“Special schools, that sort of thing?”
She was shaking her head emphatically. “No. No special schools.” She took a deep breath and her gaze wandered, leafing through the scrapbook in her mind. “We had him tested once. We didn’t know what to do — he was very quiet and withdrawn a lot of the time. And he fell along the autism spectrum. Not quite autistic, however they test for that. But they said he had Asperger’s syndrome. And if he was diagnosed, we could get insurance to cover his therapies and any meds, and I was like, ‘What?’ You know?” She looked at Swift now. “Like, ‘What?’ I don’t want my kid on pills, going to see shrinks all the time. I didn’t think it would be good for him. Plus, I think as a society we over-medicalize. First they wanted to tell us he had ADHD. Then I read that, you know, they take these kids who are younger — I started him in kindergarten early — and they’re maybe a little less emotionally mature and they say, ‘the kid has a disorder.’ Today’s world, you walk just a little out of the marching line, you know, because maybe your left foot turns a fraction of a centimeter, you’ve got ‘Left Foot Turn-out Disorder,’ or something. You know what I mean?”
Swift nodded. He kept his opinions to himself. They didn’t matter here. But she was genuinely funny, and he cracked a smile at her comments. He liked her immediately. He could see that, through all the grief she was battling, Callie was a survivor, a firebrand. Probably had a tattoo hidden away somewhere. Maybe two.
“I wanted to nurture who he was, does that make any sense? Not try to change him . . .”
But then, inevitably perhaps, Callie Simpkins lost herself to sorrow again, and Swift’s smile faded as he watched her face crumble, and her eyes fill, then overflow with tears. She averted her gaze and took a breath, her lip trembling. She took her hand and rubbed at her eyes, smearing away the moisture, and pressed her fingers to her lips, as if to stop them from quivering. Swift seized the moment, and redirected the conversation.
“Mrs. Simpkins. What do you think Braxton was doing tonight? Why do you think this happened?”
She gave him a hard look. “Do I think this happened because of Braxton’s limitations?”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean, what was he doing? Did he wake up because something disturbed him? Or was he already awake?”
She lost some her defensiveness.
“Oh, he was probably up. He wakes up in the night. Almost every night. Never bothers anyone. Just sits there in his bedroom. Lately, he’ll play his game.”
“His game?”
“Yeah, some game on his laptop. It was on when I came into his room tonight. Is it still ‘tonight,’ or is it ‘last night’ now?”
Swift was jotting down some notes. “I think we can say ‘last night.’ Do you know what the game was called?”
“Uhm, I don’t know. I can’t think of the name. Mike would know. Brax played all sorts of games. He loves them. I know you’re supposed to . . . what’s the word . . . to moderate what your kids do with games and computers and phones, and we do all of that. Reno, that’s our six-year-old, she already wants a phone. You know? She says it’s not fair that the three of us have cell phones and she doesn’t.”
The tears spilled now, and she took a hasty swipe at her cheekbones.
“Braxton had a cell phone?”
“Well, sort of. We call it the ‘house phone’ and he only has it if he’s going to be out somewhere. Lately he’s been taking it more often because we’ve moved and are getting into a new routine and there’s been a lot to do. But Braxton and his games.” She shook her head, in a mixture of pride and disbelief. “He’s always been something. Can solve any game in, like, minutes flat.” She snapped her fingers. “He would play the games on my phone when he was younger. You know, the apps. And he would just chew through them in minutes.” She snapped her fingers a second time. “Amazing.” Then she grew troubled again.
“So that’s what you mean when you say he was gifted? I mean, one of the ways he showed it.”
“Sure. Yes. Definitely. He had that sort of mind. Problem-solving. Way ahead of other kids his age. But that’s not . . . that’s not everything.”
“What else?”
“He was . . .” She fought hard against another tide of emotion. “You know . . . he’d get upset.”
“How so?”
She shrugged, but Swift knew she was certain of what she was talking about. “He’d get very down on himself if he lost at something. Not because he was competitive with others so much, but he was competitive with himself. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
She searched Swift’s face with that penetrating look she had. “But don’t think for a minute I mean he was violent. Brax was incredibly kind. Ethical. He was protective of others, never wanted to hurt anyone.”
Callie bent forward and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed silently, her shoulders rising and falling.
Swift was tempted to reach out and comfort her, but it was best he didn’t. “Mrs. Simpkins, we can do this later, when your husband gets here.”
Her head came up and she sniffed back mucous and wiped away tears from her face again. “No,” she said. “What, am I going to sit around here and lose my mind? No, let’s figure this out.”
Swift nodded. He admired her attitude. She brought to mind a younger Janine Poehler. She was a bit like Brittney Silas, too. That reminded him; he needed to check in with Silas as soon as possible. Between preliminary autopsy results and the statements of his mother, self-harm — in this case fatal — was beginning to sound more plausible.
Swift took a sip of his coffee and set the cup back down.
“Everything okay at bed time last night? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, everything’s sort of out of the ordinary. We just moved two months ago.”
“That’s stressful.”
She gave him a look that seemed to detect criticism. “Sure. But we’ve done alright.”
“I’m sure you have. How’s he adjusted to the new school?”
“He’s done fine.”
“And he was in which grade?”
“He’s in seventh.” She paused for a moment. Swift wondered if she was aware how she switched back and forth between the past and present tense. That was usually the way of things soon after losing someone. Likely she was not cognizant of it. “I said that we started him early, but after all the other stuff, we had him repeat a grade. Second grade. We thought that would take the edge off, and it did. It helped.”
“When you say, ‘we,’ you’re referring to you and the educators, or your husband, Michael? Any others involved?”
“I mean Michael . . . But sure, there were other people too . . .” There was a hint of a question in her voice.
“I know that Braxton is not Michael’s biological son. What sort of role does his biological father play?”
Her look instantly hardened. “None. Mike and I have been together for eight years. When we met, Braxton was five. I had been raising him alone for three years. Mike adopted him, that’s why his last name is the same. His biological father has no involvement.”
“His name?”
“His name is Worthless Deadbeat Dad.”
“Any aliases to that?”
Her eyes narrowed, but her mouth twitched in a smile. “Tori McAfferty.”
“And where does he live?”
“I don’t know. He never paid child support; I never wanted to see him or think of him again.”
Swift made a couple more notes. When he looked up, Callie was staring at his notepad. “I know what you’re thinking.”
He set his pen beside the notepad and looked at her.
“You’re thinking that Braxton is a troubled kid. Parents divorced, raised by a stepfather, recently moved far away from home, started a new school, and has a different mind than most people. You’re thinking he did something to himself.”
“I just need to get as much information as possible. In no way a
m I jumping to any conclusion.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“I believe you.” Of course he did; a mother never thought her child would do such a thing. There was no mechanism that could support the idea. Swift took a moment to deliberate if now was the right time to tell Callie about the three kids who were picked up. If anything, he was wondering if Braxton was pushed into doing something to himself. Peer pressure. It happened more and more these days, especially with the internet and on social media. “Have you spoken with your husband since you left the house?”
She looked remorseful. “No. I left my phone at home. I haven’t called. I need to.”
“I think that’s a good idea. But, before you do; your husband was standing beside me when I got word that the troopers picked up a car which had left the scene just after the witness arrived.”
Her eyes lit up. “And . . .?”
“And I’ve questioned two of the three young men who were in the car.”
“Are they suspects?”
“I think what we would say at this point is that they are persons of interest. They have not yet been formally charged as suspects.”
She was sitting upright now, her back rigid, her eyes wide. “Who are they?”
So much for the sedative they gave her, he thought again. He flipped back a couple of pages in his notepad. “Are any of these names familiar to you? Robert Darring, Hideo Miko, Sasha Bellstein?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Who are they?”
He took a breath and shrugged. “We don’t know, exactly. They say they were friends with your son. That they knew him from online. You say he played some games. So, maybe from one of these games. They’re young. Two teenagers, and one older, in his twenties.”
“What the hell did they say they were doing up here?”
She was getting agitated. Swift saw that same ‘mother bear’ who had run shoeless out of the house. He’d made the call to tell her about the three kids — he was seeking a way to tie them more definitively to Braxton, but it was at the cost of her trust in him. He could tell she would become adamant that the kids were prosecuted. He understood that. But it just wasn’t so simple, and the ponderous machinery of the justice system was always hard for the bereaved to accept. They wanted fast action and instant results. Who could blame them? He merely tried to serve that up as best he could.
“They said they were visiting. That it was a planned occasion. They alleged that your son was involved in this plan, and expecting them. Did he give you any indication? Did he act strangely at all last night? Maybe he . . .”
“What? Acted like he was going to run away with them? No way. Braxton wasn’t running away anywhere. Who are these kids? Have you contacted their parents?”
“Yes. The Assistant District Attorney spoke with the parents of two of them.”
“The Assistant attorney? Why not the District Attorney?”
“Cobleskill? She might get involved down the line, might not. It all depends on the case. Anyway, none of the parents were aware their children had gone anywhere. None of them knew your son.”
She seemed to be waiting for more, but there was nothing else, not yet. Swift knew in his bones, that the three young men who’d come up to pay a visit were not telling him everything. The Asian-American kid had even shut down on him, acting afraid to talk. He doubted that Braxton Simpkins had invited them, or wanted them to come. It was instinct, but instinct backed up by some persuasive facts.
For one, Braxton had been in his pajamas. He didn’t have a bag with him, packed and ready to go. He’d gone out into the dark and cold with nothing.
When she spoke again, breaking into his thoughts, Callie’s words were soft, contemplative, and yet ruthlessly precise. “Three kids — or, a man and two kids — drive up to our town in the middle of the night and are seen leaving the scene where my son lies all alone in the middle of the road. Dead. My son is dead.”
She regarded him levelly across the table. All the emotion had drained from her face. Swift had seen this before, usually in men, but sometimes in the women too. She was now a heat-seeking missile. She would want justice for her son. And she would stop at nothing.
Swift closed his notepad and stuck it in his inner breast pocket. He clicked off his pen and slid that in beside it. He began to feel the first smoky curls of fatigue creeping around the edges of his thoughts, his vision.
“You need to get some rest,” Swift said, as much to himself as to Callie. “I’m going to have a trooper drive you back to your home.”
“No. I’m not leaving him.”
He leaned across the table, and this time he did touch her hands. They felt cold and dry. “Mrs. Simpkins, there is nothing you can do for your son here. The best thing you can do for him is to go and be with your daughters, your husband.”
“Did you take his laptop?”
“We’re taking a few things from his room. It’s going to be tough, but we’re going to need to search through any of his email accounts, Facebook, Twitter. I’m sorry that . . .”
“Good.”
She surprised him by getting up from the table abruptly and looking around the empty cafeteria. “Take whatever you need and charge those three. I’ll leave. I’m going to go say goodbye first.”
“Mrs. Simpkins.” Oh no. “You can’t.”
“I can’t?”
“There will be the right time and place for formal goodbyes . . .”
“Thank you, detective, but please get out of my way.”
Fine. Here it comes. He blocked her path. “Mrs. Simpkins, Your son is about to undergo an internal autopsy.”
Her gaze speared him. “What?”
“We need to know how he died.”
But it was too late. She pushed past him and charged out of the café, through the front door, a little bell chiming.
“Shit,” Swift muttered, and started after her, pressing buttons on his phone to dial emergency services.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Swift drove back south to New Brighton. It was slow going. For a while it had looked like the storm was ending. The precipitation had tapered off to a few twirling flakes, but now it was back with full force, thicker than before. The day was grey, the trees streaks of brown, and the mountains silent behind the gauzy curtain of falling snow.
Callie Simpkins had the body of a star athlete in comparison to his. He’d been unable to reach her before she’d made her way back inside. She’d rushed ahead to the autopsy room. Mercifully, the curtains had been drawn in the observing area, and the door to the lab locked. While she banged on the glass and yanked at the door knob, Swift had finally caught up with her.
She’d fought him off like a wild creature, beating her fists against his chest and arms — he could still feel the impact of her blows. At last she had crumbled, leaning into him, all the sadness and pain released from her in a torrent of inarticulate cries that had at last dissolved into tears. Her body went slack, all the muscles turned to rubber, and he’d held her until emergency services arrived.
They took her to CVPH, where she was now under much heavier sedation. He hoped she would be able to get some rest. There was no doubt she was strong, and during their talk in the café she had shown that her mind was sharp, her instincts on point. He couldn’t blame her for the emotion that overcame her. He could only imagine, after all she had been through with her child, now having to face this.
For a long time to come the waves would batter her, like a boat in a storm, offering only the shortest reprieves when her mind temporarily occupied itself with mundane things, basic, survival things like going to the bathroom, maybe eventually eating. But after each brief moment of forgetting, it would return. Even, in times to come, when she thought she’d reached the shore, she would be in danger of crashing on the rocks.
Swift drew a deep breath, hearing a rattle in his chest. He let the air out in a long, slow exhalation. He drove the car south, the wipers on high to sluice away the thick, wet snow.
* * *
“She’s at the hospital,” Swift told Mike Simpkins. “You’re going to want to go be with her. You and the girls. My troopers will take you there.”
“No,” Mike said. “We’ll go ourselves.”
“Then they’ll escort you. I won’t take no for an answer. The roads are really bad out there.”
Mike was doing the dishes. He had tucked the girls away in the master bedroom where they were watching a movie on his laptop. He said he felt guilty about all the TV they were watching, but he didn’t know what else to do with them. He told Swift he thought with any luck they might go back to sleep.
“And how about you?” asked Swift. Mike had offered him a seat on a stool next to the woodblock island in the kitchen. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ve never been so awake, yet so tired at the same time,” Mike said, turning from the sink with a couple of plates which he dropped into the nearby dishwasher.
Swift nodded. He watched Mike go through the routine for another moment. He knew some people coped with loss by keeping their hands busy. Mike seemed that sort.
“You know it can only help me the more we talk about Braxton,” Swift said. “But this is a hard time; you need to be with your family.”
Mike paused for a moment and looked across the woodblock at Swift. His eyes were puffy. “I will,” he said. “I’ve called one of Callie’s co-workers at the school. Another teacher. We had dinner a few weeks ago. She’s going to come and watch the girls, and I’ll go up to the hospital.”
“I think that’s wise.”
“So we can talk while she makes her way here. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes?”
“That’s great. I appreciate that.”
Mike nodded. He looked distracted. It seemed to Swift that there was something else that burdened him. The troopers had already cleared out the things from Braxton’s room, under the guidance of Brittney Silas. There was no one else in the house at that moment, so Swift wondered what was occupying Mike’s thoughts.
“Something I asked you before,” Swift said. “Just . . . it’s important. Did you think any more about anyone who might want to harm Braxton?”
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