The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  “Hello?” he called.

  No one answered. Somewhere, a child cried. Through a window, Oscar could see a boy with an overlarge head being pushed on a swing by a short, stocky woman who was also trying to prevent two other, more robust but hobbling children from fighting over what might have been a doll or a stick. Behind them stood a figure watching Oscar. The dead boy with the wormhole eyes shifted on his feet and tentatively raised a hand in greeting. Oscar felt a flash of anger. Here of all places, he thought, and struck the bell sharply again.

  On the other side of the counter was a door with the word OFFICE in gold and black paint. Oscar waited a few more moments, then stepped behind the counter and tried the door handle.

  The office was surprisingly cheerful. Two tall windows shined daylight on pale lemon walls. Freshly picked flowers were pleasant blinks of bright color on each of the two desks. On one wall hung a series of photographs of center directors, certificates of appreciation, and children’s art in vivid colors. Crayon drawings of cows, rockets, houses, smiling boys and girls in wheelchairs, walking frames, crutches. Oscar scanned the pictures until he found a paper smudged in palm-size slashes of yellow and green. “Flowers,” a caregiver had written in the corner, “by Megan M.”

  Against another wall were three filing cabinets. On a third wall hung two whiteboards: one was a staff roster with in/out columns and magnets in each; the other was a table showing thirty-six rooms, under each of which was written the occupant’s name. Oscar found the same name—Megan M.—and went looking for the room.

  Above the door was a fretwork breezeway, all Edwardian filigrees curving and curling around the stylized forms of two kookaburras. The birds were beak to beak, devoid of humorous charm. The shapes wreathing around the predators arrested Oscar, reminding him of the arcane symbols carved on the dead girl’s abdomen. Through the dozens of tiny sawed holes of the breezeway came what was either laughter or sobs. Oscar noted the deadlock latch above the handle. He rapped softly and opened the door.

  In the corner under the single, narrow window, a girl of sixteen was fighting her young caregiver. The girl’s arms batted and struck the young woman who was trying to lift her from a wheelchair; tears squeezed from eyes screwed shut against the world. She moaned, an awful calf-like holler. Oscar stared. He had not seen Megan McAuliffe since the trial three years ago, when the girl’s father had wheeled her into the courtroom. Then she’d still looked something like the adolescent he’d broken under his car on Gray Wednesday. Now her flesh had lost its vigor. It was pale and soft, her hair was lank, and her once pretty face looked as puffy and wildly confused as a sick infant’s. Megan lashed out with barely coordinated hands.

  “Come on, Meggie,” the caregiver said. “Take my hands.”

  The young woman was in her early twenties, with short hair and a sharp, foxlike face; she took the slaps without flinching, and her calming voice never rose. “Come on, Meggie-pie. Take my arms, we’ll be done in no time.”

  Megan wailed louder, her mouth open wide not in pain but in some deeper misery. The cry fell over Oscar like a pall, cloying and awful. He stepped into the room on feet as heavy as stone.

  “Can I—” He cleared his throat. “Can I help you?”

  But the caregiver didn’t hear him because Megan yowled again. Her wet eyes flashed open and rolled around savagely. They fell on Oscar, and held on him a moment—a strange, slippery stare that may have been recognition or just a momentary fascination with someone new.

  The young woman followed Megan’s stare to Oscar. It was like having something honed and dangerous waved at him. The young woman wore no makeup, which made her acid-green eyes look larger; her skin was lightly freckled. She tensed like a cornered bird, ready either to fly away or to spear and scratch. Oscar raised his hands, palms forward, then slowly walked to the wheelchair.

  “Let me help,” he offered. “I’m a police officer.”

  The young woman watched him a moment longer, then gave a resigned nod.

  “Okay, Meggie-pie,” she said, her eyes not leaving Oscar. “Here we go.”

  Oscar slipped his hands under Megan’s armpits and felt the fine, damp hair there. He watched the caregiver for her cue.

  “One, two … three.”

  They lifted. Despite her thrashings, Megan felt light. She was about the same weight as the cadaver he’d carried into Kannis’s cold room. He didn’t like that thought. They put her on the bed, where an adult diaper was waiting. On her back, now, Megan grinned. The caregiver ran her hands over Megan’s face, and the girl suddenly giggled—a sad, oafish trilling. The caregiver turned to look at Oscar. No smile.

  “You should go now.”

  “Listen, how is Megan doing?”

  “Hello?”

  The voice from the doorway made Oscar turn.

  A late-middle-aged woman watched Oscar with the suspicion of a terrier that’s sensed a rat. She wore sensible clothes—pants and shirt, a wood bead necklace her only concession to fashion. Her hair was up and out of the way. On one shoulder, a child of three or four slept soundly.

  Oscar showed his ID. “Oscar Mariani.”

  The woman took the badge carefully and scrutinized it, then him: a juror’s stare. “Detective Mariani. So you’ve finally come to visit Megan?”

  Oscar felt the sharp-faced caregiver’s stare on the side of his face. He shook his head.

  “I’m here to talk about Penelope Roth.”

  “I reported Penny missing last Thursday.”

  As she’d walked Oscar along the narrow corridors to another room, the woman had introduced herself as Leslie Chalk, Elverly House’s Director of Care. She moved briskly, and Oscar noticed dark circles under her eyes.

  “It must be a challenge. Running a place like this,” he said.

  “We all have our crosses to bear, Detective.” She smiled bitter-sweetly. “There are benefits.”

  They stopped outside a numbered door, and she placed the sleeping child in Oscar’s arms while she reached into her pocket for a key. The child suddenly cried out in his sleep, and Oscar awkwardly patted his bottom; the child rolled a little, sucked his thumb, and dozed again. Chalk unlocked the door, swung it open, and extended her arms to take the child back.

  Oscar stepped inside.

  “When did you notice that Penny was missing?” he asked.

  “That morning. She wasn’t in her bed. We searched the building, then the grounds, then the streets.”

  Penny Roth’s room was almost identical to Megan McAuliffe’s: narrow, one window with bars. The bed was stripped and the small wardrobe hung open and empty.

  “You’ve packed up quickly,” he said. “Where are her things?”

  “We sent them back to her parents. We badly need the room. We have a girl moving in this afternoon.”

  Oscar tested the bars. Solid. “You weren’t expecting Penny back?” He looked at Chalk.

  She smiled understandingly. “Detective, this isn’t paradise and only a fool would pretend it is. We do what we can to keep them, which is to say we feed them and clean them and give them what physical therapy our staff are trained to deliver. But boys and girls try to leave—all the time. The grass is always greener. So when they do run off we report them straightaway, for what that’s worth. But if they get it in their minds to run away again and again, there really isn’t much we can do. Penny had run away from here four times in the last two years. She was getting good at it. So, sadly, no; I wasn’t expecting her back.”

  “Penny had cerebral palsy,” Oscar said.

  “Do you know much about cerebral palsy?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a motor-control disease. Yes, she had to use crutches, but Penny was as smart and willful as any fourteen-year-old girl. I told you some children didn’t like it here? Penny hated it. She hated Elverly, she hated most of the caregivers, but most of all she hated the people who put her here.”

  “Her parents.”

  “I expect you’ll want their det
ails?”

  Oscar nodded. They stepped back out into the corridor.

  “So,” he said, “people are prepared to pay to keep their problem children at arm’s length?”

  Chalk dropped the keys. Oscar bent to pick them up. She forced a smile of thanks as she took them from him.

  “They pay, Detective, but not handsomely.” She relocked the door. “The world has not changed that much.”

  “Are you okay?” Oscar asked.

  “A death in the family,” Chalk replied. “Unexpected.” She pocketed the keys and headed up the corridor. Oscar kept pace.

  “Did Penny have any visitors on Wednesday night?” he asked.

  “No. Penny had no regular visitors at all.”

  “Who was on shift in Penny’s section?”

  “Zoe. Zoe Trucek. You’ve already met her.”

  The young woman’s green eyes had narrowed to slits. She sat on the office chair like a cat above a yardful of dogs and stared at Oscar as if he were the nearest and worst of the hounds. He guessed that she had figured his connection to Megan.

  He asked, “Did you see Penelope Roth after she went to bed?”

  “No.”

  “Did anything unusual happen through the shift? Any children sick, needing to leave their rooms?”

  “No.”

  “Visitors? Deliveries? Unexpected phone calls?”

  “No.” Zoe Trucek inclined her head, eyes never leaving Oscar. “But Megan McAuliffe cried in her sleep. She does that a lot.”

  Oscar felt his throat tighten.

  She raised her eyebrows, an invitation for more questions.

  “Thank you, Zoe,” Leslie Chalk said coolly.

  The young woman kept her hard jade stare on Oscar a moment longer, then unfolded her thin limbs and hurried from the office. The whiteboards shook when she slammed the door.

  “Sorry about the manners,” Chalk said. “Beggars can’t be choosers. She is actually quite wonderful with the kids.”

  Oscar sat for a moment, angry with himself. The taunt about Megan had been aimed and delivered with startling precision. Did Zoe Trucek hate all police, or just him? He was too wounded by the thought of Megan crying alone in her bed to think clearly, and that made him angrier.

  Chalk opened a filing cabinet, found a manila folder, took it to one of the desks, and transcribed details onto a clean sheet of paper. She tore it off and held it out like a posy.

  Oscar rose and took the sheet. On it was written the address and telephone number of Paul and Carole Roth.

  Chapter 13

  The Heights. A few square miles of high suburb, flanked on their southern boundary by the river and commanding views of the city and its fires. There were no fires on the Heights. Since the turn of the twentieth century, this suburb had been home to state premiers and surgeons, judges and property moguls. The wealth of a state seven times larger than the UK funneled into the grand homes that speckled these hillsides like Fabergé eggs set on lush green satin.

  When the economic chaos caused by Gray Wednesday spread like fever through the population, a silent concordat was made by the residents of what was to become the Heights. Oscar remembered the joke Jon made the day the wall started to go up: that finally someone was putting the real criminals behind bars. But the wisecracks dried up as the wall grew longer and higher, and private security guards began manning the gateways and patrolling the boundaries with large dogs. The wall was electrified and the Heights were secured. The rich suburb and its wealthy owners were sealed almost in toto from the decay. Soon the city simply accepted that it had its own glistening compound where its “better” citizens lived. Similar enclaves had been created in hundreds of cities around the world, but few had been accepted as peacefully.

  Naturally, the residents of the Heights were free to come and go—they still had to get to their practices and boardrooms, courthouses and surgeries. And outsiders were allowed in—the well-to-do needed their gardeners and their repairmen and their grocers and their cleaners—but identification and intention were checked at boom gates by unsmiling men in black uniforms with telltale bulges under their arms. And the police were allowed in. Oscar had visited the Heights twice for Clause Seventeens. Even the rich had their ghosts.

  Oscar slowed the car as he approached the boom gate and presented his ID.

  “Visiting?” asked the security guard.

  “That’s right.”

  The guard’s eyes were invisible behind sunglasses. “Who are you visiting, sir?”

  “Paul and Carole Roth.” Oscar gave the address.

  “One moment.”

  The guard stepped into a neat, air-conditioned guardhouse, and Oscar watched him through greenish glass an inch thick. The guard noted Oscar’s license plate, then picked up a phone.

  Oscar looked out the open window. On the horizon, bruise-blue clouds rolled in like wave heads. The air felt charged and fraught. He was a long way from having conclusive proof, but the tight excitement in his gut told him his Jane Doe was Penny Roth.

  The guard returned and offered a printed map of the Heights; he had marked in a red twisting line from “You Are Here” at the gatehouse to the Roth household.

  The boom gate rose, and Oscar drove onto the Heights and back in time.

  The streets here were clean. Flawless lawns sparkled under dew. No rubbish clogged the gutters or storm-water grates. Footpaths were swept, and no weeds flourished in their cracks. Hedges were neatly trimmed. At a street café, women in pretty coats and men in Aran wool sat under gas heaters, sipping coffee, smiling and laughing. In a small park, a jogger in silvery shoes stretched, and a woman in designer jeans watched her child clamber up a colorful play fort. The houses were large, with windows that were clean and winked back sunlight; no graffiti stained their picket or brick or sandstone fences. Oscar stared as he passed a chocolaterie. His car wound its way higher.

  The Roth house was a three-story Art Deco iceberg floating on a sea of emerald grass. It was a balanced whole of flat facets and sweeping curves, sparkling glass and white walls—yet it looked strangely ominous under the dark clouds that roiled overhead. Oscar lowered his window and buzzed the intercom. A woman’s voice asked his name. There was an electric click, and the gates rolled silently open.

  A long driveway curved between hedges up to a tall white colonnade off the house; under the carriageway were two black BMWs and a gull-gray Bentley. Oscar parked his sedan and stepped onto a pathway of ice-white quartz flanked by waxy green camellias. He pulled his jacket closed against the chill air.

  He’d done his share of death knocks in General Duties. Was it the worst job in the world? He’d thought so at the time. Two in the morning, exhausted by shift work and drained by the sight of a young man flayed by jagged windscreen glass so that he looked more like a medical dummy, all exposed muscles and tendons, or of a woman burst like a melon as the passenger side of her vehicle spun into a power pole with enough force that the car folded around and through her. He spoke to the drivers who called in the crash; he waited for Accident Investigation to arrive and measure the tire skids; he watched as firefighters hosed oil and glass and blood off the road. Then he got into his cruiser and found the address and, stifling yawns and burying the bad jokes all cops needed to share in order to temporarily banish the pictures of dead flesh from their minds, he walked along a path to a front door and knocked and spoke and watched as a father or mother or husband or daughter turned white.

  The Roths’ tiled porch was scrubbed clean, and Oscar’s footsteps rang in the vestibule. He reached for the polished brass door knocker, but before he could touch it the door was opened by a slender Asian woman in a trim black dress suit.

  “Detective,” she said. It was her voice that Oscar had heard on the intercom. He followed the woman down a wide hallway; she knocked once on a door.

  “Thank you, Angelique,” came a man’s voice on the other side.

  The woman nodded for Oscar to enter.

  Paul Roth’s home
office was a stunning, round sunroom. One semicircle was curved walls lined with shelves packed neatly with law books: between ranks of spines was a polished headstand holding a gray horsehair wig, and Oscar remembered at last who Paul Roth was—the barrister appointed by Geoffrey Haig’s solicitor at the final, futile stage of Oscar’s Ethical Standards investigation. The curve of bookshelves was broken by a wide white fireplace and two tall gloss-black doors. Opposite was a semicircle of graceful French windows that looked out onto a courtyard enclosed by ivy-laden trellises. Oscar returned his attention to the man seated at the desk.

  Roth was dressed in striped silk pajamas and a fluffy white dressing gown. He was almost remarkable in every respect: not quite tall, not quite athletic, not quite handsome. And Oscar couldn’t quite peg the man’s mood; Roth looked pale and very tired. Yet he vibrated with a happy energy, and self-confidence punched out from behind designer eyeglasses that, Oscar suspected, Roth didn’t need to wear. He finished writing a note, then put down his pen, stood, and fixed Oscar with a raised-chin stare—a move, Oscar decided, that was choreographed for the courtroom and perfected in a bathroom mirror. Oscar wondered if Roth would remember him.

  “Detective Mariani? It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’ve been a bit under the weather.”

  Oscar nodded, his question answered.

  Roth continued, “Police usually telephone.”

  “Is Mrs. Roth here?”

  Roth didn’t move. “If there’s something I should know, I’d prefer to hear it before I trouble my wife.”

  “I’m here to talk about your daughter.”

  Roth’s eyes narrowed a little, and he chewed the inside of his cheek. “Take a seat,” he said after a pause, and went to the French doors. He opened one and cool air tumbled in. “Carole?” he called. “Carole?” The barrister looked back at Oscar, smiled as if nothing could be more normal, and stepped out onto the courtyard flagstones calling his wife’s name.

  Oscar watched Roth’s progress between the columns and the ivy. He was heading across the lawn toward two women silhouetted against the climbing sun. One woman also wore a dressing gown that billowed about her like a loose sail and glowed in the light. Oscar guessed that was Carole Roth. One of her arms circled wildly in the sky, as if she were trying to capture invisible lightning from the air; her other arm was held by the second woman. She wore a tailored suit; her frame was slender, yet she held firmly against Carole Roth’s turbulence.