“You come highly recommended after the work you did with the Taylor family. You should hear all the stories Mrs. Taylor tells about you. She swears her son didn’t speak a single word until after he started working with you. That’s pretty amazing stuff you do.” His dark-brown eyes peer into mine, and I can’t tell if he’s being genuine or not, but at least now I know where he got my name.
Mrs. Taylor was devastated that her son Owen didn’t talk. He was three, and his communication was still limited to grunts and a few gestures. She and her husband tried all kinds of different specialists in Birmingham, but he wasn’t making any progress. After Owen had a bad meltdown at preschool and bit another kid, one of Mrs. Taylor’s cousins recommended me. Owen and I clicked immediately. He was just one of those kids. She drove all the way down from Birmingham every week for an entire year, and he was almost caught up with the other kids his age within six months. Mrs. Taylor is one of the most successful interior designers in the tricounty area, and she posted a rave review on her Instagram that had people flocking to me in droves. Within days, I had to open a waiting list in my practice for the first time. I’ve had one ever since.
I wish I could take credit for Owen’s gains, but he was probably misdiagnosed from the beginning. That didn’t mean anything to Mrs. Taylor, though. It didn’t matter to her whether her son had autism spectrum disorder or speech apraxia. All she cared about was that he called her Mom.
“Here’s the deal—we need to talk to the kid, and this woman is making that pretty difficult to do. She needs someone she can trust, if you know what I mean.” Detective Layne rubs his folded chin and gives me a knowing look.
I don’t know what he means, and I don’t like the way he says this woman either. My arms cross instinctively on my chest, and I try to hide my annoyance. “What’s the problem?”
“Her son is the only one that might know what happened to Annabelle, so we need a statement from him. It’s challenging enough figuring out a way to communicate with him when he doesn’t really talk. That’s our first hurdle, but we can’t even get close enough to try because she hovers constantly. Never leaves his side. I mean never. She barely lets go of his hand. You should see it. We’ve had some of our best guys take a stab at him, but anytime Mason gets uncomfortable or agitated in the least, she shuts it down immediately. She gets so upset the minute he does. It’s like she has to stop it. We can’t get anywhere near him, and we need someone who can.” He gives me another pointed look, like I’m supposed to be following him, but I’m still clueless. “Ms. Walker, this isn’t a good situation. We’ve got to know if there’s a murderer on the loose. The community deserves that. You’ve seen what it’s like with everybody.” He motions over his shoulder to the people outside the dirty windows who he swore to serve and protect. “People are terrified. My phone’s ringing off the hook. It’s been that way since it happened. The entire town’s breathing down my neck to give them something. They want an arrest, and this kid could help me do that. He could help this entire city feel safe again.”
I nod my understanding. I wouldn’t want to be in his position. Not in a place where crime statistics are measured in stolen bicycles.
“I’m just going to be honest with you—we need someone who stands a chance at getting Genevieve to calm down enough to let us talk to the kid. She can’t handle it when that boy is uncomfortable. You’d think the whole world was ending. She needs someone to hold her hand so she can let go of his.” He shakes his head, irritated with her protectiveness. “I’ve got four kids of my own, and sheltering them doesn’t do them any favors, you know? Do you have any?”
“Just one.” I understand his frustration, but I sympathize with wanting to shield your kid from pain. I fall on the helicopter-parenting side of the spectrum myself when it comes to my daughter, Harper.
“Good, then you know that sometimes you gotta just let kids be upset. And you also know that kids really start squirming when they think answering your questions might land them in even more trouble. I know autistic kids—”
“Kids with autism,” I interrupt instinctively.
“Huh?”
“The child isn’t their diagnosis. It’s people-first language. You don’t say ‘cancer kids,’ do you?”
“Got it,” he says, and I hope he does. “Anyway, I don’t know much, but au—kids with autism”—he smiles at me as he catches himself—“are still just kids, and kids don’t like getting in trouble, so they’ll do anything to avoid it. Mason’s no different in that way, and he just needs to be pushed a bit. I’m not saying he needs to be pushed hard, but he needs a nudge, and we’ve got to have a person in there who can do that without pushing too hard. Someone that knows and understands where that line is so we don’t cross it. My colleagues and I have been trying to figure out a way to do that, and we’ve come up with a pretty good plan. That’s where you come in.” He pauses, building up the moment. “You ever heard of a person called a CASA before?”
“Not that I can remember.”
“It stands for court-appointed special advocate. Some states call it guardian ad litem. Basically, they’re people appointed by the court to serve the needs and as the voice of the child. They’re assigned in all child welfare cases when there’s been any kind of abuse. I—”
“Mason’s being abused?” I jump in. Nobody’s made that accusation yet. At least not that I’ve heard or read anywhere.
“No,” he says, shaking his head to emphasize the point. “I just mean those are instances when a CASA is automatically assigned, but sometimes, they can be assigned in other circumstances if a judge deems it necessary, and this is one of those times where we could take the position that one is needed. It’s easy to arrange with the courts, and we can file an emergency petition to do it, so we’d be able to move it through even faster. Nobody’s going to give us any grief on pushing things through with this case, you know what I mean?”