Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

“Well look at you, Young Miss Marple!” said Dabba Doo, duly impressed. “Now, isn’t that something!”

“We couldn’t just sit home anymore,” said Maya.

“I heard that ,” said the host, suddenly vexed.

“I guess,” said Troy, “we’ve sort of been having the same kind of trouble that you were talking about at the Meeting. It’s like the radio signal used to be clear but now everything’s gone static.”

“Can’t find the frequency, huh?” mused Dabba Doo. “A bit worrisome, isn’t it?”

“And about what you said earlier,” said Maya. “We really were hoping that whoever Rhonda was going to see was the same one who—”

“The same one who killed us,” said Troy.

“You’re sure that he wasn’t?” said Dabba Doo.

“We’re sure,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Because when it happened”—she turned to her brother for ratification—“when Rhonda had her moment of balance , we didn’t feel anything.”

“It wasn’t like we even wanted to join in,” said Troy. “There’s just no way it could have been him.”

“Well, well, well,” said Dabba Doo. “Things are definitely getting curiouser and curiouser…”

“Besides,” said Maya. “The Porter said it never happens that way. You know, whole hordes of us hunting down the same one.”

“Like The Walking Dead !” said Dabba Doo. He gobbled a fistful of green gummies and reflected awhile. “I’ll tell you what it sounds like to me—sounds like a few wires got crossed.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking!” said Maya.

She knew Dabba Doo would help make sense of it all; that’s why she’d been drawn to visit.

“And I hate to say it,” frowned their host. “I mean no disrespect—but I’m beginning to lose faith in the Gospel According to Annie. Something’s off. Have you seen her lately? She looks like hell.”

“She’s just a little run-down,” said Lydia, biting her tongue so as not to spill the Porter’s secret.

“More shall be revealed!” said Dabba Doo. “As our friend Mrs. Porter house likes to say. Though maybe more won’t!” He laughed again, accidentally spitting a gummy onto the carpet. He grabbed it and plunked it back in his mouth. “What concerns me is that I don’t know how much longer I can keep the balls in the air. Hell, I don’t even think of the moment of balance anymore—I’m just worried about the old ticker.” He tapped his chest. “I can feel it winding down. I’ve tried asking Annie about it. ‘How long can these fucked-up dead bodies keep going?’ ’Course I didn’t put it quite that way but it’s a damn good question, huh? And boy, does she not want to go there! Tell you something else: I’m starting to feel more like my old landlord self, and that’s very confusing. Isn’t it supposed to be the reverse? It’s like my tenant—Dabba Doo—he’s still in there somewhere but the kid’s gone real quiet. Giving me the silent treatment. Sometimes I feel like I swallowed him,” he said. “Aren’t I supposed to feel like he swallowed me ?”

Maya started to go quiet too; Lydia was ready to go home. What he said about swallowing his tenant had frightened her. She felt guilty as well for having gone around Annie—she hated being disloyal and knew the Porter wouldn’t approve of their mutinous outing. She was still glad they came. It was good to have a playdate, especially with someone who shared the same purgatory.

For his part, Daniel tried his best to hide the brutal funk that had descended during their visit. He couldn’t put his finger on it. It seemed to be a mixture of rage and abject fear, an indecipherable storm of emotions and physical reflexes incongruously reminding him of two things: Daniel’s inadvertent slaughter of the boy in Afghanistan—and Troy’s strange feeling of déjà vu that time they first met Willow Wylde in his office.

As they left, Dabba Doo said, “Let’s hope it’s just a glitch in the system and everything turns out fine. We’ll all have our moment of balance and ride El choo-choo into the sunset together . ”

“I hope you’re right,” said Lydia.

“All roads lead to Rome,” he said. “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. That’s Mark Twain but I take credit for it all the time.”

3.

After her session, Honeychile again waited in the anteroom while the therapist told Harold and Rayanne in no uncertain terms that their daughter was having a psychotic break and urgently needed to be hospitalized. They listened in shock and disbelief. Mindful of client confidentiality, Jacquie omitted much, though what they were hearing was more than enough to leave them terrified.

When the couple stepped outside the office to speak with their daughter in private, Honeychile vehemently denied the account of what transpired. “I think she’s loaded ,” she snarled. “The shrink’s the one who needs a shrink!” Indeed, to the untrained ear, Dr. Robart’s redacted version sounded like the ravings of someone who was high or unbalanced, especially so because the irascible client offered no evidence that would support such theories.

The family left, angry and unresolved, without a goodbye.

Jacquie immediately called her supervisor for counsel; she was flummoxed enough to begin to doubt her own perceptions. Had the girl been putting her on? Her colleague remained annoyingly noncommittal, “not having been in the room.” Jacquie defensively dug in: while it was possible she had been “played,” she insisted that the girl’s pathology was too real, too complete, too something . Still, she was embarrassed at being so dramatic. Either she’d been hoodwinked by a brilliant sociopath—or met an authentic “multiple” head-on, the likes of which come along once in a career, if that.

When they hung up, she gathered her thoughts. She anxiously drummed her fingers on the desk, replaying gory highlights of the session. In her agitation, Jacquie had forgotten to run something else past her boss. She was about to ring him back when she stubbornly thought: I’ll figure this out myself.

She wavered a moment before deciding to err on the side of professional prudence, not legal obligation.

She called the police.

Owen and Dubya were having their twice-a-week shoot-the-shit lunch, not at Early World, which Willow would have preferred, but at Owen’s favorite, KFC. The sheriff admitted to having a full-blown addiction to the $5 Fill Up, faithfully ordered with two hundred grams of coleslaw. KFC coleslaw got him crazy. The whole beggar’s banquet, washed down with a mix of lemonade and iced tea, really made the man happy.

They usually touched on personal things before getting into cop talk. This time it was their prostates. Owen confided that his PSA “went rogue” and he needed further tests. He hadn’t mentioned it to Adelaide yet. (The woman loomed large for these two men.) When Owen asked about Willow’s romantic life—he seemed to have an abiding, vicarious interest—the detective said it was “great,” without mentioning Dixie. But it was interesting to him that he did have the urge to talk about her; he’d been feeling a tug of a desire to promote his girlfriend to someone, anyone. He felt that pride of alliance and burgeoning love that compels one to share. He just wasn’t comfortable yet with Owen putting his shit on the street and gossiping about it to Adelaide.

When it came time to cut up Cold Case business, the sheriff made his usual rape kit backlog pitch. “It’d do wonders for the department if we nailed a few of those, Dubya. My educated guess is, we’d see a serious bump in funding. We need the rah-rah goodwill and the political muscle that would provide. I don’t want ’em to shut us down in nine months. Hit a few home runs with those kits and it’ll go a helluva long way. Don’t get me wrong— anything cold we can put to bed is going to be a big win.”