“Everybody likes a Batmobile,” Jake said. The little boy had snatched the car, trying to balance it on his head. “Phillip? Are you making the car into a hat?”
“Hat!” the little boy crowed. He showed Jake the car. “Cah!”
“Car,” Jake reached for it. “Thank you, Phillip. Batcar.”
“Bahcah!” the little boy pulled it back, hugging it to his chest.
“Batcar.” What they don’t teach you at the police academy. “Phillip? Do you know your mommy’s name?”
“Mommy name!” Phillip replied, still clutching the toy. Then his forehead seemed to crumble, and his lower lip quivered. “Mama?”
Phillip let the car drop to the floor. It landed, upside down, one wheel spinning, forgotten. “Mama?”
“Oh, dear.” Bethany glanced at Jake, mouth tightening, shaking her head. She brushed the crumbs from Phoebe’s dress, then handed the little girl to Jake. “Can you hold her for a second? I’m afraid Phillip’s about to-Come here, sweetheart.”
Jake smelled the sweet shampoo in Phoebe’s hair, felt his two suddenly huge hands almost encircle the white sash on her waist as he reached out to take her. He propped her on his lap, then adjusted the white cotton sock drooping precariously from one foot. He felt her little body settle into the crook of his elbow. With a gurgle and a coo, she grasped his forefinger with her hand. “Gah,” she said.
Jane, he thought. And then dragged his attention back to where it should be.
“So much for that idea,” Jake said. “Would have been much easier if Phillip here could have pointed us in the right direction.”
“Probably better though, for him at least, Detective, that he couldn’t.” The boy had buried his face in Bethany’s sweater, glued his wiry body to hers, and planted his sneakers on her leggings. “His brain function hasn’t developed enough to comprehend what happened. He clearly has a memory of a ‘Mama’-that’s okay, honey, everything will be fine-but we hope that will fade and be replaced by some new and kinder memories. Ms. Lussier is deceased, I’m told. And Phoebe, at this age, she should be completely free of-well, one step at a time. Detective? Seems like you’re done here. Unless you’d like to babysit a while.”
Jake realized he was jiggling his leg, bouncing Phoebe, and she was still hanging on to his finger. Where would she be, a year from now? Ten years? She was at the mercy of the system, thanks to a killer Jake had no idea where to even begin looking for.
“Hard to tell which would be more difficult, Doctor,” Jake said. “Taking care of these two, or finding out who killed their mother. Guess I’ll handle the one I’m trained to do. I think we can clear these two from our suspect list. Should I-?” He looked at Phoebe, straining toward the floor.
“You can put her down, Detective. She’s not going anywhere.”
Exactly like this case, Jake thought. Not going anywhere.
Jake stood, his knees complaining. He shook out a leg and reached for his jacket. Where was DeLuca? “Thanks, Bethany. Let us know if they spill the beans.”
“Will do, Detective. At this age, spilling is what they do best. And you know-”
“Excuse me, ma’am.” DeLuca appeared in the entryway to the dining room, cell phone in hand.
Phillip turned at the sound of male voice, then snuggled closer to Bethany. Phoebe, clattering multicolored wooden blocks into a cardboard box, didn’t look up.
“Hey D.” Next on their agenda, tracking down Leonard Perl and hitting up the Callaberry Street neighbors with a few more knock-and-talks. Now they’d turn the heat up a notch or two. Not even a day since they found the body, but already this case worried him. Doors were not opening the way he’d so optimistically predicted yesterday. “The kids are a dead end, it appears. They don’t have a clue about their mother’s name.”
“They don’t, huh?” DeLuca stashed his cell into his jacket pocket. “That’s okay. Because I do.”
21
Jane watched Maggie Gunnison tap a pass code on a number pad, heard the office door click. Maggie put a hand on the doorknob, but seemed reluctant to turn it.
Jane had to keep her talking. And she’d just thought of how. “Do you allow single parents to be fosters?”
“Well, sometimes we-”
“Hey, Maggie.” A young man approached, wearing pressed jeans, earbuds plugged into his ears and a white cord dangling down his fashionably untucked plaid shirt. He pushed a rickety metal cart stacked with file folders. A shock of dark hair curled under the bright green Celtics cap he wore backward, its plastic band making a green stripe across his forehead.
“Sorry, ladies. Comin’ through. Cool that we’re getting out at three for the snowstorm, right? Makes me proud to be nonessential.” His voice was too loud, as if he’d forgotten no one else could hear his music. He put a steadying hand on the files, then narrowed his eyes at Jane. “Hey. You’re Jane Ryland! I’m a big-”
“Hey, Finn.” Maggie shot him a look, then pointed down the hall. “Let’s go into my office, such as it is, Miss Ryland.”
Jane followed as she entered, turning to give the guy an apologetic what-can-you-do wave. Always nice to have fans.
“Sorry,” Maggie was saying. “Finn Eberhardt’s one of our newer caseworkers. He can be a bit of an oversharer. Forgive him. Anyway, you asked about caseworkers before-we’ve got five full-times. Me, Finn, three others. Five! And two thousand seven hundred fifty-eight children. The math stinks. It’s not that there aren’t families who might want them, it’s that we can’t do the home visit assessment paperwork fast enough to assure the kids are in safe places. So they wait. Even infants wait. You asked about parents. Yes, sometimes we use single mothers. It’s not ideal, I suppose, but what can we do? Too many kids need help.”
“And now there are two more.” Jane risked it. “What will happen to them?”
Maggie closed her office door behind her, pushing it shut with the flat of one running shoe. The windowless room was a nest of file folders, stacked against the walls, tipping next to a green four-drawer file cabinet, piled chest high on a wooden desk. A seemingly endless philodendron carefully coiled on plastic hooks garlanded the walls, glossy heart-shaped leaves snaking up to one corner, edging along the ceiling, then down the other side.
Maggie dumped her paperwork on top of an already precarious mountain of manila, a tiny cloud of dust puffing from the bottom.
“All these are children who need foster homes.” She patted the files. “Their parents are dead, or crackheads, or sick or crazy or basically defeated. Parental rights terminated. The children did nothing wrong, but they got dumped. One flutter of a butterfly wing-you know?-they could have been a Kennedy or a Saltonstall. But, little Phillip and Phoebe? They got dealt the shit hand. Sorry.”
Jane shrugged, Got it, eyed the one visitor’s chair. Stacked with files.
“So Phillip and Phoebe?” Jane began.
“Look. Eventually the two kids will be sent to another foster home. I’m hoping they can stay together. But there’s no guarantee.”
“But that’s…”
“Yeah. I know. I’ve only been in charge here a year. And I cry every night.”
“Your job is so difficult,” Jane said.
Maggie adjusted the leaves of the philodendron, carefully draping a loop across a beige metal bookshelf. “Well, we do what we can. I’ll be better after a week off, right?”
“Absolutely. But, um, their foster mother,” Jane kept her voice oh-so-casual, as if this were something that just crossed her mind. “Were these the first children she’d taken in? How do you spell her name again? I’m not sure I have it right.”