He Never Forgot

by P. D. Workman

  “Yes, but can your client corroborate that’s what happened?”

  “His memories are very vague. I would rather not ask him about that part. I don’t want to suggest or taint anything. I’ll leave that to the police. To question him properly, I mean.”

  Mario snickered. “So how do you know this, if your client hasn’t told you?”

  “He told me that the basement used to have a dirt floor. We found evidence of both children in the basement, which now has a concrete floor. I’ve talked to a neighbor who told the story of Burton escaping and the police coming to take the parents away. I’ve talked to the social worker who was involved, and she confirms that part of the story. She didn’t ever know that there was a second child.”

  “That’s not really a minor detail.”

  “Five-year-old traumatized child. Neglected, abused, malnourished. He probably saw his brother killed and buried. Would you confide in any grown-ups?”

  “He must have had therapy. Why didn’t it come out then?”

  “Because kids who have been told not to tell, who have been threatened… they learn to keep their mouths shut.”

  Mario’s computer keys tapped in the background. “You say that the parents were arrested?”

  “Yes. I don’t know their real last names, but they were Elizabeth and Sam Weaver when they were arrested, so there should at least be an alias in the system.”

  “If those records were digitized, which is touch-and-go, as you know. A lot of stuff was just shoved into boxes and stored away. Then it gets black mold into it and has to be destroyed.”

  “Give it a try anyway.”

  Mario typed away for a while. Zachary kept quiet and let him do his job. Mario knew what he was doing. If anyone could find any trace of the cold case, it was he.

  “Yeah, there’s a file connected with those names.”

  “What were they charged with?”

  Mario read through whatever had appeared on his screen. “Sketchy details. Looks like only the summary was digitized. But you’re right, child neglect and abuse. No mention of another child.”

  “Because they didn’t know about him. But now we know about him, so…”

  “You think we should tear up someone’s basement just because you have a hunch?”

  “Where would you look?”

  “First, I would want to verify that this other kid even existed. Did it ever occur to you that your client might have an imaginary friend? Or even DID?”

  Zachary was taken aback by that. “Like dual personalities?” He remembered how similar the writing of the two names had been. Because Ben Burton had written both? Two fractured personalities who didn’t know that the other existed, or someone he had made up? “Uh… no, I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Do you know anything about this client’s psychiatric history?”

  “No.”

  “So he could be snowing you completely. You have no idea. He might not even be who he says he is. He might have just heard the story or read it in the paper and decided to play a part and see how far he can get with it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t either, but it’s a possibility. Until you’ve verified his identity, you don’t know who he is. And I think you need to get access to his medical records, if you can. Make him prove his case. Because he’s going to have to before the PD is going to touch it. We can’t just dig up someone’s basement on some lunatic’s tip.”

  “Right. Okay. He did verify his identity to the social worker, and she knew his names before and after adoption. But I’m not sure how much of this can be proven, though. Both children were kept a secret. No one on the street even knew they lived there. So no one but Burton or his parents could verify that there was a brother.”

  He could hear Burton asking over and over again. Where is Allen? What happened to him?

  Did Burton know? Was it there, buried in his memories? Or was he shining Zachary on, enjoying playing a role?

  And even if he believed it was true, was it? Were Bobby and Allen two different sides of the same person? From what Zachary understood of DID, it was usually caused by the kind of abuse Burton had been through. Horrific, ongoing child abuse. The inability to deal with reality as an integrated person. The need to dissociate to remove himself from it, just as Zachary found himself doing when something reminded him of the assault by Archuro.

  “You need to find out what you can,” Mario advised. “We’ll need as much proof as possible before rushing into something like this.”

  27

  Zachary knocked on Burton’s hotel room door. He knew that Burton had consumed a huge amount of alcohol the day before, and who knew when he had finally stopped drinking and either passed out or gone to sleep.

  “Do not disturb,” Burton growled back from within. “Can’t you read the sign?”

  He had the door handle sign hung to keep the maid service from disturbing him.

  “It’s Zachary.”

  “I don’t need any more towels.”

  “Ben. It’s Zachary.”

  “What?”

  “I need to talk to you. Are you decent?”

  Burton started muttering to himself. Zachary assumed he was getting himself together and would let Zachary in when he was finished. It took some time, and there was a lot of muttering and walking back and forth in the hotel room before Burton finally opened the door.

  He was looking pretty rough, but he was all in one piece. He motioned Zachary in, and Zachary took a few steps into the room before changing his mind. The room smelled rankly of alcohol, sweat, and vomit, and Zachary had no desire to sit in the fumes for a couple of hours.

  “Let’s open a window and let this place air out,” he suggested, and proceeded to open one window a few inches without waiting for Burton’s answer. “And we’ll go somewhere else to talk.” He considered. He wasn’t going to go down to the lounge again, having to deal with Burton’s constant drinking and possibly loud and threatening behavior. “We’ll go back to my apartment.” He hustled Burton out of the hotel room, grabbing the key card off of the dresser on his way out. “I don’t usually have clients to my apartment, so—”

  “We don’t need to go to your apartment; we’ll just go downstairs again.”

  “No, not this time. We need some privacy.”

  “Why?”

  “Just come with me.” Zachary motioned to the elevator down the hall, and Burton went along with him, dragging his feet the whole way.

  Zachary managed to get him past the lounge with difficulty, and out to his car.

  “At least let me stop for a smoke,” Burton whined.

  “I don’t want the smoke in the car.”

  “I’ll smoke it out here.”

  “You’ll still smell like it. No.”

  “Sheesh, why are you being such a hard case all of a sudden? Knowing all of what I’ve had to go through, don’t you think I have the right to drink and smoke a bit?”

  “You’ve been through a lot of crap,” Zachary agreed. “Worse than most people can even dream of. But that doesn’t mean you need to drink and smoke constantly.”

  “Well… it kinda does.”

  “No. Just get in the car. We can stop and get something to eat if you want. Comfort food. Calm yourself down that way.”

  “Comfort food,” Burton repeated dubiously. “What, like chocolate ice cream?”

  “Chocolate ice cream works,” Zachary remembered Kenzie insisting that they go out for ice cream after their first couples therapy appointment. It had become a tradition, and he had to admit, he looked forward to it, despite his usual lack of appetite. “Is that what you want?”

  “No, I don’t want ice cream. It’s not my period,” he sneered. “I want… a steak and a case of beer.”

  “Do you cook?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, we want to grab something you can take back to the apartment. Our steakhouses don’t do takeout. So something you can get as takeout
or at the grocery store and cook yourself.”

  Burton sniffed. He sat looking out the window while Zachary drove toward the apartment. He was behaving like a sullen teenager. But eventually, he decided that he’d better pick something or he was going to end up at Zachary’s apartment with nothing to eat. Or having to choose between granola bars and frozen burritos.

  “Burger and fries,” he grumbled finally. “I suppose.”

  “Sure. Five Guys?”

  Burton nodded. Zachary detoured to the nearest fast food place and they went through the drive-through.

  “Aren’t you getting anything?” Burton demanded after Zachary relayed his order to the crackling speaker.

  “A milkshake. I’ve already eaten.”

  Not much, but he had eaten a little before going to pick Burton up.

  “Milkshake,” Burton repeated.

  “You want one?”

  “No.”

  In a few minutes, they were on the road again, and then back to Zachary’s apartment. When he unlocked the door and let Burton in, his client looked around at the set-up. Zachary waited for the criticisms or teasing to begin. But Burton shrugged and headed over to the couch with his fast food. “I don’t know what I was expecting. Jim Rockford worked out of his trailer, right?”

  Zachary shrugged. He wasn’t sure what Burton had been expecting either, but he was grateful not have to defend himself and his choice of where to live. Burton didn’t know anything about the apartment fire where Zachary had lost everything he owned and nearly his own life. Burton didn’t know about Zachary’s history or the vagaries of the private investigator business. He indicated the table.

  “Eat there. I don’t want ketchup on the furniture.”

  “I wouldn’t spill.”

  “Use the table.”

  After Burton sat down, growling grumpily, Zachary sat across from him. He took a few sips of his milkshake while Burton sat and got his food arranged on the table. Zachary wasn’t surprised when, after drinking the first few inches of his cola, Burton lifted the lid to pour in the contents of his flask.

  “So, why did we have to come back here for privacy?” Burton demanded. “Why not just meet at the lounge? That was good enough for you before.”

  “How much of last night do you remember?”

  Burton didn’t answer at first. He had said that drinking didn’t affect him, so he was conflicted whether to admit that he couldn’t remember everything that had happened or bluff his way through it. Zachary waited, seeing which he would choose.

  “Fine,” Burton said, “I might not have a clear recollection of everything that happened last night. What does that have to do with it?”

  “I just think we should give the lounge and the bar a day or two to forget about it too. Give them a break. Otherwise, you might not find yourself able to drink there again.”

  Burton rolled his eyes. He worked quickly on his hamburger.

  “Whatever. I don’t see what difference it makes.”

  “So…” Zachary pulled out his notepad to make notes as he needed to. “I have talked to a few people today about you and Allen.”

  Burton froze and met Zachary’s eyes. Then he reared back, moving farther away from Zachary and leaning back against his chair, when he’d previously been sitting forward. He was afraid of what was to come.

  “Allen. What did you find out?”

  “I found out more about you, but not very much about Allen.”

  “What?” Burton was cautious, not sure he wanted to hear. Zachary determined to take it slowly. He didn’t want Burton to have a meltdown and to punch him in the face. Having a flashback and seeing him as one of his abusers.

  “Do you remember telling me about walking outside one day? The day that you saw a dog?”

  Burton nodded. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly at the memory of the dog. “His owner let me pet him.”

  “Was that the only time you had been out of the house?”

  Burton’s forehead creased. “The only time I’d been out? No, of course not.”

  “How often did you go out?”

  “I don’t know. How often do kids go out of the house?”

  “I don’t think you got out very often. But you remember what the outside of the house looked like, so maybe that wasn’t the only time you’d ever gone out.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “When we were at the house, you weren’t that interested in what was upstairs. Why was that?”

  Burton shrugged. “I don’t know. It just wasn’t very interesting. Just a normal house, I’ve seen a hundred like that. Nothing remarkable about it.”

  “You barely even looked at the bedrooms. Usually, kids remember which bedroom was theirs.”

  Burton raised his eyebrows, looking at Zachary blankly. “Why would it matter which one was mine?”

  “People care about things like that. They want to belong somewhere. To have a room that was theirs.”

  It was one of the things that had bothered Zachary about foster care. He never felt like he had a place of his own. Even though he was assigned a bedroom in every house he went to, it was never just his, and changing homes so often meant that he never felt like he put down roots and had ownership of a place.

  “I know where my room is in the house I grew up in,” Burton said, “With my adoptive parents. That was my room.”

  “And the room you wanted to see in the old house was the basement.”

  “Yeah…” Burton trailed off, apparently unsure as to where Zachary was going.

  Zachary nodded. He sipped the milkshake, taking his time. Letting Burton think about it and get used to the idea before concluding, “Because that was where you lived. That’s where they kept you.”

  Burton’s face became a thundercloud. “No.”

  Zachary cocked his head and let Burton think about it. He needed time to go through his memories and sort it out. Did he have memories of the upstairs? Did he have memories of the basement? Where had his jar and his name been?

  Burton shook his head again, definite. “No. They didn’t keep me in the basement like an animal. That’s wrong.”

  Zachary nodded. “Okay. Tell me about it, then. What else can you remember about your house? You’ve had some time to think about it. Maybe some more memories have come to you since we talked last.”

  Burton’s anger abated slightly. He ate a few French fries. His forehead was still creased with worry lines. “That would be cruel,” he said. “No one would keep their kids locked up in a place like that.”

  “People do. I’m sure you’ve seen in the news from time to time. Not very often, but it does happen. Sometimes just one child in the family, sometimes all of the children. Maybe the basement, maybe a locked bedroom or closet. Kids go to the bathroom in a bucket or a corner. Get fed now and then, not regular meals. Maybe they don’t have any way to keep themselves clean or have clean clothes. It’s horrible, I agree.”

  “Why would anyone do that? How bad would a kid have to be to be treated that way?”

  Zachary studied the expression on Burton’s face. Guilt. Dread. They had undoubtedly conditioned him. Made him feel like it was his own fault that he’d been locked up like that.

  “A kid wouldn’t have to be bad at all. Parents don’t do it because they have bad kids. They do it because they are bad parents. Evil people. Normal people would never treat their kids like that. You know how your adoptive parents were. They loved and protected you. They would never do something like that.”

  Burton shook his head. “No. Never.”

  “And that’s how normal parents are. But the people that you were born to… they were not like that. There was something wrong with them, not with you. It isn’t your fault that they locked you in the basement. It isn’t anything that you did.”

  “No,” Burton repeated. But he didn’t look convinced. Deep down inside, he still thought he was that naughty child. The child who was so bad that his parents had to lock him in the basement. The
cold, dark, damp basement with a dirt floor.

  “I’m sorry they treated you that way. They were wrong.”

  Burton swallowed. He had a long sip of his drink. Cola and whatever had been in his flask. Zachary was sure he wished they had stayed in the lounge, where he could have ordered drink after drink to satisfy his craving. Instead, all he had was the weak mixed drink, and only one cup. His eyes started to rove to Zachary’s cupboards and fridge. But he wouldn’t find any alcohol in the apartment. That was one of the reasons Zachary had taken him there. He couldn’t deal with hours of Burton drinking again.

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Burton said softly.

  “Some people would. When you got out and went on your walk down the street, people recognized that you had been badly neglected, and they called the police. The police connected you with your parents, and they were arrested and went to jail.”

  Burton’s eyes were wide and disconcertingly childlike. He had been holding those memories inside for decades. He had always kept that part of himself separate. That child had remained locked up in the darkest corner of his mind, just as he had been locked in the basement.

  “Who found me?” he asked.

  “I talked to a woman named Elise Perry. She remembers when you were found. When you went out for a walk and saw the dog, and the neighbors called the police. They thought someone had dumped you there, but then the police traced you back to the Weavers. Or the people calling themselves the Weavers.”

  “How?”

  “You knew where you lived. You probably showed them. The police watched to see what happened. When your birth parents discovered you were missing and went out looking for you, that confirmed to the police that they were the ones who had been holding you. They arrested them, went into the house, and would have found the evidence in the basement showing that you had been kept there, neglected.”

  “It was still my home,” Burton offered.

  Zachary nodded. “Yeah. The only place you knew. It must have been very strange to be taken away from there. Put into foster care and then to your adoptive parents. Lots of disruption, strange new experiences.”