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“He’s with another patient at the moment.”
“We’ll wait.”
“Her room is right over there. You can wait with her friend.”
“Her friend?” Mendez asked, immediately thinking Jane Thomas.
But when they turned in the direction she indicated the person staring in at Karly Vickers through the glass partition was Steve Morgan.
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“No law enforcement agent can legally talk to the boy without a parent or guardian present,” Dixon said. “I’ve got everyone looking for Frank, but no sign of him. And no sign of Mrs. Farman, either.”
They stood in the coffee room watching De
A
Vince had come for her, catching her just as she had been leaving the house to go grocery shopping. There she had been, trying to do one normal thing, and suddenly an FBI agent was asking her to come to the sheriff’s office to speak to her student who had allegedly knifed two kids in the park.
She was begi
“I’ve called Child Protective Services, but Vince suggested you’re probably more qualified than anyone to try to communicate with him,” Dixon said. “You certainly know him better than anyone here.”
Detective Hicks had called with the names of the two children De
“I’m not qualified for this,” she said. “I can handle a fight on the playground. But this…”
“You’re more qualified than any of the rest of us, A
A
“He knifed a ten-year-old boy,” Vince said. “How much worse could you make it?”
A
“All right.”
She went into the hall with Vince, then took a deep breath and let it out as he opened the door to the interview room for her.
“I’m right out here if you need me,” he whispered.
A
De
“De
“I know something really bad happened today. I don’t know exactly why.” Her voice was gentle, quiet, the kind of voice she might use to tell a bedtime story or confess an i
He lifted his head then and looked at her. A bruise was spreading across his left cheek, blackening the skin beneath his eye. Coagulated blood knit together his swollen lower lip.
“When can I go home?”
The question was stu
“De
“Just Cody,” he said, as if Cody Roache was no more important to him than a toy he had broken.
A
“I’m so sorry, De
“What’ll happen to me?” he asked.
As horrible as his crime was, A
“The sheriff is trying to find your mom so she can come and be with you,” she said. “Do you know where she might be?”
He looked up at her for the first time since she had walked in.
“She’s dead,” he said without emotion. Then he looked past her to the glass inset in the door.
A
“He killed her.”
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“I thought the rules up here were: authorized perso
Morgan turned and looked at him. “Detective. Jane needed a break. Or, I should say, I made her take a break. She’s down the hall in the family room resting. She made me promise to stand here and come get her if anything changed.”
“Miss Vickers’s family hasn’t arrived yet?” Hicks asked.
“Not yet.” He turned and looked at the girl in the bed again. “It didn’t seem right to just leave her. That doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, she doesn’t know we’re standing here. She’s not aware of anything at all as far as we know.”
“Or maybe she’s playing it all through her mind,” Mendez suggested. “What happened to her, who did this to her. And if she can just fight her way up through the fog, she’ll tell us everything.”
“What are the odds she’ll remember anything?” Morgan asked. “The doctor said it’ll be a miracle if she survives at all. I wouldn’t hang your hat on getting the story from her.”
“But here’s the thing with my job, Mr. Morgan,” Mendez said. “Even dead victims tell their stories, one way or another. It just takes longer.”
“You always get your man? We’ll all hope so.”
“We’ll have to spell you here, Mr. Morgan,” Hicks said. “You’re needed in the ER.”
They accompanied Steve Morgan to the ER and hung back at the edge of the Morgan family drama. Sara Morgan had arrived to comfort her daughter. The parents managed to hide all but the edge of the tension between them as they let Wendy take center stage and tell her story.
Mendez answered what questions he could as to what would happen to De
The doctor informed them that Wendy could go home. She had a badly bruised sternum and ribs, but considering what had happened to Cody Roache, she was a lucky girl.