Again Bear shot Tim a glance from over the top of his notepad.
Tim asked, 'You're his guardian?'
Kaitlin nodded. Down the hall a door thumped shut. Emotion or exhaustion seemed to catch up to her at that moment. 'He's a special kid, such a special kid, and I'm in charge of him. Because no one else was around to do it. Not one family member was clamoring, so I got okayed. Me, with my credentials.' Her voice dropped to a hoarse, almost scared whisper. 'But it's a lot of work.'
'Tess didn't have any other family?'
An unmistakable hint of anger-'None she trusted, I guess.' Kaitlin seemed made uncomfortable by the silence, so she continued, 'We'd stayed in touch a bit, and then regularly after Sammy was diagnosed. Sammy and I…well, I guess we took to each other.'
'He's lucky.'
'I'm not able to…' She shook off the thought, then looked down the hall toward Sam's room, her face warming through the sadness. 'I'm lucky.'
'When's the last time you saw Walker?' Bear asked.
'Not in years. We separated.'
'Not divorced? How'd it happen?'
'He went to Iraq and came back but never really came back. You know? It was different than his other stints, Iraq. He never took the armor off after that.' A faint laugh. 'The stint in Leavenworth off the incoming flight didn't much help matters.'
'I'm sorry to pry, but was there any domestic violence?' Tim asked.
'Walk never hit me, no. Drank some. Got ugly from time to time-words, you know how it gets-but he never laid a hand.'
'Did he know Sam?'
'No. Walk and Tess drifted some after Tess got married, then he was gone most always. Deployed. I doubt Walker'd even recognize Sammy if you put 'em in the same room.'
'Do you mind if we take a look at her room? Maybe ask Sam a question or two?'
She looked briefly worried, a mother's protectiveness. 'One or two. Don't push him-he's got an active imagination. Tess's room is the last one on the left. Go ahead. I'm just gonna straighten up out here some.' With a wry grin, she added, 'Peel some labels.'
Sam had created a sign for his door with crayons and construction paper. SAMS ROOM. PRIVATE PRIVATE PRIVATE. NOONE ALLOWED WITHOUT NOCKING. Tim heeded the warning, rapping his knuckles against the flimsy wood.
'Come in.' Sam sat on the floor, face tilted back to take in the TV on his bureau. The bowl of cereal sat to one side, the milk all but absorbed. On-screen, a would-be sleazeball took a Bonnie and Clyde fusillade to his critical mass. Game cartridges littered the floor. Champions of Norrath. WWF Smackdown. Devil May Cry 3.
'I've got a few questions for you, Sam,' Tim said. 'Is that okay?'
Sam paused the game, a feature Tim wished they'd had on Frogger back in the day. Bear hung back in the hall as Tim showed Sam Walker's photo.
'Do you know who this guy is?' Sam studied it, then shook his head. Tim said, 'It's your uncle. We need to know if you've seen him.'
Sam's eyes went to Tim's gun. 'You're gonna kill him.'
'Not if I can help it.'
Bear opened Tess's door up the hall, and Sam's features shifted. 'Are you going in Mom's room?'
'Yeah, but we'll be respectful of her stuff.' It took a moment for Tim to decipher the apprehension on Sam's face. 'Would you like us to keep the door closed while we're in there?'
Sam nodded, relieved. Tim headed into the next room, securing the door behind him. Bear was standing before a patch of bleached carpet, looking at a scrubbed blob of wall. A dark eye stared out from the drywall where a criminalist had dug out the slug. The smell of cleaning chemicals burned the back of Tim's throat. Sam's scared look had been sudden, acute, traumatized. He was living with more than just a potentially fatal illness. The headboard of his bed backed on the wall that had once borne his mother's brain spatter.
The plastic underwear drawers, spread-out toiletries, and photos shoved into the mirror frame reminded Tim of a dorm room. The folding closet doors were permanently laid open, broken in the tracks. Clothes seemed to bulge out of the shoulder-wide space. A rack held a collection of exhausted footwear, and Tim could see where Tess had used Magic Marker to touch up her shoes. Atop a world-weary Converse sat the empty holster the cops had left behind.
Tim zeroed in on the rickety bookcase right away, looking for materials from the company that had dropped Walker's nephew. Medical books crowded the shelves, journal articles cramming the gaps. Beneath a well-thumbed dictionary of medical terminology were some stray letters, including one in which Tess requested information from Vector's study director. She'd sought out the company, it seemed, as a last-ditch treatment option for her son.
One shelf down Tim found a report, its cover featuring the familiar Vector logo, a V with an arrow capping the second vertical like a directive to scale the evolutionary ladder. Onward and upward. Tim showed off the fancy print job.
Bear said, 'We connect Walker to Vector, we've got some traction.'
Inside, Tim found a report on something called Xedral, a 'viral vector,' Tess's notes painstakingly written in the narrow margins. X4-AAT unknown side effects? Why Lentidra fall off map? Outliers included in stats? Clearly she'd poured her energy into researching the treatment. She must've been devastated when Vector eliminated Sam from the trial-another possible suicide motive. Among the stray papers stuffed into the report, Tim found no notification of Sam's termination.
Pulling books, Tim checked the scraps of paper she'd used as bookmarks. After coming across a few magazine subscription cards and a torn grocery list, Tim hit upon a business card, used to mark a page in a primer on liver disease. CHAISSON KAGAN. CEO. VECTOR BIOGENICS. A Westwood address and a 310 area code. Another number handwritten on the back.
The videotape beside the primer had a KCOM spine sticker. Sam's sloppy hand labeled the tape, My News Segmint. Tim slid it out and walked to the next room, disrupting Sam's video game once again. 'This is yours, right? Mind if I borrow it?'
'Go ahead. It's just a copy. They sent me a couple to give to other kids without a gene. But I don't know any.'
'I'll get it back to you as soon as we're done.'
''Kay. Thanks. For asking, I mean. Other people just do whatever they want.'
'Other people?'
'The cops, I mean. Right after.'
Tim looked at him. A moment's pause.
Sam said, 'What are you guys doing anyways?'
'Just getting some more information about your mom's death.'
'Two months later?'
'That's right.' Tim returned to Tess's room, again closing the door behind him.
A triangular desk in the corner held an antique computer monitor and a cordless phone. The drawers contained Tess's receipts and bills, which were clearly if not logically organized. Tim pulled the file holding the phone bills and set it aside on the bed-they'd ask Guerrera to start following up on the numbers she'd called in the months before her death. A checkbook showed an account that scraped the double digits several times a month.
Tim wandered into the bathroom. The ledge above the sink held a roll-on Lady Mitchum, a bottle of folic acid tablets, and a well-wrung tube of Aquafresh. Taking the bottle of pills, he went back over to the desk and sat in the tiny rolling chair, the ovoid wooden backrest of which doubled as a belt rack. He dug through the envelope stuffed with receipts from June, then moved on to May. Near the top he found a Sav-On receipt that contained what he was looking for. May 28. Folic acid-$12.99.
The bottle advertised a hundred 400-microgram tablets. He spilled those remaining on the bedspread and counted them. For both of Dray's pregnancies, she'd taken folic acid every day of her first term. Tim counted the pills. Eighty-eight remained, which meant that she'd likely taken one a day, including the morning of June 8 when
