I said nothing.
“I can’t believe this—it was a squirrel for God’s sake. They’re disgusting rodents, they carry diseases. It might as well have been a rat. They’re basically rats with fluffy tails.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” said Haley Moman. “This was months ago. Right after Crispin began at Beverly. During lunchtime, that’s all, nothing disruptive in class. Out on the lawn. Do you think anyone would take the time to reach out since the time he got there? As if. So he was all by himself, eating, and a stupid squirrel ran up to him and bared its teeth. Blatant. Aggressive. I mean that’s not normal, right? Normally they’re afraid of people, right? So this one had to be sick. Maybe even rabies. Or some other horrible disease.”
I said, “Crispin felt threatened.”
“Wouldn’t you? I mean, let’s face it, everyone’s into animals nowadays. I don’t mind, I gave up my furs. But animals aren’t perfect, there are mean ones just like there are mean people, and this one was obviously vicious. Baring its teeth unprovoked at a child? What was Crispin supposed to do, sit there and get mauled?”
“What did he do?”
She tented her fingers then ran them down the sides of a perfectly styled nose. “What did he do? He protected himself.”
“How?”
Her eyes dropped down again. “Look. I had no idea he had it with him. It was a gift from his grandpa. My dad, he ranches cattle in Montana, to him, a knife’s a tool. This was a stupid little two-inch blade for whittling. Dad gave it to Crispin when Crispin turned six. We took it away because we’re fiercely anti any sort of weapon. Crispin must’ve found it.”
Milo said, “So no firearms in the house.”
“Of course not!” said Haley Moman. Appalled, as if he’d suggested she was old. “No instruments of destruction, period.”
Her chest heaved. “From the beginning, we knew Crispin deserved special consideration. That means zero tolerance.”
“Crispin got hold of the knife.”
She threw up her hands. “I kept it ’cause of my dad, hid it in my bathing suit drawer, somehow he found it. He said it was just for that day, he was planning to pick up a tree branch and whittle—he tries to be artistic. So he had it with him and he ended up using it.”
“On the squirrel.”
Haley Moman faced me, cheeks flushed, brown eyes narrowed. “The stupid thing was baring its teeth at him, he felt threatened. For all we know he was in danger of being exposed to the plague or something. So he used it. So big deal.”
I said, “You’re making a good point about disease. Did Animal Control ever analyze the body to see if it was infected?”
No reaction from Haley Moman. Then she tugged at her hair, picked up her water bottle, uncapped, recapped. Put it down hard on a taupe travertine table.
“No,” she said. “There wasn’t much left to analyze.”
She ran out. This time she was gone for a while, returning with her eyes raw, her hair loose, clutching a fresh water bottle.
During her absence, Milo had done some research. Twenty years ago, Haley Hartford had worn a blood-red bathing suit for two seasons of a show called Tideline. First marriage to an actor who’d O.D.’d. A couple of boyfriends in between the marriage to Adrian Moman. Crispin’s age said Moman was likely his stepdad.
“All right,” she said, tossing the hair. “Crispin has agreed to meet with you.”
Secretary clearing the boss’s calendar.
Milo said, “Great,” and we stood.
“But,” said Haley Moman, “you must stick to only relevant topics and avoid nonsense.”
“Such as?”
“I’ll direct you.” She racewalked toward the rear of the house, speeding past three bedrooms on both sides of a skylit corridor. At the back, a space the width of the entire structure was set up with aqua leather theater seats and a hundred-inch screen on one side, a wet bar and a pool table backed by a floor-to-ceiling aquarium filled with marine fish on the other. Taupe drapes covered every window. Light courtesy dimmed LEDs in the ceiling.
All those toys still allowed for plenty of square footage in the center of the room. A queen-sized bed shared the space with a black leather Eames chair and six feet of Lucite bent into an upside-down U. Atop the Lucite: two laptops, three twenty-inch screens, half a dozen Rubik’s cubes, and a large, yellow softcover book.
MIRE PANDEMIC: A GUIDE TO MINDCRAFT VOID-SATIATION
On the bed, his scrawny butt barely taking up a corner of mattress, perched a pitiably thin, undersized boy with long, straight hair colored a curiously waxy tan. Spidery soft-looking fingers rested on bony knees. Skin so pallid and blue-veined it verged on translucent.
Crispin Moman was seventeen and a half but could’ve passed for fourteen.
This time he revealed his face, expressionless but for the merest sense of expectancy in narrow-set gray eyes. His features were well set but skimpy, as if a sculptor had roughed in then run out of clay. The exception, his eyes, purplish blue, luminous, and huge, fringed by long curling lashes.
The oddly colored hair was cut in a pageboy with straight-edge bangs that bisected a high, white brow. Already sporting brow lines his mother had avoided through lucky genetics or botulin toxin. He wore a dark-green polyester jumpsuit that evoked an old guy loafing in Palm Springs decades ago. Ralph embroidered across the right breast. Black wingtips, no socks. Four red strings banded a flimsy-looking wrist.
He looked at us but didn’t seem to see us.
Haley Moman said, “They’re here, honey.”
Crispin didn’t react.
She looked at us and wagged a warning finger. Don’t push it.
Milo walked over and faced the boy. “Crispin, I’m Milo.”
Without looking up, Crispin said, “What’s your title?”
“Pardon?”
“Your real identity has a title.” Nasal voice, tremolo modulation, the volume dialed a smidge too high.
“Lieutenant.”
Crispin Moman said, “Lieutenant Milo…?”
“Sturgis.”
“Lieutenant. Milo. Sturgis.” One of the hands extended.
Milo took it and shook gently. The boy’s fingers held on until Milo unpeeled them, then flopped back to their knee-perch.
“My identity is Crispin Bernard Moman.”
Milo grinned. “How ’bout that. Mine is actually Milo Bernard Sturgis.”