“My mother was out of her mind.”
“She made some outrageous claims. The social worker thought she was paranoid, and Officer Friendly wanted to agree, but his patrolman’s intuition told him not to dismiss her so quickly. So when he volunteered to drive you to your aunt and uncle’s house, he wasn’t just being kind—he wanted to spend more time with you.”
“That son of a bitch…He actually thought I wanted Phil to get kidnapped?”
“He wasn’t sure. It bothered him that he wasn’t sure. Unfortunately, the car ride didn’t settle the matter. He said you seemed like a normal, if very troubled, girl—one who’d done a careless thing and was now putting up a tough front to keep remorse from eating her alive. Ordinarily, he said, he’d have been worried about you hurting yourself, especially if your brother was found dead. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that you were hiding something, and that made him wonder if your remorse was just an act.
“So he went back to your mother. She repeated her claims: That you were an evil child. That you hated your brother. That you’d intentionally put him in jeopardy as a way of getting rid of him.”
“If I was so evil,” she says, “why did she make me watch Phil? I mean, does that make sense, that you have your monster daughter babysit the brother she’s trying to kill?”
“Officer Friendly asked her about that. She said she didn’t have a choice—as a single mother working to support two children, she couldn’t afford a real babysitter…”
“Oh, that’s good. Why didn’t she just get a pit bull to watch Phil? I hear they’re great with kids.”
“She also said she’d been in denial about your true nature. She said of course you were no angel, she’d always known that, but it was only now she saw what a devil you were.”
“And Officer Friendly bought that?”
“No,” the doctor says. “He thought it was nonsense. He was about to concede that the social worker had been right after all. Then your mother said one more thing.
“She said she should have known that this was going to happen—she’d had a clear warning, and she’d never forgive herself for ignoring it. Officer Friendly asked what she was talking about, and she said that the day before your brother was abducted you’d all been at the post office together. Your mother left the two of you in the lobby while she went to stand in line, and when she came back, your brother was crying. It was obvious something had frightened him badly, but he wouldn’t say what, and neither would you. Then that night, he woke up screaming. She asked him again what was wrong, and he told her that the man who collected children for the gypsies was coming to get him. ‘Jane showed me his face,’ he said.
“It sounded like more paranoia, but when Officer Friendly went to the post office to have a look around, he found this tacked up on a bulletin board in the lobby. ‘Jane showed me his face…’”
She’s silent a long time before asking: “Did he tell my mother about this?”
“No,” says the doctor. “It’s possible she’d already seen it, but he saw no reason to upset her further if she hadn’t. It’s not as if it were evidence—at least, not the kind he could act on. But you can see why he kept this, even after the hunt for Doyle was abandoned. And you can understand why, when I called him a few days ago, he knew right away which Jane I was referring to…So what about it, Jane? How does this figure into the story you’ve been telling me? Or does it?”
“Of course it does.”