Powell Elementary was a substantial brick building in an otherwise quiet residential area, sunken a bit such that Blair could easily survey the grounds as they parked near the playground and got out of the truck. The playground was directly accessible from what Blair guessed were four classrooms, presumably for the youngest kids; the building jagged in and out, allowing each of these rooms to have windows facing two directions. A 5' wooden fence separated the playground, on one side, from a large athletic field, on the other the sidewalk and street they'd parked on. There were no trees, but the area near the field was grassy, with bushes right along the fence. The area near the street was paved, with painted foursquare courts and a few tetherball poles. There were two gates: one was located near the building, so that one could exit the playground and walk between the school and the athletic field toward the main doors; the other opened onto the street.
Though it was a Saturday, they were greeted at the street gate (which bore a poster with a picture of Kenny Yates) by a woman in her late 40's whose attire - a fire-engine red polyester suit, cream-colored blouse, and low brown pumps - was meant to be recognizable from a distance and to project authority to people with no fashion sense. In other words, it screamed 'Vice Principal'. The woman identified herself as Mrs. Morris - apparently, people who dealt with small children were no more likely to possess first names in the 90's than they had been in the 70's. Well, except, of course, for Naomi, Blair mused. His mother had always been "Naomi," not "mom", never "Ms. Sandburg" to anyone.
"It's so upsetting," said the woman. "Everyone just thinks the world of Kenny."
"Do you know him?" asked Blair.
"I try to know all our children."
"Is anyone available who was out with Kenny's class on Wednesday?" Jim asked.
"No, I was told that wouldn't be necessary. They've all talked to the police," said Mrs. Morris.
"That's fine," said Jim. "I've read their statements, I was just hoping for some help with logistics. Could you tell us what happened, as you understand it, for my partner?"
"Certainly," she said. "The first graders have lunch at 11, then recess from 11:30 to noon. Their teachers aren't with them during lunch, but join them in the cafeteria at the end of the lunch period. Several children say they ate lunch with Kenny, and Mrs. Jones - that's his teacher - is pretty sure he was with her class when they came out to play. But, it was such a nice day that the children came directly to the playground from the cafeteria, through that other gate, instead of going through their classroom to get jackets or whatever, and so she didn't ever line them up at the door alphabetically; if she'd done that, she says she's sure she would have noticed if a child had gone missing. She's feeling terribly guilty about this, I assure you, though I'm sure this doesn't mean the school is - um - liable..."
"What about a lunch box or back pack?" asked Blair.
"Kenny gets a subsidized lunch, so he wouldn't have had anything like that with him."
"And when did someone notice Kenny was missing?" asked Jim.
"Not until the children were back in their classroom. The Kindergarteners come out for a brief time at noon, and it's very chaotic, with two classes of first graders heading inside and two classes of Kindergarteners coming out. The teachers try to do a count, but sometimes it's safest all around to just get inside quickly. Some of our Kindergarteners are only four, you know, though the board of education votes on moving the Kindergarten birthday cutoff to September 1 next month in fact. And some come to us with such poor impulse control! You really don't want them mixing too much with older children, bigger children..."
Some day, Blair suspected, he'd find that sort of monologue fascinating. Not today. "They said all the gates were closed?" he interrupted.
"That's our policy," said Mrs. Morris.
"Do children ever try to wander off?" asked Jim.
"No. We always have three adults out here, so that if a child needs anything someone can walk with them back into the building."
"Three adults?" asked Blair. "That's a pretty good ratio."
"We get that by having two classes out at once, plus one of our aids."
"My niece is in Kindergarten," said Jim. "She talks about walking to the office with a buddy."
"Well, we DO allow the kids to walk in the hallways. But not from the playground into the school. I can assure you that we would notice a child going out one of the gates. And ABSOLUTELY no strange adult would be able to get NEAR any of the children out here."
They walked around the climbing structure, then over to the bushes. Blair had immediately wondered if there might be footprints around the bushes - there were, dozens, from as many different types of shoes. "If a kid WANTED to skip out of school, could he maybe hide here, do you think?" asked Blair.
"That's the first thing every police officer has asked," said Mrs. Morris. "If Kenny was twelve, I'd believe it. Though a 12-year-old could just not come to school, and leave us out of things entirely. But that's not how a first grader acts."
"Theoretically, though..."
"These bushes aren't that thick, in any event," she said. Jim turned and smiled.
"Mrs. Morris, you've been a great help. We'll look around out here a while, but don't feel you need to stay with us."
Mrs. Morris' answering smile was not quite as broad; clearly, she didn't like being dismissed from her own domain. "I'll head up to my office then for a bit," she said. "It's right upstairs, overlooking the playground. Call me if you need me."
"Um... and you didn't see anyone from up there acting suspicious on Wednesday?" Blair had to ask.
"I am seldom in my office during school hours, Mr. Sandburg! But no, I didn't see anything." She paused. "What - what are the chances of Kenny being found alive, do you think?"
"I think they are excellent," said Jim.
She searched his face and seemed to see something she liked; her smile became more genuine.
As she left the playground, they returned to the bushes.
"Maybe if you try to smell him..." Blair suggested.
"Unless he's a tom cat, Chief, I'm not going to be able to pick him out."
"Maybe if you try to separate out..."
"I'm separating. Three different cats."
"Ugh."
"Maybe four. And a collie."
"You can tell dog breeds by their scent? That's - that's - that could be another chapter, man! Or maybe an article for a paying mag-"
"I can tell COLLIES. Only collies."
"Oh."
"Anyway, there have probably been a hundred kids through here too, and even if Kenny hid here three days ago there's no reason to suspect it was for more than a minute or two."
"Oh... I was guessing that he would have waited for his class to head in, then slipped out."
"I'm betting he dived in here as they came through the gate, or maybe hung behind a little, then slipped out before the teachers got themselves organized."
"That's a pretty advanced plan for a six-year-old," said Blair.
"I'm betting he saw something, or someone, he wanted to see, out on the street as his class was walking to the playground. He then just looked for a chance and took it," said Jim. "No real planning involved."
Blair looked around the playground again. "Scaling the fence might have been possible, but that would have been noticed."
"Yeah, same with going out the gate we came in," said Jim. "But a quick kid could dart out the gate, hug the fence on the other side, and be on the street and in a car in about 20 seconds if he wanted to be."
Blair looked toward the building; the jagged profile also might have afforded Kenny some shelter, but he was becoming more convinced that Jim had nailed the method of Kenny's escape. Two floors above, he saw Mrs. Morris looking down at them. He suddenly felt more sympathy toward her than he'd thought it possible to feel for someone wearing fire-engine red polyester. If only she'd been in her office on Wednesday. If only she'd been looking out the window.
While at the school, Blair had forgotten about Kenny's ball and about the woman in white. Looking back at the playground, though, he could almost imagine there being a large oak try right in the middle, where the climbing structure was. And a swing set and merry-go-round. A single classroom door opened into the shady playground. He was running out the door and Naomi was waiting for him.
No, not Naomi. He'd really wanted it to be Naomi, but it was Mommy instead. "...Chief? I asked, are you going to buckle up or not?"
Jim was shaking his shoulder; Blair hoped Jim couldn't feel him vibrating inside his jacket. That memory so did NOT make sense. He remembered preschool well - a pilot Head Start program in an adobe building in downtown San Antonio. No big trees. So there couldn't have been some other Mommy woman. Okay, now he felt better. Making up extended family in times of stress was something he'd done a lot as a child. Though usually he didn't bother to invent a mother because that's the one position he had covered.
"Blair?"
"Oh, uh..." Blair realize d they were still idling at the curb. His buckle. Cops on TV never put on seatbelts. And they never, ever refused to move before all passengers were buckled in. Maybe some day he should ask Jim about that.
After he figured out how to get the belt fastened with hands which had inexplicably traded all their fingers for thumbs, Jim seemed content to let him be. In fact, Jim seemed almost giddy. "This one's going to end well," he said.
"What makes you think so?"
"Because there's no way stranger abduction's involved."
"If a member of his dad's gang has him..."
"To what end? And, besides, Arlene told me she's had no contact with them, beyond the gifts, which she says were anonymous."
"She could be protecting someone."
"Blair, give my lie-detection skills a LITTLE credit, would you? It has to be Jimmy that Kenny saw."
"The kid hasn't seen his dad in three years."
"But there are pictures of him all over his house. And kids have great memories. They make lousy witnesses because they mix everything up and throw in flying ponies, but I've been astounded by some of the things Stephen's girls have recalled."
"Maybe a school employee grabbed him on the way out of the cafeteria," said Blair.
"You had to say that, didn't you, Chief?"
"Well, you guys are checking that out, right?"
"We've been checking everything," Jim growled, lapsing into silence. Well, at least he was letting Blair be.
That evening, Blair was grateful that Jim had a date. A second date, at that. With an incredibly beautiful woman, back in town after touring for months, who 'd just won a Grammy. Jim seemed almost disappointed that Blair didn't bother to tease him. He couldn't spare the energy, though - he had to figure out who the woman in white was. She'd gone way beyond playing catch and picking him up from preschool - he could imagine her giving him a bath, yelling at him to wipe his feet, even her showing him how to do something odd with his hands before sliding on a long wooden sofa in a large room with lots of people and very pretty windows. THAT one was just too weird. But he remembered going to mass once with a friend from Junior High and how he'd somehow known what to do, and hadn't known how he'd known.
After an hour of lying on his futon trying to clear his head and let the images come, he muttered, "let's hear it for nationwide roaming," and called Naomi on her cell phone.
After five minutes of listening to Naomi expound on how Charlie Spring (who, to Blair's astonishment, she hadn't dumped yet) had had a premonition that Blair would call, in fact she'd left her phone on for just that reason, and wasn't it lovely that she and Charlie were getting on so well and how Charlie couldn't stop talking about him, Blair finally broke in with "who's Jakie?"
Silence. Shit.
"I said, who's Jakie? Was I ever called Jakie?"
"Of course not, Blair."
"Did I ever have a friend named Jacob?"
"Really, Blair, how should I know?"
Which was a perfectly reasonable answer. But her initial silence had damned her. And now Blair knew that he was going about this all wrong, that Naomi was going to snow him, and, not being able to see her face, he'd have no idea what was truth, what invention.
"I saw something today that made me remember some stuff. From before we lived in San Antonio."
"Blair, you were so little when we lived in Texas. You were just over three when we moved there."
"I remember writing my middle name on a ball. Before Texas."
"Well, you were always very advanced, dear! I even entered some of your art in a contest at the Sears on Market Street. You remember that stuffed walrus you won?"
"Naomi..."
"What sort of ball? I remember you had this collection of super balls..."
"That's completely beside the point! Why did I write my middle name on ANYTHING? Who... did I have a babysitter that took care of me a lot? A Jackie Kennedy clone?"
"OH!" exclaimed Naomi, and Blair braced himself for what he knew would be, at best, an explanation made of half-truths. "You're remembering Janice Paulson. She had a son just your age. Poor little Jacob. I was waitressing, and she watched you quite a bit. And I watched Jacob. Until," and she sighed, "the accident."
"What happened?" Blair asked, hoping what he was about to hear was a lie.
"He was run over in a supermarket parking lot. They said he died quickly."
"Shit."
"You two had been so close. But, at three, you were too young to understand anything. It's - I'm afraid I wasn't a very good friend to Janice. I couldn't take the way she obsessed about you, after Jacob died. It was one of the reasons we moved away. If there's anything uneasy in your memories of Janice, I'm sure it's because you picked up on her grief, or maybe on my anxiety. You've always been so sensitive, which is why I really don't like you living with Jim..."
"Why don't I remember Jacob?"
"I'm sure you're repressing, darling. Just like you've repressed Janice."
"Why did I call her Mommy?"
"That was so cute. I was Mommy-Nomi and Janice was Mommy-Jani. After - well, after we moved, I tried to get you to drop the Nomi, and you dropped the Mommy instead."
"Why did she take me to church with her?"
"About a month after Jacob died, she watched you a few times. Her behavior just wasn't normal, though, like I said. Taking you to church without my knowledge or permission was the final straw. Not that I was opposed to you experiencing different cultures, of course!"
"Uh... thanks," said Blair.
"I'm sorry this is upsetting you so much, darling."
It was eerie how well she knew how to play him. He wasn't going to get anywhere. Or, maybe Naomi was being completely truthful?
"I'm sorry, Naomi, you're right, this is sort of throwing me for a loop. Say, where are you, anyway?"
"Actually, darling, we're heading up to the cabin in Alpine Falls for the week! We'll be there later this evening. If you hadn't called by 9, I was going to call you from there. When are you free?"
Alpine Falls! He could have just driven out to the mountain cabin Naomi co-owned, and gotten facts instead of - whatever it was she was spinning.
After promising to call when his calendar was in front of him, Blair hung up. Naomi had let slip one possibly-important bit of information. He'd heard about the origins of Petey the Walrus, long since passed along to a cousin, before - how he'd won it for a self-portrait he'd done in conjunction with the opening of a Sears photo studio. He'd figured it had been when they'd lived in San Antonio. But, Naomi had specifically said that it had been at the Sears on Market Street. Meaning, they'd been living in Cascade. He'd always known he'd been born in Cascade, and lived with his grandparents in the Heights right after he was born, but he'd always assumed (and Naomi had always implied) that they'd moved out of state when he was a baby, presumably after some big fight - his only memories of his grandparents were from when they moved back to Cascade when he was 11, so that they could be near them as they both struggled with, and eventually died from, cancer.
All this was based on the assumption that Naomi really was his mother. She just had to be! They were so much alike. And, if she wasn't - then, who was she? Had she, perhaps, been the neighbor, the favorite babysitter who'd lost a child? In other words, was his whole life a lie? Had his real mother been in mourning for him for the past 25 years - mired in grief, waiting for a knock on her door - while he'd played love child to a hippy flower child?
TBC