The Summer Children

by Dot Hutchison

  “Any shots on her?”

  The ME shakes her head. “Probably intended as a subduing measure. Near as we can tell before autopsy, the shots on him came first. Then she was attacked, and the killer went back to him. Spent a bit more time on him. She’s only got seventeen knife wounds, all on the torso.”

  Seventeen and twenty-nine . . . that’s a lot of rage.

  “Physically fit killer,” Eddison says, carefully stepping between two arcs of blood on the carpet so he can get closer. “Frenzies like this are tiring, but they also carried Ronnie down the stairs and to a vehicle, then up to Ramirez’s porch.”

  “And you really have no idea why?” asks Mignone.

  I am going to get very tired of repeating no. Fortunately, Eddison does it for me this time.

  I come around to Sandra Wilkins’s side of the bed, standing next to one of the ME’s assistants. “Probably hard to tell, given the mess, but does she show signs of abuse?”

  “Besides the black eye and swollen cheek? She’s got some bruising, and it wouldn’t be any surprise to find a few broken bones on the X-rays. We’ll know better once we get her cleaned up.”

  “And some of her hospital records are in the file,” adds Mignone. “Entrance into the house looks pretty straightforward. Porch light was unscrewed just enough to not connect, not far enough to fall and shatter.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Didn’t need to be any more sophisticated than that; it did the trick. Didn’t have to pick the lock because it’s been broken for a while. Mrs. Wilkins locked her husband out of the house during a fight so he broke the lock, never replaced it.”

  “Was that in a police report?”

  “Yes, few months ago. No blood in or around the kid’s room. Looks like the killer woke him up, brought him here, started to work.”

  “Matches what Ronnie said.”

  “I’m guessing she never pressed charges?” Eddison says.

  “Gee, it’s almost like you’ve seen this before.” Mignone straightens his tie, an incongruously cheerful thing with giant sunflowers all over it. “In the morning, we’ll get on the horn with CPS, get copies of their files. I’ll make sure one gets to you. Ronnie’s got a couple inches, at least.”

  “Police file, hospital records, Child Protective Services file . . . that’s a lot of eyes and hands on this kind of information,” I say. “That’s not even counting family members, neighbors, friends, teachers, church members, or any other groups they might be part of. If the murders are connected to the abuse, that is way too many people to sift through.”

  The second assistant clears his throat, blushing as we all turn to look at him. “Sorry, this is only my second, ah . . . murder? But am I allowed to ask a question?”

  The ME rolls her eyes but looks provisionally impressed rather than irritated. “It is how we learn. Try to make it a good one.”

  “If this is about the abuse, Mrs. Wilkins was probably abused too: Why would the killer attack her as well?”

  “Remind me when we get to the van. That earns you a lollipop.”

  Morbid humor: not just an agent thing.

  “If this is about the abuse,” Eddison answers, “and we are still spitballing that, but if it is, then killers of this kind generally consider the mother complicit, even if she is herself a victim. She didn’t protect her child. She had to have known about it but didn’t stop it, either because she didn’t think she could, or because she chose not to in order to relieve some of the burden on herself.”

  “When I go to my parents’ on Sundays, my mom asks me if I’ve learned anything new over the week,” the assistant says. “I need to start lying.”

  “Fact of the day calendar,” Eddison tells him. “Seriously.”

  “Saw some of the neighbors outside,” I note. “Any of them mention hearing gunshots?”

  The detective shakes his head. “We’ll know better once the bullets are out, but there seems to have been some kind of silencer. A potato, probably, from debris in the wound tracks. Neighbors mentioned screams, but that’s pretty commonplace for this house.”

  “A child’s screams?”

  Eddison gives me a slightly jaundiced look. “You think Ronnie stood and watched his parents get murdered and didn’t scream?”

  “He didn’t move off my porch. After the killer left him there, he could have gone to any other house and asked for help, but he stayed exactly where he was put. And look at the carpet: Is there any sign of a struggle around where he must have stood?”

  “If he’d ever admitted to Social Services what was happening to him, he likely wouldn’t have been returned to the home.” Eddison rubs at his jaw. “So he’s probably pretty conditioned to protect his father by keeping silent. Anyone suitably authoritative is someone he’d probably obey, so long as it didn’t mean talking about the abuse.”

  “Poor kid’s got years of therapy ahead of him,” the ME observes.

  “Does the scene remind you of any of your cases? Or things that have come across your desk that didn’t become your cases?” asks Mignone.

  “Not a one,” Eddison says. “We’ll go back through, just in case, and let you know if we find anything.”

  “Does it echo any of yours?” I ask, and get looks from both Eddison and Mignone. “Ignoring the blood, this is a clean scene. Simple, efficient entry and exit, with the child. Clear planning, awareness of the character of the neighborhood. This doesn’t feel like a first time, and if it is, what the hell comes next?”

  Mignone blinks at me, his moustache twitching. “Thanks, this night wasn’t nightmare enough already.”

  “The mothers taught me how to share.”

  True to Eddison’s prediction, it’s almost four in the morning before we walk out of the house, our booties placed in evidence bags with one of the officers just in case and our time of departure marked on the scene log. The neighborhood is still quiet, the areas beyond the house dimly lit by isolated porch lights and a couple of streetlights. A thick cluster of trees runs behind the houses on the other side of the street, and I’m tired enough that my skin crawls at the sight of them.

  There are reasons my street has big lawns and no woods.

  Eddison nudges my shoulder with his. “Come on. Marlene will be up in half an hour; we can keep her company.”

  “We’re going to invade Vic’s kitchen—”

  “Vic’s house, Marlene’s kitchen.”

  “—and keep his mother company before he wakes up?”

  “That is exactly my plan. What do you think she’s making?”

  Doesn’t matter what it is, it’ll be amazing, and dinner was a very long time ago. I lean against the top of the car, looking out at the dark fringe of woods. I can’t hear anything from them, and it seems strange, to finally find trees that are silent. Strange and frightening. “You know, Siobhan got me craving those cream-cheese-and-berry puff pastry pinwheels.”

  He smirks at me over the roof and unlocks the doors with a beep and the soft clunk of the latches releasing. “Come on, hermana. We’ll go drink all the coffee before Vic wakes up.”

  “That seems an excellent way to end up dead.”

  Unwillingly, we both glance back at the illuminated house, the Wilkins adults still inside, their son at the hospital, terrified and traumatized and in the company of strangers.

  “We’ll leave one cup. Three-quarters of a cup.”

  “Deal.” I slide into the car, buckle in, and close my eyes until we turn back onto the main road, where the trees don’t crowd so close.

  Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of the night.

  It wasn’t the same as the dark. A dark closet, a dark room, a dark toolshed, those were things that would change in an instant. You could make it not-dark, or at least try.

  Night, though. Night you just had to grit your teeth and wait out, no matter what was happening.

  Her daddy started coming to her in the night, and it was different. He didn’t hit, not unless she
struggled or told him no. He’d kiss the bruises he left on her during the day, call her his good girl, his beautiful girl. He’d ask if she wanted to make him happy, make Daddy proud.

  She could hear her mama crying down the hall. In that house, everyone could hear everything, no matter where they were.

  So she thought her mama must have been able to hear, when her daddy groaned and shouted and talked and talked like he couldn’t keep the words in.

  Her mama must have been able to hear.

  But she never saw her mama at night.

  She only saw Daddy.

  4

  “Well, you’re all here disgustingly early.”

  I flap a hand toward Sterling’s voice, too tired to lift my head up from the conference table and look at her. After a moment, hands curl my fingers around a sturdy paper cup with heat bleeding through.

  Okay, that might be worth lifting my head for.

  And it’s good coffee, too, with vanilla creamer, not the utter crap made in the kitchenette of the break room or the cafeteria. This is not Bureau-funded coffee. I let the smell and taste pull me upright and see Eddison gulping his own cup of jet fuel. Sterling watches, a wry smile tugging her lips, and then hands him another one. Vic gets one that smells of the hazelnut creamer he loves but won’t use at work because real agents drink coffee black, or some such nonsense.

  Sterling’s been with us for eight months, a transplant from the Denver field office, but somehow we’re still caught in that weird transition where we simultaneously can’t imagine the team without her and are still figuring out how the team works with her in it. She absolutely belongs here, both in skill set and in temperament, but it’s . . . well. Strange.

  Vic sits back in his chair with a sigh, absently moving through a series of stretches with his left arm to help keep some flexibility around the giant fucking scar in his chest, also known as the reason Sterling joined our team. It’s been a year since he got shot defending a child murderer we’d just arrested. Vic got shot, my hands were covered in blood trying to keep pressure on the wound until the ambulance got there, and Eddison had to arrest a grieving father for shooting a federal agent.

  It was a very bad day.

  Things for Vic were touch and go for longer than any of us like to recall, and the brass used the long recovery to finally force him to accept the promotion to unit chief. It was either that or retire, and whatever his wife’s secret hopes, Vic isn’t ready for that yet. Fortunately for everyone’s sanity, he used that extra authority to get Eddison and me out of the seminar this morning so we could research the Wilkins family.

  Pulling up another chair, Sterling settles in with her giant cup of tea. “So what happened and how can I help?”

  For the next couple of hours, the only sounds in the conference room are the click of laptop keys, the squeak of chairs, and the slurp of disappearing coffee. Sterling eventually stands, stretches, and heads back into the bullpen. When she comes back, walking in her strangely silent way, she holds the Keurig from Vic’s office, the box of K-Cups dangling precariously from one crooked finger. Padding up behind Eddison, she waits until he turns the page he’s on.

  “Give me a hand?” she asks suddenly.

  Eddison yelps and jerks forward, midsection slamming into the edge of the table.

  Vic rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

  “Bells,” mutters Eddison. “I’m putting goddamn bells on you.”

  She grins and drops the box of K-Cups in front of him. “You’re a peach,” she says cheerfully, and comes back around the table to set the machine on the counter. She plugs it in and sets it to work.

  As far as we can tell, the FBI has never had a reason to register the Wilkinses’ existence. There are no outstanding warrants, no nefarious backgrounds, nothing that would bring them to the attention of a federal entity. Their extensive law enforcement history seems to be on a purely local level. So why was Ronnie brought to my home?

  As my stomach starts complaining that I’ve had too much caffeine in the hours since breakfast, I send Siobhan a text to check in with her, see how she’s doing now that some of the shock might have worn off. Inviting her out to lunch at least makes it look less like I’m hovering, and more like apologizing.

  She texts back the location of my car and that my keys are with the front desk.

  “Lunch with Siobhan?” asks Sterling.

  “Not unless I want it frozen.”

  She winces in sympathy. “Delivery it is, then.”

  A quick rock-paper-scissors tournament twenty-five minutes later leaves Eddison with the job of going down to meet the delivery guy, but he’s no more than stood up when one of the trainee agents on front-desk duty hip checks her way into the conference room overburdened with bags and a large cardboard file box. Eddison helps her get the bags of food safely onto the table before everything topples over.

  “Thanks,” she says, blushing a little.

  Sterling and I look at each other, and she rolls her eyes heavenward. Vic just looks resigned. There is something about Eddison that is catnip to the female baby agents. He’s prickly and damaged and fiercely protective and respectful of the women in his life, and that combination seems to be a siren call. As far as I can tell, it’s not even anything he says or does; simply by existing in the same room, he can make them blush and stammer. The best part is, he genuinely doesn’t notice. He has no clue.

  Vic won’t let us tell him.

  With a polite thank-you for bringing us the files, Vic gets up and firmly shoos the young woman from the room, physically inserting himself between her and Eddison in order to get her moving out the door.

  A snicker escapes from Sterling.

  Eddison glances up from untying the knots on the plastic bags. “What?”

  Sterling loses it, which sets me off, and even Vic is chuckling and shaking his head as he closes the door.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Can you please pass the chopsticks?” Sterling asks sweetly. When he does so, she flutters her eyelashes. “Thanks,” she says, exaggerating the baby agent’s starstruck tone.

  Vic chokes a little but doesn’t comment, just hands me my food and a fork, because I’m too damn hungry for chopsticks.

  That’s the thing about Sterling, really. She’s twenty-seven but looks maybe seventeen, all big blue eyes and blonde prettiness. Despite the badge and the gun and the severe black-and-white work attire, never any color to soften or flatter, she routinely gets asked if she’s here to visit her father. She’s never going to pull off more than sweet and innocent, so she doesn’t try, just perfects that harmless appearance so everyone underestimates her.

  It’s beautiful.

  She also came to us immune to the Eddison catnip. Her very first day in Quantico, she silently walked up behind us and scared the hell out of him by saying hello, and while he was trying to unclench his fingers from the edge of his desk, she met my eyes and winked.

  It made me feel so much better about having someone new on a team that hadn’t changed for almost ten years.

  We eat quickly and clean up so we don’t get food on the files. I open the box sent over by Mignone and cringe. “Mierda,” I sigh. “This is a lot of paper for a ten-year-old.”

  From her seat, Sterling sits up very, very straight and cranes her neck to see. “That whole thing?”

  “No. It’s also got the police reports from the domestic disturbances and the mom’s hospital records. Still.” I haul out the two folders marked with Ronnie’s name, both so large they have to be clipped shut with the most massive binder clips I have ever seen, and drop them on the table. They land with a significant whump. “That’s Ronnie.”

  She leans closer, reading the top of one of the folders. “They named him Ronnie.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s why—”

  “No, I mean, they named him Ronnie. Not Ron or Ronald and call him Ronnie. They named him Ronnie.”

  “That’s an unfortunate thing to do to a child,” mutters
Eddison.

  I look up at him, lift the stack a couple of inches, and let it drop again.

  “Fair point.”

  Sterling takes the folders with Sandra Wilkins’s hospital records, and Vic and Eddison split the substantial pile of police reports between them, leaving me with the Social Services file.

  There’s a point in this job when you expect things to become less heartbreaking. You struggle through your first cases, expecting that at some point in the misty future, you’ll become inured to it all the way your partners are, that what you see and read will affect you less. One day, you’ll see a child who’s suffered abuse they can’t even name, and it won’t shatter part of you.

  It never happens.

  You learn how to work through it, how to hide it, how to make it useful. You learn that your partners aren’t inured to it; they just conceal it better than you do. You learn to let it motivate you, but it never stops wounding. And the thing is, you know better than almost anyone else, because it’s your job, that the system isn’t perfect, but it tries its best.

  Dios mío, it tries its best.

  And then there are times, like now, when you realize its best is nowhere near good enough.

  Four times. Four times Ronnie Wilkins was removed from his home by Social Services because of physical abuse, and every time he was returned. The first time he was given back because his mother left his father, and Ronnie was taken to her at her mother’s. Except two months later, she went back to her husband and brought Ronnie with her. The second time was because his parents submitted paperwork showing that his father was undergoing counseling and anger management, sessions that stopped as soon as they had Ronnie back. The third time, his grandmother had to drop the custody suit because Daniel Wilkins came over with a baseball bat, beat the hell out of her car, and once again, just a few weeks ago, because Ronnie simply couldn’t admit to the abuse, wouldn’t tell the social worker how he got so badly hurt he had to be hospitalized.

  This poor child kept getting delivered straight back to hell.

  We chase Vic out of the office at six, but the rest of us stay until nine-thirty to finish scanning the last of the Wilkinses’ records, by which point I’m seriously contemplating opening a K-Cup and drinking the sludge for pure caffeine, and I stay slumped and half-dozing in my chair as Sterling and Eddison clean up around me. It’s not remotely fair of me; Eddison has been awake as long as I have. When I try to help, though, he snaps my hand with a rubber band.