The Perfect Child(10)

“I’m so glad Janie’s surgery went well,” I said to Christopher later that evening as we turned down our comforter and climbed into bed. “Now maybe you’ll be able to relax a little.”

He’d been so tense all week. He’d spent all of his free time studying her case. He’d fallen asleep with his notes on his nightstand, the last thing he’d looked at before bed.

“I don’t know, but it’s weird. I’m actually more committed to her than I was before.” He pulled me close, and I snuggled against his chest. I loved when we got to go to sleep with each other at night. It was the best part of the weekend. “Like I’m kind of bummed that I don’t get to do more for her.”

I’d felt the same way with my first child abuse case. You never forgot your first. Mine was a ten-year-old boy brought in by his mother with a bloodied and broken nose. His mother had kept trying to convince us that he’d fallen, but something about his demeanor had sparked everyone’s suspicions. We’d kept him in the hospital until the social worker could talk to him, and he’d finally confessed that his stepfather had punched him in the face after the boy had accidently spilled his beer. For weeks, I’d thought of excuses to call him so I could check on him until my supervisor made me stop. I didn’t have any choice but to let it go. It would probably take Christopher even longer to let go of Janie.

“It’s not like she’ll be going anywhere anytime soon, and you’ll still have to follow up with her postoperative care,” I said, rubbing his arm.

“I just wish there were more for me to do, but so much of her care is centered on her eating issues. There’s nothing I can do there.” He shook his head in frustration. “Nothing.”

“How’s the oven timer working?” I asked.

One of her nurses had brought in an old-fashioned oven timer so Janie would have an idea when she could eat again. The idea was to use the clock as a cue for her in hopes that it would calm her.

“She watches it constantly, but I’m not sure it helps much. They put her meal times on the whiteboard too,” he said. He was quiet. For a minute I thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he said, “I think I’m going to stop at Target tomorrow before work and pick up some markers so people can sign her cast and she can color on it if she wants to.”

“Oh, that’s so cute.” I scooted up and gave him a big kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck. “You’re going to be a great dad. The best. I just know it. Things have been busy lately, but now that they’re settling down a little, we can start looking at profiles again.”





CASE #5243

INTERVIEW: PIPER GOLDSTEIN

“We hadn’t considered Janie a reliable source of information when we thought she was three, but all that changed when we learned she was six. She broke open the case.” My supervisor had finally called me back. She’d spoken with our lawyers and told me I should help the officers in any way I could, that I didn’t have to hold back. Despite the lawyer’s permission, I still wanted to be careful about what I said. “We started asking her real questions, probing into what happened before she got to the hospital. We pushed her further than we’d pushed her before.”

“How did she respond?” Ron asked.

It was just the two of us in the room now. Luke had gone to get us coffee. We’d been sitting in the room for over an hour, and we all needed a pick-me-up. I should have told him to grab me something from the vending machines too. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“During the times we met before, I only asked her yes-or-no questions, so I brought my iPad with me because I thought I’d need to use the TAP program with her. It’s a program that helps me communicate with nonverbal autistic children. Even though she was six, we figured her language was probably way behind. But I didn’t need it. She was able to answer all my questions. Once she opened up and started talking, I couldn’t believe how well she spoke, since she’d probably never been to school.”

“She provided you information about her mother?” His interest was piqued again.

I shook my head. “Sorry.” I hadn’t meant to mislead him. I needed to be more intentional with my words. “She still refused to talk about her mother, or any person for that matter, but she opened up about where she lived.”

“She described the trailer?”

“Almost perfectly, even down to the black garbage bags on the windows.”

Investigators had always suspected Janie was from the trailer park, and they’d gone door to door with her picture, but nobody had reported seeing her. It had been Janie’s description of two dogs tied up in the front lawn next to a dilapidated bird feeder that had led them to the correct place—the last trailer on the left side of a dead-end street. Officers had expected to find tubing running through glass jars and odd-size bowls, since meth was what the trailer park was most known for, but they had found a ransacked trailer reeking of urine and spoiled food instead. It was clear from the holes in the walls and dried blood on the floor that there’d been a struggle. Maybe more than one. But it was the closet in the back bedroom that had shocked everyone the most.

Ron splayed out the pictures of the closet on the table like he was laying down his hand at a poker game. He pointed to the picture with the zip ties and dog collar. I hated that one even more than the blood-marked walls. I was glad he had the pictures, though. It was something you couldn’t describe in words unless you’d seen it, and I’d thought I’d seen it all.