When Secrets Die

by Lynn S. Hightower

  “That’s no surprise.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “She probably made the whole thing up.”

  “Always that possibility, but this time I think not. I did a little research. Her friend in trouble is a girl named Blaine Marsden. Fifteen years old. Her mother is Emma Marsden, the one in the papers?”

  “The Munchausen Mama?”

  “Yeah. Looks like this kid ran away from home.”

  “Can’t say I blame her. Whatever happened with that case? Didn’t they put the mother in jail?”

  “No. It’s still grinding away in the system. Our office launched an investigation, but only on the say-so of the doctor. The word is, there’s not a shred of actual evidence the mother did anything at all. But they are proceeding to take the daughter and put her in foster care. They tried to cut her a deal, according to the paperwork. Said if she’d admit to it, and take parenting classes … but she said, hell no, she wasn’t guilty, and she would fight them.”

  “You’re telling me they’re going to take the child out of her home with no evidence just because this doctor said so?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. One of Cathy Reardon’s cases.”

  “Cathy Reardon? That piece of work who tried to put Kirby in jail when he took that gun to the Y?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Okay, I just changed sides. I’m with the mother.”

  “So am I. The report says the doctor was suspicious because she was—quote—very proactive in her son’s medical care.”

  “Charlie, you know that’s a description of any good mother. You think for yourself, you don’t just do like they tell you. Nobody knows your child like you do.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “You can’t sit there and tell me they’d take a child away based on that and that alone.”

  “I can sit here and tell you that with this doctor it’s already happened two times.”

  “I thought Munchausen by proxy was rare.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I think the person to be looking at is this doctor.”

  “He’s not my problem. Blaine Marsden is my problem. If I help her out, then Twyla will go to school six months without skipping.”

  “And I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.”

  “It’s worth a chance. It’s not like I can turn my back on this. And maybe Twyla will help herself if she can do it to help out a buddy. A lot of kids get motivated that way. It’s one of the things going right with this generation.”

  “Charlie, this sounds like something you need to talk to the police about. Somebody in Juvie.”

  “Juvie? Janine, you know if I do that, this mother and kid won’t stand a chance. Cathy Reardon is a runaway train for trouble, and I want to know more about what’s going on before I make things worse.”

  Charlie stood up, opened the grill. He turned the steaks, flipping the raw red meat to hiss against the hot metal, sprinkling the exposed sides, nicely seared, with seasoning salt and lemon pepper.

  Janine tapped her fingernails on the arm of the lawn chair. “And besides which, this is the perfect opportunity for you to finally get back at Cathy Reardon.”

  “That too.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “You think I’m wrong?”

  “Hell, no, sweetheart, I’d just like to be in on the kill.”

  “You can live vicariously through me.”

  She blew him a kiss. “You think you might be going down there, to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg?”

  “May go on down there day after tomorrow.”

  “Can I come along? We could go after school lets out, and I can get some early Christmas shopping in at the outlet malls. We can eat some pancakes while we’re there.”

  “Revenge. Pancakes. Child rescue. And shopping.”

  “Just another day in the life.”

  Charlie laughed. Janine always made him laugh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Charlie hadn’t slept much the night before, and was in the office before six. Getting up early was no problem for Charlie, not after all his years in the military. He had gotten worried about that little girl, Blaine Marsden, the kid who really wasn’t any of his business.

  He’d spent most of the time he’d planned to sleep going over the ethics in his mind. He’d had to do some thinking before he went slogging through Cathy Reardon’s case.

  He’d never forget how anxious she’d been to throw his son to the wolves, and how the power she held in her hands seemed to eat her up from the inside out. She had the God syndrome, no question about it. And the God syndrome in social work was a disease Charlie himself did not want to catch. So he’d gotten up finally, and flipped through the textbooks, and the statements on ethics, to remind himself exactly what job he was supposed to be doing.

  Before he was on the job himself, like most people on the outside looking in, Charlie had been horrified by cases that came to light in the media—caseworkers neglecting their charges or, on the opposite end, playing God and wreaking havoc on families that were already in trouble.

  Now he was a social worker. And he was still shocked—shocked that it didn’t happen more often, considering the workload and the legal bureaucracy most caseworkers had to deal with. Seeing the uncaring parents, the crap households … how often he busted ass to get some young girl with kids, no husband, and no income into a government-subsidized education program, CNA training at the Red Cross, or some such, only to find she’d stopped going to classes because she didn’t want to get up that early in the morning. Those kinds of cases made you crazy.

  Everything he needed to know to make his decision was right there in the preamble to the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics. It was his job, his primary mission, to “enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty.” He was to “focus on individual well-being in a social context and the well-being of society.” The mission of social work was rooted in the following core values—service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence.

  It tickled him, more than a little, that the son Cathy Reardon had been so determined to put in juvenile detention three years ago was the son who had taught him how he could hack into the department computer.

  Charlie sat behind his desk and organized his work space. Large cup of black coffee. An ashtray, which would disappear at eight o’clock when the official clock began to tick, and a big fat cigar, which would be smoked by the time the workday began. As for the cigar smoke, he would deny it, as always. Though he was sorry, of course, that it made Cathy Reardon break out in a rash.

  His first task was to gather the information. He was a slow reader, always had been, always had to read each and every word, sometimes twice if the material was the least bit technical. He made his own private copy of the Marsden files, then scanned the database for names and made copies of files that had those names, which is how he came to cross-reference three other Munchausen by proxy accusations from Dr. Theodore Tundridge.

  The Munchausen’s cases, few and far between though they were, always bothered Charlie. Only one had come through the department that he remembered. Charlie had been suspicious because it had cropped up right after a television movie on Munchausen’s. Too much coincidence, was Charlie’s opinion. The jump-on-the-bandwagon effect. But some of his colleagues disagreed, preferring to think it was more a matter of getting the information out so that the syndrome was recognized and reported, like a disease that had gone unnoticed.

  He’d trained enough boys in the marine corps to know there were parents who could do such a thing. Some of their kids had wound up under his command in boot camp. But Janine had a point when she said that this sort of charge was invariably made against women.

  What bothered Charlie the most was lack of due process. A doctor l
ike Theodore Tundridge had to do nothing more than point his finger, and a child could be removed from the care of its mother, with the full cooperation of Child Protective Services. Usually some kind of compromise was made. If the mother agreed to admit that she was guilty and to take prescribed parenting classes, she could keep her child.

  This did not sit well with Charlie. He was personally familiar with having to feign humility in parenting in order to satisfy the agenda of Child Protective Services. What about the woman who was not guilty? She had the choice between losing her child and being ground down by a system that considered her guilty until proven innocent, or saying she was guilty for the sake of expediency, taking the classes, and keeping the child. A lot of women would do that, guilty or not.

  What kind of woman wouldn’t? An Emma Marsden wouldn’t. The whole thing was ludicrous anyway. Her daughter was fifteen, not five, and from all accounts perfectly healthy. What exactly was it that the department had on Emma Marsden, anyway?

  It took him three hours of painstaking reading, and he forgot to put out his cigar, and had to slam it into a drawer when Cathy Reardon peered over into his cubicle. He pretended not to see her and kept his eyes on the reports she would have been incensed to know he was reading pretty much under her narrow, pointed nose. He took notes.

  Tundridge had certain criteria for identifying his Munchausen’s mothers. He’d made three accusations in the last five years, which, considering the number of accusations brought by other doctors, was a hell of a lot. It could, of course, be argued that as a pediatrician specializing in very sick children, he would therefore have a higher level of exposure to this sort of thing.

  The profile Tundridge had put together, according to Charlie’s notes, included “(1) A child with a medical problem that did not respond to treatment.” That one was interesting. It could certainly be the doctor’s fault. That one made Charlie uncomfortable.

  “(2) A parent who seemed medically knowledgeable.”

  So any nurses or CNAs or doctors themselves were high on the list?

  “(3) A highly attentive parent who either appears unusually calm in the face of crisis with her child, or becomes hysterical.”

  That one pretty much covered everybody.

  Also under suspicion was a mother who encouraged more tests and was very supportive of the doctor, as well as a parent who was combative and disagreed with the medical tests ordered.

  Charlie felt the pit of his stomach go cold. So far, he and Janine were scoring high on risk factors. The red flags were broad enough to include almost anyone. Were they prosecuting mothers on this nonsense?

  Other red flags included “A mother with a different social standing from her spouse.” What did that mean?

  “A mother who had at some time in her life committed a crime.” How would the doctor know that?

  “A mother who had had a dysfunctional upbringing,” which was a category that included everyone or no one, depending upon your personal outlook.

  “A SIDS death in the family”—okay, maybe and maybe not. It was a terrible thing that often happened through no fault of the parent.

  “A tendency toward attention-seeking.”

  In whose judgment? Charlie wondered. Did that mean a mother who didn’t take the doctor’s word as law? A mother who got a second opinion, or made trouble if the child didn’t get good care … in short, almost any good mother?

  Where was the hard evidence? Charlie wondered. They didn’t seem to have any on Emma Marsden. What they did have, curiously, was a videotape of her having sex in the parking lot of a restaurant. This happened on the anniversary of her child’s birth, seven months after the child’s death, and it happened with the father of the child, to whom it was unclear whether or not she had actually been married. According to the notes, she had said they were married when in actuality they were not, which was considered suspicious by Child Protective Services. Evidently, in the view of the department, Emma Marsden was a slut, and sluts were highly suspect.

  Her other child, Blaine, was perfectly healthy, but the notes made by Reardon said that often only one child is victimized, and the rest are left alone.

  The medical records were interesting. Evidently, the boy, age twenty-nine months, had been taken to Tundridge with manifestations of severe liver distress on three occasions, the third one resulting in death. The boy would be brought in violently ill, his liver enzymes spiking. The enzymes would drop, the boy would get better, and then it would happen all over again. Tundridge had run tests for hepatitis, congenital gallbladder disease, various toxins and poisonings including pesticides, and household detergents. He had been unable to find anything other than a severely diseased liver.

  It interested Charlie, more than anything else, that Dr. Tundridge had not made the Munchausen’s accusation until fourteen months after the child had died. What had triggered it? Maybe Reardon had her dates wrong.

  He checked the other cases.

  One other involved a child who had died, and was made six months after the death of the child. The third had involved a patient who was being treated at the time.

  Charlie rubbed his forehead. Not enough information, and he was beginning to worry that he was in over his head on this. He didn’t have enough to do anything on an official level, and he had too much to let it go. He for sure didn’t like the profiling. And he’d seen a lot of people get railroaded. He was afraid that Emma Marsden might be guilty of nothing more than having sex in the parking lot of a public restaurant on her dead son’s birthday. Which surely wasn’t everybody’s idea of a properly grieving mother, but on the other hand was nobody’s business.

  Charlie wondered who the hell had been on the other side of that video camera. Awfully convenient for somebody. The video ought to have no influence in the case. Ought not—but Charlie was well aware that it would.

  LENA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Emma Marsden wasn’t alone when I pulled into her driveway. There was a car I didn’t recognize parked right behind the Jeep Wrangler that Emma drove. I heard Wally barking when I rang the bell, and I recognized the man who answered the door.

  I had seen him in court several times—the state medical examiner, Marcus Franklin. My knees went shaky. Something bad had happened.

  “I’m Lena Padget. I work for Emma. She called me?”

  He seemed more like a host than a professional when he shook my hand and invited me in. “I was here when she called. I’m Marcus Franklin.”

  “I know.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me, and Wally rushed to greet me as soon as I was through the door.

  “Down, Wally,” Franklin said. Wally immediately dropped all paws to the floor.

  “Marcus, how do you do that?”

  I looked up and saw Emma sitting alone in the kitchen.

  Her voice had that flat quality common to people under stress. She looked fragile, her eyes dark and lost. Her worry simmered beneath the surface, as tangible as a pot boiling on the stove.

  “Any news about Blaine?” I asked. Emma shook her head. I bit my bottom lip. My feelings were hurt. She should have called me the second it happened, and it took all of my self-control not to ask her why she hadn’t.

  Missing teenagers are the trickiest. There’s usually a fight. The parents are angry and hurt and on the defensive. And in protect mode. They might want to kill their children in private, but they want to protect them in public. The problem with that is the legal issue. Report it to the police, and the child officially becomes a runaway. Don’t report it, and you’re a negligent parent.

  Marcus Franklin sat next to Emma at the table. I noticed that he was wearing bedroom slippers. He did not seem to be here in a professional capacity.

  “Emma, I need to know what happened. How long Blaine’s been gone, why she left. You have to trust me with everything.” I realized I was still on my feet, and took a seat across from them at the table.

  “She’s been gone since the day before yesterday.
In the morning,” Franklin said.

  “Why did you wait to call me?” It had slipped right out. So much for self-control. I knew from Emma Marsden’s face that I had just added another layer of guilt to the weight on her shoulders.

  They both started to talk, but Franklin pulled back and let Emma tell it.

  “We had a big fight. I was driving her to school because she hates to take the bus. And she jumped out of the car and ran away.”

  “What did you fight about?”

  “It was stupid, nothing big. I wouldn’t let her have one of her friends spend the night, and she just blew up. Got totally hysterical, and I … I pulled to the side of the road so she and I could talk sensibly, and she jumped out of the car and ran away.”

  I waited.

  Emma looked down at the table. “I pulled over to the side of the road because my little girl was beating me up.”

  Marcus took her hand. Emma cried silently and the morning light trickled into the kitchen.

  “My daughter has been gone two days. She hasn’t called. None of her friends know where she is, or if they do, they won’t tell me.” Emma held her arms out.

  There were bruises on her arms, finger marks on her skin the blue black of ripe Concord grapes. She lifted her chin so I could see the scratches on her neck that had bled and scabbed over, and the muscle area in her upper arm looked like the sky before a thunderstorm. Blaine had evidently driven her fist in hard, over and over. I noticed Emma winced when she moved.

  She wore no makeup, and her face was round and pale, the way your face looks when you have cried yourself out and haven’t slept. She was wearing comfort clothes—an old pair of Levi’s, quite loose, and a French blue T-shirt that was worn soft but not quite threadbare. Her feet were bundled in clean white socks, thick and soft.

  Emma put her arms back down. She seemed to me like a bird that has flown into a window and lies stunned and bewildered on the pavement below. We sat quietly. A breeze ruffled through the open window, making the blinds sway and clack. Emma held a cup of hot coffee in a bright yellow ceramic mug. She did not drink the coffee; she simply held the cup.