Strip Search (7 page)

“She, um, didn’t take you with her?”

“No. Not this time.”

“Did she say why?”

“She said they would not let her.”

“Did she say who
they
was?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“No.”

Well, that was a relief. “Why didn’t you?”

“B-B-Because I already knew.” He twisted back onto both elbows and resumed the adventures of Heathcliff and Catherine.

Oh. Well, of course he did, damn it. The kid was scary sometimes, the way he knew everything. Except the common sense and social skills normally acquired by a five-year-old. Looked like O’Bannon was in for a chilly evening. Unless maybe…

“Darcy, you wanna play a game? Maybe chess? It’s your favorite.”

“But you hate it,” he said, mumbling into his hand. “It is not fun to play with someone who is not enjoying the game.”

“Okay, what about Scrabble? We both enjoy Scrabble.”

“I always beat you at Scrabble.”

Yes, that would be because you know every word in the whole damn dictionary and can anagram letters like a code-breaking computer. “I still enjoy playing.”

“I would rather not, if you do not mind.”

“Well…what would you like to do?”

Again he turned, if only for an instant. “I would have liked to have gone with Susan.”

O’Bannon sighed heavily and closed his eyes. He knew better than to perpetuate a discussion that could never reach a satisfying result. They couldn’t talk to each other. They just didn’t know how. And much as he might like to, he couldn’t blame it all on the neurological disorder. Darcy did much better with Susan. Some of the young women at the day care center. Even small children. But not with his father.

He still remembered sitting in that child psychiatrist’s office, twenty-three years ago, hearing the devastating news for the first time. He hadn’t wanted to go at all, but the administrators at Darcy’s nursery said there was a problem, a serious one, and that he wouldn’t be allowed to return unless they sought some professional help. So they did, and the great man in the glistening white coat returned after half a day of observation and informed them that their child was autistic.

God, he barely knew what the word meant back then. But he learned soon enough. What, he’d asked, can we do about this? Basically—nothing. Get your kid in a “special” school. Accept that he will never be normal, that he will never be emotionally satisfying in the way parents want their children to be. Be prepared for a lot of work. And be forewarned that it will never end, because Darcy will never be able to leave home, can never hope to take care of himself, no matter how long he lives.

O’Bannon read all the books on the disorder, such as there were. Then as now, no one really understood what autism was. They called it a “spectrum disorder” to disguise the fact that it took so many forms, that no one could come up with a consistent description (much less diagnosis) that fit all cases. His wife, Connie, who seemed to cope with the bad news much better than he did, took Darcy to California for a month of intensive training and behavioral intervention therapy with Dr. Ivar Lovass, while simultaneously administering a barrage of diet and drug therapies. It drained every penny they had in savings, but that was okay, anything to get their boy fixed. Which was, of course, impossible. By the time the money ran out, she had learned enough to continue the program at home, to train other volunteers to work with him.

Her efforts made a profound difference. Slowly but surely, Darcy became more communicative, more disciplined, easier to control. But fixed? Hardly. Cured?

For autism, there was no such thing.

A few years later, Connie died and left him a widower, Darcy motherless. Her heart had given out. Many people thought she had worked herself to death. But that wasn’t O’Bannon’s theory. Oh, she’d worked diligently all right, more than any woman in the history of the world ever worked, his Connie. But what hurt her most was the emotional vacuum where her firstborn son was supposed to be. The child who never said “Good night,” much less “I love you.” The boy who never gave nor returned a hug, who shied away from displays of affection. That’s what hurt Connie the most. That was what killed her.

Since that time, O’Bannon and Darcy had muddled on in their own way, coexisting, but never truly living together. Friends had suggested that he put Darcy in some kind of home, but he couldn’t. Darcy was his boy. His only son. He knew Darcy was frustrated. He knew he thought his father was holding him back. But the truth was—he was protecting him. He’d watched this boy for twenty-six years. He knew what he could do and what he could not do. He was not going to set him up for disappointment. He would not put him in a position where he would be belittled, made the object of a sniggering freak show. He had been very reluctant when Susan first started involving him in her casework. But Susan looked after him, protected him. She had a gift for taking what seemed like inane autistic ramblings to everyone else and turning them into pertinent investigative information. She made him useful.

But could Darcy function on his own? No, not now, not ever. Without Susan his directionless observations would be worse than useless. He could never hold a position of real authority, a job where people depended upon him. A job that forced him to interact in the real world, to try to understand people’s minds and motivations. It was absurd. Impossible. He was an innocent, a child. He couldn’t possibly allow Darcy to visit the scene of a crime where some maniac had melted a man’s face off with boiling hot cooking oil. He was the boy’s father, damn it. Darcy had been through so much, had borne so many struggles normal boys never had to face. He would not set him up for failure. Not like that.

He glanced at his son, still lying on the carpet. He turned a page every now and again, but O’Bannon didn’t think he was really reading. For a kid who supposedly didn’t grasp emotion, he did a pretty damn good version of the cold shoulder treatment.

“Darcy,” he said, clearing his throat, trying to carefully choose his words, “…are you…interested in the case Susan is working on?”

Darcy’s head turned ever so slightly in his direction. “Y-Y-Yes,” he said.

The stuttering again. Whenever Darcy was around him. “Can I show you something? Something to do with the case?” Even as he’d stuffed the document in his satchel, he’d had misgivings about showing it to Darcy. He didn’t need to be involved in anything this ugly. Still, as long as he kept Darcy away from the crime scene…maybe…

Susan was always able to find a way to make Darcy useful.

“Here it is.” He slid a photocopy of the imprint Escavez had taken off the grill. The mysterious formula:

“Can you read it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“It is…an equation.”

“I know how good you are in math. Can you, uh, tell me what it means?”

Darcy tilted his head to one side. “What it means?”

“Yeah. We think it must have some significance. It was found at the scene of the crime. Do you know what it means?”

“Are you asking me…can I solve it?”

As if he knew. “Okay, can you solve it?”

Darcy took it into his own hands and stared at it. “What does
n
stand for?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“It is used twice. If I knew what
n
was, then I would be able to maybe narrow the range of possible solutions.”

“Well, we really don’t know what—”

“What does
a
stand for? Or
b
?”

“Darcy, we don’t know what any of the symbols stand for.”

“Then it is impossible for me to solve it. I could give you a list of possible solutions in algebraic form. But there would be an infinite number of numerical answers. Unless I know at least one of the integer substitutions, I cannot narrow it down to one solution.”

“We don’t know what the formula stands for, or what it means, or what you do with it. Maybe it’s something theoretical. Like E = mc
²
. I mean, that has some meaning”—or so he’d heard—“but you don’t know what any of the numbers are.”

“I do not have to. I know that E is energy and M is mass and c is the speed of light. Even if I do not have any of the numbers, the equation is still true.”

“Well, then—”

“But without one of the numbers, I cannot possibly give you any of the others, so I cannot solve it.” He laid the paper down.

O’Bannon blew air through his teeth. Every conversation they had always turned out like this—with both of them totally frustrated. He thought Darcy would jump all over this—a clue to a crime involving mathematics, his strongest subject. At school they used to call him the human calculator. He could multiply five-digit numbers in his head. So why couldn’t Darcy help now?

“Well, thanks for trying, son.”

“I-I-I did not try, because it was not possible. Why would you ask me to do something that was not possible?”

“Well, I didn’t know—”

“Y-Y-You don’t think I can do anything. Y-Y-You wouldn’t ask me to do anything that was possible.”

“Darcy—that’s not true!” O’Bannon protested, but it was too late. Darcy was already back on the floor, his eyes glued to the book, either reading or not. Damn it all. He should’ve known better. He shouldn’t have come home asking for trouble.

Or maybe, just maybe, he should’ve recognized what everyone else already knew.

Susan could work with his son. But he couldn’t.

“I HOPE YOU don’t mind meeting me so early in the morning, Rachel,” I said, as I passed her the Krispy Kremes. “I’m on a new case. And I’m supposed to be in the office at nine o’clock sharp.”

“I don’t mind. Which one’s cream-filled?”

I pointed. She wolfed. Rachel is my beautiful, effervescent, clear-skinned, sixteen-year-old niece, who is good for a smile even at this godawful time of the morning. How I loved her. She was the only real family I had now, but there was a lot more to it than that. Everyone who knew her loved her. I certainly did. Which was why I finally abandoned the custody battle and left her in foster care.

She licked a dollop of cream out of the center with a quick flick of her tongue, an Ingrid Bergmanesque-move, if Ingrid Bergman had been as lovely as my niece. “I get up this early every morning anyway. Basketball practice.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“City league. I was on the school team before, but since it turned out I wasn’t half bad, I thought—why not?”

That was my girl. Well, David’s late brother’s girl, but still. Mine. Initially I had been hostile to the idea of her playing basketball, not to mention joining a youth group and a church group and everything else that was her foster parents’ idea and not mine. But they had worked wonders with her. They were sweet old folks, straight shooters. Honest as the day is long. Boring as hell. But you could see where there might be some value in that, when you’re raising a teenage girl.

“So,” I said, as I started my second coffee. I know, I shouldn’t, but cut me some slack—it’s my last remaining addictive substance to abuse. “Anything new in little Rachel’s life?”

“Not really.” Her head turned down, her face shrouded by her gorgeous auburn hair. “I mean, nothing important. Nothing worth, you know, nothing—”

I decided to put her out of her misery. In a little singsong voice, I said, “
Ra
…chel’s
got
…a
boy
…friend…”

“I do not!”

“Do so.”

“Do not. Not really.”

“Meaning, Rachel wants a boyfriend?”

“No! Ugh! I mean, okay, not ugh, but, you know, yuck.”

Fortunately, I speak fluent teenager. “So there is a guy and you like him but you’re not sure if he likes you yet.”

She stared back at me. “You know, you’re really amazing.”

“Well, I am a trained psychologist. So is this that—what was his name—the skateboard guy?”

“Bobby? Oh, God no. He is so yesterday.”

“Just as well.” I smiled and snarfed the last cruller. “Look, Rach, if you really like the guy, just tell him.”

“Easy for you to say. What about you? Have you been out on a date lately?”

“No. But Amelia and I have been running around some. Keeps me off the streets. Look, I’d better get you back to the Johnsons.”

“There’s no rush.”

“Rachel, it took that man three months to trust me enough to let me take you out of his sight. I’m not going to blow it now by being late.”

“I know. But—” She hesitated, and this time I really didn’t know what was on her mind. “I—I wanted to give you something.”

“Unless I’ve really lost track of time, it’s not my birthday.”

“No, I meant—” She swallowed hard, then plopped it down on the table. “I saved this when Lisa moved you out of your apartment, while you were in the clinic. It’s—”

“I know what it is.” No explanation required. I carried the thing around for almost nine years, till I started getting so drunk every day I forgot to put it in my pocket. It was a good luck charm, a tiny four-leaf clover, a real one, encased in translucent acrylic.