The Ones Midas Touched

Lauren's Lullaby

I think Truman gave us his case just to get us out of the office. It was a rookie level assignment, really, but after our last case, we were drained. It had struck a nerve in just about all of the agents, and no one envied our assignment. A teacher had abused and driven one of his students, a young girl who happened to be a telepath, to suicide. It was a touchy issue for everyone involved and even the media seemed reluctant to print the story at first. Of course, what tiny shred of courtesy and respect for the dead they had was quickly pushed to the side when they realized that they'd struck gold as far as news stories go. I think Sasha still has a reporter dogging him about the case.

It had hit me pretty hard. Cases with children always affect those in law enforcement a certain way, and I won't deny that this one caused old memories to resurface. Memories best left forgotten. They emerged with a vengeance when we discovered the little girl's diary three months after she killed herself. By then it was too late. Politics had gotten in the way of the case--a teacher murdering a student was one thing, but most people doubted that a teacher would convince a child--a psychic child, no less--to kill themselves.

I only read through it once. Those words still haunt me. I simply couldn't get them out of my head. Sasha seemed concerned, in his own way, and told me that it wasn't healthy to dwell on it. (Ironic. Sasha telling me I was doing something unhealthy.) But I couldn't help it. If we had only found that diary sooner, we would have had time to mount a stronger case and put that monster behind bars.

February 24, 2001

I know they're there. I can hear them at night just before I go to sleep, and there's so many of them. They don't talk loudly or scream or shout, really. There's just this constant buzz of conversation, like you're in the middle of a busy street or something, catching bits and pieces of conversations between a bunch of people. No matter what I do during those brief moments, I can't shut out their voices. Sometimes, it gets so bad that I go without sleep for a few days, so when I finally do go to bed, I'll be too exhausted to hear them. That's pretty rare, though, and I'm not really scared by it.

I get scared when one of them screams out in anger. The nightmares always come whenever that happens.

March 1, 2001

Mr. Brooks looked at me oddly today. I don't know how to describe it. I remember once my brother and I were walking down the street and we saw this starving dog foaming at the mouth, mad with disease. That's what Mr. Brooks looked like. I told my brother and he said that the dog was probably the smarter of the two. I laughed at that; Mr. Brooks is too mean to be stupid.

The voices said bad things about him. They said he hurts little girls.

It was her final entry, however, that chilled me to the bones. The clairvoyants refuse to even touch the paper it was written on. The last one who tried became physically ill and had to be taken to the infirmary.

March 26, 2001

It was a simple question. Just something I had to ask to get them to shut up. He told me to stay after class, and I did. I figured he'd answer my question then. Why did he hit me? I didn't do anything to him! My ears won't stop ringing.

I can't go to sleep. There's too much noise.

April 10, 2001

I'm sorry, Mr. Brooks. I didn't mean to tell them. That detective was so nice...and the dark haired lady, she reminded me of mommy. The voices made me do it...they wouldn't be quiet! They said I could trust them. I didn't know they'd take you away. You were right, Mr. Brooks. I'm too stupid to know when to keep my mouth shut.

But you can't talk without a tongue.

The voices are strangely silent tonight. Maybe they've lost their tongues, too.

By the time we found this, Ronald Brooks had been cleared of all charges and gone into hiding, possibly even fleeing the country. Some of the other agents speculate he was aided by a radical anti-psychic organization, the Agency Against Psychic Entities, better known as the AAPE (the phrase "Damn, dirty apes!" is almost always said in conjunction with the name, thanks to Morceau's twisted sense of humor). Others say he was 'taken care of'' by some psychics from the underground.

Either way it didn't matter. We failed to bring him to justice; we failed little Lauren by letting her killer get away.