The Summer Children

by Dot Hutchison

  “In a few minutes, the doctor is going to come in,” I say, taking her hand as the officer packs the camera away. “Those metal things at the end of the bed that look kind of like bike pedals? Those are called stirrups, and she’s going to ask you to put your feet in them so she can prop them up. You’re going to feel uncomfortable, kind of like you’re on display, but she is the only one who will see anything, I promise. No one is going to walk in, and even if someone tried, her sitting there between your legs will block everything from view.”

  “Do we have to?”

  I wish I could give her a different answer, but I’m not going to lie to her. “Yes. This is something we have to do. If you need the doctor to stop, or explain something she’s doing, just say so, okay? I know this sucks.”

  “Is it like getting a pap smear? Mom talks about that. She says when I get older I’ll have to do those.”

  “It’s pretty close. This is maybe a little more thorough, though.”

  “Why?”

  “The doctor is going to make sure you don’t have any injuries down there. When men hurt girls like this, things can tear, or get swollen, or infected. If those tears have been happening for a while, there could be scars that cause problems later on. So she has to make sure all the wounds are identified, so they can be treated.”

  “Oh.”

  I give her hand a squeeze. “Sarah, I was just a couple years younger than you when I had my first exam, and for the same reason.”

  Her hand spasms in response, fingers digging into mine. “Really?”

  “Really. So I promise you, I know that this is going to be uncomfortable, but it really is important. We wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t.”

  “You said you’re an FBI agent.”

  “I am.”

  “Do you . . .” She swallows hard, but when she looks back up at me, her eyes glitter fiercely. “Do you think I could be one someday?”

  “Sweetheart, if you want to badly enough, and work hard enough, I genuinely believe you could be anything you want to be. FBI agent included.”

  “I want to protect people.”

  “You already do.” My heart breaks a little at the confused tilt of her head. “Sarah, he would have gone after Ashley. You’ve been protecting your sister for years, and you’ve done such a good job of it, she didn’t even know she was in danger.”

  The doctor comes in while she’s chewing on that, a woman not much older than me with kind eyes and a gentle voice, and a way of explaining every step without making it overly technical or insultingly simple. In between parts of narration, she asks Sarah easy questions, things to get her talking without being too personal. Sarah squirms a little through the examination, and yelps once or twice when even the warning wasn’t enough to prepare her, but the doc gives her a warm smile as she peels off her gloves.

  “You did really well, Miss Carter.”

  “Is everything . . . is everything okay? You know, down . . . down there?”

  “Mostly,” the doc answers honestly, but she doesn’t look worried. “You’ve got some inflammation, and it looks like some of the surface tissue has rubbed off pretty painfully, so we’re going to give you some medications: antibiotics, to prevent infection, and some anti-inflammatories to help with the swelling and tenderness. Bad news—and it’s not very bad, just sort of awkward—is that there’s also a cream to help with it. After you’ve had a chance to rest and clean up a bit, one of my nurses will take you aside and teach you how to apply that. Think about your health class at school, add in a little more awkward, and you’ll probably get the idea.”

  Sarah laughs, and looks a bit startled by it.

  “We’ve got some pajamas on the way for you,” the doc continues, “and once you’ve changed, the nurse is going to take you up a few floors. We’ve got you and your brother and sister all in one room tonight.”

  “And they’re okay?”

  “They are. Shaken up, scared, but physically they are just fine, and we’re going to have nurses checking in on you through the night. There’s a social worker up with them, too, and she’s going to walk you through what will happen next. Do you need Agent Ramirez to go up with you, or can I borrow her for a minute?”

  Sarah gives me a small smile. “I think I’ll be okay. Thank you, Agent Ramirez.”

  “Mercedes,” I tell her, and the smiles grows. “Before I leave, I’m going to give the social worker my contact info, and there’ll be a card for you in there with my phone and email. If you need anything, Sarah, even if it’s just to talk, please let me know. There’s going to be a lot happening in the next few days and weeks, and it can be tough to deal with, especially if you feel like you have to be strong for your siblings. But you never have to be strong for me, okay? So if you need me, you call me.”

  She nods and squeezes my hand, then lets go so I can follow the doctor out of the room and down the hall to a charting station.

  “Is it unprofessional if I want to find the bastard that’s done this to her and twist his dick off?” the doc asks conversationally.

  “Desecrating a corpse may be a crime in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I’d have to check, though.”

  “Corpse?” She considers that a moment, then nods sharply. “I’ll accept that as good enough.”

  “So is her condition worse than you told her?”

  “No, physically she’ll heal fully with time and care. I’m simply of the opinion that anyone who commits rape should be castrated, and if they rape a child, the punishment should be as painful and damaging as possible.”

  “I like that opinion.”

  “We put a rush on your partner’s blood work, and she’s under the legal limit now. I don’t imagine your team is going to get much sleep tonight.”

  “No, not so much. Thank you, Doctor.”

  In the waiting room, Sterling is frowning down at her phone, a foam cup at her elbow steaming. “There’s a coffee vending machine, if you want something,” she informs me. “If their coffee is as bad as their tea, you might not want to risk it.”

  “I’m awake enough for now,” I admit, dropping into the seat next to her. “I haven’t turned my ringer back on yet; any word from the boys?”

  “They said it’s a similar scene to the Wilkins house. Father was subdued with a couple of gunshots, mother was hacked to death, father was really hacked to death. Unlike Daniel Wilkins, Samuel Wong has a number of stab wounds on and around his groin.”

  “Ronnie Wilkins wasn’t sexually abused, Sarah Carter was, so that makes sense, I guess.”

  “They live in one of the neighborhoods on the edge of town, where the houses each have a couple of acres. No neighbors close enough to hear or see anything.” She looks up from her phone. “Vic said the mirrors in Sarah’s room and bathroom were covered over.”

  “That’s not uncommon for someone who’s been hurt that way.”

  “CSU is going over the scene, but so far nothing really stands out. A lot of people in that neighborhood don’t lock their doors at night.”

  “A safe neighborhood.”

  “I’m sure they feel safe now.” She sighs and drops the phone facedown in her lap. “Did she make them watch?”

  “No. Three would be much harder to control than one, especially since two of them weren’t abused. She woke them up after and made them go in to listen for heartbeats.”

  “Holy God.”

  We sit in silence for several minutes. I try to decide which is better: telling Siobhan myself, despite her little edict about letting her initiate contact when and only when she’s ready to do so, or leaving her to hear it through the grapevine at work. I should email the analyst pool so they can start running cross-checks as soon as they get into the office, finding anything and everything that links Sarah to Ronnie. One point in space is generally next to useless, but two points, two points can make a commonality, the beginning of a pattern. Two points can make a line. I wish Yvonne, our team’s dedicated analyst, was back from maternity leave.
She’s good at finding those hidden threads between A and B.

  “Do you think Eddison’s bed is big enough for three people?”

  “What?”

  Sterling leans her head on my shoulder. She scraped her hair back into a ponytail at some point, and stray strands tickle the back of my neck. “Mine’s not big enough, and yours is probably taped off. None of us should be alone tonight.”

  I reach across and tug lightly on her ear. “You’re still a little bit drunk, aren’t you?”

  “Just a little.”

  “None of us get to sleep this morning, but tonight?” I tilt my head against hers and just breathe. “If Eddison’s bed isn’t big enough, we’ll all go crash on the floor of Vic’s living room.”

  “Deal.”

  The silence resumes, broken by distant conversations and the occasional intercom call. After a while, a handful of doctors in scrubs and paper trauma gowns race past us to the ambulance bay, and a few minutes later we hear the whine of approaching sirens. Sterling’s phone buzzes and chirps with a series of texts delivered in swift succession. We take one more breath, one more moment, and then she picks up her phone, opens up the message, and starts reading the new texts out loud.

  9

  “They’re saying more kids were taken to your door.”

  Siobhan is at my desk, and I have no idea what time it is right now, but she’s obviously been to her desk already this morning (still morning?) because she’s got her hideous sweater on. There’s a vent right over her desk, and whatever thermostat it’s attached to seems to be permanently set on freezing. The fact that my brain is stuck on her sweater, rather than her presence at my desk, does not bode well for the conversation that’s sure to follow.

  I lean back in my chair, trying not to rub at my face because my makeup is the only thing keeping me looking semi-human at the moment. “I left you a voice mail,” I say after a moment. “Asked you to call me back.”

  “Yes, and then I got to my desk, and Heather was waiting there to tell me all about my girlfriend getting more bloodied children delivered to her door.”

  “It’s not like I’m ordering them off Amazon.”

  “Mercedes!”

  “What do you want me to say, Siobhan? Yes, there were children at my door. Yes, their parents were killed. Yes, it was terrible.”

  “What’s going to happen to them?”

  “I don’t know,” I sigh. I’ve been on the phone with the on-call social worker. Sarah and Ashley’s grandparents in California are willing to take the girls, but they’re apparently fervent racists and won’t take “the half-breed,” and Sarah has already announced that if she’s sent anywhere without both her siblings, she’ll run away. Which, you know, good for her, but still. The girls’ father is in prison for a white-collar crime, his parents have been dead for years, and Sammy’s grandparents haven’t been located. There aren’t any uncles or aunts, and it’s hard to find fosters willing to take in a trio and keep them together. “For right now they’re at the hospital until they’re sure the oldest one is okay, and then they’ll be taken to a group home while it’s being figured out.”

  “And you’re all kinds of fine with this.”

  “Are you just here to yell at me?”

  She looks abashed at that. Tired, too, her eyes washed pink with exhaustion, and concealer can only cover the color of the shadows there, not the way the softer skin sags with fatigue. She hasn’t been sleeping. “I miss you,” she whispers.

  “I miss you too, but you’re the one who walked away.”

  “Bloodied children, Mercedes!”

  “Victims, Siobhan, who certainly didn’t ask for their parents to be murdered so they could inconvenience you.”

  “Wow.” She sits—perches, really—on the edge of my desk and stares at her feet. “Normally when we fight, you’re not this mean.”

  “Normally when we fight, it’s over stupid shit.” I dig through the mess of papers on my desk until I can find my phone, which tells me it’s just shy of eight-thirty; I’ve been at my desk for almost five hours already. Madre de Dios. Swiveling my chair, I can see Sterling at her computer, typing rapidly, and Eddison at his obsessively neat desk nearby, feet up on the corner with a thick file opened across his lap. “Hey, hermano—” I say to him.

  “Bring me back something.”

  “Got it.” I grab my purse from the bottom drawer and head toward the elevator. A second later, a startled Siobhan follows suit.

  “What’s—was that a conversation? What was that?”

  “We’re getting coffee.”

  “I have work to do.”

  “Which is why you were at my desk?” I jab the call button harder than I really need to, and have to keep myself from doing it repeatedly. It’s that kind of morning. “Come or don’t.”

  “Mercedes . . .”

  The elevator opens and I step in, turn around, and raise my eyebrows at her. With a muttered curse, she follows me.

  “I don’t have my wallet.”

  “Have your ID?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then as long as you can get back to your desk later, I’m pretty sure I can spare the cost of a coffee, even yours.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That you order ridiculously complicated coffee.”

  “Oh. That’s . . . that’s true.”

  I’m tired and angry and confused, and more than a little hurt by her recent choices, so I’m well aware my current mood is set to bitchy. We head out of the building and down to one of the coffee shops. Despite how many there are in the area, they’re all busy, feeding the addiction that keeps a large percentage of agents operating at something like capacity. A few blocks down, we manage to find one that’s a bit quieter, with a little patio holding a handful of chairs and tiny tables, and no people. Some are sitting inside with the air-conditioning, and there are others getting cups to go, but we should get the patio to ourselves. No one wants to sit in this humid heat, no matter how early in the day it is.

  Siobhan’s order fills the side of her cup with arcane runes, and mine gets a quick smile from the barista for being so simple. I also grab a bagel and get a cannoli for Siobhan. It won’t be as good as Marlene’s, of course, but maybe it’s good to remember that the longer she’s pissed at me for something that isn’t my fault, the longer it will be before she gets superlative baked goods again.

  I’m not above bribery.

  We wait in silence for the drinks. She plays with the cuffs of her giant ugly sweater, and I check the newest text from Holmes: Why are so many of your neighbors in bed by ten? By that, I’m guessing no one noticed a car driving up and off-loading children. People on the street are friendly, but they keep to themselves. The arrangement Jason and I have for lawn and laundry is an unusual degree of coexistence. There’s not much reason to spend your time peeking through the curtains at the world outside when your life is inside.

  Coffees and breakfast in hand, we retreat to the patio. She only picks at her cannoli, crumbling the thick shell between fingers and thumb. I am entirely too hungry to be delicate, and my bagel is gone in five bites. I maybe should have grabbed a second one.

  “Mercedes? Why don’t we live together?”

  Her hair is so bright in the morning sun, fiery red corkscrew curls that fight any attempt to tame or contain them. She can’t even use a hair band on it when it’s dry; this morning, her ponytail is cinched by a giant pipe cleaner in a cheerful pink. I’ve gotten spoiled the past three years, being able to feel it against my skin, the weight of it in my hands.

  “Mercedes.”

  “Because I don’t like sharing space on a permanent basis,” I say simply. “Because having my own space, having locks between me and everyone else, is important to me, and I’m not ready to give that up. Because I can’t have my only safe space, my only private space, be a bedroom, even if it’s converted to an office. Because I love you, but I can’t live with anyone just yet.”

  “I s
tay over at yours, you stay over at mine, you and Eddison have sleepovers all the time. What’s the difference?”

  “The ability to say no.”

  “I don’t—”

  “My bedroom door didn’t have a lock I could control, growing up. I went into foster care when I was ten, anywhere from two to six of us in a room, and if there was a lock, it was on the outside of the door, nothing we could touch. When my last set of fosters asked if I wanted to stay until I aged out, they did it by buying a lock and helping me install it on the inside of my door. They understood what that meant to me, how safe it made me feel, and that’s why I stayed. It’s the first space that was mine, not just because I was in it but because I could control who had access to it.”

  She sips her drink, watching the cars pass by. “You were in foster care?” she asks eventually.

  “Eight years.”

  “You weren’t adopted?”

  “The last ones offered. I said no.”

  “Why?”

  “Because family hurt me. I wasn’t ready to try again. But I stayed with them for four years, and I’m still in touch with them. We get together a couple times a year.”

  “Three years, and you’ve never told me this?”

  “You like to edit your world, Siobhan. You can’t tell me you’re not curious about why I went into foster care, but you’ll get angry if I explain it. Because that’s not what you want in your reality. Children don’t get hurt in your little world.”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  “No, it isn’t, and I’m tired of pretending it’s something I can do.” My thumb taps against the scars on my cheek. I keep them covered most of the time, but not always. She’s seen them, and she’s never once asked how I got them. I used to be grateful for it until I better understood that she wasn’t granting me privacy—she genuinely didn’t want to know, because she suspected it might be something terrible. And it was, and it is, but still. “You constantly punish me for doing a job you think shouldn’t be necessary, while refusing to admit that it is. I’m tired of feeling like I have to protect you from my history simply because you don’t like that the world can be a horrible place.”