Mike rolled his neck on his shoulders, feeling beaten. Lena was a machine, her posture straight after two hours, notepad filled, eyes clear. They’d gone through fifty files by his count. Everything a person could do to a child was there, in some form or another. Some of the referrals came from doctors. Some from teachers. And there were more than a dozen complaint calls on record that cited civilians as the source. Every caseworker was a mandated reporter, but Harriet Fogarty never had occasion to call in a complaint.
Lena was right – going after the complainant was a needle in a haystack. Regardless, he’d listed several on his own yellow legal pad under the heading “John Q. Public” – people whose call might’ve spurred an investigation resulting in a child removed from the home of a now very angry, resentful parent.
Emilia Watson: a concerned neighbor who heard shouting every night come from next door, a child crying incessantly.
Paul Hoffnagle: a hardware store worker who called after a man left his toddler in the car on a hot summer day, windows rolled up.
Belinda Baker: called the police, fearing that her boyfriend had shaken their baby to silence it when she’d gone out for groceries.
Mike stood to stretch his back, rotate his shoulders. Couldn’t seem to get out the stiffness. Reading about this stuff, seeing the pictures, it put him in a mood.
Harriet had never made a complaint call on record. And no one had threatened any judges or cops. It was all about cases both Harriet and Lavoie had worked on. That was the key.
He eyed the groups of files on the table. One pile was everything they’d found so far with both Harriet’s and Lavoie’s names on it. A growing stack of red folders marked the cases where there were more serious allegations of neglect and abuse.
He took the file on the top, went through it. Picked up the next one, sifted through the pages.
And the next.
After twenty more minutes his vision was getting blurry and his thoughts kept gravitating to the list of complainants.
“Okay,” he said, and Lena jumped a little. “I’m going to head over to my office to check something out.”
She didn’t look up, but said, “Might be nice if you brought back a little late lunch.”
“I can do that.”
* * *
Two dead ends: Emilia Watson, concerned neighbor, had passed away. Belinda Baker, young mother with a violent boyfriend, had taken her child and moved to Florida. They were doing fine, the kid now twelve years old. That left Paul Hoffnagle, who was no longer working at the hardware store in Cold Brook, but bartending at an upscale place called The Lodge on the edge of Lake Haven. Not only had Hoffnagle been the one to call in on a child in danger, there was another report less than a week later when he told police he’d been threatened by someone, but he didn’t know who. Mike called The Lodge, learned that Hoffnagle was in fact working a shift.
Ten minutes later Mike found him slicing up lemons and dropping them into a plastic dish. The bar was enormous, at least ten yards long, all lacquered wood, like pine. The dining room was dark as Mike picked his way through the tables, chairs turned upside down. Everything was rustic and cozy – chandeliers made from deer antlers – and in the winter a fire would be crackling in the big open fireplace down at the far end.
He knew because he’d had dinner here with Molly; she’d been pregnant with Kristen and they’d gone out to celebrate.
Hoffnagle looked up from the lemons and turned on a smile, a careful face Mike figured employees of The Lodge had learned to curate for their typically rich, persnickety guests. “Hello, sir – dining room’s not open again until five this evening. Is there something I—?”
Mike showed his badge and sat at one of the stools. “That’s okay – I called a little while ago? The manager said you were here; I just have a few questions for you. My name is Mike.”
Hoffnagle wiped his hands on the towel over his shoulder and shook with Mike. “You’re with the state police?”
“That’s right.”
There was something that happened with most people – you could tell right away whether they’d ever had any trouble with the cops, you could see it sitting just inside their gaze, sometimes feel it in the thrum of nerves if you shook their hand. Hoffnagle didn’t have any of that. After working the hardware store as a young man, he’d gone to New York City for some art school, then came back and joined the restaurant world, like most graduates of art school. He was thirty-five, wore his hair short but stylish. “What can I do for you?”
“About fifteen years ago, you were working at Remsen Hardware, in Cold Brook.”
“That’s right.”
“There’s a report where you called the police, concerned that someone had left their child in a car on a hot day.”
Now Hoffnagle blanched with the memory, his eyes went a bit glassy, as if the whole thing still pained him. “That’s right. I was outside, um, this was right in the dead of summer. And so I’m out there having a cigarette break – I don’t smoke anymore…”
“Good for you.”
“… and I heard, like, a baby crying. And I’m just standing there, and I don’t think much of it – it’s sort of a muffled crying – but then I kind of walk around, you know – it’s this big parking lot – you know where Ames used to be?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah; Dollar Tree is there now.”
“Right. So the parking lot is pretty big. But so I walk out a ways, and I see this kid, really just a baby, in their car seat, in the back of this… well, it’s a pretty junky kind of car. And the kid is…” Hoffnagle looked off, eyes unfocused. His voice took on a dreamy quality. “He’s just beet-red, looks like he’s burning up in there. I mean it was so hot out. So I went in and told the manager, and we called it out over the PA to see if the parent was in the store, or something. But no one responded.” His gaze sharpened up and he looked at Mike. “So that’s when I called the cops.”
“You did – not your manager?”
“Yeah, I did. I mean the manager… I think he would have. But at this point he hadn’t seen the kid. But I’d tried to open the car doors, everything. It was… you know, I was really worried for the kid. I was panicked.”
“And so,” Mike said, remembering from the report, “cops came, and while they were there, the parent returned to the car…”
“Right, from the Radio Shack or something. Whatever else was down there at the end of the plaza. Or maybe it was the grocery store…”
“And he saw you?” Mike asked.
Hoffnagle just stared a minute, then nodded. “Yeah, he saw me. I was there. I mean, not right there, I was back under the awning, you know, watching with some other people. But he – I swear, and I told the cops this later – he looked right at me.”
“Later – you mean when you called the police two days after that.”
Hoffnagle took the rag from his shoulder and buffed the bar, like he was nervous and needed something to do with his hands. “Yeah, I called. I mean, I’m not the type to freak out and call the police over everything…”
“You had someone call you, according to the report.”
Hoffnagle lowered his head and drew a deep breath through his nose. Then he looked up. “This guy calls, says, ‘You better mind your effing business.’ I mean, but he actually swore.”
“But you didn’t call the police that day.”
“No. I laid awake that whole night, and I heard stuff outside, and I’m sure someone was out there, and the next day, the next morning, that’s when I called them.”
“And you think it was the guy, the parent of this little child in the car, the one who called you, was maybe prowling around your house?”
Hoffnagle nodded.
“Can you confirm the name for me?”
He bit his lip a moment and then said, “Dodd Caruthers.”