“Because you’re special, that’s why.” Then she said, “I hear you have your own butterfly collection at home.” She fanned through the book.
He said nothing. He did not like her face. It was pinchy and mean looking.
“Where’s my mom?”
“She’s home.” Vera’s mouth was small with thin lips that were very red. “And if you cooperate you can go home real soon.”
Cooperate. That meant eat their food, swallow their medication, and take their tests. He didn’t know what the tests were. But Vera had said that was the reason he was here: to take the tests. Then he could go home.
He looked at the cookies, but did not take one.
Vera got up. “Enjoy the cookies,” she said and left using a key.
That was the only way out of the room—a key. And they didn’t give him one.
He hated the room. There were no windows, the door had no handle and was always locked from the outside. The floor was padded with some plastic-covered foam. The furniture was also soft—beanbag chairs, air mattress on the floor, a plastic table, and a hanging plastic clothes organizer. There were five of everything—shirts, pants, pairs of socks. Five days’ worth.
It was clearly a place for kids because of the stupid paintings on the wall and all the stuffed animals, the boxes of “nontoxic” Crayolas on the floor, and coloring books and paper. And there was nothing hard or sharp. No pencils or pens or metal or even wooden toys. Just soft puzzle pieces and rubber building blocks. And stuffed animals. Even the food was safe—sandwiches served on easily crumbled Styrofoam plates; and there were no forks or knives, not even the plastic kind. The only hard surface in the place besides the TV cover was the black plastic hemisphere on the ceiling.
Travis couldn’t see the camera, but he knew there was one inside because he had once asked his mom what those black bubbles were on the ceiling of the Target in Fenton on Florida Highway 75. Mom had said it’s how the people in the back room make sure folks don’t shoplift stuff.
There certainly was nothing worth stealing in here. But the folks in the back room were watching him—even when he went to the bathroom—which made him feel creepy. He hoped they went to sleep at night. That was another thing: The lights never went off, they just dimmed automatically at bedtime, which was when the TV went off.
In the corner was a toilet with a plastic blue curtain, but you could see through it. The TV was built into the wall and was covered with a hard Plexiglas front. It wasn’t a real TV since all it showed were cartoons which he had seen dozens of times. And it was on whenever he was awake, so that the sound constantly filled the room. He couldn’t hear the outside—no cars or planes. No sounds of other people.
He missed the canal. He missed the woods. He missed the sounds of birds. He missed his friends. But most of all, he missed Bo and his mom.
He didn’t know where in the world he was, but he had a sense that he was far away. Really far.
He looked at the cookies which made him think of his mom and her cookies. And he began to cry. He didn’t want to cry. He had done a lot of that for the last two days. Sleep, stare at the TV, and cry. But he couldn’t help it.
So he lay on the mattress and cried a deep cry, hoping he would fall asleep and wake up at home.
20
The first thing Greg did on the morning after his visit to the Essex Medical Center was to multifax a memo to the medical examiner’s offices throughout the state asking if anybody had seen any human remains with such a pattern of holes in the skulls as in the accompanying photos—holes that appeared to have been made by medical drills: “Any information may help in the investigation of two missing children, one of whom is a kidnap and possible murder victim.” He left his name and number.
Nobody seemed to know what the holes were for, but every instinct in his being told him that there was some sort of plan—some sort of connection between the Essex case and the remains of the two kids.
When he was finished, his telephone rang. It was his supervisor, T.J. Gelford. He wanted him to come to his office. Something in the tone of Gelford’s voice told him it was not a routine conference.
Greg went upstairs to the detective sergeant’s office. Greg stiffened as he entered. Gelford was not alone. With him were Chief Norm Adler and the internal affairs officer, Rick Bolduk. They nodded when he came in, but nobody was smiling.
“Have a seat, Greg,” Gelford said.
Greg felt his heart rate kick up.
“I’d like to know where you were yesterday afternoon.”
Greg gauged their expressions as they waited for his answer. Their faces could have been hewn from Mount Rushmore. “I was on a case.”
“Which case?”
Before he went off on a job for any length of time, he was supposed to report to his supervisor or at least leave word with the dispatcher, especially if the investigation took him out of town. But failure to report did not call for a tribunal. “I was on the North Shore.”
“The North Shore? That’s a hundred miles out of our jurisdiction. You were supposed to be working the high school break-in.”
Some kids had broken through a rear window and trashed a room, maybe doing eight hundred dollars’ worth of damage. It was not a Priority One crime. “That’s not what this is all about.”
“That’s right,” Gelford said and glanced at a piece of paper in front of him. “We got a call from a Dr. Paul Doria, an internist from the Essex Medical Center that you’d been up there mucking around about this skull case.”
“I was investigating some leads.”
“He said that you threatened him and two other ER staffers with arrest unless they showed you somebody’s X rays. We contacted the other two, and they confirmed.”
“Because they failed to report suspicions of child abuse.”
“What suspicions of child abuse? The kid had some old scars in his head.”
“That’s right, and in the same places as the holes in the two skulls. I wanted to see if there’s a connection.”
“Did you?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“No you’re not, because you coerced three members of a medical staff to compromise a patient’s right to privacy, and that’s a violation of policy.” He handed Greg a piece of paper.
Greg didn’t have to read it to know it was a formal letter of reprimand.
“I sorry to say this, Greg, but you’re being put on notice,” Rick Bolduk said. “If you do anything else on this skull case, we will proceed with disciplinary action.”
Greg stiffened. He knew what that meant. At best, they would take away his gold shield and bust him back to a foot officer chasing speeders. At worst, he could be suspended, maybe even terminated.
“Nobody wants to do this, Greg,” Rick Bolduk added, “but you’ve stepped over the line and shown insubordination to your supervisor. Those are grounds for dismissal, but we’re giving you a second chance. From this point on, you’re off this case. Period.”
Greg nodded.
“It’s in the letter, but I’m putting you on night shift, seven to three,” Norm Adler said.
Greg made a flat grin. “Great.” Nothing happened on night shift in Sagamore except car accidents or drunks beating up their spouses. So what they’d give him to fill his time would be a bunch of petty larcenies and bum-check cases. His punishment was to further marginalize him. “Starting when?”
“Tomorrow.”
Greg knew that it was useless to protest, only because they were right to do this. He had operated on
