“An hour isn't going to change anything. I doubt I'm going to be struck with inspiration before you get back. Trust me.”
Rhett took another uncomfortable look at the untidy mountain of records they'd carted away from the hospital in a van. “What have you found out so far?”
Molly took her own look and sighed. “I found out I worked way too much and got way too little out of it.”
Rhett didn't bother to comment.
“I think it was the hormones,” Molly said. “I seem to have been on a mission to save every bruised kid who hit the door.”
“That was unusual for you?”
“You want the truth?” Molly rubbed at the gnaw in her epigastrium even White Castles couldn't cure. “I don't know.”
Now Rhett did comment, all with his eyes.
Molly shrugged. “I don't remember. I don't remember much of what's in that stack at all, no matter how many times I signed my name. Just the outrageous stuff. The frat jock who entered the fart lighting contest and our burn unit in the same day, the crazy who really did cut off his nose to spite his face, the woman who was valet parking Hot Wheels in her very own subterranean garage. But the everyday stuff?” She shook her head. “It doesn't pay to remember that stuff. It just gets me mad all over again, and I've had my fill of mad, thanks.”
“So you can't put any memories to any of the possibles you've listed?”
A list of thirteen so far. Boys, all of them, questioned abuse. Neglect.
Trauma. Possibly, now that they'd finally learned to diagnose it, Munchausen by Proxy, by which a parent got attention by making her own child ill. And every one of those names meaningless. It was only the lesson that had remained, an awful brew distilled from all those sad, empty eyes.
The Game.
And, evidently, one little boy who had remembered better than Molly. But if Kathy was right, while Molly had tried to save them all, only Molly had tried to save that one little boy.
Rhett picked up Molly's list. “Well,” he said. “We can at least start running these while we're gone.”
Molly had her coat on before Rhett could argue. “Good idea.”
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Sasha was fond of saying that one could tell exactly where one was in the social structure of St. Louis by the Christmas lights in the yard. If this was true, the Taggatt neighborhood sat solidly in white trash central, where the lights probably confused overhead airliners and the seasonal lawn ornaments represented every Christmas cliché but Jingle Barney.
At the Taggatt home, the lawn held a plastic manger, Santa, deer, candy canes, lights, and Homer Simpson. Multicolored lights were strung from the roof out to the lawn like a spiderweb, and a big HAPPY HOLIDAYS sign hung over the front porch. The house beneath the lights was small, shabby, and sagging. So was the woman who answered the door.
“Yeah?”
Rhett and Baitshop flipped badges. “Mrs. Taggatt? May we talk to you please? We're from the St. Louis police.”
Molly just stood behind with her hands in her coat pockets while Mrs. Taggatt assessed the situation.
“About fuckin' time,” she finally said and pushed the door open. “You here about Crystal?”
The inside of the Taggatt home looked no better, with a pink Christmas tree fighting for space with a big-screen TV tuned to soaps, and tables cluttered with Busch bottles.
“Could we sit down?” Rhett asked. “Is Mr. Taggatt in?”
Mrs. Taggatt laughed like an air horn and reached for her cigarettes.
“That asshole ain't never in. Now, you gonna tell me where Crystal is? She in trouble again? If she is, I'll blister her little ass.” She lit up and sat, and everybody else followed, the three of them tucked into a dingy blue couch that smelled more than faintly of cat. “I'll tell you, that girl's been trouble since the day she grew tits. Always wants her own way. Like she knows better. Well, I'll tell you, she's sure as shit gonna know better now.”
Molly simply sat by while Rhett waited for an opening into which to insert his news. As pissed as Mrs. Taggatt was at her daughter, at the police, at Mr. Taggatt, it could take a while.
In the meantime, Molly did what she did every time she entered a home for an interview. She looked for pictures. Evidence of what kind of family might dwell in the house. Did they arrange their memories, or save them at all? Did they keep the faces of the people they loved close at hand, clustered like bouquets, or did they just forget?
There were a few pictures arranged on the far wall in a triangle. Mrs. Taggatt in a better time, leaning back against a fairly good-looking guy with high cheekbones and small eyes. A boy seated in a Sears-type pose with football and fall leaves. A girl, looking old and hard in a Glamour Shot pose with sequins, too much makeup, and teased, stiff mall-hair. One of those child-women who didn't know quite where she belonged anymore, her expression a dead cross between fear and bravado.
The face, Molly knew, of one of her victims.
“Mrs. Taggatt,” Rhett said, his tone of voice pulling Molly's attention back. “I'm afraid I have some bad news.”
The woman stopped dead in the middle of a drag, the smoke curling up beyond her straw yellow hair like a small barn fire.
“No,” was all she said, going pale.
The three occupants of the couch tensed to react.
“I'm so sorry,” Rhett said softly, reaching for her hand.
She jumped as if he'd scalded her. “No!” she shrieked, on her feet so fast she almost sent the tree over. “You get outta here with that shit! They told me she run away.”
“I'm sorry.” The litany of homicide. Of death investigation. Of trauma. “We're virtually sure that your daughter Crystal was the victim of a ⦠murderer in the area.”
“No ⦔ Tears blurred exophthalmic blue eyes. “She's not dead. If I see her I'll prove it. Show me that girl you found. Show her to me and I'll ⦔
Rhett just shook his head. It was better than explaining that all that was left to identify was a painted bone. “I'm afraid there isn't any question, Mrs. Taggatt. We matched her with those X rays you provided the police last week. Please, won't you help us find who did this? Would you answer a few questions?”
The tears came fast now. Real tears, silent, blinding, streaking Mrs. Taggatt's makeup and running down her neck. “Aw, God, no. Who would ⦠who ⦔
Molly made it to Mrs. Taggatt before either of the other two. And then she just held her. Just let her sob. Closed her own eyes, trying to close her ears against such furious, keening grief. Understanding perfectly well why she hadn't remembered any of the people she'd seen in the ED twenty years ago.
Baitshop found the Kleenex, and Rhett got his interview. Molly held on to Crystal's mother until she finally pulled herself to her feet and lifted that Glamour Shot picture off the wall to hand to Rhett.
“You told the police you heard her making a date that last night,” Rhett said in his most compassionate voice as Mrs. Taggatt sat back down, the photo still in her hands, her thumbs on her daughter's cheeks.
Mrs. Taggatt nodded, snuffling. “I told her not to go. I told her I hated that crowd she hung with up there. They talked her into dressing like a whore. And she was piercing every fuckin' thing she could find. Tell me, what the hell does that mean?”
“She'd tried to run away before, hadn't she?”
“Three times. We got her back every time. She didn't mean it. Not really. She just doesn't get along with her dad, ya know?”
“We know. Kids just do that sometimes,” Rhett said with a soft smile. He didn't say that usually they did that because there was abuse somewhere in their life. After all, it would take a pretty awful home to be worse than the streets in winter. “Is there any reason to think she meant to go again?”
Mrs. Taggatt looked down at the face on her lap. “No. I really don't think so. She ⦠she usually got real antsy when she was thinking about it.
Bitchy, like nothin' we did was right. She wasn't doin' that. In fact, after she was sick, she really seemed happier.”
“Sick?” Molly asked.
Mrs. Taggatt couldn't quite look at her. “She ⦠well, she didn't mean to really hurt herself. I mean, who tells you that Tylenol shit can kill ya? She was just bein' dramatic. That's what Lou says.”
“Of course. How long was that before you last saw her?”
“Only a few weeks. But she seemed better.”
“Do you know who she met that last night?” Rhett asked.
“Kenny. She said his name was Kenny. That they was just gonna have coffee.”
Molly knew for sure then how good a cop Rhett was, because he never reacted to the fact that they now had a name. “How'd she get up there, ma'am?”
Another dip of the head. “I don't know. I told her she couldn't go. She had to baby-sit her sisters. I just don't know how she got there.”
“But you never saw this Kenny.”
“No. She wouldn't tell me where she met him or nothin'. Just that he was real nice.” She shrugged. “Harmless.”
“But she went up to the Mean Bean a lot?”
“Yeah. Said she felt normal up there. Whatever the hell that means.” She was shaking her head, eyes unfocused, hands trembling. “You couldn't be wrong ⦠?”
“No, ma'am,” Rhett told her, because that, in the end was all they could give her for closure. “We couldn't be wrong.”
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Molly enjoyed that trip so very much that when she got back, she packed up her pile of charts and she just went home. She brewed up more tea, she called Sam to find that Patrick had gone down to the local cyber café to contact his friends, she changed from jeans and T-shirt into a flannel nightgown, as if that would simulate sleep, and she sat down to more longforgotten mayhem.
She got her first nibble about three hours later.
She'd been digging through the various and sundry disasters of October
1979 when her attention was caught by a nurse's note on the chart of a ten-year-old named Peter Wilson. His father had brought him in for a sore throat. There was nothing on the face of the chart that should have stopped her. No injuries high on the abuse-suspicion category, no mention of multiple visits or signs of neglect. But she checked anyway, just as she had every chart, for a pattern she might only later recognize.
And there it was, and in her own handwriting.
Kenny appears to be anxious and alert. No apparent distress. Vague about symptoms
.
Kenny. Molly checked the face sheet again to find that no middle name was listed. She read the disposition on the chart to discover that none of the physical findings supported the child's complaints. She saw that two other times she'd referred to the child as “Kenny” as opposed to “patient,” which was the traditional appellation.
Peter Wilson.
Molly reviewed the list she'd begun. Names she'd suspected of obvious abuse. Repeat offenders with obvious problems. The name wasn't among them. She certainly didn't remember the name or the child. But something about the careful notes made her uneasy. She had to get back to her previous logbooks and see if the name Peter Wilson showed up. She had to look ahead.
Well, she could start with what she had, which was October.
Molly was so deep in her research, that it took her a minute to hear the tapping. She looked up and shrieked. There was a face at her window. Then she recognized Rhett's abashed smile and damn near killed him.
If only Magnum hadn't adopted him, just like all the other people in her life. Molly stalked to the back door and threw it open, ready to rip the officer several new orifices. The worry lines between his eyes stopped her.
“No,” she said, turning away before the videocams lurking on the other side of her back fence caught her in her nightie. “No more bad news. I already told you that.”
“I'm sorry, Molly.”
She didn't even bother to turn around. “Don't be sorry, Rhett. Just be gone.”
He followed her into her family room where all the charts were strewn across the floor and tables. “I can't.”
Molly sat down and pulled over the October logbook. “I'm ignoring you,” she informed her very uncomfortable friend. “I'm looking to see if I can find a repeat visitor named Peter Wilson. Wanna know why?”
“You were the one who wanted to be kept in the loop,” he reminded her, “and you haven't been answering your phone.”
Molly waved him off. “You want me, beep me. I stopped answering the phone.”
“I know. The answering machine's full, too.”
Molly snorted. “Mostly hang-ups, since I won't give quotes.”