by Darrell Bain
"Yes, thank you, your honor. I'll see you in the morning, but would you confirm for Ms. Meriweather that you are issuing a restraining order? Thank you."
He held out his phone in the CPS agent's direction. "Judge Simonson wants to speak with you."
If looks could kill, the attorney would have died on the spot but Ms. Meriweather took the phone and spoke once. After that she had very little to say other than "Yes, your honor" or "No, your honor". When she handed the phone back she picked up her briefcase and strode toward the door with Elaine right behind her. "You haven't heard the last of this," she declared as she left, but her haughtiness had all but disappeared.
"Thanks Steve," Ronald said. "I take it you've clashed with that woman in court before?"
"You bet I have. Most CPS agents are truly trying to do their best for the children in homes that they investigate but that woman--" he shook his head. "She really doesn't give a damn about the kids. What she's looking for is to get her name in the press and gain the attention of the home office in Austin. She'd love to move up in the Department. We've faced off in court before and she's lost every case where I was present."
"Was she really going to try to take me away from Mom and Dad?" Samantha asked, close to tears.
"She probably was, Sammie but don't worry. She won't succeed in whatever she tries with you."
"Thank you, Mr. Orleans."
"Sammie, why don't you and Betty go to your room and find something to do there for a fifteen minutes or so while we talk, please," her father said.
"Yes, sir. Come on Betty." She carefully handed over Tet and told him goodbye then she and her friend headed for her room. She looked back once and without her saying a word Shufus jumped off the couch and followed her.
The Vet hailed her. "Wait, Sammie! I have to go, but before I leave could you tell Tet that we'll be giving him a few more shots, and that the last one will eliminate his pain completely?"
"Yes, ma'am, I'll tell him." She hurried over and told Tet what would be happening. She had to repeat the message several times since most animals have little sense of time passing. She said goodbye again once she was certain the little creature understood. The white-headed lemur hugged her for a long moment before it finally let go.
Once Samantha was back in her room, Dr. Summers stood up, but before she could leave Steve stopped her.
"Dr. Summers, I take it you were serious about offering Sammie a contract?"
"I certainly was! We'll list her as an animal specialist and use her only on cases that we're unable to solve, like the little cotton-top here." She smoothed her hand over the silky white fur.
"Good. Let me give you my business card and you can send the contract to my office to look over, then I'll give it to Ron. How's that?"
"That's fine. Now I really do need to get Tet back to familiar surroundings."
"Thanks so much, Dr. Summers," Ronald said. They shook hands and she was gone. He turned to his attorney.
"What else do we need to discuss, Steve?"
"There's a possibility Sammie might have to appear in court. If it happens I'll let you know but I'll try to keep that from happening. I'll pick up the signed restraining order in the morning, as well as find out what else that woman might be up to. Whatever, any time she tries to contact you, call me immediately. There's no trusting her."
"I won't. I swear, I don't understand people like that, wanting to use kids to enhance their careers."
"There is no understanding them, Ron. Their way of thinking is alien to us. If I ever catch her in outright scheming I'll do my best to get her fired, but so far she's skated just at the edge of the law without quite going over it." He glanced at his watch. "I'll have to be going soon. It's getting near Betty's study time before she goes to bed."
"I think Sammie has some homework, too. How about we meet for lunch tomorrow at Dennison's Restaurant? Your office isn't that far from it."
"Fine. I should have a chance to go over the zoo contract by then. Thanks for having us over. This has been an amazing experience!"
"Just please don't talk about it, Steve. We don't want any publicity if we can possibly avoid it."
"I won't say a word that's not absolutely necessary, and anything I have to tell the Judge will certainly be kept confidential."
"Good. I'll get Betty for you."
***
Ronald pulled out a chair at the restaurant where they had agreed to meet. "Hello, Steve. I see you picked a table where we'll have a bit of privacy."
"My very intention. Since it's my treat I went ahead and ordered for you unless you want something to drink."
"Too early for me. I'll just have iced tea with the meal."
"Same here and that's what they're bringing." Steve looked reflectively at his guest for a moment then said, "Ron, is there anything else you think you ought to tell me about your daughter?"
"Like what?"
"Like how she communicates with animals. I didn't say anything last night but remember, I watched her completely reverse our dog's behavior in one week flat without ever raising her voice. And last night was pretty revealing, too, not to mention the episode with the tiger."
"Do you have to know how she does it, Steve?"
"I don't have to... hold on, our waiter is heading this way."
The two men remained silent until their food was placed on the table and their waiter had departed.
"As I was saying, I don't have to know but it might be very helpful sometime in the future for several reasons, the first being that she has the potential to earn a whale of an income with her talent." He raised his brows questioningly.
Ronald gazed at him for a long moment then decided he could trust his friend. Heck, he thought, if you can't trust your attorney, who can you trust? "Steve, at the moment we'd rather avoid any publicity that we possibly can. We've seen the bad effects from it. However, would you believe she really does talk to animals? No, you already know she talks to them. But the thing is, they know exactly what she's saying when she does. Not only that, the animals talk back to her. To us they're just animal sounds but to her they have meaning, and very explicit meaning at that. Somehow, she and animals are on the same wave length. Of course, the higher up on the intelligence scale an animal is, the more they have to say. She tells me a mouse thinks only of food, danger and sex and that those thoughts are more instinctive than real language, whereas Shufus conveys very intelligible meanings. For instance, she can tell a rabbit not to be afraid of Shufus and it won't be, or tell Shufus to leave it alone or make friends with it and he will. She tells me most animals are so surprised and amazed to find a human who can talk to them that they're eager to do what she asks or tells them to do. Now understand, Steve, that Elaine tries not to believe it, but I've seen too much evidence not to. Sammie can talk to animals, just like the old Dr. Doolittle stories if you've heard of them."
"Sort of vaguely. How long has this been going on with Sammie? Do you know?"
"Not exactly because she doesn't know. She tells me that she's been able to talk to animals as far back as she can remember. We thought it was simply her imagination when she was younger but it just kept on and on. I've seen her do truly remarkable things, like playing with grizzly bears or getting a mother wolf to allow her and her classmates to play with its pups. And I didn't see it, but she told me there was a grizzly bear mother that let her play with its cubs. If you don't know, grizzly females are extremely protective of their offspring. Then there's the tiger. You saw the video of her leading it into the zoo. What you didn't see was me driving there with it in the back of our SUV because Sammie asked it to ride with us. I hardly need to tell you that I was scared half out of my wits the whole time, but Sammie wasn't the least bit afraid."
"My God, Ron. How about me raising my concept of how much money she could earn by whole orders of magnitude? That's not even mentioning her value to human society. She could tell us exactly how the animals we raise for slaughter and consumption feel about their capti
vity--except that I doubt you'd ever submit her to such an environment at her tender age."
"You've got that right. She's so sympathetic and empathetic with animals it might do her a lot of harm to be exposed to the thoughts of ... oh, say, pigs being raised for meat. They have to live their whole lives in those little tiny pens where they hardly have room to breathe, much less turn around." He shuddered at the thought.
Steve looked down at his steak and suddenly wasn't very hungry. Neither was Ronald.
Chapter Eleven
Elaine's hope that there would be no publicity over the CPS designs on Samantha held for a few days, right up until a bored journalist by the name of Thomas Hoover, who sometimes did pieces for the Houston Chronicle began perusing court orders, thinking he might find something there to write about. When Hoover saw a restraining order against CPS he stopped scanning with the abruptness of a car screeching to a halt. He backed up until he found the piece that had caught his eye again. Restraining orders against Child Protective Services were rare enough to get his attention, and the subject of the order only reinforced his suddenly brightened outlook. Samantha Douglas! The girl who caught a runaway tiger and led it back to the zoo and subsequently helped the veterinarian treat it had been a great news story, but it had gradually died away and been replaced by the usual run of murders, drug arrests and all the other sordid activities from the police and court beat.
This was different, though. He read rapidly though Judge Simonson's restraining order against CPS until his eye caught the name of Meriweather. Even better, he thought. That publicity-hungry old biddy was a blot on the CPS but like many other civil service bureaucratic positions, it was hard to dismiss her unless she actually broke the law and so far, she hadn't. He thought for a moment and then, just as Jennie had, he believed there must be much more to the young girl's activities that hadn't been discovered yet. He wanted to try digging them out himself but he knew he didn't have time. First, he needed to research the history of clashes in the courtroom between Meriweather and Orleans that she lost far more often than she won, then write this piece about the restraining order. He could supplement it with background material on Meriweather, but leave out the factor of how overly ambitious she was in case he needed her later. He could work with her if it would produce more articles he could place, despite not liking the woman. At the same time he knew a television reporter and an internet news source he could sell this information to, or maybe just trade it for a future favor. After all, the TV and big city internet reporters had much deeper pockets than he did, resources that would be needed to find out more about the girl. Whistling to himself, he began to type.
***
"Oh, damn!" Ronald said as dropped the newspaper he had started to read by the side of his breakfast plate.
"What is it, dear?" his wife asked but she was already preparing herself for bad news concerning their daughter.
"The judge's restraining order just went public. That's going to set off another storm of publicity," he said helplessly, knowing what his wife's reaction would be.
Surprisingly, Elaine controlled her first impulse to either burst into tears or begin haranguing her husband for supporting their daughter in her fantasy of being able to talk to animals. Instead, she tried to meet this latest setback of their desire to avoid publicity more calmly. Her attitude was the result of becoming more and more doubtful of her previous belief that Samantha simply had a "way" with animals, perhaps a more enhanced version of the popular "horse whisperers" or "dog whisperers". That type of person claimed to be much more in tune with those species than the normal run of humanity. On the other hand, none of them had an understanding of their chosen animals that even approached Sammie's rapport with almost all mammals. She was grudgingly beginning to believe that perhaps Samantha actually could talk to animals. It was certain she couldn't offer a better explanation, she thought, despite how often she derided Sammie's talent as simply a "way" with animals. No, it had to be more than that.
"I suppose we'd better prepare ourselves for another influx of busybodies and reporters, then, shouldn't we?" she said quietly.
Her husband was surprised she wasn't more upset but he was grateful she was taking this latest publicity so much more calmly than she had before. "Yes, we should. However, even as irritating and intrusive as those people are, I'm beginning to worry more about the real left-handed wing-nuts out there and what some of them might do."
Elaine looked at her husband, knowing what he meant. They had been the recipients of a number of bizarre letters and mean-spirited intruders into their social media pages on the internet, but there had been only a rare threat to do Samantha physical harm. All those had been tracked down by police or other investigators and discounted as missives from poor harmless mentally ill persons. Despite endless threats against those in the public eye they had never attempted harm to anyone. "Do you think it's a real danger, Ron?"
"I'm afraid so, honey. And I guess I should confess that I've concealed a few of the more evil-sounding ones from you and Sammie just to keep you from worrying and because they weren't real threats. Now, though, Steve tells me that he's seen this kind of thing before and that we should be wary of several kinds of whackos."
"What kind?"
"Well, how about some the far-out fundamentalist religious interpretations of what Sammie can do? Talk to animals? She's obviously the reincarnation of Eve. Or how about an opposite interpretation? She's abrogating God's powers for herself, or at least the powers Adam and Eve had before being banished from the Garden of Eden, obviously a horrendously evil sin."
"Ron, surely no one from our church would go that far, would they?"
"I doubt it. We've met most of them at one time or another and they seem to be the usual mix of regular, faithful church-goers, the Christmas and Easter variety and those in between. Whatever, I haven't seen or heard any signs of fanaticism in either direction from there. In fact, everyone I've spoken to has been very supportive, even if a bit nosy on occasion. But that's not the only worry."
Elaine sighed but nevertheless looked grimly determined to face whatever might come. "Who else might threaten Sammie?"
"How about kidnappers? Some really mean people might think they could take her and make money from her somehow. Someone like an evil, unscrupulous carny in a traveling fair, for instance. That's probably not very likely but there are probably terrorists who think she might be able to talk to animals and have them infiltrate places with dynamite strapped to them and blow themselves up. She'd be very valuable to those crazy bastards. Or consider our own beloved NSA. They didn't think twice about tapping into the phones and email of everyone in the country. I wouldn't put it past some of those black operations to want her for their own purposes, maybe to study her and try to find out how she does it so they could use the talent in warfare. See?"
"Lord, I could have gone all day without hearing that kind of stuff. But what do we do about it?"
"I don't know yet. A lot depends on what kind of legs this latest story about Sammie has." He picked up the newspaper beside his unfinished breakfast and thumped it with his hand. "Listen to this." There is no question that the Douglas girl was observed walking along beside the tiger that had escaped from the zoo, nor of her participation in the tiger's treatment for an infected tooth. Both of those activities, according to Jesha Meriweather of the Child Protective Services, exposed her to the extreme danger of a possible attack by the huge carnivore. There is also no denying that Dr. Dorothy Summers, the zoo veterinarian also brought an ill lemur into the Douglas household and asked the girl for help in treating it, thereby exposing the girl to the possibility of contacting whatever illness was afflicting the lemur. However, both her attorney, Steve Orleans, and the veterinarian state that she was in no danger whatsoever, and that even if she had been her dog would have protected her, with its life if necessary.
Those are the known instances where Samantha Douglas was placed in potentially dangerous situations by her parent
s. Meriweather attempted to investigate the Douglas home but was stopped by a restraining order issued by Judge Simonson, a questionable decision in our humble opinion. We can only speculate as to what other episodes in Samantha's life may have exposed her to injury--or worse--while her parents were present. There are rumors of other contacts with dangerous animals in the past. Whether these are true or not and whether Judge Simonson was justified in blocking the CPS investigation can only be determined through further investigation.
The Douglas attorney has stated that he has had personal contact with the young girl in his own home where she, as he says, "Was instrumental in completely reversing his daughter's dog's unacceptable behavior in only a week." He has also stated that Samantha is, in his words, "One of the most well-adjusted girls of her age he has ever seen and that her parents would never knowingly place her in a situation where she might be injured." Readers might note that Mr. Orleans is completely unqualified to judge whether anyone, much less a young girl, is well-adjusted or not.
The CPS Office in both Lufkin and Austin refused to comment on the case but Ms. Meriweather has previously stated that... . "Well, you get the idea, I'm sure. The smarmy guy that wrote this piece is simply trying to make some money off Sammie's adventures. I suppose he's convinced himself that he's doing a public service by having this stuff published but I hate to give him even that much credit. If anything, he's the one putting Sammie in danger!"
"I wonder if we could ask Steve to talk to him. Or maybe we should."
"We can try, I guess. I think Steve would be the best bet, though. In the meantime I hear Sammie getting ready to come down for breakfast. Fortunately this is a Saturday but we still need to caution her again not to talk to anyone about this, and especially never speak to anyone she doesn't know."