—the happy, healthy child that looks like your family and that you were meant to have.’ ”

  My mother put down the paper and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Those words. ‘Exclusive.’ ‘Privileged.’ ‘The elite.’ In my days, they meant ‘No Jews Allowed.’ Today? ‘Only the rich need apply.’ ”

  My mother’s flaring nostrils, and her eyebrows, which drew toward each other as if trying to meet in the middle, reducing her eyes to lizard-like slits, indicated her genuine outrage. “This isn’t an agency for the Angelina and Brads of this world. No Rainbow Coalition going on here. This is for perfect little parents who want perfect little children—or, as I like to call them, stuck-up rich bitches who want white kids with a clean bill of health and a good pedigree.

  “These people don’t want children.” She was practically frothing at the mouth. “They want show dogs. Babies they can wear as accessories before passing them back to the nanny-of-the-month.”

  “Or locking them in a cage for two years,” I muttered.

  “Exactly!” my mother exclaimed.

  Andrew’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “This story means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” he asked my mother. His tone was sympathetic and, if I read it right, kind of impressed with her, too. As if he was pleased to see her interested in something that wasn’t completely trivial and meaningless.

  Or maybe I was just projecting.

  “There is no job in life more important than being a good parent,” she intoned dramatically. “My children were everything to me. Nothing came before them. All I did was be there for them.”

  The whole time I was growing up, my mother ran her own business. I couldn’t remember her ever going to a school play, attending an assembly, or volunteering in the classroom.

  I did have a specific memory of her mockingly referring to the Parent Teacher Association meetings as “that support group for grown-ups who haven’t figured out the value of a good cocktail.”

  Maybe she meant “there for” me in spirit. Which is not to say she was abusive or negligent—she was a great mom. She just wasn’t Suzy Homemaker.

  Still, I never doubted she loved me. I’m sure my older sister felt loved, too.

  It was surprising to me that, in retrospect, my mother felt the need to embellish her maternal involvement. When I was a kid, she was proud to call herself a “career woman,” happy to delegate the day-to-day child rearing to a succession of housekeepers and au pairs. Now, she was suddenly Betty Crocker.

  I guess everyone has regrets. As we get older, we become aware of how we wished we’d handled things differently and eventually convince ourselves that’s what we did.

  “Where were the people who were supposed to be there for Adam?” my mother asked.

  “Behind bars,” I said. “Hopefully, for a very long time.”

  “No, I mean those stuck-up bastards at Families by Design? Shouldn’t they be screening the families who adopt from them? Aren’t they supposed to be doing home studies to make sure that the children they place wind up in safe situations? Shouldn’t they also do follow-up visits to see how the baby is doing?”

  I wasn’t sure what the exact requirements were, but most of that sounded right.

  “But reading between the lines of that Web page,” my mother continued, “I don’t think they’re ‘placing’ children at all.

  “I think they’re selling them.”

  She let the words sink in.

  “Their ‘premium service’ for the ‘elite few’ willing to make a ‘significant investment.’ What does that sound like to you?”

  “My brother and his wife adopted,” Andrew said, using a yellow marker to highlight the phrases my mother had quoted. “There are fees involved, and I suppose agencies can charge what they want. But there are certain things you can’t pay for. For example, you can reimburse the birth mother’s health and living expenses during the pregnancy, but you can’t give her an out-and-out fee. That would be . . .”

  “Selling a child.” My mother finished his sentence. “Which would be wrong.”

  “We don’t know that’s what they’re doing,” Andrew said. He’d put down the highlighter and picked up a paper clip, which he toyed with absently.

  “No,” I offered. “But it does happen.” I’d seen a Lifetime movie starring Melissa Joan Hart or some reasonable facsimile of her as a young girl who’d fallen into a baby-selling ring. Sabrina’s Secret Shame: My Womb for Hire, or something.

  “I bet this Families by Design cuts other corners, too,” my mother observed. “Whatever preadoption screening they did couldn’t have been too careful if they let Adam wind up with two meshuganas like the Merrs. What about the follow-up visits? How do you miss that the baby’s in a cage?” My mother pursed her lips together and pushed out air, miming a spit. “Animals.”

  “I agree,” I said. “But, still. What can we do about it? I doubt we’ll get them to come on the show.”

  “Obviously not,” my mother said. “I’m thinking we go undercover. A stink operation.”

  “A sting,” I corrected, although she probably had it right the first time.

  “What,” Andrew asked her, trying to keep an expression of horror off his face, “do you have in mind?” I noticed he’d half uncurled the paper clip he’d been playing with, bending back the metal with nervous restlessness.

  My mother sat up straighter, excited to present her plan. “We pretend to be a couple looking to adopt. A rich couple. But a crazy one—clearly not suitable as adoptive parents. We go in . . . what’s that word from CSI? Wired. We get them to make some incriminating remarks on tape, and then expose them for the scum they are.”

  Andrew gave up the pretense of remaining calm. “We?” he croaked.

  “Not we.” My mother gave a little giggle, wagging her finger between herself and her producer. “I don’t think we’d make a particularly believable couple, do you?”

  “No!” Andrew almost shouted in a combination of relief and agreement. “We wouldn’t.”

  “I meant ‘we,’ ” my mother explained, indicating with her finger again.

  Only this time, it was me on the other end of the wag.

  15

  Mystery Men

  Is there a reverse Oedipus complex? If so, I was pretty sure my mother had one. I instinctively scooted a foot away from her on the couch.

  “You want to pretend we’re a couple?” I asked, my voice rising on each syllable, until I squeaked out the end of the sentence like a sixteen-year-old girl.

  “Why not? You’ll be perfect.” To Andrew: “He looks so much like his father did at that age.”

  “Yeah, but now you look your age,” I pointed out, too appalled to be polite.

  “Don’t be silly,” my mother trilled. “You know I look a lot younger than I am. How often have people told us we look more like brother and sister than mother and son.”

  Unless the A in ADHD stood for “amnesiac,” I was pretty sure the answer to that was “Never.”

  “Why not have Dad play your husband,” I suggested, trying the more diplomatic approach. “He’s had more experience.”

  “Oh, your father’s much too old.” She dismissed my suggestion. “Who’d ever believe he’d want a child at his stage of life? Besides, you know he’d never go along with the idea.”

  It was true; my father was much too sensible to get involved with my mother’s attention-seeking machinations.

  “He’s too jealous,” she explained. “Of my success.” Then, lest she sound immodest, she added, “He’s such a sweet man. Wants me all to himself.”

  What my father wanted most from my mother was to be left alone. My mother saw the skepticism on my face.

  “Listen, we have some of the best makeup people in television on this show, right?” S
he turned her attention toward Andrew. “We have them glam me up a little, take a few years off. At the same time, they throw some gray in Kevin’s hair, give him a few wrinkles; he’ll look a decade older. He’ll appear to be in his mid-thirties, I’ll pass for early forties. That’s not a huge difference. Remember that episode we did: ‘Cougars and the Boys Who Love Them’? Some of those women were twenty years older than their lovers. Kevin and I will look much closer in age than that.

  “I mean”—she bestowed upon Andrew her patented imperious expression, which combined the most outrageous possible claim with an implicit dare that you’d better not challenge her—“I really don’t look like a woman past her forties even before your hair and makeup crew touch me. Given the level of quality I know you insist on from the staff, there’s no reason we can’t make this work, right?”

  I could think of at least a dozen reasons, not the least of which was the probability that at least one of the people we’d be meeting with would be sighted. But my mother was studiously, purposefully ignoring me and directing her question at her producer.

  Andrew’s eyes widened and darted back and forth like a rat caught in a trap. Any sane person would tell my mother her plan was ridiculous. She looked like a woman in her forties only if you took that to mean the decade in which she was born. Plus, I was cursed and blessed with looking far younger than my real age, as proven by the fact that I still got carded at bars. I couldn’t imagine a coma patient buying us as a couple, let alone a conscious person.

  Added to that, my mother had no experience “going undercover.” One of her few undeniable charms was that she was always herself, for better or worse. Her ability to convince anyone that she was genuinely looking to adopt, and to trick them into an admission of unethical practices, was highly doubtful.