Suffer the Children

by Lisa Black

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” Riley observed.

  She crossed her arms. “I need a ladder.”

  Two ladders were located within the building, both eight feet high and unable to reach to the top of the chain link. Maggie propped one against the pole and went to the top step. The right side of her body faced the links of a secure section of fence, the left side, nothing but open air. She had a nice view of the lake and the city as it spread to the east.

  The pole is steel, buried in the brick wall, she told herself. It’s not going anywhere. No reason for her heart to pound and her knees to quiver as they did.

  Even though the pole was buried in old brick that had been there for decades, sun and snow and wind working on its mortar, possibly loosening bits of it.

  She should probably have a safety harness, something to tether her if the fence gave way, but no such item existed in her current crime scene kit. She might make the suggestion to Denny—

  A burst of wind seemed to push at her, and she grabbed the links. Deep breath.

  “You sure you should be up there?” said a voice below and behind her. Justin Quintero. She didn’t turn to look.

  “Quite sure. Just tell me the bricks into which this pole is set aren’t going to suddenly fall apart.”

  He sounded as if he were speaking from the center of the roof, apparently not too fond of heights either. “Um … I hope not.”

  “That’s not reassuring.”

  “Sorry. But it’s been my job to point out the deficiencies in this building so we can give the state an itemized request.”

  “Oh,” she said, not terribly interested at the moment.

  “There’re so many aspects that make a place more conducive to rehabilitation that we currently”—he sighed—“lack. More interior space. More windows, more natural light. Enough outdoor spaces—like this one—for each age group so they can be accessed at will without scheduling. Better colors, kid-proof decorations.”

  She half listened to him. With the ladder’s help the uppermost bracket appeared at eye level. Still she couldn’t tell if the killer had borrowed a ladder as well; she saw distortions in the links where he, or she, could have grabbed or stuck in a shoe during the climb to the top. Besides, the ladders were stored in a dust-coated cubby in the limited basement area, to which only maintenance had the key. Even if someone could have broken in they would have had to lug the thing up four flights of steps, or one floor and take the elevator for another three and all without being seen by staff or residents. The construction workers had ladders as well but they removed all their equipment at night to a van parked outside, and it had not been disturbed.

  The chairs wouldn’t stack, and one by itself wouldn’t even lift someone to even the middle of the fence, so they were useless to the killer.

  “At least our furnishings are moveable so we can scoot tables and chairs around for different purposes. And we have both big and small rooms, so that variety apes what the outside world is like more than places where they’re either in one big dorm or one big mess hall or one big exercise auditorium. But we need more sound-absorbing materials in those spaces, especially when you get a bunch of teenage girls chattering.”

  She still imagined this being done at night, when perhaps the climb wouldn’t have been as nerve wracking, when you couldn’t see every crack in the sidewalk far below or how small the cars seemed as they crawled along South Marginal.

  “And furniture that isn’t designed primarily for suicide prevention, because there is such a thing as self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not easy. We got a good design out of last year’s budget. Now all we need is the money to go ahead.”

  Maggie kept her body as still as possible and twisted the tiny blue cap off the vial of sterile water, then tossed the cap back over her shoulder. A bit of littering could be tolerated at this juncture.

  “Detectives,” she heard Quintero say. “Are they going to remove the body soon? I would really like it not to be there when the state budget board members arrive. It might put them off their baby carrots.”

  Riley said, “ME just got here.”

  “Fabulous.” She heard the relief in Quintero’s voice and the swish of his clothing, testament to his hasty departure from the aerie.

  She moistened the swabs and ran them along the pole where the boltless bracket remained and the links to the side where a killer might have held on while loosening that bolt. It was a long shot—touch DNA usually was—but a slam dunk if it worked. Kids climbing the fence wouldn’t go this high … would they? … and presumably not in the last twenty-four hours.

  Now she heard Jack’s voice from below. “What are you doing?”

  “DNA,” she said.

  “There you have it,” Riley said. “DNA.”

  “Peachy,” Jack said.

  She felt a tremor under her feet and saw that Jack had grasped the ladder to steady it, though it had not shifted. Funny how he always seemed determined to protect her, even when she remained the only fly in the ointment of his calling to make the world a safer place.

  Something in the still-firm bracket caught her eye. A thin filament protruded, caught between the pole and the brace. A hair, or a fiber. She slid the swabs into their clean box and then into a manila envelope she had tucked into her belt, then gingerly made her way down.

  “Done?” Jack asked.

  “No. Perhaps our guy did use gloves, because he may have left a thread up there. And then I need to do the other side.” She nodded toward the opposite pole at the other end of the gap.

  “Oh boy,” Riley said. “You two have fun. I’m going to gather up another set of time cards from the last basketball game until now. How anyone’s going to get paid this week is beyond me.”

  Maggie gathered a tiny manila envelope and climbed into the sky once more.

  *

  Another hour passed at the crime scene and Maggie at last conceded that they had done all they could. The medical examiner investigator had arrived and taken Quentin’s body away. Riley had gone to observe the autopsy, not that they expected any surprises to come of it since the cause of death seemed pretty damn apparent. Amy had transported the loose brackets and bolts back to the lab after supervising the removal of the fence section. The fire department came to handle the biohazard—Quentin’s blood—in the street and reopen it to traffic. Dinnertime approached and Maggie’s stomach growled.

  Melanie Szabo came looking for her once the crime scene tape had been removed from the top of the stairwell. “Trina would like to see you. She said she has something to tell you. She won’t tell me what it is. So if you have a minute before you leave—”

  “Sure,” Maggie said, with less enthusiasm than she felt. She still had no idea how to be supportive and mentoring to a juvenile violent offender. Especially one who had apparently tried to kill her own mother. Of course, if Trina’s mother had been anything like Damon’s, that might not be so hard to understand. “Let me lock my stuff in my car and I’ll be back in.”

  They descended the steps, voices bouncing off the concrete walls. “I have no idea what it is; she wouldn’t give me a hint. Anyway I told her she could wait in my usual counseling room. Second-floor visiting area, where you were this morning?”

  “Got it. Dr. Szabo—”

  “Just Melanie, please. Even the kids call me that.”

  “How did the Johnsons and Carters make out?”

  Melanie Szabo stopped dead, one foot hovering over the landing. “Uh-oh.”

  Maggie halted as well. “What?”

  “With all the excitement—poor word, let’s say bustle—of Quentin’s accident and getting the kids settled down and more emergency sessions—”

  “Yeah?” Maggie said, drawing the word out.

  “I totally forgot about them!”

  The therapist flew down the next flight in a swirl of skirt, her low heels clattering on the treads.

  Chapter 24

  Maggie shut the hatch on the mini city-issued statio
n wagon, clicked the door lock button, and turned around to bump into Jack. “Jeeze! I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  He took no offense. “I’m thinking.”

  “That’s a good thing.” Then she remembered other details of Jack and added, “Usually.”

  “The building is still locked down. So far no one cares because it isn’t yet quitting time, but eventually we’ll have to put some teeth into it.”

  “Uh-huh.” They walked along the sidewalk. The sun had finally burst out of the clouds and heated the back of her neck until sweat poked out of its pores.

  “If you could identify that fiber and I could get some reinforcements, we could toss the building for the gloves.”

  “Simple but effective.” It would take a long time for a thorough search of the large structure, but finding the gloves would give them cast-iron proof of the killer’s identity. Or nearly cast iron, depending upon the type of fiber. “In truth the fiber could have been there since the fence was constructed, though that’s pretty unlikely. If it’s cotton or some natural fiber, the elements would have worn it away long ago. Making a murder case on that alone would do a lot for my poor neglected science of fiber comparisons. It would be the biggest thing in fibers since the Wayne Williams case.”

  “I’m not really interested in making forensic history,” Jack said. “I just want to catch whoever is slaughtering these kids. With a building full of people who have the means, opportunity, and whatever they want to pick for a motive—I’m desperate,” he summed up. “I don’t even know it yet, but I’m desperate.”

  Those weren’t words she often heard a man say. Especially cops, who had that invincible image to protect. For a man who had taken the cause of justice into his own hands in the most outrageous way, Jack could be remarkably un-self-conscious. She found herself wanting to give him a hug. Or maybe, after the events of the past few days, she just wanted one herself.

  She said, “First I need to identify the type of fiber and the color that we’re looking for—and I can’t do that without a microscope. Let me say hello to Trina for a minute, and then I’ll hightail it back to the lab and find that out. She says she has something to tell me. I’m hoping it might be about Rachael.”

  “Make it quick. I’m going to muster an invading army.”

  She asked about Rachael’s father. Jack told her the man had claimed the ring was his, though Jack still had his doubts, and could not positively identify the kids in Rachael’s two photos. He thought they might be children from their old apartment complex but didn’t know their names, making them impossible to track down.

  He and Maggie went inside and climbed the stairs to the second-floor visiting area, by now finding their way without hesitation.

  Maggie said, “The staff won’t be happy when you seal the exits.”

  “Tough. A boy was murdered here today. They’ll have to suck it up.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Jack surprised her again by saying, “I don’t expect too much pushback. The people here make a lot of sacrifices to help these kids—work long hours, stay overnight, get threatened, screamed at, occasionally have the snot beaten out of them by pint-sized maniacs. I’m pretty sure they’ll take it in stride.”

  He continued to the third floor to inform Dr. Palmer of the plan while she stopped on the second, passing the Jackson and Carter clans on their way out. Since they had not been on-site until immediately before Quentin’s death and had had no contact with anyone else at the facility except Melanie Szabo, they could be allowed to leave. To Maggie’s surprise they now seemed relaxed, chatting and laughing together easily, followed by the beaming therapist. Apparently she had been right—let them work out their own plan and they’ll not only get but stay on board.

  The second-floor visiting area sat empty, all afternoon appointments rearranged for immediate crisis counseling. Trina had been arranging chairs just outside the door to Szabo’s therapy room and greeted Maggie with carefully controlled enthusiasm. She showed her inside as if it were her own living room, shutting the door behind them.

  Maggie sat down at the tiny round table, nearly tripping over a bucket filled with what smelled like a strong solution of ammonia. A plastic bottle rested on the floor by the wall. “I’m on bathroom cleaning duty,” Trina explained. “It’s pretty gross.”

  “I know what you mean. I worked as a maid in a hotel while in college.”

  The girl wrinkled her nose. “Lots of toilets.”

  Maggie agreed, then leaned forward over the magazine and assorted toys that had been left on the table. “I had one overflow once. With stuff in it.”

  Being a teenager, the delicious disgustingness of this image tickled Trina. She burst into giggles with an “Oh no!”

  “Oh yes.” Maggie let the girl chuckle for another moment, then, with ice sufficiently broken and Jack’s plan in mind, said, “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

  The laughter disappeared. “I know you only care about Rachael.”

  “No—that’s not true. But we would still like to know what happened, why she died. Don’t you? Do you have anything else to tell me about her?”

  Trina jumped up and paced, as much as she could in the very small room. “Rachael really wasn’t nice.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Maggie kept her voice calm and warm. Talking did not come easily to Trina—that had always been obvious. She would have to let the girl get to it in her own way, even if the staff had to stay locked down a few more minutes.

  “She’d say mean things.”

  “Uh-huh. Like what?”

  “She told me I was ugly and that boys would never like me.”

  An uncomfortable thought began to hover in Maggie’s mind. “That was mean.”

  “It was! Ms. Washington made her apologize but she said it like it was a joke—the I’m sorry part—and then she was supposed to help me with a homework assignment. That’s what they make you do when you hurt somebody—you have to help them with something and that’s supposed to make us feel like helping is good instead of hurting.”

  “That’s a very good idea.”

  Trina stopped in her pacing to snarl, “It’s stupid.”

  “I think it’s supposed to encourage you—us—to empathize, to put ourselves in others’ shoes.”

  The agitated pacing started up again, Trina pausing only to gnaw at a cuticle. Two fingers already showed pinpricks of blood. Trina seemed to be prodding herself into an angry mood, and Maggie continued to worry. Was she working herself up to a confession? If so, what should Maggie do? She wasn’t a cop, couldn’t advise her of her rights or—

  “We had to draw the photosynthesis process and Rachael could draw pretty good. But she purposely made it bad, made stupid stick plants that didn’t look real and this dumb sun that looked like a baby drew it.”

  “She was still being mean.” What could Maggie do, other than sit still and listen carefully? So she sat still and listened carefully.

  The ammonia from the bucket tickled her nose and she stifled a cough.

  “That’s what I’m saying! You’re not listening.”

  Maggie wished she had asked Melanie Szabo to sit in. “Tell me.”

  Trina threw her body into the other chair for a brief rest. “She said she had a boyfriend who was going to sneak her out of here and they were going to live in Manhattan in a penthouse and I couldn’t come because I was just a kid.”

  “Okay, but that probably wasn’t true, right? You figured Rachael made a lot of stuff up.”

  “It doesn’t matter! That’s not important!” The lithe form bounced up again, resumed the movement, moving from wall to wall like a pinball in a machine. Only instead of working up to a point she seemed to be getting farther from one, her thoughts more dispersed. “It’s what I’m told.”

  “Told by who?” Maggie asked.

  “Told by them.” Trina picked up the bucket by the handle, moved it closer to the door, and set it down again to continue on her err
atic course.

  Maggie asked who them might be. The air had gotten close in the tiny space, the ammonia smell thick.

  “The voices.” Trina stopped abruptly to stare down at the bucket, as if wondering what it might be and how it had gotten there.

  “Whose voices?” Maggie deeply regretted starting this conversation. She had no more business trying to mentor Trina than she had pressing vitamins on a cancer patient.

  Trina didn’t answer. Instead she picked up the plastic jug, twisted off the lid, and began to add it to the solution.

  “I think that’s strong enough already,” Maggie said. “I hope you’re wearing rubber gloves when you use that. The chemicals will do a number on your skin.”

  Trina didn’t answer. The liquid made a soft glug glug.

  Maggie tried again. “I didn’t like to wear them either when I was your age. But harsh cleaners will really dry out the epidermis. Do you have any hand lotion? I could bring you a bottle.”

  No answer. Yet the girl’s back, the shoulders, her waist began to round and relax. She might have been adding eggs to a quiche for all the stress her body showed. Perhaps this motion soothed her, even as it choked the air.

  “Really, Trina, I think that’s enough. Let’s at least open the door, okay?”

  No answer. The last of the liquid dripped from the bottle.

  Maggie rose very slowly, but before she had completely straightened Trina whirled, her face screwed into an unrecognizable mask. “Sit down. You have to stay here!”

  Her voice as gentle as she could make it: “Why?”

  “This is what I have to do,” Trina said, and in one smooth motion she opened the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind her.

  Maggie jumped up and reached for the latch knob. It had no lock; all she had to do was turn it to open. But Trina had already wedged a chair under it, the chair she had moved out of place to position next to the door. An old-fashioned technique, as old-fashioned as loosening a bolt or pushing someone over a railing. Simple but effective.