“I’m a coroner,” Reid said.
“And you don’t deal with shit like this, believe me.”
Striding forward, with no hubris, Reid entered the room and stopped dead. “You’re right, I wasn’t ready. How many?”
“Eight children, two teachers and the perp.”
“Water?”
The officer behind us held up two bottles and handed one to me and one to him. Reid cracked his and took a sip. I walked up ready to crack mine and stepped into the room.
A wave of dizziness hit me hard. This was…
I looked to Lily. “On second thought, maybe I am ready to make a request of my brother.”
Paige
I pinched the bridge of my nose out of habit, then winced.
The bruise was almost gone, but not quite, and I’d made it angry with that.
Doing my best to ignore the pain I’d inflicted on myself, I glanced at the papers on the desk. Lily was sitting in her chair and the ever intimidating Doctor Wren Warner was leaning against the wall.
These two were a fucking force of nature, and sometimes I didn’t know how to deal with it. Stick Fischer or Lincoln in the picture, I was toast.
“So, you’re telling me that the mother, the stepfather, and the father are all dead and when the father went to kill the kid—he killed eight other children and left his son an orphan.”
“Yes.” Lily’s words were clipped. “From the notes and emails we found, he wanted to kill the mother and stepfather mostly. He wanted the kid.”
I nodded my head. “Perfect sense.”
“Every goddamned news outlet is camped out in front of that daycare,” Wren said. “We need to get this kid somewhere safe as soon as possible.”
“I agree,” I said. “I’ll run through the families that we have ready and trained for trauma. How much did the little one see?”
“Not much,” Lily said. “He ducked and covered at the first bullet. Like they were taught.”
Wren leaned forward. “We need to keep his location quiet, though, Paige. We’re afraid of retaliation.”
“The father…”
Lily shook her head. “Not the father. From the other parents. Eight children were shot dead. Two adults. You think that one or two of them wouldn’t go off the deep end? They lost children. The man who wanted that child dead missed, and when you lose a child you aren’t rational. You might want revenge, or to finish the job.”
“That’s terrible to think like that,” I whispered.
“I am literally paid to think like that. So yeah, it sucks, but it’s real. People aren’t sane at the death of a child.”
I scrubbed my face, another bruise behind my hair line lighting up with some pain. I ignored it. We had to find a place to basically hide this kid, and I didn’t like hiding children. Not after what happened with Ben.
Lily was right though. We had to find a place to keep the boy safe, away from all those damn cameras and reporters.
“How old is he?”
“Four,” Wren said. “We’ve got him holed up in St. Christopher’s. He’s got a guard, and a roommate and that’s it.”
“Wren—”
“No,” she said, sadly. “No, we can’t. We have two already traumatized children and Ben isn’t… It’s too much. We’ll lose someone in the mess.”
“All right.” I nodded, tapping my fingers on the pile of files I had on the desk. “I have other homes. I’ll pull something up.”
“Please, make sure that the address doesn’t get out,” Wren said.
That rankled. I knew, on some level, she wasn’t trying to be mean. With the media circus it was a legit concern, but I didn’t need to be reminded of all my small fuck ups with Ellie and Ben.
“I will,” I answered. “That’s going to be a trick with all these reporters hanging around. I—”
The door slammed open and a teenager trounced into the room, wild eyed and pissed off, with two officers trying to pull him back. “Where’s my brother?!”
“Kid, you can’t—”
Lily stood and held off the uniforms. “I got him, officers.”
“He busted Derwick’s nose!” the one snapped.
“I said I got him,” Lily barked at them. “Take Derwick to the ER. I will deal with the kid.” She pulled the teen in and kicked the door close. “Jackasses.”
“Where’s my brother?”
“Bad move, assaulting an officer, kid,” Lily said.
“Please, he called me a nigger and told me to go back to the jungle.”
Lily pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fucking idiots. Every single one of them.”
As she let out an exasperated breath, Wren stood and offered a hand. “Hi. Doctor Warner. And you are?”
“Looking for my damn brother.”
“You get further with manners, young man.” There was no hostility in her voice.
A second went by, and he shook her hand. “Andre White. Dre.”
“Well, Dre, it’s nice to meet you. Please sit, and we can talk about your brother.” Wren motioned to her former seat. “What is your brother’s name?”
“James. James Higgins. The kid that’s been all over the news.”
I whipped out the folder on James and started thumbing through it. “There’s no record of a brother.”
“He ain’t my real brother. He’s my stepbrother.”
“There’s no…”
Dre sank a bit into the seat. “My daddy and his momma were supposed to get married. My daddy was killed in a car wreck about three months ago. Momma was trying to get the courts to give me to her.”
“Oh, Dre, I’m so sorry,” Wren said.
“He’s my brother. He’s all I got left.”
“How old are you, Dre?” I asked.
“Sixteen,” he answered.
“Well, this just got worse,” Lily said.
“Two minors,” I grumbled. “And why weren’t you noted in all the paperwork around here? Your brother is practically a celebrity, but no one checked up on you?”
“I keep quiet,” he said. “I don’t like attention.”
“You liked it enough to punch a cop in the face,” Lily admonished.
Dre turned in the seat. “He called me a—”
Wren’s hand dropped on to his shoulder. “Please, relax. We know what he called you. Detective Haden was just trying to point out that if you really want to stay on the downlow, you can’t punch cops in the face, no matter what they call you.”
“You ever had to deal with shit like that? Listen to people assume who you are by what you look like?”
I spoke up this time, watching Wren clutch her fist, “Yes, actually Dre. She does. Or did. Fortunately, a new and amazing procedure corrected her hand. And we are also aware that what we experience as racism and ablism is nothing like that of yours. So please. We want to help you. If you claim that James is your brother, we’ll be happy to work with that and work to keep you together. We’re not your enemies in here.”