and walked to the fire escape. The stairs led down to a door that opened from the inside only and led out onto Ocean Avenue, which was busy with pedestrian and vehicle traffic. He walked north to the corner and turned along Santa Monica Boulevard. It was lined with shops and restaurants and was bustling with the sort of night-time activity that one would expect in a popular tourist town.
7
At nine a.m. the following day Stratton walked through the gate of the child-protection centre and along the path to the front doors. A black armed security guard wearing a crisply ironed shirt, slacks, a large badge on his chest and a baseball cap sat beside the entrance on a white plastic deckchair.
‘Mornin’, sir,’ he said as Stratton passed him.
‘Hi,’ Stratton replied as he pushed in through the doors.
Two little Hispanic children sprinted past Stratton, causing him to pull up sharply as the door closed behind him.
‘Come on, you two,’ a woman in a nurse’s uniform said as she hurried into the lobby and shooed the kids into a corner where she took hold of their hands. ‘No playing in the corridors,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘Back we go to the playroom.’ And with that she led them away.
Stratton crossed the narrow lobby to a reception desk and watched the nurse take the children along a corridor and in through a doorway.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked the lady at reception. It was Dorothy from the night before and she grinned on recognising Stratton. ‘Oh, it’s you. Did you have a nice time last night?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ Stratton said, aware that Dorothy was still under the impression that he had some kind of relationship with the social worker. ‘Is Vicky in?’
‘Yes. I think she’s busy – but then, hell, she’s always busy. I’ll give her a call,’ Dorothy said, reaching for the phone.
‘I’m actually here to see a young boy who came in last night. Josh Penton.’
‘You have a kid in here?’ Dorothy asked, looking surprised.
‘I’m a friend of the family. I stopped by to see him.’
‘And Vicky knows all about this, right?’
‘She knows I’m coming to see him this morning.’
‘Em … Okay, I guess,’ Dorothy said looking a little confused. ‘Maybe I should give her a ring.’
‘I’m only here to say hello. Is he in the playroom?’ Stratton asked, indicating down the corridor.
‘Nice try, Mister … Stratton, is it?’ Vicky was standing in the doorway of an office near the entrance.
Dorothy looked even more confused. ‘I thought—’
‘It’s okay, Dorothy. Would you come into my office, please?’ Vicky asked Stratton coolly.
He walked past her into the office. Vicky went to her desk, leaving the door open. Stratton waited for the ticking-off that he was expecting but there was no sign of anger in her expression. Quite the opposite, in fact.
‘I’m sorry about what happened to Josh’s mother. I didn’t find out until I got in this morning … I understand your concern for Josh and I’m here to help in every possible way, but can I ask you to please respect the way we do things around here. There’s a reason why they call this place a child-protection centre and why we have an armed guard at the entrance. Many of the children in here have been forcibly removed from their families, some of them for quite horrific reasons. It’s not unheard of for some of those families to ignore the court’s decisions and try and kidnap the children. Two weeks ago a woman came in here with a gun to get her daughter back, a little girl who for the past year she’d kept locked in a cupboard without any hygiene facilities and with barely enough food to live on. That,’ Vicky said, pointing at the wall behind her where a neat hole was ringed by a marker, ‘was where she fired her gun when I told her she couldn’t have her daughter. Then, mercifully, she was overpowered by the guard … This place is all about the children and not their families or guardians. Do you understand, Mister Stratton?’ Her statement sounded as much an appeal as a lecture.
‘I understand,’ Stratton said, genuinely humbled.
‘Where’s Josh’s father?’
‘He died a week ago.’
‘Oh,’ Vicky said, lowering her head as if receiving bad news about a friend. She was used to dealing with cases where children had been exposed to dreadful experiences but even after so many years she was still unable to put the painful details to one side quickly enough.
Vicky took a form from a drawer and placed it on the desk in front of Stratton. ‘Would you fill in this questionnaire, please? The first section is about Josh and the second section is for you. Fill it in as accur ately as possible. Any details found to be deliberately incorrect will negate any chances you have of gaining custody of the child.’
‘Miss Whitaker – a word, please,’ a man’s voice interrupted rudely behind Stratton.
Stratton looked around to see a skinny, balding, bespectacled man in the doorway. He was clutching several files.
‘I’ll be one minute, Mister Myers.’
‘I need to speak to you right away,’ Myers insisted.
‘I said I’d be a minute –
Myers frowned, stepped back into the lobby and started neurotically flicking through a file.
‘Excuse me,’ Vicky said to Stratton as she headed for the door. ‘Some people just don’t know the meaning of manners.’
Stratton took a pen off the desk and started filling in the form. It took several minutes to complete the pages that requested detailed information – he had to get several of the numbers and addresses from the small Filofax he carried in his breast pocket. When he had finished the form he left it on the desk and stood in the doorway to see Vicky still in conversation with Myers who looked as though he was telling her off about something. He seemed like an irritating little man and when he walked away Vicky folded her arms and looked at the floor in agitated thought for a moment.
Stratton walked over to her, deciding that he would be nothing short of cooperative and friendly, especially since the young woman appeared to get flack from all directions. Her kindness and compassion for her wards were apparent and he reckoned that she could be a useful ally if he got on the right side of her. ‘He your boss?’ he asked.
She looked up at him. ‘Head administrator – thinks he owns the centre. Technically he’s my superior but I run the childcare. He holds the purse strings but in fairness to him I have to admit that job requires a certain level of coldness. As he’s always pointing out, if I ran this place it’d be bankrupt in a month.’
‘Miss Vicky, Miss Vicky,’ a small boy called out as he headed towards her, holding a model helicopter.
‘George. You’re not supposed to be out here,’ she said without a hint of scolding.
‘I know,’ George said. ‘But my helicopter’s not working and Mister Myers said he didn’t have time to handle someone else’s goddamned case load and—’
‘Okay,’ Vicky interrupted. ‘Go back to the playroom and I’ll come by later and see if we can fix it.’
George’s expression fell with immediate unhappiness at all the rejection he seemed to be receiving. ‘Okay,’ he said, kicking the floor and turning to go.
‘Can I take a look at it?’ Stratton offered.
George stopped and looked up at him suspiciously.
‘Do you know what kind of helicopter it is?’ Stratton asked.
‘It’s a Hip M1-8,’ George said. ‘It says so there,’ he said, showing Stratton the bottom of it. ‘Soldiers can get in the back that opens,’ he explained as he demonstrated the unusual rear-entry doors that were hinged like crab claws.
‘Do you know where it’s from?’ Stratton asked, crouching so his head was at the same level as the boy’s.
‘It’s American.’
‘Nope. It’s Russian.’
