“I’m standing beside Dr. Evan Ferguson, who is in charge of treating our brave men and women in Kansas who have served in the military. Dr. Ferguson is an imminent psychologist, one of the most prominent in his field. Would you care to say a few words, sir? What can you tell us about the perpetrator of this heinous crime?”
“Obviously he has a pronounced Madonna complex. Somewhere in his childhood he was totally lacking in mothering and developed a profound desire to be cuddled and loved. He wants to be the infant that we saw cradled there.”
The reporter was rapt. She motioned for the cameraman to move a little closer.
“He has a compulsion to kill infants and put them in the place that he was always denied. He kills them so they will stay in the right place and won’t move. He can’t help himself.”
Aghast, I stared at the ground. This was exactly the shoot-from-the-hip analysis that Josie detested.
Then I looked at Dimon. He was obviously flabbergasted. He honestly hadn’t known what we were dealing with. He was as shocked as I was.
He understood before I did. I was too mad to think. “I can’t make that call tomorrow morning, Lottie. Not now. That reporter thinks Ferguson is God Almighty. If we kick him off the case, he’s going to go straight to the press.”
Chapter Nineteen
The wind howled around the house like it was trying to take off the roof. The sound was eerie, discordant. Josie chain-smoked, so my kitchen stunk. Harold prowled from window to window jingling the coins in his pockets and stared out like he could will the damn weather to go away.
Harold and Josie were desperate to get back to Manhattan. It would have made the most sense to go on from Council Grove to their own homes, but they had to come back for Tosca and now were unable to leave because of the weather.
“What can you tell me about Ferguson, Josie?” I was poring over manuals about psychology. “Dimon obviously doesn’t want to cross him because he will most certainly go running to the press and tear the regional center to pieces. Plus, he will undoubtedly blame Frank for turning the investigation over to us in the first place. You can bet your life he’ll make sure everyone knows that he’s far superior to you and Harold.”
She scoffed. “So why hasn’t he been making stunning progress if he’s so capable?” She beat a little tattoo on her thighs. “Come on, Tosca. Come over here.” The little dog looked up and snuggled down further in her bed. Josie straightened and made a face. Tosca sniffed.
“Ferguson obviously has a narcissistic personality disorder. As you know, I never, ever give a cut-and-dried diagnosis without proper testing. But in this case, I have no hesitation. I admit I can’t stand the man, but that’s not why I’m just spitting it right out. He’s simply grandiose to the max.”
“He craves the limelight, that’s for sure.” I laid my book on my lap and hoped she would sit down and talk to me about other criteria for diagnosis.
“Very few persons with this type of personality disorder come to me for treatment because they don’t think there is anything wrong with them. They think they are incredibly gifted and brilliant. So superior that only very special people can appreciate how magnificent they really are. They need constant admiration. Their sense of entitlement is unbearable. I see their wives in my practice. And their children. But not them.”
“Sounds like Ferguson, all right.”
“Yes. He’s textbook.” She wandered toward the stairs. “Going to start a video. You interested?”
I shook my head. Disappointed, I went back to my reading and recalled the reception Ferguson had received when he tried to round up our equipment. In light of what Josie had said, he had probably been enraged when the men jeered. Ridicule from mere rubes that couldn’t fathom his superiority. Had to be hard to take.
The afternoon wore on. I couldn’t remember a time when there was this little conversation in this house. After watching two mediocre movies, Josie came downstairs and suggested that learning to knit or some other sort of hand work would help me handle stress better when I’m agitated, instead of reading books that were over my head. I countered that smoking was not the best way for her to handle stress when she was agitated. She could take up weaving or macramé. Then she blew a smoke ring right in my face and marched off with a book.
I began flipping through medical response charts, memorizing techniques for first aid. Keith was in the music room twanging around on his guitar, experimenting with chords that I’ll bet would never work with any melody.
Dorothy was here too and, sensing the tension in the room, resumed reading the commonplace book. Which I was not in the mood to hear, in case she was planning on organizing one of her little story times.
Sleet pelted the windows and snow was piling up in drifts. Zola Hudson and Keith had done everything possible for the animals and we should have been snug as a bug. But we weren’t. I laid down my book and looked around at our faces, seeing deep fear. All of us were adept at controlling our lives, and now we were confronted with the deaths of three tiny babies at the hands of someone so depraved it was beyond our imagining. The baby boy at Council Grove had enclosed our outrage in a shroud of grief. And we drew no comfort from one another. The killer had even left the same message on the same untraceable paper. “See how the mighty have fallen?” No fingerprints. Nothing misspelled.
We were ahead in only one way. This time we knew where the child had come from. The baby was taken from the hospital in Lawrence, Kansas. His DNA matched that of a newborn there. The baby had been a week old and the mother had already been discharged, but she came daily to hold the child and nurse him. She pumped her milk for feedings during the night. The father came twice a day during daylight hours. They were both there every evening. The hospital wanted to keep the little boy another week because he was underweight.
There were relations who came and went and peered through the viewing window. They were not allowed to enter, of course, but there was a bevy of people cooing at this precious child. It was the couple’s first and they had been trying for a long time.
Hospital staff and certainly doctors and nurses streamed in and out of this special room where the infants needed intensive care. The man who took the infant masqueraded as a doctor in surgical clothes and was wearing a surgical mask. Because the little boy was undersized and kept in this isolated ward, a bevy of doctors and pediatric nurses were in and out. To run this test and that. Examine his heart, his lungs. Always some new worry originating from the results of this test or that. The “doctor” had simply plucked the infant from the crib, stopped a moment to greet the nurses at the desk, and walked away.
Now the mother was heavily sedated and the father walked around like a zombie. The nurses staffing the pediatric floor had sounded the alert as soon as they realized something was amiss. They all said the man came during the shift change when there was a lot of commotion.
Most infant kidnappings are committed by deranged women who want a child. Not by a doctor wearing clothing hospital personnel expect to see every day of the world. No one remembered what he looked like because his head was wrapped and he was wearing the kind of mask that was proper under the circumstances.
Lay people usually didn’t know about the security bracelets the babies wore. But all the doctors certainly did. These bracelets set off an alarm if they aren’t disconnected before dismissal. That was no problem for the man who took the baby. The bracelet never made it out the door. It was later found in a Haz Mat container.
The CTV tape showed a number of men coming and going that evening but no doctors that couldn’t be easily identified. All the other men who showed up on the camera were visiting patients and had a right to be there. If the thief had disposed of the surgical clothing in one of the trash bins close to the hospital there might have been some forensic evidence transferred, but he had been smarter than that.
Due to being underweight and frail, this baby�
�s chances of survival were much less than the average baby. The medical examiner forensics said the child didn’t last an hour.
“Oh, no!”
Dorothy’s sudden outburst scared me. Confused, I stared blankly at the fire before I jumped up and ran to her side.
“What’s the matter?”
“Franklin Slocum. This book. Something happened.”
Josie came too. She eyed Dorothy, this visiting aunt who was rarely rattled and usually managed to keep all her emotions under control.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Dorothy said. “Not for sure. Listen to this.”
I want to die. I want to die. Yesterday this terrible man carried a little boy into the woods over his shoulder. The boy kicked and kicked and had tape over his mouth. No one could hear him scream out here anyway. I heard his screams in my mind. The man dragged an old log into the center of this little clear place and then stripped off all the little boy’s clothes and laid him over the log.
I cannot write what happened next. I did not know it could happen to boys. I could not watch it all the way through.
I did not make a sound.
I think I did not make a sound.
I may have made a sound.
The man looked up suddenly.
Then I shape-shifted into a little wood frog. They can still their hearts, their breathing. I can too now. When I need to.
Then he twisted the little boy’s neck like he was a little rag doll. He left him there and when he was gone I came out from my hiding place and went to the boy. I knelt beside him and held my hand close to his nose. There was no breath.
He was dead.
I could not bear to touch him. I started to cry. I had to tell someone. Biddy. The police. Someone. I had to be a manly man. This time I would be. Not like I was when the little girl was hurt.
I picked up the handkerchief the man had used to wipe himself. There was a lot of blood mixed with stuff that smelled like the rubbers the teenagers left. The smell made me sick and I gagged, but I did not throw up.
Then my heart started beating so wildly I was afraid everyone could hear it in the next county.
He came back. The evil man came back. With a shovel this time. I heard him in the leaves when he was still pretty far away. I ran to my hiding place and did not move. He dug a hole for the little boy and it was very deep and he covered it with leaves. He did a very good job.
Then he started looking around. He started at one end of the clearing and tried to find something. I looked at the handkerchief in my hand and became a wood frog again. I didn’t stir and didn’t breathe. I could still hear the crunching of the leaves and while the man was still searching I heard a car coming.
Two cars drove up. Some teenagers jumped out with their fishing poles. He heard them too and slipped away before they got here.
When it was night I went home and sneaked inside. I was too nervous to sleep. The next morning, I decided to go to the police. My body was filthy and my clothes were dirty. I filled the bathtub with water. Biddy heard me and came marching in. She’s used to my sounds and my hand signs so I told her to get out and then we got into a fight. She said she wished she had killed me when I was born and I told her that if she did that she wouldn’t have gotten any money to take care of me.
Oh her face. Her face when I said that. The look on her face. And I knew what I had I said was her biggest fear in the world. That I would die and she would stop getting money.
Why didn’t I think of it before? There were other ways to stop her from getting my money besides dying. All I had to do was to prove she was not taking care of me and the government would take me away and poof—she would lose her money. I told her this and she left me alone while I cleaned up.
I told her to find some clean clothes for me. She was so angry her hands shook. She opened the bathroom door and threw a pair of jeans and an old flannel shirt on the floor. I told her I wanted clean underwear and she came back with a pair of shorts and some socks. She even found some old shoes. I don’t know where she got them but sometimes the social worker gave her things for me.
I went to the police station. It was hard for me to walk that far and I was tired when I got there. I still can’t talk right but I could write down what they needed to know. I practiced what I going to say/write when I got there.
There had been a murder. A terrible murder.
But the first officer I saw was Steven Avery. A boy I had gone to school with. He was about seven years older than me and just barely old enough to get this job.
I hated him. He was the meanest of them all. And he caused all the others to be mean.
Dummy. Duck Boy. Freak. Filthy retard.
Steven looked up and spotted me and I backed away and then turned and hurried home as fast as I could go. He would never listen to me. I could hear him laughing and calling. “Duck Boy. Waddle on back here, little Duck Boy.” He could have caught me, but I doubt if he thought I was important enough to chase.
When I got home, Biddy was sitting on my bed holding the commonplace book. She was at the very beginning. I hollered and she dropped it on the floor. It fell upside down with the pages open to the ceremony of blessing for the animals. So she had only read the first pages.
I shook when I picked it up because I knew if I lived here she would destroy it and it was my best friend. I would die if I didn’t have this book. But I could no longer live in the woods in my special place. What if that man came back? I went to the kitchen and found a plastic trash bag and wrapped my book and tied it with twine.
This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. This book is my best friend.
There is nowhere safe to hide it here where Biddy can’t find it. And the handkerchief. I know it’s important. There is blood on it from the little boy. Blood mixed with that smelly stuff. I brought it home with me last night but I know it’s not safe here either.
Sometimes if I think a while I can figure out what to do. The police need to know what I saw.
I am going to think. I will take the commonplace book and hide it under my special tree and put the handkerchief in there too with the plastic bag holding all my other stuff. Then I will come back home and make Biddy do what she should. While I think.
I have a right to a warm house and a bed and some food. If she doesn’t give me that, I will go to the social worker she is so scared of. They will take me away and give me to someone else and I don’t care anymore. But first of all I’ll got to decide what to do. If someone like Avery gets ahold of the handkerchief he will just throw it away will never let me talk or explain. He would never let me write anything down.
I will go to my tree tomorrow morning. Just after the sun comes up. I will figure out how to get everything buried. After that I’m never going into the woods again. I’m going to live here with Biddy.
A special prayer poem:
Goodbye little squirrels and thank you for teaching me to hide quickly.
Goodbye little wood frogs and thank you for teaching me to slow my breathing. Goodbye little possums and thank you for showing me how to play dead.
Goodbye little otters and thank you for teaching me to swim.
Goodbye my most precious little owls, for teaching me to think
Goodbye, goodbye.
I will be back someday.
We didn’t make a sound. The sleet increased as it hardened and peppered the window like birdshot fired from a twelve gauge. The fire crackled and Tosca, sensing some change, padded softly into the room where we sat like statues. She jumped on Josie’s lap and looked up at her face to comfort her. But Josie slowly rose and dumped Tosca on the floor and went to the doorway.
“Harold. I want you to read something.”
He came to the room and glanced at all of our shocked faces. “What’s going on? You all look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
&
nbsp; “Take this.” Dorothy shoved the book toward him. “Read it. Right now. It won’t take you long.”
Josie’s face was pale. Perhaps mine was too, because Harold slowly looked at all of us like we had become ghosts.
He carried the book back to his chair by the fire. When he finished, he came to the doorway. “Josie, I need to talk to you.”
“Keep in mind, Harold, that this child might be just making all of this up. It’s almost too improbable to be true,” she said slowly.
“I know that and I’m confused too. But we need to talk.”
She followed him from the room.
Chapter Twenty
Dorothy and I sat and waited while two of the finest psychologists I knew conferred about an incident that happened a decade ago. I was awash with grief for this lonely child, but Dorothy’s face was impassive. Thinking, thinking, always thinking. Bewildered, Tosca transferred to my lap while Dorothy and I waited for instructions.
Then Dorothy grabbed her walking stick and pulled herself to her feet and began pacing. But her slow steady energy flagged as though the accumulation of tragedies were weighing her down. Once again she could not neatly work out a solution. One of her preferred happy endings.
“If this is all true,” she said soberly, “if it is…”
I said nothing.
Harold returned and asked Dorothy and me to join him and Josie. He went into the music room. “Keith, there’s something you need to know about. It’s all here in the strangest book I’ve ever read. You’ll need to read this section yourself, then I want us all together so I won’t have to repeat everything. Josie and I need to ask Lottie some questions and I want you to hear her answers.”
“Does it have anything to do with the Ghost Babies?”
“No, thank God, but it has to do with something that happened about ten years ago and Josie and I have a moral obligation to stay here and do what we can. We are both officers of the court and as such it’s our duty to report a crime. Although this is way beyond the reporting stage. If what this child says happened is true, everyone would know about it. If this account is made up and none of it is true, there won’t be a record of these events. Either in law enforcement records or in the newspapers.” Harold’s face darkened. “I’m beginning to think this damned county is the Bermuda Triangle for crime.”
Fractured Families Page 19
