The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(40)

“She’s going to do her best to get one in. They’re understaffed, at the moment.”

All the public services in this county are.

“The teddy bear? Was it the same?”

Simpkins carefully replaces the frame on the wall. “White, gold wings and halo.”

“And the note was pinned on the bear?”

“Handwritten or typed?” adds Eddison.

“Typed,” Simpkins answers. “We had a look at the computers, but the killer brought the note with them. The Jefferses don’t even have a printer.”

“So the killer knew in advance that Mason probably couldn’t be coached to say anything. She came prepared.”

“Why are you saying she?”

Eddison and I trade a look, and Mignone drifts closer to join the conversation. “The description the children gave,” Eddison says finally. “They all called her a lady.”

“But we don’t actually know that it is. Saying ‘she’ could blind us to avenues. I’m not implying the children lied or even that they were mistaken, but just because someone in a costume seems to present as female . . .”

“It doesn’t mean they are,” Mignone finishes. “Could be a tactic to throw suspicion the wrong way.”

“Precisely.”

It’s perfectly reasonable and actually better practice to not block off avenues of investigation, but my gut says we’re looking for a woman. A man might dress as a female, given the appropriate impulses, but the phrasing would be different. This killer says the children are going to be safe now; a man would say he was rescuing them, or making them safe. Men are more likely to announce actions, women states of being.

And judging from the way Simpkins is watching us, she’s already come to the same conclusion, she’s just putting us through the paces. Exhibit A as to why I always learn a hell of a lot from Simpkins, but I don’t actually like working with her.

“Holmes is at the hospital with the boy,” Mignone says. “She wasn’t in the room during the examination, but he had a panic attack when the doctor needed to check beneath his underwear. They actually had to sedate him.”

“Did they finish the examination?” Eddison asks with a frown.

But Mignone shakes his head. “He didn’t seem obviously injured, and they want to try to build a measure of trust with him. They did some scans to assess for internal damage, to make sure they could wait, but otherwise they want him to be awake and allowing them.”

Eddison’s shoulders relax.

“Do you mind if I go to Mason’s room?” I ask. “I won’t touch anything, I promise.”

For an answer, Simpkins offers us pairs of gloves.

Okay, so maybe I will touch things.

Eddison trails after me, along with Mignone.

Mason’s room belongs in a magazine. Being officially on the case, the detective can be our crime scene chaperone, as it were, able to swear, if a problem comes up later, that no evidence was planted, taken, or altered. The walls are painted in halves, the top a dusky blue, the bottom a deeper, royal blue, separated by a white-paper border covered with colorful figures in a number of different professions. I can see cowboys represented, astronauts and doctors, different branches of the military among others. His bed is plastic and low to the ground, shaped like a cartoon rocket, and except for the indentations where he lay and one corner folded back from when he got up, the blue sheets and comforter are perfectly made. Everything in the room is picture-perfect, designed for appearance rather than function.

Nothing in here actually says little boy.

Eddison opens the drawers of the dresser, his gloved hands easing between layers of perfectly folded and color-coordinated clothing. The closet is as pristine as the room, clear storage bins on the top shelf eliminating any chance of Mason using them to hide anything.

Children like the idea of secrets; they don’t actually like keeping them, usually. Children want to tell people things.

The action figures in the toy box look barely touched, but the stuffed animals show a troubling bit of personality: they all have pants stapled onto them. Some of the pants are heavy construction paper, some look like doll clothes, but they’re stapled into the fabric of the animals in a very worrying, very telling way. Eddison grimaces when I show him, but nods.

“That can’t really be all,” he says.

“Maybe not.” Heading back to the bed, I ease my hand behind the head of the bed and feel the glove slip over something with a different texture. “Mignone?”

The detective lifts his camera and snaps photos of the bed, before and after we pull it from the corner. A plastic sheet protector, like a report cover, is taped to the back, filled with sheets of extrathick cardstock.

Mignone slowly lowers his camera. “Are those paper dolls?”

“Yes.” I pull the pages out of the protector and spread them across the floor. They were probably torn out of a book at some point. A family of paper dolls, but the father and both children have pants attached front and back, not with the folded tabs but with more staples.

The doll for the mother is colored over with black marker, drawn so firmly the marker soaked through and tore the thick paper in places.

“Shit,” mutters Eddison, and Mignone nods even as he lifts the camera again to snap pictures.

“I’m not top of the game for child psych, but that’s a pretty distinctive sign of sexual abuse, right?” asks the detective.