The Sin Eater

by Lee McIntyre

  Adam ran back down the hallway. When he returned he said “Yes, that’s right. Stadler Childcare Solutions,” before he even hit the sofa.

  “And I guess we can check with the agency,” Tony continued, “but do you know who Ms.Norwood might have listed as an emergency contact? Family maybe?”

  “Family, gosh. I don’t know if she had any family.”

  “She said she had a brother!” Kate called from the other room.

  The cops just looked at one another.

  After some more questions that Adam felt fully competent to handle on his own — whether he was aware of the abuse allegations that she had made against him, whether he had any idea who might have killed her — came the haymaker. “Can you please tell us where you were between ten p.m. and four a.m. from Wednesday night to Thursday morning of this week?”

  “He was with me.”

  Adam yanked his head around and saw a sight that shocked him. Kate had pulled herself out of bed and halfway down the hall, with Emma holding the hem of her nightgown.

  “Shit! Kate!” Adam said. He bounded over and picked her up.

  “I told her it was naughty, Dad.”

  “You’re right, Emma,” Adam said. “Please go back to the big bed and wait for us there. Go now!”

  Emma scurried off. Adam hesitated before he brought Kate over to the couch. The cops were standing, awkwardly, with their hands out, as if they could catch her from ten feet away. Adam laid her on the couch and covered her with an afghan, then took a different chair.

  “So as I was saying,” Adam began.

  “He was with me,” Kate said again. “We were both here, in this house, with Emma beside us from Monday night till Friday morning. He was with me every minute. He was never out of my sight. The phone records will show that we made calls almost non-stop during that three-day period.”

  “Even in the middle of the night?” the Asian officer asked.

  “Obviously not,” Kate replied. “But we were sleeping in the same bed together. I’d know if he left.”

  Tony Soprano wrote something in his book. “Okay. I got that,” he said. “But now that Mrs.Grammaticus is present, can I ask again whether either one of you might have any knowledge of who might have committed this crime?”

  Kate jumped in again. “We do not.”

  “No one who might have had a grudge against Ms.Norwood — that is, except you two?”

  “We do not.”

  “Maybe someone who had the same grudge as you?” Tony nudged. He looked at Adam as Adam looked off into space.

  Doing wheelies in the desert somewhere.

  “No, we don’t,” Kate said.

  “Maybe your husband could answer that question too?” said the Asian officer.

  “I — well, no. I already answered that before. I don’t really —”

  There was another knock at the front door. Lighter this time.

  The door pushed open.

  Adam thought that Lisa Castro looked surprised to see the cops there. So this wasn’t a set-up?

  “Officer Babcock. Officer Ng. I’m glad I caught up with you. Can we go out to your cruiser for a moment? There’s been a development.”

  “In our case?” Kate called from the couch.

  Castro avoided her gaze along with the question and disappeared outside.

  “Back in a few.” Tony and his partner swung themselves off their chairs and out the front door.

  “Adam!” Kate hissed. “Go get Emma and take her out the garage door and don’t look back.”

  “What the hell, Kate?” Adam said. “The cops are almost done with us. You saw Castro. She looked surprised to see them here. Maybe she’s not here for that. They didn’t even seem to know she was —”

  “Don’t be an idiot! Get Emma and go!” Kate insisted. “Can’t you see what’s coming?”

  Adam stood but hesitated, just as the cops and Lisa Castro reappeared in the doorway. Their faces were stone.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs.Grammaticus,” Castro said, as she brushed by the cops.

  “No!” Kate screamed. “I did not give you permission to enter my house!”

  When he heard Emma scream, Adam felt something tear loose inside him. Between Kate sobbing and Emma wailing, he didn’t make the decision so much as felt himself a spectator, watching the crazy man in pajamas vault down the hallway.

  “Hey, you! Stop! Get back here!”

  Adam was dimly aware of the cops closing in behind him, as he met Castro in the hallway, just coming out of the master bedroom.

  “Put her down. NOW!” Adam yelled. His pulse pounded behind his eye sockets as he grabbed Castro’s arm.

  Adam saw a look of horror in the social worker’s eyes just before the awful weight came down behind him. Adam fell to his knees, then bucked his head back as he launched again and again at the departing figures.

  “Calm down!” Tony Soprano yelled. “Once more and I’m using the pepper spray.”

  Adam caught one last glimpse of Emma raining a torrent of tiny hands in Castro’s face. Then they were gone.

  “Cuffs, Julie. Now!” yelled Tony.

  An inhuman sound rose up from the living room.

  Adam felt the zip of plastic tighten around his wrists.

  The cops said something, but he couldn’t hear it.

  “Julie, for the love of God. Would you just go to her and do something?” he finally heard.

  Tony pulled Adam to his feet. “Guess you’ll want that lawyer now.”

  Chapter 7

  Adam hurried down the steps of the Multnomah County Courthouse and opened his cell phone. “I’m out.”

  “Adam! You’re out?”

  “Yes. Carnap may not be a criminal lawyer, but he sure knows his way around. All charges dropped. I thought I was going to have to spend the night in there.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Adam walked down S.W. 4th Avenue to hail a cab, wondering where Emma was at this very minute. “Yes, I’m fine. Booking, fingerprints, and nine hours in a big holding cell with a bunch of sweaty men, but I’m okay. I definitely wouldn’t want to repeat the experience, but it could’ve been a lot worse. I made it out just before they were getting ready to bunk me for the night. The thought of it gives me chills.”

  “I’m just glad you’re out.”

  “Me too. Any news about Emma? Are you all right?”

  “No.” Kate broke down sobbing. “I’m not. Just get home as soon as possible.”

  Adam bolted in the front door and looked wildly around the living room. He saw Kate in her wheelchair on the deck, sitting with Mrs.Nguyen. He rushed over. “Kate!” he said. “What happened?”

  Kate nodded toward her visitor. “I’m okay. Thanks to Minh Chau. She’s my hero.”

  “Don’t need hero. Need husband,” said Mrs.Nguyen. “Hurray.” She smiled gently and patted Adam’s arm as she got up to leave.

  “Thank you — for everything,” Adam said. “How in the world did you get the wheelchair out here?”

  “This one fold,” she said. “Not hard.”

  Kate smiled. “Thanks.”

  When they were alone, Adam grabbed Kate and held her. Within seconds the brave front dissolved in a well of tears.

  “Any word on Emma?” he said, stroking her hair.

  “No.I’ve been calling nonstop. Between that and you being in jail, I was in pretty bad shape. Minh Chau saved me. Now that you’re here, I can finally let it out.” Kate cried like a teenager, and Adam held her.

  One step at a time they would fix this. He was out of jail. Emma came next.

  “Hal called from work,” Kate said. “He wants you to call him right away.”

  “Hal can wait.”

  “He says he’s putting you on paid leave, but that once he’s cleared it with the lawyers he’s going to terminate you.”

  There’s loyalty for you.

  “Based on what? This morning? How did he even hear about that?”

  “No, he heard that you wer
e a ‘person of interest’ in Rachel’s death. Don’t ask me how. Oh Adam it looks bad.”

  A call from a reporter seeking comment before they ran a story about a Tektel executive? It wouldn’t be long before this hit the papers.

  “Have you talked to Carnap?” Adam said, wiping his face.

  “Yes — but that’s kind of bad now too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  It was another beautiful evening on the lake. The water looked as if it had swallowed another sun. Across the lake someone was roaring back and forth on a Jet Ski. From a distance, the sound was sort of comforting.

  “He said that when you attacked Lisa Castro, it confirmed their view that you were an unfit parent. You’re too violent.”

  If they only knew.

  Kate continued, “And they think this reinforces their claim that you probably abused Emma. Add to that the fact that they think you had some role in Rachel’s death and it looks pretty bad for us. One more mistake, and we may never see her again.”

  The Jet Ski buzzed past about 50 yards away. So incongruous to be sitting on a beautiful lake, crying, when someone so close was having a good time.

  “So how can we get Emma back?” Adam said. “Does Carnap have any ideas?”

  “Court,” Kate said. “That’s the only hope we’ve got. He’s requested a hearing as soon as possible. He said not to do anything stupid until then.”

  Adam looked down. “And in the meantime, Emma remains in foster care?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Adam, I feel like my insides are bleeding.”

  Adam heard a buzz again, but it wasn’t the Jet Ski. He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Hey —dude. It’s Tugg.”

  “Tugg, is it you? New number?”

  “Yeah, this is a disposable. Lost the other one on the road. You couldn’t have reached me anyway.”

  “Where are you?” Adam said.

  “Closer than you think.”

  Adam snapped the phone shut and squeezed Kate’s hand, then walked through the living room toward the front door. When he opened it he saw the big black Harley Ultra Classic Electraglide in the driveway, still ticking in the sunshine.

  “Tugg?” he called, looking around. “Tugg?”

  The sight of tiny Mrs.Nguyen on her front porch, having a conversation in French with a six foot three, square-jawed beast of a man, wearing a blond goatee and head-to-toe leather almost made him laugh.

  Tugg looked over and smiled. “Did somebody call Nannies R Us?”

  Chapter 8

  Lisa Castro sat at her desk with tears streaming down her face. Wanda had left for a home visit two hours ago and the rest of the office was off for the weekend, so at least for a spell Castro had the whole place to herself.

  What a glamorous office. What a glamorous life. How many more years could she take it? Burnout wasn’t even a question anymore. When you worked in Child Protective Services, you got burned the first day.

  Castro leaned back in her squeaky chair and looked at the water stains on the ceiling. Crumbling acoustic tile. A leaky radiator. Mold in the walls that the city never seemed able to fix. Lisa and Wanda often joked that if a stranger walked into their building, he or she would deem it an unsafe environment for children.

  Yet this was where the power lay. This was the chance to do some real good in the lives of a bunch of kids who desperately needed it. Even if the public didn’t really understand what they were doing and it was easy to paint CPS as the bad guy, it was absolutely necessary to protect those kids, even if their parents — and society — didn’t like it.

  But Castro doubted she could make it through many more days like today.

  Her eyes wandered over to the latest inspirational post-it note that Wanda had stuck on her lamp: The measure of a man who does his duty is not what others think of him but his own commitment to doing what is right.

  Funny, it didn’t say anything about angry parents attacking you. Or screaming at you as if you were a terrorist. The Grammaticus case was far from the worst she’d seen, but in some ways it hit closest to home. Castro herself was living proof that abuse could happen even in a “good” family. And if she could fix things for just one kid — give one girl a chance to escape the nightmares she had experienced — it would all be worth it.

  But was it worth her life? Rachel Norwood was dead and Adam Grammaticus was the prime suspect. Was he also a child abuser? It seemed likely. The daughter had “fallen” in his care as an infant. A more recent abuse report had come in from the nanny, who later turned up with knife wounds in her stomach. And the father had assaulted Castro just this morning. Would she be dead next?

  Castro picked up a ruler and absently felt its edge.

  Abuse cases were the worst, but neglect could be almost as bad.

  So many kids and so few good options for any of them.

  And all of these Native American kids lately. Where in the world would she put them? Castro was glad that she didn’t have to do the home visits and “extractions” on the Indian reservations. Two of the three teams they had sent to do it had asked for a transfer the minute they got back. It was awful to be attacked by an angry father, but almost as bad to have a whole community call you a racist and accuse you of genocide.

  “You just don’t understand our culture,” the tribal leaders had said. “We are a sovereign nation and you are killing our future.”

  Castro knew neglect when she saw it. The poverty. The easy availability of alcohol. Some of the houses didn’t even have any food in them.

  “That’s because we share food. The kids walk down the street to their cousin’s house when they get hungry,” came the answer.

  That was a new one. Poverty wasn’t the same as neglect, of course, but sometimes it came damn close.

  And still the cases kept coming. They had a lot of pressure from the governor’s office to get the children placed in foster care or group homes right away. An equal amount of pressure came from the tribes to let the kids stay with relatives or Native American foster families, so that they wouldn’t be alienated from their culture. Federal law dictated placement of Native American kids with Native American families, if that was possible, but there just weren’t enough of them, so they needed to start placing those kids anywhere they could. For once, they had enough money.

  The phone rang.

  “Lisa, how are you doing? I heard through the grapevine that things got pretty hairy for you this morning. Are you okay?”

  Castro straightened up in her chair, even though the governor’s chief of staff couldn’t see her. She felt guilty for loafing at her desk, even on a Sunday.

  “I’m fine, Mr.Beauchamp. Thank you. Are all of the social workers getting special calls today? Or did I just hit the lottery?” Castro bit her tongue. Stop trying to be clever.

  “If you can call having your arm almost pulled off hitting the lottery, then yes, I guess you did,” Beauchamp said.

  Castro tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. “Well, at least I had the police officers there. That was a break. After I heard that the father was a suspect in the nanny’s murder I went over there to get the kid, police escort or not.”

  “You’re doing God’s work,” Beauchamp said. “For too long we’ve felt compelled to ignore abuse allegations from certain zip codes. You know how strongly the governor feels about this.”

  “Yes, I do,” Castro said, trying to sound gung ho. “And we’re grateful for the support. We have a lot of cases right now. More than I ever remember. But we’ll manage somehow. The whole office is working on placements. Especially for the Native American kids.”

  “You’re doing God’s work there too. Keep it up. We’re counting on you.”

  “Thank you,” Castro managed.

  When the line went dead, Castro felt a little better. It was the same dingy office and the same shitty hours, but it was important work just the same.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Castro spied an older post-i
t from Wanda: be the change that you wish to see in the world. She blew her nose and turned on the desk lamp against the gathering dusk.

  “Time to get back to it,” she said out loud, as if someone were listening.

  Chapter 9

  Adam watched Tugg kneel next to Kate’s wheelchair and give her the closest equivalent to a bear hug that was possible under the circumstances. The physical contrast between them was comical. Every time they had greeted in the past, canes or no canes, Tugg had picked Kate up for a full-body hug. Now that she was in a wheelchair, that wasn’t possible. This might have to be their new thing.

  “He loves you,” Adam had once said, in response to Kate’s bemusement after one of Tugg’s visits.

  “He loves that I love you,” she replied.

  Adam watched them, exchanging soft words, greeting like old friends. Kate nodded and Tugg hugged her again as Adam joined them on the deck.

  “Tugg, it’s so good to see you,” Kate said. “It’s been awful. Emma hasn’t even been gone thirteen hours and Adam just got back from jail. I’m a wreck.”

  “Understandable,” Tugg said. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You must be a mind reader.”

  Adam looked around for another chair, but Kate stopped him. “Adam, I’m not feeling well. Physically. I was so hysterical when they took you and Emma away that I took something to calm me down, but all it did was upset my stomach.”

  “Are you all right?” Adam said.

  “I feel like I want to throw up. But I’m just so tired I feel like I could die. I’m wrung out.”

  “I feel terrible too,” Adam said. “Emma is out there somewhere. And it’s getting dark. And she’s going to have to sleep in a different bed surrounded by strangers.”

  Tugg put a hand on Adam’s back. “Listen, bud, this ain’t helping. There’s nothing more you can do tonight. Kate, what did you take?”

  “Xanax.”

  “It’s worn off by now. Take another. You need to sleep. And Adam and I need to talk. We’ll figure this out by morning.”

  Kate gave a hint of a smile and nodded.

  Adam knelt down by her chair. “Okay, but I’ll need to figure out where that catch is that Mrs.Nguyen was telling us about. Apparently this thing folds up, but I don’t see —”