Czytaj książkę: «His First Choice»

CHAPTER ONE

“MS. HAMILTON? THIS is Mara Noble calling from Busy Little Minds preschool...”

“Yes, Mara.” As a social worker employed by California Social Services in the child welfare department, Lacey Hamilton had familiarized herself with the reputations and locations of all of the child care facilities and schools in her district of Santa Raquel. Busy Little Minds was one of the best rated for both intellectual and emotional development. “What can I do for you?” While there was kindness in her words, there was no smile attached. If Busy Little Minds was calling her, chances were a serious issue was at hand.

With her phone on speaker behind the closed door of her private office, she opened a new document on her word-processing program.

“I have a little boy,” Mara said. “He’s four, and I suspect abuse...”

The woman knew her stuff. Issuing silent points to Little Minds for employee training, Lacey asked, “Is he there with you now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is he in need of medical attention?”

“No. He’s already had medical attention. His father took him to the emergency room at the Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital over the weekend.”

Call the hospital. And Ella. Ella Ackerman was the hospital’s representative to the High Risk Team, a group comprised of professionals from various fields that fought to prevent domestic violence deaths. Lacey was the team’s child protective services member.

“So right now he’s not in any immediate danger.” She went back to the checklist she knew by heart. Determine the immediate safety and medical condition of the child first.

“Not at the moment.”

Could the child be in imminent danger?

“Do you suspect the abuse took place in or outside the home?”

“It’s not here,” Mara said, her voice solemn and low, as though making sure she wasn’t overheard. “And as far as I can tell, he doesn’t have babysitters and is not in any other activities outside of ours.”

Parents? Lacey typed onto the blank page. Many of her colleagues still took notes by hand. She always took them electronically, even if she had only her smartphone with her at the time. As if engaging with technology gave her a tiny bit of the distance she had to maintain to be emotionally capable of doing her job.

“What about siblings?” she asked. “Are you aware of anyone in the home other than his parents?”

She had to assess the situation to determine which course of action to take: an immediate trip to Little Minds to secure the child within her care while she investigated, or the more preferred, less harsh approach of a call to his parents.

“No. He’s an only child. And...his parents are divorced.”

She wrote that word with a capital D. Sadly it showed up in more than 50 percent of her reports.

“Who has custody?”

“Our records indicate that they have shared parenting. Dad is the one who always drops him off and picks him up.”

She typed Father controlling? and then a few notes to herself, to be used later when she made an official report.

Now for the hardest part.

“Why do you suspect abuse?” Thousands of kids went to emergency rooms every day, because kids were naturally inquisitive, adventurous, without the wherewithal to calculate danger, making them prone to accidents.

“This morning he showed up with a cast on his arm. He says he fell, but he mumbles and looks down when he says it. We asked him what he was doing when he fell. He shrugged. No matter what we ask, he shrugs.”

“What did his father have to say when he dropped him off?”

“That he fell down.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s it. Mr. Bridges isn’t the chatty sort.”

More typing, ending with Father evasive?

Still, kids and broken arms went hand in hand. This one could have fallen off a bike, or from a tree. Not that many four-year-olds were climbing trees or riding bikes. But some did. And some fell from bunk beds, too.

“Anything else?” she asked, wanting to know why the woman thought this broken arm was different from the norm. A kid not talking about the incident wasn’t all that unusual. He very likely could have been into some kind of mischief and knew he was in trouble. If he’d climbed on a cupboard to sneak a cookie, for instance, or...

“Yes, Ms. Hamilton, I’m sorry. This is very difficult for me. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to make a call like this and...”

“I understand,” Lacey filled in, softening her tone, when the woman paused. Abused children were her business. Sometimes she lost sight of the world outside of her small circle, where coming face-to-face with the monstrous fact that heinous people abused children was an anomaly.

“We’ve had Levi since he was three months old. He started out in day care and then moved to preschool when he was two, which is a year earlier than we usually move them. He’s a precocious little guy. What I’m trying to say is that we know him. And in the past six months, he’s changed. A lot.”

She needed to know if there were other signs of physical abuse. But listened patiently. She didn’t want to lead her caller into saying something she might not have mentioned, giving it more weight than it deserved.

Lacey had been at this awhile. Going on ten years. She knew her business. And had given up hoping it would ever get any easier.

“He’s withdrawn, to the point of not playing well with others. He cries easily, rarely smiles. I can’t remember the last time I heard him laugh. He seems fearful. And...a couple of other times, he’s had bruises. Once on his torso. It had fingertip marks on it.”

She was pounding the keys hard, her lips pressed together. It could be nothing. Kids went through phases...

“Do you know if there’s been any changes at home? You said his parents are divorced. Do you know for how long?”

She’d ask the question again—and more—of the mother and father. Separately. She already knew, just from the little she’d heard, that she was going to have to interview them.

“Levi was one when his folks split. I remember because we had his first birthday party here with both parents present, at the request of his mother.”

“So you have met her?”

“Of course. I know her. She’s just never been the one to drop him off or pick him up on a regular basis. And I haven’t seen or heard from her in at least six months. I could check our sign-in records to tell you the last time she dropped off or picked up.”

“I would appreciate that.” Lacey typed as she talked. Was Mom isolated from the boy? Had she been threatened? Was she afraid to get help?

She’d seen it enough to expect such an outcome, but had certainly had many, many calls that, upon investigation, had turned out to be false reports.

“Where do Mr. and Mrs. Bridges work?” She needed as much information as she could gather, as quickly as she could gather it.

“He owns a contracting company. It’s a small one, but they build houses. Last I knew she was working at an investment firm, but I don’t think she’s doing that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“A while back Levi made a comment about his mother being the boss of a money place. I meant to ask Mr. Bridges about it, but I’m not always out front when parents pick up. I guess I just forgot.”

“Don’t you need work numbers of all of your parents?”

“Yes, but Mr. and Mrs. Bridges...they both asked that we always call him. They said because she dealt with money and couldn’t always take calls, but being the boss, he could get away for a few if he had to. We have a cell number for her in case of emergency when we can’t reach him.”

Control. Control. Control. She typed on.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to know?” she asked, her fingers pausing over the keyboard.

“It’s just... I notice a pattern. Levi isn’t an accident-prone kind of kid. He used to be boisterous, like a miniature version of one of those guys who’s confident and goes through life getting it right, you know? He almost had a swagger about him. He’d try anything, usually master it, assuming it was age appropriate, but with a certain kind of...grace. He focuses more than most kids his age. But every couple of weeks or so now, he shows up with skinned knees, or a scab on his chin. All explained by play. But...why doesn’t he ever fall down here? And why is it only every couple of weeks?”

Lacey’s fingers pounded. If she’d been playing the piano she’d grown up mastering, she’d have been bellowing out a crescendo.

“Do you know his shared parenting schedule?” she asked, careful to keep her tone neutral. With a lifetime of hiding hurt feelings, it was a part of the job that came naturally to her.

“No.”

Did Dad pick the boy up and take him to his mother? And then pick him up from her, as well? Had he threatened to take her to court for full custody if she balked at his rules?

She wondered. Maybe even suspected. But she didn’t know.

Which meant there was room for another explanation. A better scenario.

“There’s another thing,” the woman said. “His schoolwork is faltering. He did better last year, as the baby of the class, than he’s doing this year...” She talked about numbers and letters, pre-reading and easy reading. Following directions. Shapes and colors that had been mastered the year before seemed to be giving Levi some difficulty now.

“I guess maybe I’m overreacting,” Mara Noble said next. “But in all my years working in child care, I’ve never had the feeling I get about Levi. There’s something odd about that broken arm of his. He can’t tell me any details. He’s a smart kid, Ms. Hamilton. He’d know what he was doing when he broke his arm.”

“Sometimes trauma can wipe out immediate memory,” she said slowly. She typed Smart little boy, suspicious break.

“So you think I’m overreacting?”

“I think you did exactly as you are supposed to do. You suspect, you report. It’s the law.” There could be no doubt about that. Second-guessing could cost a child’s life. “You don’t have to be right, Mara,” she said, softening her tone more. “You just need to have reasonable suspicion, which you do. You did the right thing here. Thank you.”

“So...what happens next? Is Mr. Bridges going to know that I called? Because if he is...”

“Does he frighten you?”

“He never has before.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m just... I love this kid, you know? We aren’t supposed to have favorites, and I care for all my kids. I don’t play favorites. But this little guy stole my heart the first day he was here.”

Lacey couldn’t afford to love her kids that way. Couldn’t let emotion cloud her judgment. Though to do her job she did have to care. Be aware. And sensitive...

“In answer to your question—no, Mr. Bridges will not know, at least not immediately, where the report came from. It could just as easily have come from the hospital.”

Which was the first call she was going to make, to find out why a report hadn’t been made and if there’d been any other trips to the ER for little Levi.

“So when he comes to pick up his son, I’m just to give him to him like usual?”

“Yes. If anything different needs to happen, you won’t be the one to police it. You just do your job and leave the rest up to me.”

“Will I hear from you again? I mean, if this turns out to be nothing, will you let me know?”

“Absolutely.” And the fact that the woman was asking told Lacey that Mara was on the up-and-up. Someone making a false report generally didn’t give consideration to the fact that it might be found to be false. Or want to be told if it was.

But she had to ask, “Other than seeing them through day-care-related activities, have you ever associated with either Mr. or Mrs. Bridges?”

“No, ma’am.” Straightforward sincerity—Lacey liked that.

“And will you have a problem handing Levi over to his father?”

“Not if you tell me it’s okay to do so.”

The buck stopped with her. She hadn’t understood, when she’d signed on to this career, that one wrong decision on her part could get a child killed. And still, there wasn’t any other job, any other life, she’d rather have.

“It’s okay,” she said now. But only because she knew she had enough time to intervene, to get to the day care and put other plans in motion, if upon further investigation she decided differently. The day was young yet.

And obviously, since he’d dropped his son off on schedule as usual, Bridges wasn’t currently posing a flight risk. She wanted time to do some searching before he was onto her. “Just one more thing,” she added. “For now, just until I tell you differently, please don’t say anything to anyone, other than possibly a coworker where appropriate, about your conversation with me.”

“Of course not. I don’t want anyone to know it was me.”

Lacey understood. And hung up filled with mother-bear determination, doing her best to ignore the heavy sadness lurking within her.

Chasing down abusive parents, stopping them, was her life.

And she was good at it.