Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

If they weren’t too drowsy, Daniel kept reading aloud until Lydia drifted away…

Rule Number One: Be GOOD to your NEW BODY!!! Treat it with RESPECT and it will RETURN the favor!!!

Rule Number Two: It is perfectly normal for the “old” you to occasionally feel sadness. These feelings WILL diminish as you get closer to your Moment of Balance . But if you DO feel sad (you sometimes will) it is TO BE EXPECTED. Remember: take a deep breath and TRUST!!!

Rule Number Three: As time goes by, you will find that you are becoming more “yourself.” But remember —while ADULTS are PLAYFUL, and CHILDLIKE qualities are usually tolerated and enjoyed, do NOT call ATTENTION to yourself with too much CRAZY HORSEPLAY! Listen to your Landlord!!!!

The Guide would fall from his hands as he tumbled into his sister’s dream. It was always the same. They dreamed that their moment of balance had been achieved and their work here was done. Lost in a city, they asked random strangers for directions back to the train station. The people they approached didn’t have faces, but that didn’t frighten them. Each time Troy and Maya moved on to the next bystander, the one before suddenly grew eyes and ears and a mouth and a nose, like a flower blooming in time-lapse. In the dream, they stopped worrying where the station was, because they knew they would find it again when they had to.

But that time was not now.

3.

Owen Caplan has been a career cop since the mid-eighties. His education began modestly, at community college, and he was a decorated vet in the Marine Corps. A lifetime resident of Macomb County, he lives ten miles northwest of Saggerty Falls, in Armada. He’s an active weekend hiker on the Orchard Trail.

Originally a station on the GT Railroad, the Falls was incorporated as a village in 1869. It never grew large enough to become a township. In 1991, its sleepy police department boasted four full-time officers, one of whom—the childless bachelor Owen—was the “designated detective” because he had a B.S. in criminal justice from Wayne State University. (Willow Wylde became his partner in ’93 and then moved to Manhattan to work narcotics five years later.) In 1999, eighteen months before the disappearance of Troy and Maya, Owen was upgraded by the local governing body and made chief. It was an ill-fated incumbency; the Rummer case effectively broke the back of the Saggerty Falls PD.

The abductions received so much press and political attention that the village was forced to dismantle its overwhelmed, undertrained police department and contract out to the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office. With its eighteen jurisdictions and multiple municipalities, Owen couldn’t argue against the Sheriff’s superior manpower, resources and skill sets. “Hell, it’s not a competition,” he said publicly, when asked how he felt about being subsumed. But for many years, in the privacy of his own thoughts, he found himself gloating over the Sheriff’s failure to find the killer. He was actually ashamed by such pettiness—made worse by what seemed like a passive-aggressive investment in their not finding those who were responsible—but couldn’t help himself. It was personal. Those kids were like family. He felt stymied that he couldn’t be the one to personally bring the murderer to justice.

The transition period for the deposed chief was rocky but his ambition to achieve something large, something of greatness, remained undimmed. He was a soldier. He went back to school with a fury, acquiring an M.S. in administration from Central Michigan University. Attended the FBI National Academy in Quantico. Graduated from the Macomb County Public Service Institute Center for Police Management and Leadership Studies. Top of his class in the Northwestern University School of Police Staff and Command. Joined the Sheriff’s Office. Was quickly promoted to sergeant and assigned to the Detective Bureau. Promoted to lieutenant. Promoted to chief of staff, in charge of jail operations.

He was a natural leader and a people person. He dabbled in local politics, building a loyal fan base. Did lots of speaking at schools, hospitals and charity events. Became a Democrat and ate as many rubber chickens as the fund-raisers could throw at him. Buddied up with the lieutenant governor. There was still a lot of goodwill toward the former chief, not just in Macomb but in surrounding counties, even after all those years. Folks never forgot the elegance and compassion he brought to the impossible task of the nightmare in Saggerty Falls. There was a case back in the seventies, the Oakland County Murders. Four schoolkids were abducted and their bodies found posed, in different clothing. To this day it remained unsolved, but those who were old enough to remember wished there’d been a competent, avuncular figurehead like Lieutenant Caplan to soothe the collective nerve. Macomb wasn’t nearly as high-end as the westerly Oakland County, yet with his warm and easy blue-collar charm, Owen would have fit the bill. He fit it for Saggerty Falls, best he could—until they took the job away from him three months into the investigation.

Twelve years after the abduction of the Rummer children, Owen Caplan was elected Macomb County sheriff; four years later, he was voted in for another term. It wasn’t even close.

Now he presides over an undersheriff, four captains, thirteen lieutenants, a handful of corporals and twenty-five sergeants. Some of those he appointed and others floated to the top, or near it, in accordance with the arcane mysteries of civil service. Under him are 225 sworn deputies, with another 250 at the Macomb County Jail in Mount Clemens (thirteen hundred prisoners strong), where Deputies Daniel Doheny and Lydia Molloy began their careers. The sheriff is responsible for maintaining that institution.

He insisted on being directly involved in the hiring of his deputies and had the heart and energy to do that. He felt responsible for their successes and failures, which made him an exemplary sheriff, an exemplary man. Owen trusted his instincts, even when he didn’t fully understand where they were heading—such as now, with Daniel and Lydia sitting across from him.

Deputy Doheny wasn’t exactly a loose cannon, but certainly had his moments. As a fellow veteran, Owen could see that he was wrapped too tight; the kid went through some bad hoodoo in Afghanistan. And Owen knew all about the major melodrama that occasionally flared between Daniel and his eternally soon-to-be-ex-wife. Still, there was something about him that made the sheriff want to give him a shot.

Lydia was actually a bigger question mark, but Owen absolutely knew she had heart—the Tim Hortons shooting proved it. When a lightbulb went off in his head to throw them together in a squad car at the substation in Saggerty Falls, his gut said, Hell, absolutely. Either it’d work or it wouldn’t, like anything else in this world. (But it’d sure be fun to watch.) He enjoyed creating micro-labs where his deputies could flourish, learning both from their mistakes and gold-star actions. Instinct told him that Molloy would be a good complement to Doheny, providing the balance that seemed to be MIA in his Special Ops problem child. She was no pushover either. In a way, the sheriff was glad it was Molloy who had pulled the trigger on the nutjob. That it went down like that made it easier for him to enlist them in tandem for his new enterprise.

“I might have a special assignment for you two,” he said. The sheriff had summoned them to his office on Elizabeth Road in Mount Clemens. The deputies nervously glanced at each other. They liked and respected their boss but had no idea what he was up to. “How would you feel about that?”

They thought he was being sarcastic and prepped themselves for some kind of demotion.