“You are the only one I know who smiles at the gloomy gray.”
“Lots of reasons to smile at the Vancouver sky.”
“Maybe, but it’s usually not chilly weather that people smile about.”
“Who said I’m smiling about that now either?”
He didn’t have an answer for that.
At the hospital, she walked in and talked to the receptionist, got a room number, and headed to the stairs.
“We might see the parents here,” he said.
“I highly doubt the parents left,” she said. And, sure enough, as she shoved her hands into her pockets to walk down the last little bit of the hallway, she shut down on the inside as she prepared to see the little boy. The father stood outside, rubbing his exhausted face. At least she assumed that was his father.
When he looked up and saw them, he frowned immediately.
She reached out a hand and identified herself. “I’m the one who found your son last night.”
Immediately the thundercloud in his face cleared, and he threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Thank you, thank you,” he whispered brokenly. “Oh my God, we are so grateful to have him back.”
She gently disentangled herself. “How is he doing?”
He shook his head. “The doctors don’t know. He keeps screaming, so they have him lightly sedated,” he said. “He is a little bit awake, but he drifts off to sleep really fast. It’s funny but not funny in a way. It’s just, whenever he is fully awake, he screams again.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I do have some questions to ask of you.”
His shoulders shrugged, and he nodded slowly. “Of course,” he said, “the trouble is, I wish you could answer my questions. Like what was he doing on that street corner?” He raised his hands in disgust. “Anybody could have got him there.”
She stopped, gave herself a headshake.Maybe that was the point.But that was another whole discussion she wanted to sort out in her head. Because this ugly impression was going on in her mind, she didn’t quite understand it. “I need to ask you, did you recognize the clothing he was in?”
“Yes, of course. Although the big sweater wrapped around him wasn’t his.”
“And did the police come and take away all the clothing?”
He nodded. “They said they needed it to check over for forensic evidence.”
“And I presume they checked him over too?”
He winced. “They went over his body, with a fine-tooth comb, magnifying glass, and tweezers. That was absolutely degrading.”
She reached out a hand, gripped his with hers, and said, “But remember. It’s important. If we find just one hair,… we might find the person who did this.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “But investigators do that to a dead body, not to my little son,” he said, tearing up. He sat down on the bench outside the room, outside the window in the door, and motioned at Kate. “My wife is inside.” He sobbed and just curled up and cried.
Leaving him alone, she rapped lightly, then she stepped inside. A woman stood, looked over at her. And Kate explained again who she was. The mother began to cry gently. “Thank you for finding him,” she whispered. “We’ve been just so lost.”
Kate walked closer and looked down at the little boy. He was sleeping lightly. She reached out a hand and gently stroked a curl off his temple.
“They didn’t seem to have hurt him,” his mother said anxiously, “but we haven’t had a full report from the doctor.”
Kate looked at her. “He was quite bloody when I brought him in,” she said. “I don’t know the extent or what damage was caused or even if it was his blood that he was covered in.” She wished to God it wasn’t, but she highly suspected that the sexual assault she already had confirmed had been a large part of it.
“And then there is, you know, that other part that they did to him,” the mother said, motioning at her son’s lower body, “but he could just forget about that.”
Kate stared at her, wondering how that was even possible. She hoped, for the little boy’s sake, that he could grow up and forget about what had been done to him. But she highly doubted he would walk away from it as quickly and as calmly as the mother thought.
Just then, the little boy’s eyes opened; he looked at his mom and frowned a little bit. Started to whimper. She reached over to him immediately, calming him down—or trying to. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Mum is here.”