Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

Impatient, your mind runs on ahead:

… and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

But the expectation is not fulfilled. The essential words do not follow.

Your eyes seek his, frantic, pleading. The devil growls at your shoulder, taking shape out of the umbra, exulting as he solidifies. Closer. You feel his talons pluck at your vision, begin to pull the fetid shroud across your eyes. You are sinking.

Quickly! Finish it!

The priest bends closer still, his voice a whisper in your closing ear.

“You found me, and I was lost. Now you are lost, because I found you …”

THE MOTHER

BY ALAFAIR BURKE

Diane Light closed the file folder and added it to the heap on her desk. At nearly a foot high, the pile began to wobble. She rested her forearm on top of the tower to hold it steady.

She resisted the urge to separate that last file from the rest. It was special. It deserved to be carried into court on its own.

“Jesus, I thought I was late.” Diane heard harried footsteps rush past her office door, her coworker’s generic voice fading as he moved farther down the hallway. “Stone’s a stickler about time, you know.”

She knew.

She stole a glance at her watch as she scooped the stack of files against her chest. Two minutes until Stone would be seated at his bench, tapping the face of his own watch, eager for the deputy district attorney to start calling cases.

Judge Stone was a stickler for promptness, but he was also a stickler for facts. She’d memorized the contents of Kiley’s file, from start to finish.

TWO HOURS IN, Stone finally commented on the time. “Nice job this morning, Miss Light. You could teach your colleagues a thing or two about docket management.”

Her previously foot-high pile was now down to two inches. Three more cases. Two more before Kiley’s. And still an hour to go before Stone’s hardwired lunch alarm would sound. The strategy was working.

She rushed through the next two cases. They were easy ones: Mothers complying with conditions. Social workers report progress and recommend continued monitoring and treatment. No request for immediate disposition, Your Honor.

Forty-five minutes to go, and only one more file. The file. Kiley’s file. She called the case number and watched Kiley’s father approach the opposition table with his court-appointed counsel. Kiley’s assigned guardian ad litem stood between the two lawyers.

“Your Honor, you may recall this case. The State originally moved to terminate parental rights ten months ago, after police learned the child had been sold sexually by her parents. She was only twenty-two months old at the time.” Twenty-two months sounded much younger than two years old. Somehow it sounded even more babylike than a year and a half.

“Objection.” It came from the dad’s attorney, Lisa Hobbins.

Hobbins pretended to care about her clients, but Diane knew for a fact that last Cinco de Mayo, after too many tequila shots at Veritable Quandary, Hobbins had puked her guts out in the gutter of First Avenue, crying about the scumbag parents she represents. “Miss Light is well aware that only the mother was convicted of those charges,” Hobbins said now. “My client was estranged from his wife at the time the crimes occurred. He wanted to get clean. She didn’t. He wouldn’t have left Kiley with his wife if he’d known —”

“We dispute all of that, Your Honor. A grand jury indicted the father as well after finding probable cause for his involvement. The defendant was acquitted at trial after his wife testified about her sole responsibility, but the State’s position is that his wife, a battered woman and not estranged from her husband at all, protected Mr. Chance —”

Judge Stone held up a hand to cut her off. “The State lost at trial, Miss Light. The jury must have rejected your theory.”

“But this is a separate case, Your Honor. As an independent finder of fact, you can make a fresh assessment —”

“So where are we now?” He didn’t try to mask the long glance at his watch.

“The mother has stipulated to a termination of parental rights, but Mr. Chance has not. The case has been continued seven times over the past ten months. At the third hearing, Judge Parker found grounds for termination but wanted assurances that Kiley would have a permanent home. The State objected to the condition and has continued to object since, but the case has been set over at each subsequent hearing pending further monitoring of the situation and while Kiley’s foster mother, Janice Miller, decided whether to enter into a legal adoption.”

Stone was rifling through the court’s file, still trying to understand the procedural posture. She didn’t want him thinking about continuances, hearings, and orders held at bay. She needed him to care about Kiley. That little girl was not just a number. She was not just the last case of the day. Maybe Diane should have called the case first. All that work. All that planning. And now she was blowing it.

“To cut to the chase, Your Honor” — she knew that was Stone’s favorite phrase —“Kiley was not an easy child to place. Adoptive parents are reluctant to take on children who have been through the kind of trauma Kiley experienced. In addition to having been subjected to repeated molestations, she was born drug affected. At the time of her parents’ arrest, she was undernourished and suffering from PTSD. But after nearly a year as a foster parent to Kiley, Miss Miller was sufficiently comfortable with Kiley’s physical and emotional progress. This was to be a hearing to finalize the termination of Mr. Chance’s parental rights with a simultaneous adoption by Miss Miller.”

“But?”

“But Miss Miller was struck and killed by a drunk driver two nights ago as she was jogging across Powell Boulevard.” Judge Stone made a tsk sound. “The State is still seeking termination of parental rights. Although counsel notes that Mr. Chance was acquitted, it cannot be ignored that one of the men who was paying for sexual contact with the child was a former cellmate of Mr. Chance. At Mr. Chance’s trial, that man testified that —”

Hobbins interjected on her client’s behalf. “Your Honor, that man was a child rapist who testified in exchange for leniency. Given how child abusers are treated in prison, he would have said anything to get in the prosecutor’s good graces.”

The man’s name was Trevor Williams. His status as a convicted felon was the primary reason the State’s criminal case had come together. A neighbor in the Chances’ apartment building called the police after she saw blood on a child’s pair of pants in the communal laundry room. A fan of CSI, she went so far as to seize the evidence and seal it in a Ziploc bag. Police found not only blood but also seminal fluid. A search warrant executed at the Chances’ home turned up a set of pajamas with a different man’s fluids. Thanks to the state’s DNA data bank for convicts, they linked the second sample to Williams.

Cutting a deal with that pedophile was the hardest bargain Diane had ever struck. They might never identify the other man — or men — to whom Kiley was traded off, but they had Williams, and Williams was willing to give them both of the parents. It was the only way to protect the girl in the long run.

Judge Stone wasn’t interested in the details of Williams’s testimony, however. He raised an impatient palm again. “I’m not going to relitigate the criminal case here, ladies. You should both know that the standard is the best interests of the child.”

And how the hell was it in Kiley’s best interests to live with a man who sold her as a two-year-