Break and Enter (3 page)

“Done,” he said, and he hurried upstairs.

I finished drying the kid and carried him up to the kitchen. Mike met me at the head of the stairs with a T-shirt in hand, and we got the shirt on the boy and took him to the kitchen table.

“Are you hungry?” I asked the boy.

The kid didn’t say anything but nodded his head.

“Mike,” I said, “do we have any soup?”

“Yes, but why soup?”

“Because he’s very thin, almost as though he hasn’t had a square meal in a while,” I said, “and if that’s the case, too much food at once might come right back up.”

“Gotcha.” There was a pause while he rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets. “Tomato or chicken noodle?”

“The latter, I think. It’ll be easier for him to digest.”

“On its way.”

“When you get it started, look up Lucinda’s number at work and dial it for me.”

“Why?”

“Because she knows everyone around here, and she might be able to stop by and possibly identify him.”

“Sure. In fact, she ought to be getting off work just about now.”

A couple of minutes later, he handed me the telephone, saying, “It’s ringing.”

The hotel operator answered, and I asked for Lucinda. A couple of seconds later, I heard her familiar voice say, “Housekeeping.”

“Hi, Lucinda, George Martin here. Are you about to leave the hotel for the day?”

“I was just about to walk out the door. What can I do for you?”

“You can stop by the cabin on your way home. We need your help with something kind of important.”

“Are the boys all right?”

That was a mother speaking, Lucinda being the mother of Zeb and Zeke, so I said, “They were just fine when we left Jacksonville this morning. This is something totally unrelated.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Good. The gate is closed, but you have the code, right?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Mike placed a small bowl of soup and a glass of water on the table in front of the boy, and said, “Be careful, the soup is still kind of hot.”

The boy took the proffered spoon and retrieved some soup from the bowl. He blew carefully on the spoon and finally tasted it, and I sensed that he wanted desperately to dive into the soup, but its temperature held him back.

“Give it a minute or two to cool,” I said. “Mike, how about a slice of bread and butter to go with the soup?”

“Way ahead of you.” He placed a piece of buttered bread on the table.

“Why don’t you dip the bread in the soup?” I said.

The kid looked at me. Thor chose that moment to put his head in the boy’s lap, and I said, “This is Thor. He’s our dog, and he wants to be your friend. It’s okay to pat him on the head.”

A little hand reached out and gave Thor a tentative pat. Thor responded by licking the hand, which caused the kid to smile.

“Use the bread like this,” I said, and I took the bread, dipped a corner of it into the bowl and pointed it at his mouth.

He got it instantly and began to work his way through the bread.

“I think he needs more bread,” I said.

“Coming up.”

Lucinda arrived at the front door just as the kid finished the soup. I remained at the table, while Mike went to let her in, and I could hear him explaining to her what, or rather who, we’d found hiding in the shed. She walked up to the table, took one look at the boy, and said, “Robbie, where have you been? People have been looking for you for days.”

The boy started crying, so I picked him up to comfort him, and he buried his face in my chest.

“What’s going on, Lucinda?” I said.

“His name is Robbie Ward—his mother was found beaten to death in their house almost a week ago. His father is missing, and the authorities think he did it. Nobody has seen Robbie in more than a week.”

“Mike,” I said, “why don’t you call Bob and Martha Plott? They need to get involved with this, I think.” Bob Plott was a captain with the Waynesville Police Department, and his wife Martha was head of Social Services for the county. We’d met them not long after our first visit to Maggie Valley.

“What’s that he’s wearing?” Lucinda said.

“He was beyond filthy when we found him,” I said, “so we gave him a bath. His clothes are in the washer, so we put one of our T-shirts on him for now.”

“Oh,” she said. “There might be some clothes at his house, if the authorities will allow us to go inside—it’s got yellow tape across the front right now.”

“There’s more. He has some kind of infection or something around his penis. It looked so bad, I was afraid to try to wash him there. We need to get him to a doctor.”

“We can do better than that,” she said. “There’s an old country doctor just up the road. He’s semi-retired, but he makes house calls.”

“Give him a call, please. We’ll pay for his time and trouble.”

Mike hung up the telephone and said, “Bob and Martha will be here shortly.”

Lucinda went to the telephone and made a brief call. When she had finished, she said, “Doc Jenkins will be right here.”

“Let me carry this little guy to the guest bedroom,” I said.

Somehow during the time I was talking to Lucinda, Robbie had gotten a death grip around my neck, so I stood up and carried him down the hall. I turned the covers back and laid him gently on the bed.

“It’s okay, Robbie,” I said, taking his hand. “We’re going to take care of you. My name is George. Can you say that?”

“George,” he said.

“Good,” I said, “and this is Mike.”

“Mike,” Robbie parroted.

“You already know Mrs. Hawkins,” I said. “Do you know Zeb and Zeke?”

He nodded his head.

“Good. Zeb and Zeke are very good friends of ours. In fact, they are staying at our house in Florida right now.”

“Robbie,” Lucinda said, “do you remember Doc Jenkins?”

He nodded his head.

“Good, because he’s on his way here to take a look at you and make you better.”

I started to let go of Robbie’s hand and stand up, but he clutched my hand tightly and started to whimper. “No,” he said.

“You want me to stay?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“It’s okay, big guy,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ll go open the gate,” Mike said.

“Okay.”

He left the room and, after what seemed an eternity, returned, leading an older man. “This way, Doc,” Mike said.

“Hello, Lucinda,” the man said.

I introduced myself and said, “We found this little guy hiding in the generator shed in back of the cabin when we got here today. He was dirty, so we gave him a bath, but I didn’t like the look of things in his groin, so I was afraid to wash him there.”

“Gotcha,” the doc said. “If you folks will excuse me, I’ll take a look at the patient.”

I started to get up, but Robbie clung desperately to my hand and whimpered, so I stayed put.

“I don’t think he wants you to leave, George,” the doctor said. “Hello, Robbie. Remember me?”

Robbie nodded.

“I’m going to take a look and see what’s up with you, okay?”

Robbie nodded again.

Lucinda and Mike were standing in the doorway, just out of Robbie’s line of sight, when the doc pulled the covers back and the T-shirt up. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Damn stupid hillbillies. Not you, Lucinda—as I recall, you knew better. They don’t always want their boy babies circumcised, because they think it’s Jewish, but sometimes they’re too stupid to teach them how to clean themselves properly.”

He was poking around Robbie’s penis as he talked, causing an occasional whimper. “Sorry, Robbie,” the doc said. “This will hurt for a bit, but you’ll feel better soon. Can somebody hand me my bag?”

Mike retrieved the bag, which was on the floor near the door, and handed it to the doc.

“Do you folks happen to have some medical alcohol and cotton balls?” Doc Jenkins said.

“You bet,” Mike said. “Give me a minute.”

Mike went to retrieve the needed items, brought them back, and said, “Here you go.” He handed them to the doc.

“Thanks,” Doc Jenkins said. “Robbie, this is going to sting a bit, but it won’t last long, okay?”

Robbie whimpered again and nodded.

Doc Jenkins worked swiftly, and when he had finished to his satisfaction, he said, “Now, Robbie, I’m going to give you a little shot. It’ll sting at first, but soon you’ll take a nice little nap.”

With that, he produced a syringe and a bottle and, rolling Robbie to one side, gave him a quick jab in the left buttocks. He took another syringe and bottle and repeated the process on the other side. In seconds, Robbie’s eyes closed, and you could see that he was out like a light.

“I gave him an antibiotic too,” the doc said.

“Doc Jenkins,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Now that he’s out cold and you can do it without causing him discomfort,” I said, “I think you ought to give him a quick rectal exam, to make certain that he hasn’t been molested.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I’m a policeman, and I’m paid to think about things like that,” I said.

“Point taken,” he said. He retrieved a small flashlight from his bag and asked me to turn Robbie over, then he spread the boy’s cheeks and pointed the flashlight at his anus. After a couple of minutes, he turned the light off and signaled that I could turn Robbie back over. “I don’t see any evidence of molestation,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said, “because according to Lucinda, he’s been through enough already.”

“Meaning what?” Doc Jenkins said.

“Let’s go out to the kitchen where we can talk.”

“Sure, let’s just get this little guy under the sheets first.” He pulled the T-shirt down and covered Robbie with a sheet.

We sat down at the table, and Doc Jenkins repeated his question.

“I thought you’d have heard,” Lucinda said. “Robbie’s mother was found murdered in their house, and the police are looking for her husband. They say she was literally beaten to death.”

“When was this?” Doc Jenkins said.

“Almost a week ago,” Lucinda said.

“That would explain it,” he said. “I was out of town for a few days last week, and I don’t keep up with the news very much. It takes a while for the local gossip to catch up with me now that I’m mostly retired.”

There was a knock at the door, and Mike went to answer it, eventually returning with Bob and Martha in tow.

“What’s going on, George?” Bob said. “And what’s Doc Jenkins doing here?”

“Mike and I got in a little after two this afternoon. Thor was acting funny down in his run, so we put him on a leash and took him around back. He led us to the generator shed, and we found a little boy in it. He was curled up in one corner of the shed on a pile of rags. He was filthy but didn’t appear to be hurt, so we brought him inside and cleaned him up.”

“If he wasn’t hurt, why is the doc here?” Bob said.

“Because he has a seriously infected foreskin,” Doc Jenkins said. “His idiot father never taught him how to take care of himself. His foreskin also appears to be abnormally tight, and that will cause problems for him when he’s older. My best guess is that he’s going to have to go to the hospital in a couple of days and be circumcised to take care of it.”

“Who is he?” Martha said.

“Robbie Ward,” Lucinda said. “His mother was found dead in their home several days ago, and the police are looking for his father. As far as I know, nobody around here has seen Robbie since before his mother’s body was found.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he saw it happen,” I said, “and ran away. We need to go out and check the shed—I’ll bet he’s been living in it for a while. How far away was his home?”

“Just up the road past Uncle Cyrus’s house,” Lucinda said, “but on the same side of the road as your place. He could easily have come down along the creek to your cabin.”

“Does he have any relatives?” I said.

“He has a grandmother still living,” Lucinda said, “but she’s old and sick. She had Robbie’s mother very late in life, so she’s probably in her late sixties by now. As far as I know, there aren’t any other kin. Why do you ask?”

“Because we’d like to keep him,” I said. I glanced at Mike, caught his silent assent, and continued. “He needs somebody, and he’s certainly taken a liking to me. Are we agreed on this, Mike?” It was a rhetorical question, given that Mike and I had been best friends since age eight and knew each other totally and completely after twenty-some years.

“You beat me to saying the same thing by two seconds,” Mike said.

“Keep him, how?” Martha said.

“As foster parents, as adoptive parents, whatever we can do,” I said. “I don’t know what kind of rules there are in this state about gays adopting, but I’ll surely find out.”

“Actually, single men and women who are gay have no problem adopting in this state,” Martha said. “It’s a little more tricky with couples, but not impossible. Let me do some checking.”

“Will he have to go into child services in the meantime?” Mike said.

“Normally, yes,” Martha said, “but we don’t have any beds available right now, so there’s no reason why he can’t stay right here for the time being.”

“Needless to say,” I said, “we’ll take care of any expenses, if he has to have surgery.”

“Bless you,” she said. “We have enough budget problems as it is.”

“Let me get the camera, Bob,” Mike said, “and I’ll show you where we found him, and we can take some pictures. I know we’re in the county and outside of your jurisdiction, but you can pass things along to your counterparts.”

Martha was looking at the remains of Robbie’s food. “Did the boy eat?” she said.

“We gave him some soup and some bread and butter,” I said. “He looked so undernourished, I was afraid to let him eat too much right away.”

“That was the smartest thing you could have done,” Doc Jenkins said. “If he had wolfed down a huge meal, it would have come right back up in no time.”

“How old is Robbie, Lucinda?” I said.

“He’s five, I think,” she said. “Maybe closer to six.”

“That’s about right,” Doc Jenkins said. “He was one of the last babies I delivered before I started to slow down, and that was close to six years ago.”

“We’ll need to make a run to Walmart and get him some clothes,” I said. “He can’t run around in one of our old T-shirts all the time.”