Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

With careful thought and determination, he’d traced back the moment when Dabba Doo moved in, nearly ten months ago to the day, after a lethal heart attack. How and why his ruined body continued to function was a thing that he ceded to Annie and her Mystery talk: there are more things in heaven and Earth, and all that. But now he felt as if he were dying again . That excited him because he couldn’t help believing that if he could fool death once, he might do it twice. Perhaps he was meant for bigger things.

Perhaps he was meant to become Death itself.

His attention drifted to the photos pinned on the wall:

A blurry image of Sarabeth Ahlström (he’d written Miss Shrinking VIOLET above it) from her LinkedIn profile, poorly printed on his antiquey HP… Deputies Lydia Molloy and Daniel Doheny ( TROY and MAYA-oh-my-a!!! ), scissored from an article in the Macomb Gazette covering the inauguration of the new Cold Case unit… and a yearbook photo of Renée Devonshire ( win-win WINSTON!! ) that he’d found online. The playmates from the Meeting who once elicited such affection were poison to him now. But he needed them—so went the incomprehensible logic of an incomprehensible being—if he was to live.

To live!

For he had come to believe their deaths would act like toxins, in the manner that pathogens of certain snakes, fish and plants can be titrated and absorbed by human beings, allowing them to survive a condition that would be fatal without such intervention.

2.

Renée was still druggy when the sheriff arrived. (“Medicated, but to the minimum,” as the doctor put it.) The suspect had “decompensated”—completely broken with reality. Owen thought that an interview would be futile but he had to try. He brought along Ruthie Levin, an investigator whose specialty was the forensic interview. She was skilled in speaking to juveniles.

She’d been temporarily moved from a padded safety cell to a thick-glassed, sunny room with carpet and sofa. Instead of a hospital gown, she wore the pajamas her parents dropped off. Owen was startled by her appearance. She looked nothing like the girl he’d glimpsed in the back of the squad car that day at Mount Clemens High. She had purplish blotches on the skin above her breasts that one of the RNs said were most likely caused by a reaction to antipsychotics. Still, they reminded him of the skin eruptions of dying children he’d met at Adelaide’s hospital.

She smelled like something that was dying.

“Good morning, Honeychile.” He thought it was best to use her nickname. “I’m Detective Caplan—and this is Ruthie Levin. We’re here to talk with you for just a little. Is that okay?”

When she didn’t respond, he nodded to the investigator.

“Hi! And thank you for seeing us today,” said Ruthie. “I know it’s not easy being here. And the first thing that’s so important to say is that no one’s upset or angry with you, okay? We just want to get your side of the story. You know, I’ve been doing this a long time and if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that there’s always two sides of a story. And we’d very much like to hear yours.”

“That’s right,” said Owen. “We’re not here to judge.”

“We just want to know your side. And we’re very happy to have a chance to sit with you today and just listen.”

They waited awhile but she was silent. Just when Owen was about to try a different approach, Honeychile whispered, “Winston was kilt.” She stared at the floor, making it easier for the colleagues to communicate by a semaphore of glances, urging or cueing each other to push forward or hang back.

“Who killed him, Honeychile?” said Owen. He didn’t think he had anything to lose by cutting to the chase. “Do you know who killed Winston?”

Ruthie discreetly raised her hand, telegraphing him to move slower. “We’re trying to find out who hurt Winston,” she said. “And we think you can help. How did you know where we would find him, Honeychile? Where we could find Winston? Because thanks to everything you told us, we did find him—and that meant so very, very much to his mom. We really want to thank you for showing us where he was.”

“They put Winston in the water,” said Honeychile.

“Can you tell us—do you think you can tell us how you knew that?” she said. “That he was in the water? Can you tell us how you knew that, Honeychile? Did someone tell you? Or did you see it? Did someone tell you that Winston was in the water?”

After a moment, Owen said, “Were you there when they put Winston in the water?”

If his eyes weren’t playing tricks, he could swear that more splotches were appearing on her calves and forearms, like flowers opening in slow motion.

“Honeychile kilt wrong one! Honeychile the biggest loser ,” she said, and began to cry.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Ruthie, daring to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. Honeychile was oblivious to the gesture.

“He was a mean, nasty boy but did not kilt Winston.”

“Who was a mean, nasty boy?” said Ruth.

“Boy at skwool. Boy she kilt.”

“Why did you kill the boy at school?” said Owen.

“ Honeychile kilt him, not me!”

“Okay,” said Ruthie. “And who are you? Can you tell us who you are?”

“Winston.”

“Do you know why she killed him, Winston?”

“’Cause she think he kilt Winston ,” she said angrily. “But it was the bad man who kilt him.”

“ Who was the ‘bad man’?” said Owen, powering through despite Ruth’s caution. He sensed they’d come as far as they would today—or possibly ever. “Can you tell us about the bad man? Was he alone?”

“I saw woman,” she said.

“Was Honeychile with the man?”

“Honeychile not with him,” she scowled.

“Did you know her? Did you know the woman that you saw?” said Ruthie.

“Woman had wings!” said Honeychile.

“Wings?” said Owen, looking impatiently toward Ruthie.

“Like angel ,” said the girl, her breath becoming labored. “But Honeychile she fail ! I going to be punished on train ! Porter going punish me! Me and Winston s’posed to kilt him—but Honeychile kilt wrong one…”

She sobbed, then screamed.

As the sheriff and his colleague stood, two males nurses rushed in to subdue her.

3.

The Task Force gathered in the conference room for a midmorning coffee.

Sitting there with his “kids”—he’d called them that from day one and now laughed at the irony—the detective experienced a cognitive dissonance. From all appearances, things looked, felt and seemed normal, though nothing could have been further from the truth. Instead of dissipating, the dream Willow was trapped in grew more real by the hour. He thought of the end of The Shining , when Jack Nicholson vanishes into a group photo taken on Independence Day, fifty or sixty years before (“You have always been the caretaker,” says the spooky bartender), and fantasized himself entering the mural that he painted on his apartment wall. Dixie would wonder where he’d gone and, when she came to look for him, wouldn’t even notice his haunted face staring out at her from one of the windows of the train.

You have always been the Porter…

“Daniel,” he said. “Let’s go over what you remember from that day.” It was really Troy whom he was asking, but Willow still couldn’t bring himself to use the name. “Start from when your father told you to borrow the lighter fluid.”

The deputy shrugged and went blank-faced. “Daddy asked us to go to Ebenezer’s. I just remember being on our bikes.”