Jason frowned, “Invisible?”
“Like brain damage from too little oxygen if a child is choked or smothered or if his head is held under water. Or if a child is shaken so hard his brain moves inside his skull. Or if a child’s head is banged or slammed hard during a beating to cause brain injury. Or if he’s forced to take pills or drink chemicals like cleaning products that harm his brain or nervous system. Or even starvation, if a child hasn’t nutrition to grow a normal brain, especially infants and toddlers.”
“Geez, I never thought about that.”
“And Jay, there’s more.” She slid sliced onions into the green beans. “After what happened to me, the doctor asked if I wanted counseling. I said no because while my experience was awful at the time, Ruger was the threat and the danger ended when he died. Not so for poor Tina, of course, but her terrible treatment was different from mine. Anyway, the doctor explained that besides invisible physical damage, emotional damage is also invisible. He talked about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which we know is that thing soldiers with battle fatigue or shell-shock have. But it can happen to anybody exposed to a terrifying experience; whether a group trauma like a plane crash or a tornado or a house fire, or an individual one such as a car crash or mugging or abuse like Ruger’s.”
“So how do you know if you have this PTSD or not?” Jason asked.
“That’s the puzzle. Some heal and recover, some don’t.”
“Well then,” he said, “let’s pick Hannah as an example. An event left her heart-broken and disillusioned. After a five-month funk, she managed to heal and is functioning normally again.”
“Oh, Jay, I wish you’d picked a different example. Hannah is functioning, but we won’t know how normally until she tries to love someone again. And even if she does, can she make a go of it or will the old trauma return to cripple her new relationship? She’s made good progress and I want her happiness more than anybody, but Jay, I don’t know if she’s out of the woods yet.”
“Gee, I guess you’re right. I wanted so much to see her okay again, I looked only at the surface.”
“My doctor said it can take months or years of safe living for someone with PTSD to balance that terror, if ever. We know Ruger had too many strikes against him to recover, but I’d like to think, given a normal home life, he might have been a very different person.”
Jason countered, “I’d like to think so, too, Jen, but even if that explains what happened to him, it doesn’t excuse what he became. Society can’t allow killers on the loose.”
“Right. The trick is to find and rescue kids like Ruger and help them recover.”
Jason tapped the newspaper, “Believe it or not, here’s an article about a study that says gene changes might explain why two people exposed to the same experience can have such different reactions. It says…” he read from the page, “‘…the common denominator among those with serious stress reactions to a current trauma appears to be a previous trauma at a young age.’”
“Like my dog bite? Hey, I learned a good lesson: it’s sensible to be cautious around strange dogs. But if I had PTSD, wouldn’t I be afraid to leave the house for fear a dog would get me?”
Jason chuckled, “Well, you certainly aren’t afraid to leave the house.” He put the newspaper down. “It’s only one study, Jen, but unlike your dog situation, I think it means people with serious PTSD did have early trauma and just when they thought they were safe at last as adults, terror found them once more and now they’ll never feel safe again.”
“But I thought genes took generations to make even tiny changes. How can a gene change in just one lifetime? Instead of gene changes, didn’t they just learn fear from a couple of unfortunate experiences?”
They both fell silent, wondering at these complex questions.
Jennifer thought of Ruger’s scarred, half-starved dog and its positive response to her food and kind voice. For a time, she thought they became bizarre fox-hole buddies of a sort. Had the dog made a different choice in the deserted mansion’s bedroom, rejecting the cruel man and joining her instead of attacking, she’d have brought the animal home and tried to rehabilitate him, despite her phobia.
Would she have been successful or could animals—and people—become broken beyond repair?
CHAPTER 70
The doorbell rang thirty minutes later and Jennifer greeted the detective at the front door. “Hello, Adam, come on in. Glad you’re early. Hannah’s still in the shower so would you like to visit with me in the kitchen until she comes downstairs? Do you mind slicing tomatoes while I finish getting dinner ready?”
He agreed enthusiastically and they chatted as they worked. “Hannah tells me that you and your mother live in downtown McLean now?” Jennifer began.
“Yes. My dad died four years ago. Mom felt isolated in the country. I lived there too and helped out when I could. But you know police work… odd hours. She got lonely out there. Besides, builders bugged her daily to sell her property. Finally she agreed. She’s glad she did.”
“Where was the other house?”
“Out Old Dominion Drive, near Great Falls. That northern Virginia book map, the one you use for garage sales. If it’s handy, I could show you.”
“Great idea. Mine is still in my van, but I think you’ll find another one on the desk in the study.”
Putting the tomatoes he’d prepared aside, Adam wiped his hands on a dish towel, retrieved the map book and riffled the pages. “Here, this is where our four acres were and where the builder’s two new mega-mansions stand now,” he pointed and she put the salad aside to take a look.
“I see it. And you say she’s happier in town now?”
“Oh, yes. She found a beautiful house. It has what they call a mother- in-law suite added on. Now it ’s my bachelor apartment. Got my own entrance and kitchen. Mom likes to cook breakfast for me. So I eat there to keep her company most mornings. Unless my work schedule interferes. And I do handyman jobs around the house, mow the lawn and such. She loves the house and the neighborhood is friendly. Her life’s a lot quieter now that Dad’s gone.”
“She’s lucky to have you so near and involved.”
“I’m happy to do whatever I can for her.” Glancing at his watch, Adam fished through his pockets but came up empty-handed. “Hannah should be down in a minute. By any chance, do you have a comb I could borrow?”
“Why, yes. You should find five or six in the laundry room on top of the washing machine. I cleaned them just today.”
Alone in the kitchen, Jennifer’s mind wandered back to her earlier conversation that evening with Jason. Something bothered her… something just beyond her ability to draw it in.
Ten minutes later, when Jennifer used the bathroom herself, she noticed a comb on the edge of the sink. She stared at it a moment before tidying that area for company.
***
After dinner, the smaller Grands left the table to play elsewhere while the adults nibbled at dessert and sipped coffee.
“Well, Adam,” Jason began as those around the dining tables leaned closer, “You know we’re all curious about this case that put our family through such a scare. Anything more to tell us?”
All eyes focused on Adam, who sat beside Hannah. He put down his coffee cup and stood. “I know you want closure, but anything I say here tonight is off the record, not to be discussed elsewhere. Okay?” He looked around expectantly and all nodded agreement.
Adam recounted the general information he’d given his boss earlier that afternoon. Then he described the attorney who visited Wendey, sent Ruger to the military academy and sold the mother’s land to pay her bills. “Over time, this reduced the original 260-acre farm to the current 15.”
“And golden acres they are!” Mike said. “Given the chance, hungry developers will carve that prime property into big lots topped with McMansions.” Agreement rippled through the group.
“So this lawyer filled in a lot of gaps? What did you say his name is?” Becca asked.
“Greg Bromley. He’s a respected McLean attorney and heck of a nice guy. He’s very upset about the whole situation. We talked at length and he showed me his files on the Yates family. Then I visited Ruger’s military school. Fortunately, it’s still in business today. The earlier personnel were gone but the school kept good records. Their rules have changed a lot in the meantime. They wouldn’t admit a cadet now on the terms Ruger needed.
“So how did this guy become a serial killer?” Bethany wanted to know.
“I guess the bottom line is that cruelty has consequences,” Adam said. “The father terrorized his wife and children. When he was institutionalized, the mother was too damaged mentally to break the chain of abuse. Ruger was just the next link. Did you know three million cases of abuse or neglect are reported in America every year? Right here in Fairfax County last year we received 5,400 calls reporting child abuse. Of those, 2,700 were documentable cases. And we’re not talking low-income areas. Some happened right here in McLean. Yet for all that are reported, many are not. Like the nightmare at the Yate’s house. Those are the children we can’t protect.”
Murmurs of disbelief traveled around the table. No one realized the problem existed in McLean.
Hannah said, “Adam, you must be a very good detective to discover all this.”
Embarrassed, he nodded to her. “Part effort and part luck, like all cases. One person says a name or a place that leads to the next. And so on. Considering how many years back the clues led, the story came together pretty fast. One interesting fact is that detectives are often the first to pull a whole puzzle together. That’s because they try to interview everyone involved in a case. Others just know isolated pieces of the total picture. Say, for instance, the academy commandant or the medical examiner or the toxicologist or the neighbors or the Army.”
“So after Ruger left home for the military school, did the mother change?” Bethany asked.
“Not for the better. Our investigation includes talking with neighbors. They said local kids occasionally sneaked onto her property. They called her ‘The Witch’ and described her with wild hair, a shrill voice and weird behavior. If she caught sight of them, she screamed at them to leave her property. In fairness, signs were posted along the outside of her property, so the kids were trespassing.”
Jennifer shook her head sadly. “Except for the dreadful way she treated her little boys, I feel sorry for her. I mean you told me she started out a normal, bright, healthy person; yet look at the miserable direction her life took. Makes us count our own blessings.”
The group chatted amiably a few minutes before Kaela interrupted. “Didn’t you say Ruger had a brother? What happened to him?”
“Good question, but we don’t know.” Adam kept to himself that the grave search at the farm included the tragic expectation of finding the boy’s remains.
CHAPTER 71
Adam leaned down for a sip of his coffee, grateful for Hannah’s encouraging smile shining up at him. “How am I doing?” he asked her quietly.
“Magnificently!” she answered back.
He stood again and asked the family, “Any other questions?”
“Given his awful childhood, how did Ruger adjust to school?” Kaela asked. “Hey, I’m a first grade teacher. I need to know these things.”
“No public school record exists for either brother, but they also had no birth certificates! The mother was a teacher and presumably home-schooled her sons. Academy files show Ruger could read and write when he arrived. He made good marks and excelled in military skills. Compared to his dysfunctional home life, the orderly academy routine had to be an improvement.”
Jennifer said, “Hard for you all to believe now, but thirty years ago obedient kids were the popular objective, and the majority thought tough discipline and physical punishment were the ways to make that happen. So even if those boys had attended public school in those days and someone noticed their abuse, there might not have been intervention. Public and parochial schools doled out physical punishment, with or without parents’ consent. So did some fundamentalist churches. And a child’s parents might punish him again when he got home for causing trouble at school. Spare- the-rod-and-spoil-the-child actually passed for wisdom then.”
“Mom’s right,” Hannah added. “I saw a TV documentary last week that said only in the last fifty years did mistreatment of children create enough public outcry for the federal government to pass protective laws. And guess how it originally began?”
“How?” Mike asked.
“Laws existed to protect animals way before they did children. So a family in New York City called their local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and asked them to investigate a neighbor who treated his daughter worse than any dog. The SPCA did, and from that incident gradually grew the child protection laws we have now in every state.”
Adam added, “And those laws now include missing and exploited kids, not just abused or neglected ones. No question, current law offers the best child protection ever. Still, staffing, funding and enforcing are always challenges. In Ruger’s case, their deliberately isolated family discouraged outsiders. Only Bromley was in a position to read the situation at the farm and help the boy. Law enforcement today holds as suspicious this same kind of isolation and secrecy that cults practice and often tries to investigate their treatment of children.”
Mumbles about cults animated the listeners.
“Anything else?” Adam asked.
Mike said, “My own six-year-old’s behavior still seems to be growing and forming, not set in stone. If Ruger left that environment at age six, couldn’t he still recover? What tipped him from abused kid over to psychopathic killer?”
Jennifer and Jason exchanged looks, listening for Adam’s answer. Perhaps he’d add information to their conversation earlier that evening.
“It’s easy enough to hate someone who tortures you. Our psychologist thinks Ruger subconsciously wanted his mother’s love but consciously hated her for withholding that love… and hurting him besides. Reaching puberty and adulthood complicated this situation. As a result, he didn’t trust women, although he wanted and needed the normal relationships any adult male would. When rejected, that latent anger against his mother spilled out on the nearest handy female victim. The hate-the-thing-you-love syndrome is explosive stuff. To compensate for his helplessness as a child, he reinvented himself with power and control.”
Thinking back to her curiosity about the remaining mysterious room at Ruger’s house, Jennifer asked, “So what was the ‘important work’ he did in his office?”
“The short answer is that we don’t know. The long answer is the Army confiscated Ruger’s computer. They promised to tell us facts found there relating to our case. So far, they’ve volunteered nothing, saying it’s classified. But we can make some guesses. His office had lots of books about the militia movement and covert operations. He owned an attention-getting arsenal of guns. And stacked in one corner were hundreds of copies of Playboy Magazines.”
Jennifer’s hand went up. “I know where he got those,” and she told her story.
“Any other questions?” Adam asked the group.
Jennifer raised her hand again, “Two quick ones: when do I get my stolen van back and are the things I bought at garage sales that day still inside?”
Above the chorus of patronizing groans from the other family members, Becca said, “Only our mom would think about that at a time like this!”
Smiling with amusement, Adam responded, “The police inventoried everything in the van and your vehicle comes back tomorrow. Let’s presume everything’s still inside.”
“If not,” Hannah joked, “she knows where to find you, Adam!” This gave everyone a very good laugh and seemed to end the evening on a high note.
Jason stood, clinked his fork against a glass for attention and when the room quieted said, “Adam, we all thank you again for your crucial role in solving this crime, for rescuing Jennifer and Tina from the f
arm and Hannah at the hospital. We are each and every one in your debt for your priceless gifts to our family.” Enthusiastic applause echoed through the dining room, together with “here-here” and “hurray, Adam!” Hannah snuggled her shoulder against him.
This was Adam’s cue to sit down, but he did not.
CHAPTER 72
As the tumult of appreciation died down, Adam still stood before the group. “Just one more thing,” he began, “I know you’ve already absorbed many shocks the past few weeks, but I’m afraid there’s one more.” He paused, readying himself to lob another.
Jennifer reached nervously for her husband’s hand, murmuring her apprehension into his ear, “Jason, can our family handle more bad news right now?”
Adam looked at the group nervously. “A couple of things I say next may surprise you, but please listen anyway.” Looking uncomfortable, he drew a deep breath. Then, turning to the girl seated beside him, he said, “Hannah, I love you and I think we can share a wonderful life together. Please, will you marry me?”
Shocked silence filled the room as Hannah stared up at him in stunned surprise. Absorbing the impact of his words, her serious expression furrowed more as she rose to her feet beside Adam and looked at him as if for the first time.
Everyone at the table knew about the disastrous end of Hannah’s long relationship with Kevin. They remembered her months of gloom, distrusting both men and her own judgment. Jennifer’s fingers tightened anxiously on her husband’s hand.
The electrified silence hung in the hushed room and Hannah searched Adam’s eyes as if her answer lay somewhere within them. At last she spoke. “Detective Iverson,” she looked up at his hopeful face, “Yes!” she cried, beaming her dazzling smile up at him and then to the room full of family faces. “Yes, Adam, I will marry you!”
Immediate wild applause, whooping, foot stomping and whistles filled the room as the handsome young couple shared a kiss, their happiness radiating out to those gathered around them.
Garage Sale Stalker (Garage Sale Mysteries) Page 31