The Baby Squad

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Huh?”

  “Black, ebony black,” Ryan added.

  “I don’t know. We’ve got flashlights all over the place.”

  “This model is about a foot long,” Ryan added.

  Chester thought a moment.

  “We’ve got that big one in the kitchen,” Jennie said.

  “Can I see it?” Ryan asked.

  She hurried into the kitchen and returned with a black flashlight. Ryan looked at it and shook his head.

  “It’s a Magnolight. Any others?”

  “Not that big,” Chester said firmly.

  “Okay. I’d like to look at her room, if I may,” Ryan requested.

  “Sure, go look at her room. I guess we’ll turn it into a regular museum now,” Chester muttered, and closed his eyes to lay his head against his right shoulder again.

  Ryan studied him for a moment, glanced at Henry McCalester, and then turned to Jennie.

  “Those women who were just here,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Were they in your daughter’s room?”

  Jennie looked furtively at her husband, but he kept his eyes closed, his head turned away. She, too, glanced at Henry.

  “Were they?” McCalester followed.

  “Hattie said it was necessary,” Jennie replied.

  “Did they take anything from the room?” Ryan quickly followed.

  “Not that I saw, no.”

  “Take me to it now,” Ryan demanded. “They’re way out of bounds here,” he told McCalester.

  Henry simply nodded.

  Jennie led them up the stairway, each step looking as if it might just be her last and she would come tumbling back at them.

  When she opened the door to Lois’s room, she turned away as if she had confronted her corpse and began to cry softly.

  “I’ll just be a few minutes,” Ryan told her, and entered the room.

  Teenage girls were almost another species to him. He had no sisters or brothers and no significant high-school relationships. His peers always knew he was a Natural, and despite there being no obvious differences between him and them, they always looked at him differently. He carried the unmentionable stamp of a leper. What little he knew about women from a romantic standpoint, he knew through some very insignificant relationships, observation, and vicarious experiences. He found it hard enough to understand women his age, much less the impulsive, highly emotional creature he saw teenage girls to be.

  For example, despite their promiscuity, they clung to childish things such as dolls and Teddy bears, while teenage boys eschewed anything that in the smallest way connected them to preadolescence. Girls were far more sensitive to looks and words and always seemed to totter on a tightrope, threatening to fall to the side of tears or the side of laughter. What made them lean either way made no logical sense to a man like Ryan Lee.

  On a number of previous occasions, he had been alone in the room of a young girl or a young woman and couldn’t help feeling titillation. Touching, inspecting, searching a woman’s underthings immediately conjured up the woman naked. The same sort of reaction occurred when he smelled her perfumes or touched her lipsticks. Any intimate part of her being aroused him. He resisted it, hated himself for having the reaction, and did the best he could to hide it from his associates and superiors, none of whom seemed to have a similar reaction. It would surely confirm his being different in their eyes and disqualify him as an objective investigator immediately.

  Up until now, his relationships had all been unsatisfactory. He had even resorted to paying for sexual favors, treating it in his own mind as he would going to the dentist or doctor, a medical necessity. Fortunately for him, few people cared about his personal life.

  He took a deep, quiet breath and fought back the wave of sexual interest that threatened to invade his deductive thinking. Lois Marlowe’s room had shelves of stuffed animals on the wall to his right, and there were dolls on a shelf below that. She appeared to have kept everything ever given to her.

  The wall on his left had movie and rock posters. It looked as if she had belonged to the Vig Tom fan club. There was an autographed picture of the prematurely gray-haired twenty-year-old albino rock star wearing his famous pink-framed sunglasses and an opened shirt revealing the tattoo of a jagged cross with hands at the ends. Girls who followed him were definitely left of center, Ryan thought.

  He studied the desk, the computer, the top of the dresser, and the vanity table. He perused the closet and checked the shoes. There was no pair of Rockers. In many ways, Lois Marlowe didn’t follow the crowd, he concluded.

  He opened his bag and extracted his video-phone file researcher. Then he went to the console on the nightstand beside her bed and turned over the receiver. With his pocket screwdriver, he flicked off the brain cover and inserted his VFR. It clicked, and he turned the instrument over to look at the screen. He considered the date and time of each call, chose one in particular, and called for an identification. A split second later, the Robinsons’ address came up.

  He put the brain cover back on the receiver and his instrument back in his bag. Then he did a routine search of dresser and desk drawers. Finding nothing of interest there, he turned on the computer and with a few quick function key directions began to read her e-mail and Internet history, almost instantly centering on the Natural Birth Web site. He knew that it was coming from France. There was a continuous diplomatic effort to get the French government to shut it down, until now to no avail.

  It both amused and interested him that more and more young people were fascinated with natural childbirth these days. He wondered what it meant. They all knew they were reading what society now considered pornography and they could be arrested for spreading it, yet they were determined to know, to learn, to question, despite the risk. Were they looking for something freaky, or were they part of a new generation that might someday challenge what was called progress? He wondered.

  He ran down her e-mail history, made some notes of names and addresses, and shut off the computer.

  McCalester had been standing in the doorway quietly observing. When Ryan picked up his bag and turned to him, he raised his eyebrows.

  “Well?”

  “We’ve taken a few more steps forward,” Ryan said cryptically.

  They marched back down the stairs. Jennie Marlowe waited in the living-room doorway.

  “Did you find anything that will help?” she asked, her hands clasped at the base of her throat as if she were in the middle of a prayer.

  “I believe so, Mrs. Marlowe,” Ryan said.

  “Good. Now what?” Chester Marlowe called from the living room. Ryan stepped past Jennie and looked in at him.

  “We’ll find the person who killed your daughter, Mr. Marlowe.”

  “And then what?” Chester pursued.

  “We’ll bring him or her to justice.”

  “And what do we do then?” Chester followed like some priest testing the catechism.

  Ryan stared at him a moment. “Mr. Marlowe, you’ll have to go to a higher authority to get the answer to that question, I’m afraid.”

  “What higher authority? God? I sometimes wonder if he’s a higher authority anymore,” Chester said bitterly.

  “So do I, Mr. Marlowe,” Ryan said.

  Chester turned with surprise.

  “So do I,” Ryan repeated, and headed for the front door.

  Seven

  “Where is she?” Hattie Scranton demanded as soon as Esther Robinson opened the front door.

  “Who is it?” her husband, Mickey, called with clear annoyance from the living room, where he had just sat back like someone easing himself into a hot bath. The county highway employee wanted to watch the Scooters’ flip-ball game without any interruptions. It was the preliminary, and he had put twenty-five dollars on them to win by more than five points. They had one of the best flippers in the league, Marsh King, who could flip the disc close to full field.

  “Where’s who?” Esther fired back at
the four women crowding the small entry.

  Despite their demeanor and their influence on everyone in this community, they didn’t intimidate Esther Robinson, who was a known Abnormal but who never let anyone think he or she was superior because of her birth. Nevertheless, it was a surprise to everyone that she and Mickey had qualified for a parental license and acquired Stocker a little more than sixteen years ago. Bertram Cauthers had weighed in on their behalf. Hattie had her suspicions and her theories about the reason, focusing mainly on Bertram’s well-known sexual predatoriness, but she had never voiced an accusation or complaint. She had the diplomatic sense to know whom to bully and whom to leave alone. Bertram Cauthers was no one she could bully.

  “Your daughter,” Hattie replied, almost spitting the words back at her.

  “She’s finishing her homework. Why?”

  “We have to talk to her. Now,” she emphasized.

  “Why?”

  “She’s been linked to the Marlowe girl situation.” Hattie obviously enjoyed telling.

  The impact was immediate. Whatever wall of defiance Esther had been able to put up between her and the baby squad immediately began to crumble. They were saying her daughter was linked to a murder.

  “I don’t understand,” she managed to say.

  “Who the hell is it?” Mickey Robinson screamed. He came to the doorway of the living room and looked past his wife. When he saw Hattie and the women, he simmered down like a pot of boiling water placed on a pile of ice. “Huh?” he muttered. “What’s going on here?”

  Esther stepped aside, and Hattie moved into the house, the three women with her moving so in sync they looked almost attached to her.

  “We have to speak to your daughter immediately,” she said. “We’ve just come from the Marlowe house.”

  “Stocker?” He looked at Esther, but she seemed to have suffered lockjaw. “Why?”

  “Either take us to her or bring her to us,” Hattie replied. “We’re wasting time.”

  He glanced again at his wife and then backed up toward the stairway.

  “Stocker!” he cried, his eyes on the women who glared at him as if he were the murderer. “Stocker!”

  The shouting woke Kasey-Lady, and she started to bark. Someone scored a goal in the flip-ball game, and the crowd roared over the television set. Missing that on top of all the commotion churned up Mickey Robinson’s stomach, making him feel as if he had swallowed a dozen steel ball bearings.

  Stocker had still not appeared on the stairway landing. He cursed under his breath and charged up the steps. When he reached her door, he pounded with a closed fist.

  “Stocker, get the hell out here!”

  No response brought a pitch of rage into his face that looked as if it would blow the top off his head. He practically ripped the door off its hinges when he turned the knob and pushed it open.

  The sight nailed his feet to the floor.

  Stocker was naked except for her virtual reality glasses. She had an X-rated VRG movie running, and she was masturbating along with the two studs who had surrounded the voluptuous naked woman giving head to a naked man kneeling on the bed. Everyone’s groans and moans were amplified, including Stocker’s.

  Mickey ripped the glasses off her head and looked down at her with bulging, furious eyes. She reached to pull her blanket over her and started to cry out, but he put his hand over her mouth and glanced into the VRG.

  “Christ,” he moaned, and then realized the situation. “The baby squad is downstairs,” he said in a loud whisper. “Get dressed and come down immediately. We’ll talk about this later,” he added, holding up the VRG. He took his hand from her mouth.

  “What do they want?”

  “How the hell do I know? Get down there in thirty seconds,” he ordered.

  He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him. She leaped out of bed and put on her bathrobe. Then she slipped into her Rockers and shuffled to the door. Before she opened it, she took a deep breath and gained full control of herself. No one was going to blame her for anything, she vowed, and walked out of her room and down the stairs.

  The women were standing in the small hallway, all eyes lifting to watch her descend. When she reached the bottom of the stairway, she folded her arms under her small bosom and looked from her mother, who was now nearly trembling, to Hattie.

  “You gave Lois Marlowe those prenatal vitamins, didn’t you?” Hattie began.

  “Who said so?” Stocker shot back.

  Mickey widened his eyes at her nasty, defiant tone. Didn’t anything frighten her?

  “You traded something for them, didn’t you?”

  “That’s a filthy, stinking lie,” Stocker said, her mouth twisted with wonderful feigned rage.

  “Those girls hate me. They’re always making stuff up about me. They call me names and all because of my mother,” she said, throwing a pail of blame at Esther Robinson. “People say nasty things about us all the time.”

  Hattie stared at her. She had always prided herself on her ability to mine the truth like some pan-handler searching for nuggets of gold. She could shift her eyes, scan a face, read every revealing gesture.

  However, Stocker was a match for anyone. She was a good liar because she knew how to convince herself of the lie and then defend it. She really believed she was the victim here, and she wasn’t going to let that happen again, not this time.

  “We found this in Lois Marlowe’s room,” Hattie said, and held out a notebook page. She didn’t want to use the trump card so quickly. She was hoping for some sort of confession and then supporting it with the scribbling, but Stocker’s façade of defiance and convincing show of anger demanded it.

  Stocker took the paper and opened it. She smirked when she read it. “So?” she said, handing the paper back.

  “What is that?” Mickey Robinson demanded.

  “It’s a list Lois Marlowe made of things she was willing to trade. Stocker’s name is on the paper. Lois Marlowe told us she had traded for the prenatal vitamins.” Hattie turned back to Stocker. “Did you trade with her?”

  “Not for prenatal vitamins,” she replied. Long ago, she had learned that offering a piece of the truth when she lied helped her get the lie accepted. This answer confused Hattie Scranton for a moment, as well as her women. One of them, Carol Saxon, was too frustrated and impatient to let Hattie continue the interrogation herself.

  “What did you trade, then?” Carol asked.

  Hattie shot a reprimanding glance her way. She didn’t want her own momentum interrupted.

  Stocker looked at her father.

  “You better tell them and tell them now,” he ordered.

  Stocker looked down. “An X-rated VRG movie,” she replied, her eyes still directed to the floor.

  “What?” Hattie swallowed before she spoke.

  “One of these, for sure,” Mickey said, holding out the virtual reality glasses. “There’s a filthy one loaded. I just caught her with it.”

  Hattie took the glasses slowly. The movie was still running in them. She brought it to her eyes and then lowered it and passed it to Carol, who looked, grimaced, and passed it to the others.

  “A lot of the kids have them,” Stocker defended. “I’m not the only one!”

  Disappointment flooded Hattie Scranton’s face. She smirked and then took a deep, thoughtful breath.

  “How did you get this horribly disgusting thing?” Esther asked her when the glasses were finally passed to her and she had looked.

  “Kids are trading for them all the time,” Stocker said. “I’m not the only one.”

  “Someone has to talk to Mr. Sullivan about this,” Esther told Hattie Scranton.

  Hattie pressed her lips together harder. “That’s a different issue. We don’t have time for that. You parents should be taking more interest in your teenage sons and daughters. Parental licenses can be revoked, you know,” she threatened.

  Mickey gazed furiously at Stocker. “We might not fight so hard to keep i
t if this sort of thing continues,” he threatened.

  “I’m not the only one!” Stocker insisted.

  A knock on the open doorway turned everyone around.

  “Who’s this now?” Mickey moaned, and opened the door.

  Ryan Lee and Henry McCalester were standing there.

  “What is this?” Ryan demanded when he saw Hattie and the others. “Why have you women come here?”

  “We had reason,” Hattie said curtly, then turned and marched herself and her followers out of the house. Henry had to step aside quickly. Hattie paused and turned back to Stocker. “We’re not finished with you, young lady.”

  She and the others continued to leave.

  “You’re interfering in a state criminal investigation,” Ryan called after them. “I’m warning you.”

  Hattie didn’t respond. She walked faster to her car. The women got into it quickly.

  Ryan and McCalester turned back to the Robinsons.

  “This is Ryan Lee from the state criminal investigative division, Mickey. He’s here to find the person who murdered Lois Marlowe. He wants to talk to Stocker.”

  “If this is about her doing some sort of trade with Lois Marlowe,” Mickey began, “we’ve just been through it all. That’s what brought Hattie here. These kids have been passing X-rated VRG movies among themselves for who knows how long.”

  “No,” Ryan said. “It’s about a phone call that was made to this house right before Lois Marlowe was murdered,” he said, and stepped farther into the house.

  Esther turned to Stocker. “You’re going to give me a heart attack tonight,” she said. “Tell them everything you know, Stocker, and tell it to them immediately.”

  Stocker looked at Ryan. Lying to Hattie Scranton had been easier than she had anticipated. It filled her with confidence. “She called me, yes,” she admitted.

  “And?” Ryan said.

  “She wanted that,” she said, nodding at the glasses in her mother’s hands.

  “What’s that?” Henry asked.

  “One of those disgusting movies,” Mickey said.

  “It’s the best one. Everyone says so,” Stocker continued. “I was just lucky to have gotten it. Everyone was offering me stuff, and I kept saying no, not enough.”