Miracle Creek(85)

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SITTING IN COURT, Elizabeth looked at the chart on the easel, the ugly word ABUSE.

Child abuse. Was that what she’d done? After that first pinch in her neighbor’s basement, she promised herself she’d never do it again—she was a proponent of positive parenting, didn’t even believe in threatening or scolding—but the frustration would build over time. Weeks and months of patience, of ignoring negative behaviors and praising positive ones, then, like a riptide, fury would rush in, knocking her down and making her desperate for the sweet release that came with grabbing Henry’s soft flesh and squeezing or yelling. But she never hit, never slapped, and certainly nothing to cause injuries requiring medical attention. And wasn’t that—things that ended with blood and broken bones—child abuse, not the invisible things she did to cause a moment’s pain, just enough to jolt Henry out of whatever behavior she needed him to stop? Was that any different from spanking?

She looked at the chart, all the NOs confirming the absence of wrongdoing, and felt anguish for Henry, the knowledge that she and those listed on the chart—the people whose job it was to protect him—had failed him. And when Shannon said, “Abe’s doing a redirect on Heights, but don’t worry. No one believes this abuse claim of hers,” Elizabeth felt a pinch of pity for her, too, for having been so thoroughly duped.

Abe went straight to the chart. He pointed to the phrase NO ABUSE = NO MOTIVE and said, “Detective, when you wrote this phrase, did you mean that if the defendant didn’t abuse Henry, she’d have no motive to kill him?”

Heights said, “No, of course not. There are many cases of parents harming and even killing their children without prior abuse.”

“So what did you mean?”

Heights looked to the jury. “You have to understand the context. I’d barely begun the abuse investigation before the child and a witness were murdered. I was asking for more staff for my abuse investigation, and I was perhaps…” She took a deep breath, as if working up the courage to confess something embarrassing. “I wrote this as sort of a shorthand to make my point that at that time, which was still early in the investigation, the only motive we had was the abuse claim, so we should put more resources into that.”

Abe smiled like an understanding teacher. “So you wrote that to convince your superiors to give you more power and resources. Did others agree?”

“No. In fact, Detective Pierson erased it and said I had tunnel vision, that the abuse claim was a proof of motive, but certainly not the only one. And certainly, since then, we’ve uncovered a lot more proof of motive. The defendant’s Internet searches, notes, fights with Kitt, so on. So it is most definitely not true that no abuse equals no motive.”

Abe took a red marker and put a thick line through NO ABUSE = NO MOTIVE on the chart. He stepped back. “Let’s explore the rest of this very organized chart from Ms. Haug. She asserts there’s no abuse here because other people weren’t aware of it. Detective, as a trained psychologist and detective specializing in child abuse cases, is that right?”

“No,” she said. “Abusers often effectively conceal their actions and convince the child to go along with that.”

“Did you find such evidence of concealment here?”

“Yes. The defendant never told Henry’s pediatrician or even his father about giving him IV chelation and MMS, let alone that children have died from them. It was classic deliberate concealment, a hallmark of abuse.”

Elizabeth wanted to shout out that she wasn’t hiding anything, simply saving herself an exhausting argument with an old-fashioned doctor. And Victor hadn’t wanted any details; he’d said he trusted her, that he didn’t have time for appointments and research articles. But something about the phrase “deliberate concealment” stopped her. It had a sinister quality, the kind of guilt-wrapped feel that infused her when she told Henry before pediatrician visits, “Let’s not tell him about the other doctors, because we don’t want him getting jealous, do we?”

Abe stepped closer to Heights. “You mentioned this before, deliberate concealment. Why is that so important to you, as a psychologist and an investigator?”

“Because it goes to the intent of the action. A parent tells a child, if you do X, you’ll get a spanking. The child does X, the parent spanks. It’s controlled and predictable. The spouse knows about it, the child can tell their friends. Many parents do that.

“Same with medical treatments. Your child is ill, you want to try a treatment, you talk to doctors, your spouse, decide together. Fine. But you deliberately hide your actions—whether it be treatments or physical punishment—that tells me you know what you’re doing is wrong.”

She felt something go off inside her, like a bulb that burns too brightly and flames out, blinding and deafening her. She’d wondered what made her yelling and pinching different—and they were different, she knew it—from the yelling, spankings, and smacks on the head that other parents discussed, sometimes even did, in public. Was this it? That she didn’t want to do it, had promised herself she wouldn’t, and yet couldn’t help but do it? It was the difference between a regular person having a martini before dinner and an alcoholic doing the same; the physical act was the same, but the context—the intent behind it and the aftermath—couldn’t be more different. The loss of control, the unpredictability. And afterward, the cover-up.