Miracle Creek(62)

Abe said, “What happened at this point?”

“The friend declined to give her own name, but she did provide Henry’s last name and address. That was on Thursday, August 21. The following Monday, we interviewed Henry at camp. The Code of Virginia allows us to interview a child without parental notification or consent, outside their presence. We chose to do that here, to minimize parental coaching.”

“Did the defendant ever find out about the child abuse investigation?”

“Yes, on the evening of Monday, August 25, the day before the explosion. I went to their residence and informed her of the allegations.” Teresa thought of the police knocking on her door, barging in with abuse charges. No wonder Elizabeth had been so distant the day of the explosion. What would that feel like, to be told that someone—someone you know, maybe even a friend—had accused you of child abuse?

Abe said, “Did the defendant deny the allegations?”

“No. She only said she wanted to know who filed the complaint, and I informed her it was anonymous. I didn’t know myself. But the next morning, I got a call from the friend, the one picking up from camp.”

“Really? What did she say?”

“She was upset because she’d just had a big fight with the defendant.”

Abe stepped closer. “This is the morning of the explosion?”

“Yes. She said Elizabeth accused her of filing the CPS complaint and was furious with her. She asked me to please tell Elizabeth who did file it, so she’d know it wasn’t her.”

“How did you respond?”

“I told her I couldn’t, it was anonymous,” Heights said. “She became more upset and said she was sure it was the protesters. She said again how angry Elizabeth was, and she should never have talked to me. She said, quote, ‘She’s so mad, she’s ready to kill me.’”

“Detective Heights,” Abe said, “have you since then discovered the identity of this friend, the one who called on the morning of the explosion and said the defendant was, quote, ‘so mad, she’s ready to kill me’?”

“Yes. I recognized her from the morgue pictures.”

“Who was it?”

Detective Heights looked at Elizabeth and said, “Kitt Kozlowski.”





ELIZABETH





KITT AND ELIZABETH WERE more like sisters than friends. Not in the we’re-closer-than-friends-could-ever-be! way, but in the I-wouldn’t-have-chosen-you-as-a-friend-but-we’re-stuck-together-so-let’s-try-to-get-along way. They met because their sons were diagnosed with autism on the same day at the same place, six years ago at Georgetown Hospital. Elizabeth had been waiting for Henry’s evaluation results when a woman said, “This is like waiting for the guillotine, isn’t it?” Elizabeth didn’t answer, but the woman went on, saying, “I don’t understand how men can focus on work at a time like this,” looking at Victor and another man—her husband, presumably—both working on laptops. Elizabeth gave the tersest smile she could and grabbed a magazine. The woman, though, kept blathering on about her son—almost four, his birthday was coming up, she was making a Barney cake, he adored Barney, was positively obsessed—and how he didn’t talk (could it be because he couldn’t get an effing word in edgewise?) but it was probably because he was the youngest, she had four other kids, all girls who talked nonstop (apparently a genetic trait), you know how girls can be, et cetera, et cetera. The woman—Kitt, like Kit-Kat, with two t’s, she introduced herself mid-monologue—was not making conversation so much as spitting out words in one long strand, oblivious to Elizabeth’s nonresponse. She didn’t stop until the nurse called for Henry Ward’s parents.

The doctor said, “Let’s see … Ah, yes, Henry. I know you’re anxious, so let’s cut to the chase. Henry was found to be autistic.” He said this casually, between sips of coffee, as if it were a normal thing, an everyday thing, to announce to parents that their child was autistic. Of course, for him, a neurologist at an autism clinic, it was an everyday thing, probably an every-hour thing. But for her, the parent, this was a moment—the moment—that would divide her world into Before and After, the life-defining scene she’d replay over and over, so was the oh-so-nonchalant drinking of the venti Frappuccino really effing necessary? And his choice of words: “Henry was found to be,” as if he didn’t do the finding himself but discovered Henry lying somewhere, stamped AUTISTIC by some mysterious force of nature; and autistic—was that even a word? It offended her, him turning a disorder into an adjective, the net effect of which was to declare autism to be Henry’s defining characteristic, the sum total of his identity.

These semantic issues—why people were “diabetic” but not “canceristic,” for instance, and the difference between “moderately severe” (Henry’s autism-spectrum placement) and “severely moderate”—were occupying her when she passed Kitt. Elizabeth wasn’t crying, hadn’t cried at all, in fact, but her face must have screamed out her devastation, because Kitt stopped and hugged her, a tight, never-ending hug reserved for the most intimate of friends. She had no idea why this inappropriate hug from this inappropriate stranger should feel anything other than awkward, but it felt comforting, like family, and she hugged her back and cried.