Just one theory, but after last night, a theory with a bit more tooth... (And yes, I am watching TOO much Guardian..)
Tyger Tyger
Chicago, Illinois, October 1975
Laurie Bell sighed as she pulled up to the brownstone this one last time. It was in one of the nicer districts of Chicago, not affluent but certainly not poor. The outside of the house was well-maintained and nice enough - red brick, black iron, grey steps. In the summer, there were usually two bikes, one small blue two-wheeler, one red trike, but it was winter, and the new snow was covering everything. Except for the yellow tape and police cars. But even the police cars were getting a dusting.
She'd been here several times before, and it had never been pleasant. But then again, her job so rarely was. Common law couple. Matthew John Partridge, a mean-spirited beat cop with the Chicago PD, and Annie Wills, exotic dancer, snake charmer, part-time bartender, painter, poet, would-be attorney. She had been in college off and on in the few years Laurie had known her. Smart woman, very smart. As talented as any woman Laurie knew, if not more so. Annie could do anything she put her hand to, except pick a man worth her time. Annie had terrible, terrible taste in men.
She locked her car and stepped out into the snow, flashing her credentials at the cop standing by the door.
"Laurie Bell, Children's Services."
The cop nodded and lifted the tape. She slipped under it and into the house.
There were bookshelves on almost every wall, books piled up in corners, tipping in stacks on the floors. It was always this way – Annie loved to read, and her six-year-old son had picked up on it. She had rarely seen the boy without some book or another. The younger one was always drawing or finger painting, usually on walls. Annie didn't seem to mind. She thought it fostered the boy's creativity. Naturally, their walls were a mess.
She peered through the crush of officers, milling bout, taking photos, making notes, trying to fit in the small kitchen. She saw it immediately, as if her eyes were drawn to it, the trail of red leading across the linoleum floor, and a man's shoe sitting in a puddle. She looked away. Truly the worst part of her job.
"Laurie…" A man spied her through the crowd and made his way over. It was Det. Sergeant Bill Russell, Homicide Division. "Thanks for coming."
"What happened? I thought she had an injunction against him?"
"She did. From the looks of it, he was coming back for something, maybe to take his son, we don't know. There's a couple of bags packed in his truck. Looks like Annie tries to stop him, he stabs her repeatedly with a butcher knife, then puts blows his own head off with his police issue weapon."
She sighed. It didn't get much worse than an angry cop.
"What about the boys?"
"They're fine. At least, they seem to be."
"Did they see any of this?"
"Probably. There are kids' bloody hand and footprints all over the kitchen, and an interruption in the spatter pattern. And then… there's this…"
He led her into the kitchen, weaving his way in between the uniforms and lab coats crowding the area. She tried not to look at them, this man and woman lying in contorted poses on the ground, but it was impossible not too. There was simply so much blood.
Russell stopped and she looked down.
Painted on the floor in a pool of red was a happy face, eyes, smile and big round head. Obviously the work of a child's finger, for it was tiny and tentative and sad. It broke her heart.
The same face was painted on a few of the kitchen cupboards and the back door, with less and less blood each time, as if the child were making his way out of the kitchen and down the back stairs.
"That would be Brett," she sighed. "He's always painting smiley faces. Where are they?"
"Downstairs. They're hiding."
Laurie looked up sharply. "Has anyone—"
Russell held up his hands. "No, no. We thought we'd wait for you. Maybe you can talk 'em out. I don't want them any more scared than they are now."
"Are they hurt?"
"Don't seem to be. They're squished in a cold cellar pretty good."
Her heart sank and she followed him down the steep steps and into the basement.
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The brownstone was almost a hundred years old, and the basement was unfinished, just stone, cardboard boxes and cement. The cold cellar was just a remnant of a bygone era, and it was barely large enough to hold a bag of potatoes, let alone two small boys. But they had pressed themselves as far back as they could, and as she shone the flashlight into the narrow space, she could see them curled up on each other like puppies.
She could see Brett moving behind his half-brother, quietly picking at the blood on his fingers, using the flakes to draw imaginary faces on the black wall of the cellar. He was a sweet-looking boy, with straight brown hair and blue-grey eyes and, of the two, he was the quiet one. Smart, articulate but painfully shy, he lived in a world of his own for the most part, drawing and painting pictures on any given surface. Being only four, it had been hard to pinpoint his needs, likes and dislikes, and while the bruises, hairline fractures and cigarette burns on his brother had been easy to identify, signs of abuse with Brett were deeply hidden emotional ones. It remained to be seen how he might handle this. His face was smeared with red.
His half-brother Patrick was all of six, and he had the face of an angel. White blond hair and quick blue eyes, he was usually a chatterbox, and he could hold a conversation with an adult with ease. He loved to read, loved magic tricks, marbles and coins, and dragged around a stuffed duck given to him by his birth father, a carnie worker whose name was somewhere in the file. He was still holding the duck, but it was no longer yellow. There was blood spatter on his cheek and nose, and he was staring at her with glassy eyes.
"Hi there," she smiled at them from the door. "Do you remember me? My name is Laurie. I'm a friend of your mother's." Technically not true. She was the boys' social worker. She had investigated abuse charges on more than one occasion, removed them from the home once before. She liked Annie, sure enough, wanted to do anything to help support her choices, but there had been no friendship involved. It was her job, nothing more.
Naturally, there was no answer. The boy named Patrick continued to stare, the boy named Brett continued to paint. She sat on the floor and crossed her legs. Russell waited nearby with a paramedic team, just in case.
"Can you come out? Would that be alright with you? Because I can't come in. I won't fit. I'm too big."
Patrick seemed to push his brother just a little bit further back. Brett, for his part, didn't seem to notice.
"What are you painting, Brett?"
Brett said nothing. He rarely did. He could talk – he wasn't autistic – he simply chose not to. When he did, however, he was a complex child, speaking in layers upon layers with minimal words, and sometimes poetry. Completely unlike his half-brother who usually talked non-stop and who had already begun learning Spanish and some Latin from his mother's law texts. Laurie had wanted to have them both tested, but Matthew Partridge had refused.
"Faces," said the boy named Patrick quietly. He was still staring at her with glassy eyes, but they were aimed at her, as if seeing right through her. "He's drawing faces. He always draws faces."
She smiled. The boy was missing his front teeth, and it made a little lisp when he said his s's. She hoped it was a natural loss, baby teeth falling out, adult teeth growing in, not a loss from an adult fist going where it never should.
"Yes," Laurie said, smiling. "He does, doesn't he? And you always do magic tricks. Can you show me a magic trick, Patrick?"
His blue eyes flicked away and she could tell that he was thinking. He looked back at her.
"I don't have any coins."
It sounded like 'cointh'. She fished in her pockets, pulled out a quarter. "Will this do?"
He swallowed and she could tell that he was tempted. She angled it so that it flashed in the dim light.
"Show me the one where you make it disappear and then pull it out of my ear. I love that one."
He bit his lip, looked back at his brother again.
"It's okay. Brett can stay there," she said. "He's busy drawing faces."
And to her great relief, the boy nodded and began to crawl forward. She could feel Russell and his team tense behind her, made a motion with her hand, waving them back. Patrick knelt in front of her, pushed the duck between his knees and plucked the quarter from her hand. Held it up in his little fingers so she could well and truly see, and suddenly, with a waggle, it was gone.
She gasped, impressed. He reached his small hand up to her ear, pulled it back. No coin.
"Hm," he said, but there was mischief in his eyes and she had to smile. He reached up to the other one. Again, no coin.
"That's strange," he said. It sounded like th-trange. "Where could it be?"
Behind him, Brett began to giggle.
"Brett, do you know where my coin went?"
More giggling.
"Wait a minute…" Patrick closed his eyes, wrinkled his nose. "Ah…ah…ah…choo!"
And in his hand, there was a coin.
Brett was giggling uncontrollably now, but he was also rocking. Not a good sign.
"Brett likes gross things," said Patrick, smiling. "He killed this cockroach once. Pulled all its legs off, then its antennae, then its three-segmented body. Do you know that all insects have a three-segmented body? Head, thorax and abdomen. Well, not all insects. Most insects do, but I don't know all the insects that don't. Anyway, all the pieces were twitching and they weren't even connected anymore. It was gross." He turned to look at his brother again. "That's why mom won't let us get a cat."
All said with a toothless lisp.
Brett continued rocking but his giggles slowly stopped. Young Patrick looked back at her. "I guess we can get a cat now, yeh?"
It broke her heart. "Maybe," she said softly. "Maybe."
"He stabbed her four times. There was a lot of blood. Brett likes blood but I don't. I don't think we should get a cat."
Again, she could feel Russell move behind her. The boys were technically witnesses to a murder/suicide. Their testimony was crucial. She swallowed, wading into these deep waters. "Who stabbed her, Patrick? Who stabbed your mother?"
"Mr. Partridge. He wasn't supposed to be here but he was. He came back."
"Mr. Partridge."
"My step-dad. My real dad lives at the circus. My mom told me that. I believe her. I have lots of books about the circus. Do you know it's a Latin word based on a Greek one? It means circle ring. I read about that in my Discover the Circus book. I don't know what he does. Maybe he does magic tricks, like me?"
"Would you like to live with your dad, Patrick?"
The boy frowned, slid his eyes back toward his brother, no longer painting or rocking, but bumping his forehead against the black wall of the cellar.
"Can Brett come too?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"I don't think he would like the circus."
She smiled sadly. The boy was intuitive. They were only half brothers. The only thing that kept them together was being tagged and bagged in the kitchen upstairs.
"I don't think he would, either." She sighed, rolled onto her knees. "It's kind of cold down here. Do you want to come out now?"
He stared at her and she could see him folding in on himself. Tears had begun to well up behind his blue eyes.
"It's alright, honey. It's safe now. Can you please come out?"
He nodded, blinked the tears away and reached back to tap Brett on the shoulder before crawling out of the cellar on hands and knees. The four-year-old followed him like a puppy. She resisted the urge to bundle them both in her arms. It was frequently counter-productive in trauma cases like this. But little Brett held up his bloody hands to her, so she did, propped him on one hip, and took Patrick's hand in the other. Together, they made their way up the steep steps and past the kitchen.
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Chicago, Illinois, December 1975
She wove her way into the Children's Shelter looking for their room. It was a packed house this close to Christmas, and decorations were everywhere. They had been assigned a room with three other boys, but it was snowing, so most of them were outside at the moment, making snowmen and snowforts and throwing snowballs at each other. Good fun, no matter where you found it.
She pushed open the door, spied her two charges sitting on the floor, doing what they loved to do best. Patrick was crosslegged, reading to his brother from a very old book, and Brett was on his stomach, drawing. There was a pile of crayons at his side, all discarded save for the reds.
She paused to listen as the young boy read.
"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?
What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"
All read with a lisp.
"Read it again. Read it again."
"Oh no. I'm tired. Let me see your tiger."
Little Brett slid the picture over.
"Oh that's good," said his brother. "You should put some stripes on him."
Brett pulled it back and went to work, the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth.
"May I see?" asked Laurie as she moved into the room. Patrick glanced up and smiled, the cusps of his adult teeth barely visible in his gums. Brett didn't look up at all, a fact that did not surprise her. She knelt down to peer over his shoulder.
"It's a tiger," said Patrick. "But not really. It's just a happy face with four sticks that are supposed to be legs and a stick for a tail. I said it needed some stripes. What do you think?"
"Stripes would be good," she said smiling. "Boys, I need to talk to you for a moment."
Patrick looked up at her, blue eyes innocent and eager. Brett did not.
"Patrick, do you remember how we talked about you going to live with your father?"
"In the circus?"
"Yes, in the circus. Well, we haven't been able to find him yet…"
"Most North American circuses move around a lot."
She smiled.
"I read that in my book."
"Yes, so it's just taking some time to find him. That's all. I'm sure he's out there. We just have to keep trying."
The boy nodded, innocent and eager.
"But Brett, well, his grandparents are going to take him, remember?"
"I remember."
She took a deep breath. "They're here now. To take him."
"Oh."
"So, I need to pack up some of his things. They're going to take him in a few minutes."
"And where am I going to go?"
"You'll have to stay here until we find your dad."
"Oh."
She could see it beginning to dawn on him what she was saying. The shrinking of his shoulders, the glazing of his eyes, the folding in on himself. She had seen it all before, a hundred different cases, a hundred different kids. It broke her heart everytime.
She rubbed his arm. "But it's only for a while. Until we find your dad..."
He said nothing. He was almost gone.
The door opened and an older couple shuffled in. They were holding a duffle bag.
"Brett?"
Brett did not look up.
"Brett," urged Laurie. "Your grandparents are here."
The boy continued to draw.
"His dresser is that one," said Laurie. "The bottom drawer is his, isn't it Patrick?"
The boy sitting next to her nodded. As the grandfather stuffed clothes and the grandmother fawned over her little artist, she reached an arm around Patrick, tried to give him some of her warmth, but he had become very small and still in her arms. She knew he was feeling very little of anything at all.
And for his part, Brett was still happily working on his smiling tiger.
It took only a few minutes and it was done, a boy's life packed away in a bag the size of a bread box. The grandparents stood beaming. The grandmother was a tall woman, leathery face, dyed orange hair, red lips. A smoker, Laurie could tell. It showed on the teeth and fingertips. The grandfather was thin, his grey hair slicked back, eyes like flint. He was a cop, like his son had been. It terrified Laurie to know that the abuse had likely not started with Matthew. There was nothing she could do.
"Okay, Brett. Time to go, son."
Brett said nothing, merely worked on carefully adding one more stripe.
Laurie smiled down at him. "Brett, honey, it's time to go."
And still, the boy did not move.
Laurie sighed. "Patrick…"
"You have to go now, Brett."
The boy gathered his crayons and his red crayon tiger and scrambled over to where his grandparents were standing. They looked up at the social worker.
"We've signed everything at the desk, so…we're good?"
She nodded. "Yeah, you're good."
They held open the door. "Say goodbye, Brett."
Clutching his crayons to his chest, Brett trotted out the door without saying a word.
A fact that did not surprise her.
And she sat for a while longer, holding the little boy with the face of an angel.
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Marietta, Ohio March 1976
It had taken them months to locate the boy's father, a man by the name of Alexander Jane, and when they did, he was outside a town called Marietta. He did, in fact, work with a circus, a traveling carnival that moved from state to state across the Midwest. And it had taken several calls, most short at first, gradually growing longer, to get him even in the least bit interested in meeting his six-year-old son.
"The last time I seen him was when he turned one." Alex Jane was a handsome man, tall, broad-shouldered and smooth like cheap rum. He was wearing striped pants and a plaid shirt, but for some odd reason, it worked. "Wouldn't even recognize him now if he came up and bit me on the leg."
Laurie turned to her car. Patrick was looking out the opposite window, dazzled by the sights of the fairground. There were boxes of books in the trunk of her car.
"What's happened to Annie's other boy?"
"He's gone to stay with his grandparents, Partridge's mom and dad."
"I knew that cop was no good. She just ran off with him one night. Just packed up our boy and ran off. I'm sad she's dead, really I am, but tell me why I should pick up her pieces after she goes and does that to me?"
"Because one of those 'pieces' is your son, Mr. Jane, and he needs you."
Hands on hips, the man shrugged. "This is a carnival, Ms. Bell. It's show-biz, not Sesame Street. What do I know about kids?"
"He's a good boy. Smart. Very, very smart. Gifted, perhaps. Talkative, social, loves to read."
"I'm a carnie. I run a show."
"He does magic tricks."
Jane glanced up, as if something had suddenly clicked inside him.
"Would you like to meet him?"
He thought for a long while, chewed the inside of his cheek.
"Does he ever talk about what happened… to his mother?"
She looked at him now. It was an interesting question. "No, he doesn't. Not about his mother, or his brother. We've had him interviewed by numerous child psychologists but he's not talking. About everything else under the sun, but not that." She sighed. "It's a common coping mechanism with kids. They bury traumatic memories so deep that they are almost forgotten. But they are always there, under the surface. We never know how it affects them."
He stared at her and she could see the intelligence behind his eyes. He glanced at the car, the young head barely visible through the tinted windows. She could see the battle being waged, the remnants of something that might have, at one time, been beautiful, the glimmer of something else that might just be hope.
"Sure," he said quietly. "I'll meet him."
She walked back to the car, opened the door and the boy slid out, still holding the stuffed duck. It had been washed repeatedly, but that only succeeded in turning it a sickly orange. She saw Alexander Jane swallow and look away.
"Damn," he breathed. "He looks just like her."
The social worker and boy walked slowly up. He was so small next his father, so the man stooped down, draped his arms across his knees.
"Hi."
The boy said nothing.
"Nice duck."
The blue eyes flicked down. He hid the duck behind his back.
"If you're gonna live here, you're gonna have to work. Have you ever washed an elephant?"
The blue eyes grew round. He shook his head.
"Let me see your hands."
The duck dropped to the ground as the boy held out his hands. The man turned them over and over in his own. They were so small.
"And you gotta have good teeth. We have a dentist in Stillwater who brings his family and staff here for a day in exchange for services, but we only get there once a year. Can you handle that, boy?"
He nodded soberly.
"Let me see your teeth."
The boy bared his teeth, his front teeth finally in, strong and white. The big man nodded.
"Okay. Not bad. You need good teeth, son. It's important in our line of work."
The boy nodded again.
"Ms. Bell said you did magic tricks."
The eyes lowered. A smile began to play about on his face.
"Can you show me a magic trick, son?"
"But I don't have any coins…" His voice was very small.
Laurie Bell bit back a smile. That was a lie. The boy's pocket was full of coins. She'd given them to him herself.
"How about I give you a coin?"
"Okay. If you want to…"
Jane fished in his pocket, pulled out a quarter, passed it over to his son.
"Okay kid, show me what you got."
Young Patrick Jane lifted his eyes and smiled.
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Salsalito, California March 1976
Mrs. Helen Partridge bent down and scooped the tiny body in both hands.
"John!" she called. "John, there's another one!"
Her husband shuffled over to her side, frowned.
"That's the third one this week."
She turned the small body over and over in her hands. It was a yellow warbler. As its name implied it was bright yellow in colour, a common bird at her feeder. It's head lolled as she moved it, as if broken.
"It's Gertie's cat. I'm sure of it."
Her husband grunted. "Gertie hasn't seen that cat for weeks, dear."
"So what's killing all our birds?"
From the table, a young voice piped up.
"May I have a cat, Grandma?"
The couple turned toward the voice. A four-year-old boy was drawing at the kitchen table. He didn't look up.
"What's that, Brett?"
"A cat. My dad said that when I lived with him, I could have a cat."
"We'll see, Brett. We'll see. What are you drawing, son?"
He held up his picture. "My brother Patrick. He loves me. He'll come for me when he's growed up and we're gonna live together in Chicago."
They moved in close to see.
"Oh, that's very nice, Brett," sighed his grandmother. She had seen it all before. It had taken stringent methods to get the kid to stop drawing those damned faces on their walls. John snorted.
"Yeah, very nice. Do we have any beer left, Helen?"
"How the hell should I know, John? I'm not your mother."
In his very own world, young Brett Partridge bent back down to his drawing, a red smiley face with sad eyes and dripping smile and thought about cats and birds and the art of blood across a linoleum floor and couldn't wait for the day he'd grow up and be a man and rescue his brother from the horrible circus and be a hero.
The red crayon he was holding broke in half.
With a smile, he reached for another one.
The End