Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

1.

As he left Sterling Heights for the Caplan home in Armada, Willow passed a middle school with a PLEASE BRING WINSTON HOME! banner strung across the gymnasium.

Along the way, some of the houses had a smiling picture of the boy on lawn stakes. Over the weekend, hundreds of volunteers went poking around the banks and foliage of the part of Clinton River that wound its way through Mount Clemens. As a cop, Willow knew it was futile and that he was likely dead.

It was way too soon to bring a date to the barbecue.

He wanted to feel the way men do when they walk into a party with a beautiful woman on their arm but didn’t think that would fly—especially not with a gal, technically speaking, who Willow hardly knew. He hadn’t yet earned that kind of goodwill, and showboating Dixie would just make him look foolish. He didn’t want to offend his ex either; young pussy had a way of stirring the pot. At the same time, he kicked himself for not inviting her, because Dixie had the knack of generally chilling him out (more so since the insanity with Annie), a talent that definitely would have come in handy at the backyard hullabaloo. He kicked himself one more time because his concerns about Adelaide felt codependent, flashbacking him to the worst parts of their marriage.

“There he is!” said Owen, standing at the grill in full barbecue regalia. “How do you like your meat?”

“Young,” whispered Willow, uncharacteristically macho. His thoughts still lingered on Dixie and he felt a tad unruly.

Owen laughed and licentiously prodded at a sizzling patty. “Speaking of which. Had any lately, Dub?”

“Nope. Been sending everything back to the kitchen.”

“Well, at least you put an order in. Trouble with you is you’re too picky,” said Owen. “You didn’t used to be that way.”

“I didn’t used to look this way.”

They chortled and then Adelaide waved Willow down. He dutifully went over.

“Well, hey there, Dubya!”

“Hi, Addie.”

“You good?”

“I am excellent.”

“That’s what I like to hear. And thanks for coming to our event the other day. I know you hate that kind of thing.”

“No worries. I actually had a nice time.” He stared at his shoes a moment, wondering how to approach it. “That lady you introduced me to… you know, the volunteer—”

“Annie?” she said brashly. “Little old for you, isn’t she?”

“Very funny,” said Willow. “I was just curious.” He had to circle around to it. “You know—are all those people retired? The volunteers? Or are they independently wealthy?”

“Well, Annie isn’t. Makes the drive from Detroit twice a week. I think she takes the bus. They’re selfless people, most of them. Annie’s a saint.”

He was stymied over what direction to take next. Just what was it that he wanted to know, what was it he was trying to find out? Willow was at a total loss. At least it felt good talking about the woman—it got her out of his head, made her less of a chimera.

A few couples settled into the picnic tables. Most of the men were cops. Willow and his ex joined them as they fed their faces and shop-talked. The wives were used to it.

“A friend in California told me about a pretty wild case,” said one of the men. “All these folks were being murdered in Atlanta. I’m talking straight-out executions. This happened, oh, I think over the course of two or three years. Not thugs or gangbangers or drug addicts—just folks who’d given information on homicide cases. Not CIs. Regular people. Witnesses, whatever. It wasn’t even a Crime Stoppers deal, just members of the community calling in tips from what they heard on the street. Some were probably doing it for the reward, but most were just trying to make the community safer. Gettin’ bad guys off the streets. And none of the murders were connected. Zero. No one in homicide could figure it out. For a while, they thought it was a serial deal. Know what they all had in common?”

“What was that?” said Owen.

“Every one of the vics had been interviewed on a reality cop show. There’s a hundred of ’em now. During interrogations, when the shows aired, they were heavily blurred out, voices altered, the whole deal. To protect their anonymity. Now here’s what’s amazing. Turns out there’s a guy working at the editing facility out in Hollywood—”

“The blur-out guy?” said Willow.

“That’s right. There was one guy who had that job. The motherfucker was selling pre-censored images to the criminal community.”

“Jesus,” said Adelaide. “That’s like an Agatha Christie. Or whoever’s writing that kind of thing now.”

Guests came and went, replenishing their paper plates. When the talk fell to Winston Collins, the women didn’t want to entertain the hardboiled husbands’ certainty, backed up by stats, that the boy was killed within hours of his abduction. To placate the ladies, one of them half-heartedly said, “He’ll probably turn up.” A wise guy couldn’t help adding, “Parts of him, anyway.”

A few of the wives asked Owen if his office had any leads, and he shook his head. “Something’ll break,” he said. “Just a matter of time.” Willow was familiar with that kind of optimism, or at least its compulsory public face. One of the men brought up the infamous, unsolved Oakland County murders that took place an hour southwest—four kids between the ages of ten and twelve were killed in a thirteen-month period between 1976 and ’77. But the “Oakland County Child Killer” was never found.

“Maybe the guy’s still doing his thing,” said a wife. “And living in Macomb.”

“Possible, but unlikely,” said her husband. “He’d probably be in his seventies by now.”

“Let’s get our cold case expert’s opinion,” said Owen, turning to Willow.

“Oh, you find serial killers who are ‘active seniors.’ I’m sure there’s a few out there who are wearing Depends. It’s atypical but it happens. They don’t usually lay low for forty years, then pick up again. But as the man said, anything’s possible. It’s more likely that he’s dead.”

“Or she,” said Adelaide.

“Or she,” echoed Willow. “It certainly wouldn’t be without precedent for a woman to be involved. The prime suspect in that Oakland deal shot himself in the head, though, didn’t he?”

“That would be Christopher Busch,” nodded Owen. “There were a lot of ‘prime suspects.’ And speaking of cold cases, how’d you like my deputies?”

Willow suddenly felt remiss for not having called his boss to compliment him on the recruits. “Good people,” he said. “They’re green, but sometimes green’s a good thing. A very good thing. You just may be right. I think there is something special about them.”

“Willow’s heading up our new task force,” said Owen to the others, mostly for the benefit of the wives because the men already knew. “He very courteously allowed me to lure him out of retirement. He was the Big Apple’s Cold Case king.”

“Your wish is my command,” said Willow.

“The king and the genie,” said the wise guy. “ There’s a pair to draw to.”

“I don’t mind playing genie,” said Owen. “As long as there isn’t any rubbing involved.”

“I’ll try to keep my hands to myself,” said Willow. Everyone laughed. “You won’t believe who they chose for their first case.”

“JonBenét?” said the wise guy.

“Troy and Maya Rummer.”

“You are shitting me , ” said Owen, genuinely surprised.

“Oh my God!” said Adelaide. “Dubya, are you being for real?”