Under Her Care(35)

“That’s not the point.”

“Did you feel threatened in any way?”

“Yes!” I snapped. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. What part of that don’t you understand?”

“You felt threatened by a business card?” He didn’t hide his annoyance or his frustration. It didn’t help that I’d been calling nonstop since I’d found it. “I know you’re upset, but most of these guys have lots of side hustles. They’ve got wives. Families. Kids to feed. So they’re painting, but guess what? They’re probably doing lawn service, too, and even though it’s not exactly cool, they’re taking the opportunity to network and see if they can gain any new customers while they’re out here. Can you blame them for the hustle?”

“I blame you for letting them in.” I hung up on him.

Then I put Mason in the car and drove to the police station.

That Monster knows where I live. He knows my routine. He probably followed me here.

Oh my God, what if he followed me here?

I turn my head, straining to see as much as I can in each side mirror. I twist my body around, not trusting the rearview mirror to give me the complete view behind me. The parking lot is still pretty full. A few men in plain clothes tumble out of a car, and my heart speeds up all over again as one of them walks in my direction. What if it’s him? Or one of his people?

I press the door-lock button incessantly like I’ve been doing ever since we parked. The sound of the click reassures me even though we’re in a police station parking lot and there are officers everywhere. It could be one of them for all I know. There are plenty of crooked cops in this town.

I clutch both cards in my hand and peek at Mason in the back seat. He refuses to sit in the front. Getting him in the car used to be such a huge issue. He hated it and fought so hard, but eventually John and I got him to do it. When it came time to move him forward, he didn’t want to, and I refused to go through all that hassle again, so now I drive like I’m chauffeuring a grown man around.

He’s engrossed in Candy Crush. He’s got a ridiculously high score. Better than mine. Guilt pummels me. What will happen to him if I tell the truth? I’m all he has in this world. I can’t do that to him. Detective Layne won’t understand what happened. Nobody will.

There has to be another way.





SIXTEEN


CASEY WALKER



Nothing about Genevieve’s history fits with Savannah’s descriptions of her, but too many parts of her story line up for it to be false. Like the fact that there aren’t any pictures at Genevieve’s house of her doing the things she excelled at and enjoyed, but there are plenty of her beauty pageant photos. And I never noticed it before, but Genevieve rarely brings up Savannah in conversations about her family. She’s the same way with John. She talks about her family almost like it’s just her and Mason without anyone else attached to them.

I pull up Mason’s testing reports again. I’ve been through them so many times, but we’re missing something. We have to be. My gut’s screaming at me that Mason didn’t do this, and my gut is almost never wrong. People always ask how I’m able to connect with kids the way that I do, as if there’s a technique or a formula to follow, but there isn’t. At least not for me. Going to school gave me tools and all the latest research, but I just feel kids. It comes from my insides, and they’re telling me Mason’s innocent. My talk with Savannah has only strengthened the feeling.

I slowly scroll through the pages just to feel like I’m doing something, and as I go, a pattern slowly emerges from Mason’s IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. I was too busy searching for other things to notice it before. He’s had five IQ tests over a period of seven years, and his IQ scores are almost identical. Three of them are exactly the same—38. The others only one point off. I’ve never seen that much consistency among tests. I scroll to the end of the document, where all the testing protocols are attached. I only glanced at them before since all the scoring was finished.

This time, I make my way through each testing response booklet. I’ve given so many WISCs throughout my career I can practically do them in my sleep. At one point during graduate school, I think I did, so it doesn’t take long to notice a pattern. Mason gets all the same answers wrong and all the same answers right on each test. That’s really tough to do, but theoretically, not impossible. However, when I dig deeper, I discover that it’s not just that he gets the same answers wrong but that each wrong answer is identical. Alarm bells go off inside me.

Nobody consistently gives the same wrong answer to math problems. If someone doesn’t know how to add or subtract, they guess. Guessing is random. You can’t end up with the same answer. Not that many times. It’s the same situation on the working memory test, where he’s given a list of items and asked to repeat them back. This is usually one of the easiest tests for kids with ASD. Typically, their highest scores, but that’s not the case with Mason. He never gets past the third section. Not only that, he remembers things wrongly in the same pattern every time too. How’s that possible?

My heart speeds up as I print out the pages from his block-design answer sheets and lay them all out next to each other on the dining room table. Block design is the most basic cognitive test, and a low score drags down your overall IQ, so if kids do poorly on this one, it has an impact on their total score. And that’s exactly what Mason does. He fails out of block design over and over again. He fails the same way each time, making the exact same wrong design on each test. That’s not the most concerning part, though.