The Light at the End of the Tunnel (11 page)

According to the chaplain, for
worst-of-the-worst criminal, Les Paul, fighting the system was
guaranteed anyway, and, after originally sharing that name with
Nicole, since he couldn’t absolutely guarantee identity of the
child, he insisted they use only the name
‘Baby
Boy-Doe9.’

After the hospital they visited Family
Services, and found their brand new private investigator licenses
would help them, and speed things up, to a point. Then, after being
certain of Baby Boy’s earlier foster homes, they made the decision
not to visit any of them immediately, and instead went directly to
the home of the family that had lost their mother at the Grand
Canyon accident.

There they met a stone-faced father with a
sad story, which he began right at the door: “At first I thought it
was just a terrible accident,” the man said, “After all, before I
even met my wife she had scaled Mt. Whitney with a girlfriend, and,
just before we met, she had—alone, for Christ’s sake—climbed El
Capitan at Yosemite, her home state. So it’s not like she was some
bumbler who regularly stumbled over her own feet!”

The man was angry. The chaplain saw that, so
would move slowly, “So what do you think happened, sir?”

“I think that little bastard foster kid we
had
pushed
her!”

“A two-year-old.” Nicole said it as a
statement.

“Chloe, my daughter, was first to suggest
it.” The man hesitated, and brought his hand to his mouth, and let
go a sigh, then a swallow, then another sigh, “At first she loved
that little boy…always holding him and teaching him things, and
then she came home early from school one day—“ The man stepped back
and swung the door wide, “Please, come in.” He gestured to kitchen
chairs, “Would you like some coffee?”

Both the chaplain and Nicole said, “Yes.”

After the coffee was poured the man pulled
his own chair, sat down, first sipped his coffee, then began, “Even
at just seven years old Chloe has been a really smart kid, and very
observant, and even though she loved that little—“ The man shook
his head and tightened both his fists, “Bastard!—the little
shit!—I’m just calling it as I see it! He murdered my darling wife!
I have no doubt but I can’t prove a thing!”

Nicole reached across the table and clutched
his right hand.

The man brought his left hand over and
clutched Nicole’s hand, “Thank you,” he said, then released her,
“Anyway, Chloe was the first to suggest he also murdered my
son.”

Nicole gasped, “We hadn’t heard that!”

“No,” the man said, “And of course it would
not have gone into the paper as that.” Again the man appeared to
almost lose control of his emotions, “No! The story that went to
the media was that my son hung himself!—A nine-year-old! The police
suggested—after investigating—that my son accidentally killed
himself by playing around with erotic asphyxiation!—a
nine
-year-old, for Christ’s sake!”

The man placed both his hands over his eyes,
and gasped and swallowed several times. The chaplain and Nicole
stared at each other. How wrong they had been about the tiny Les
Paul’s capabilities. Nicole reached and clutched the man’s right
lower arm, “We believe you, sir, and we are trying to locate this
child, but we need to know more about, what…you think happened. You
mentioned Chloe earlier.”

“Yes.” The man lowered his hands and laid
them on the table. Nicole again placed her hand on his arm. “Yes.
Chloe came home early from school. She heard the boys in Tyler’s
bedroom, and she knew that the boys didn’t get along.”

“How so, sir?” asked the chaplain.

“Chloe never really saw anything herself, but
quite often Tyler told her about Baby Boy’s expressions when he
thought nobody else was looking—a two-year-old! Conniving like
that!”

“Could you be more specific, sir, about the
expressions?”

“No, and Chloe really couldn’t either. For a
long time she didn’t believe Tyler. But this one time when she got
home early she said that Baby Boy had apologized to Tyler for
playing with his computer, and Tyler accepted it.” The man withdrew
his hand from Nicole and took a drink from his coffee. His face was
coldly sober, “And the next morning we found Tyler hanging by his
lariat. A Christmas present. It looked to me like Tyler had been
strangled in his sleep, and then Baby Boy just drug him out of bed.
And Baby Boy was sound asleep in his room.”

“The police could have taken fingerprints—“
Nicole started to say.

“Why would they?” the man snapped, “Why on
earth
would
they—
anyone
—even
consider
a
two-year-old capable of murder?” The man again sipped his coffee,
“I didn’t either, and wouldn’t have, but then Chloe started sharing
things she had seen over the months but had dismissed, like those
expressions—just glimpses, you know, that the little bastard
thought nobody but Tyler ever saw. She even feels responsible for
Tyler’s death.”

“Oh no,” Nicole said, “Work with her, sir.
Take her to as many counselors as necessary to get her over
this.”

“I will,” the man said, and looked at the two
of them. He appeared calmer than he had yet, as if sharing his
story had helped, “And we are going to a counselor. Both of us, but
neither of us has felt comfortable telling them what I just told
you.”

The man’s mouth smiled. His eyes did not.

Chapter 21
The Barbie Dolls

More time passed. Les Paul had reached the
ripe old age of four and then some. Even at his very young age he
had learned that he had to moderate his actions and for certain
never let his true nature be known by any more than one member of
the family. He somehow knew he had screwed up with Tyler and Chloe.
He would be more careful, and he knew he needed to grow up a bit.
It would help to again stay with one family longer than a few
weeks. He learned that with Tyler and Chloe and their loser dad, so
only was on his seventh family, not including his birth
parents.

This family had a boy, ten, and a girl,
eight. He was in the girl’s room surrounded by her dolls. He wasn’t
a lover of dolls but he liked putting the Barbie Dolls into
compromising sexual positions with the Ken Dolls, and if he
couldn’t find a Ken, or ran out, he would use one of the other
Barbies. He didn’t in his young mind really know about sexual
positions, but his hands
did
.

Whenever he was in his foster sister’s room
alone he would put all her dolls into every compromising position
his hands could think of, then he would skedaddle out of the room
to anywhere else and wait for his foster sister to discover the
dolls, and who did she blame? Her blood brother. Her brother, of
course, always denied doing it, and neither were willing to bring
the matter to their strict parents.

This time Les Paul didn’t hear his foster
sister coming until she opened the door and stared at the dolls
with the widest eyes he had ever seen on anyone.

“
You
did this!” she shrieked, “Mom!
Mom!”

Mom came immediately, “What’s wrong,
honey?”

“Look at my dolls! I always thought my real
brother was doing this, but I was wrong—it’s him!” She pointed.

Les Paul was caught. There would be no
getting out of it this time. He stood up and stood still…and began
wondering about the thoughts and visions that began coming to him.
He was lying on a steel table on a very thin mattress, his hands
and feet were bound in chains, he couldn’t really move well…but he
could see
. Straight ahead was a large glass window. Behind it
were several people sitting, like on a bleacher, because some were
higher than others…and some looked familiar, and they all had
strange looks on their faces, like they were mad at him—why would
they be mad at him? He didn’t even know them! Then he noticed a man
dressed in white by another window. Behind that window looked like
tubes, and the tubes combined and ran into just one tube…to his
arm! Where a needle was injected and taped to his arm! Then he saw
a man in a suit enter, who looked familiar, and another man in
black clothes with a white collar and white hair, and he knew that
man too, but who?

The man with the white hair came to him and
opened a book and looked into his eyes, and laid his hand on his
arm and began speaking—at least his mouth was moving, for just a
really short time—then the man in the suit nodded to the man
dressed in white, who did something with the tubes because liquids
started moving…moving…he felt a roaring in his ears, like he was
going fast, faster than he ever had, and faster, and faster, and
faster…

The scene ended.

Les Paul felt so strange. What had just
happened? Why would he see something like that as if he was
thinking it? Dreaming? He thought about crying, maybe just
screaming, like what used to get him the best attention, but,
somehow, he knew, screaming and crying—
this time
—would not
help. He was done with this family and he knew it. They probably
wouldn’t even let him stay the night.

He was right. The mother grabbed his arm,
glared at him, and jerked him toward her, “What kind of monster
are
you? How would you even
think
of such a
thing?”

“He’s done it about ten times, Mom!”

“Good Lord! Ten times?”

“Yes! It made me so mad, and I always blamed
my real brother!”

The mother then escorted Les Paul to the
boy’s room, “Son,” the mother said to her real son, “Watch this kid
and don’t let him leave your sight. I’m calling your father at
work.”

A half hour later the father arrived. They
installed Les Paul into a car seat in the back of their Sport
Utility Vehicle, and the father instructed, “Watch him, son. When
we get there, you stay in the SUV.”

A half hour still later they arrived at the
government office that dealt with foster children. The father
removed Les Paul from his seat, and took him by the hand as they
entered the building and walked straight to the correct office,
where a stern-looking woman sat at a desk, “May I help you,
sir?”

For five minutes the father spoke, giving the
main reason, and others, that this child could no longer stay at
their home, and ended with, “Will we still get paid for this month?
We are over half, you know.”

“Of course, sir.”

So the families got paid for keeping him.
Good to know. Just one more card in his deck to use against all the
people who were being so mean to him.

Chapter 22
Cassandra at
Four

Cassandra had just passed her fourth year
too, and had lost track of how many foster homes she had been in.
Only her reasons for getting moved around were not
behavior-related. Though never coming anywhere near bonding with
any of her families, she was
well
-behaved. She never caused
trouble. If there was trouble with her foster siblings she would
back away, go to her own room if she had one, and if she didn’t she
would go to her own bed and crawl onto it and wait for further
instructions, or sometimes would just wait for night and bedtime.
Sometimes her foster sister, if she had one, older or younger
didn’t matter, would look at her with big sad eyes.

So, yes, Cassandra was well-behaved but she
was not healthy. Physically healthy, yes, though slightly
underweight and under height for a girl her age, but, basically,
healthy. It was her mind that was not healthy. She wasn’t retarded
by any means. She was bright, but she kept everything inside. She
never spoke unless spoken to, and then just to answer. She kept to
herself and never reached out, so much so that nobody reached out
to her, either. The grownups and children in each family always
looked so sad whenever they looked at her, that Cassandra decided
that was just how it was. Life, as she understood it, was not
happy.

She had one thing, though, that she really
liked, a Little Mommy Play All Day Doll. In her last foster home
her eight-year-old foster sister had given it to her. “It used to
talk, Cassie,” her foster sister had said, “It used to talk a lot,
but it doesn’t anymore. Would you like to have her?”

Cassandra remembered holding her arms out.
She hadn’t planned to but her body had just responded on its own to
such a kind gesture, “Thank you,” she said, and brought the doll
against her as if a baby, and wrapped her arms around it, and the
doll—in lieu of a human person—began to warm her. Wherever she went
after that the doll went with her and rarely was out of her hands.
If she wasn’t holding it she at least tried to keep it in sight.
So, maybe she more than liked that doll, maybe she actually loved
it. It was good to feel that emotion, even though she did not
relegate her feelings to love. She yet had not heard the word
‘love,’
or, if she had, she had not linked the word to good
feelings.

But it didn’t matter. What she felt with the
doll, felt good.

Oh, and she was a very good girl. She always
did what she was told to do, by everybody and anybody.

Chapter 23
Employment

Another year passed. The chaplain and Nicole
kept up with Les Paul by news stories—if anything reached that
point—or simply by going out and checking. They also renewed their
acquaintance with Riley Stokes and his crew and continued training,
which began to include helping to train others. With the many
doomsday threats, greenhouse effect, climate change, terrorism, and
a whole host of other toxic problems, it seemed that many people
wanted to learn a few self-preservation tactics. Besides martial
arts, gun laws and the care and firing of weapons, and private
investigation, Riley added to his course list rural, urban, and
wilderness survival. A new man and wife from the Hopi Reservation
joined the crew and brought with them many ancient Native American
skills, and added to the weapons list, knives, spear and tomahawk
throwing and bow and arrow.