Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

The public memorial for Winston Collins was a few weeks away, too long for Lydia to wait. (Maya’s and Troy’s bodies, entombed in the foundation of Roy Eakins’s old house in Saggerty Falls, wouldn’t be found for three weeks.) As it happened, though, on this day—today—there fell separate services for Renée “Honeychile” Devonshire and Deputy Daniel R. Doheny. Willow hadn’t planned on going to Honeychile’s memorial until Lydia said that she absolutely wanted to be there. When he mentioned that to Owen, the sheriff was glad. He said he would have liked to go himself but would be attending church services at St. Joan of Arc in Saint Clair Shores for his fallen deputy. Willow told him they’d join up with everyone at the Doheny funeral, after Mass.

He was waiting at the curb to take her to the Devonshires’ when Lydia walked out in her deputy’s uniform. At first he was uncertain, thinking it a bit heavy-handed for what he understood to be a more casual, kid-heavy, festive gathering at the girl’s home. (The parents were calling it a “celebration,” that bugbear of a word when it came to heartbreaking occasions.) But then he thought, no—it was a respectful, powerful, purposeful choice. He laughed to himself that even an entity, a moribund vessel inhabited by the spirit of a dead child, had known the right thing to do. The uniform represented those who protect and serve, who sought justice and the restoration of balance. By honoring Honeychile thusly, she was honoring as well the girl who had mysteriously allowed them to recover Winston’s body, to help solve his crime. It was the one positive thing that came out of her death.

When they arrived, the house was filled with Honeychile’s schoolmates (mostly girls) and their parents. It felt like a party, which was just what Harold and Rayanne wanted. Willow found himself scanning the rooms for Honeychile, which seemed normal, the lines between both worlds having so recently been blurred. The lights dimmed as the movie put together by her best friend, Zelda, began. The montage of Instagram photos and videos of Honeychile being, well, Honeychile were greeted by hoots, laughter, applause and tears. At the end came the tour de force: a tribute from none other than Gaten Matarazzo, the young actor from Stranger Things who was afflicted with the cleidocranial dysplasia that she shared. The young celebrity had read a story about Honeychile online and after her suicide got in touch with the Devonshires, asking if there was any way he could help. They invited him to the party but he was unable to come, sending a funny, moving tribute instead. “Oh my God,” Honeychile’s friends kept saying. “She would so die!” The tribute closed with a last group of photos of the absent hostess, accompanied by an eerily beautiful rendition of “Life on Mars?” sung by Honeychile herself, surreptitiously recorded on Zelda’s iPhone. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

They finally found their way to Mom and Dad, who remembered Lydia from the hospital waiting room—the Sheriff’s Office uniform helped—and were so touched that she’d come to pay her respects.

“Is your friend here?” asked Rayanne. Lydia looked at her blankly. “The young man who was with you when we met?”

Daniel’s death had been big news and while it was likely they knew of it from the paper or television—they’d probably seen his photo—they obviously hadn’t made the connection.

“He was unable,” said Lydia, not wishing to inform.

“Well, please say hello and tell him he was missed,” said Rayanne. Just as they were about to leave, she took Lydia’s arm and said, “Can I show you something?”

She walked them to the den—“Honey’s favorite place”—and Harold plucked something off a shelf, gently putting it in Lydia’s hands. It was a snow globe. On closer inspection, she and the detective saw three figures hugging. Their faces, meticulously traced from photographs, were clearly recognizable: Harold, Rayanne and Honeychile.

“She made this for you?” said Lydia.

“Yes,” said the mother, choking up.

Harold stepped in. “That was Honeychile—artistic and loving and so, so smart. That was our Honey.”

“Was and still is,” said Lydia.

Rayanne seemed to particularly appreciate the remark.

Outside, they passed a woman on the walkway. She stumbled a bit on the steps and the two rushed to support her. She looked at Lydia’s uniform and smiled. “Who says the police are never there when you need them?” She thanked them and said, “I’m going to need a walker soon but don’t tell anyone.” She was only half-joking; she wasn’t that old but had the gait of someone who’d prematurely aged. “It’s not already over, is it?”

“Not at all,” said Willow. “It’s in full swing.”

“Were you one of Honeychile’s teachers?” said Lydia.

“Not by definition,” she smiled. “I kind of think she might have been one of mine.” She thrust a hand out and said, “I’m Hildy, an old family friend. Hildy Collins—Winston’s mom.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Willow.

“And thank you,” she said, addressing the one in uniform. “Thank you for finding the man who did that to my son.” Her eyes watered over as her voice became resolute. “Thank you for all that you do.”

2.

Owen went in the direction Willow suggested. Not that he had a real choice; it was either go with the flow or not go with the flow, with the latter engendering months of controversy, ill will and bad press.

It was now a matter of permanent record: Deputy Daniel R. Doheny was a hero cop.

The sheriff had his red bow and ribbon—for the public anyway, and the department as well—if not exactly for himself. By stepping outside his Cold Case lane to assist a current homicide investigation, not only did Deputy Doheny find the killer of Winston Collins, but also helped unravel the mystery of the nearly two-decades-old disappearance of Troy and Maya Rummer. Willow’s instincts had been spot-on; it was a footprint on the birthday card, not a palm. And it belonged to Roy Eakins. That sort of thing has been known to happen because the ridges of the arch of the foot toward the heel are similar to those on the “knife edge” of the palm. Apparently the technician who did the assessment in July 2000 got it wrong and no one double-checked the results. Dubya really pulled that one out of the hat. He had to hand it to his spooky old buddy for cracking the code.

The bottom line was that the deaths of the Rummer kids, Winston Collins and Sarabeth Ahlström were stamped SOLVED—with five more children’s bodies in the process of being exhumed from that hell farm in Wolcott Mills. (Three had already been identified.) As far as Owen was concerned, Roy Eakins did not commit the grisly crucifixion murder of his own son, but Laverne Eakins wasn’t around to tell any tales. He had a few sleepless nights over that one, because if it wasn’t Roy who nailed Grundy to the floorboards, it could only have been Lydia or Willow, and he simply refused to go there. He locked up those suspicions and buried them in a hole deeper than any of those kids had been buried in. For political and personal reasons, the latter of which he was unable to explain, the punctilious sheriff did what he never had in his long, decorated career: he let it slide, even if there was no evidence it was true. Not a drop of his son’s blood was found on Roy’s hands or clothing as he lay dead in bed at his home in New Baltimore, the place Willow speculated he had gone right after killing Grundy. Yet the coroner ruled that Roy had died the night before, with Grundy’s death occurring the next morning, around the time of the sheriff’s arrival at the farm. But if he wanted that bow and ribbon, Owen had to name Grundy’s killer, and name him he did. Neither the public nor the politicians gave a shit about an iffy timeline, because two monsters had been wiped off the face of the Earth. So he hung it on the child-killer dad and felt no remorse. In his heart, he knew that Deputy Lydia Molloy killed Grundy in a rage over the torture of her lover. Owen had even spoken to her about it personally, with compassion, doing everything he could to get a confession, but she stuck to her story. There just wasn’t any payoff in making Lydia or the community suffer any further. Owen also knew that Willow was grateful to him for that, and grateful too that the sheriff elected not to further pursue the line of argument in private conversation.