Lost Babies

3625 words
         
         
         Lost Babies
         
         
         -It wasn’t his death that was so disturbing; it was the circumstances. 
         Officer Chan and I were called to investigate the disappearance of a newborn baby.  It happens; it happens frequently in some bigger cities but it was the first time it had happened here. 
         Newborn.  Disappeared on the way back from the hospital… or perhaps it had been just after arriving home. 
         There were three adults and seven children living in the double-wide mobile home.  Mrs. Spears was sobbing, clutching a dishrag.  Mr. Spears was reclining on the tattered sofa, in boxers and a yellowed undershirt, scratching himself and fixated on Saturday morning cartoons with three of the smaller Spears draped over him.  Mrs. Bixby, the elderly mother of Mrs. Spears, was patting her daughter on the shoulder and trying to offer her a cup of tea.
         I looked around the dusky living room, scattered with tattered toys, various items of children’s clothing, beer bottles, oil-crummy dishes, TV guides, and garbage in various states of decay,  while Chan questioned the adults.  “What is your full name, please, Mrs. Spears?”
         Stifling sobs, “C-C-Carrie-Ann.  Carrie-Ann Spears.”
         The windows were covered with tin foil and shaded with 30-year-old curtains, which matched the low-pile carpet, fraying at the edges, and dilapidated sofa in various shades of coffee-dregs brown.  “Which hospital was the baby born in?”
         Mrs. Spears didn’t answer at first, as she collected herself.  “Central, like all the others.  It’s on the other side of the park.”  Sniff, sniff.
         There was a potted plant withering in one corner and the old console television sat on a wooden board held up by cinderblocks.  “And when did you bring the baby home?  Yesterday, right?  What time?”
         Sob, gasp.  “Um, it was, my husband picked us up; I think about 10.”
         “In the morning?”
         “Uh-huh.”  Snorting up mucus.
         There were two brown recliners, one picked to death at the armrests and the other held together with duct tape.  Each recliner held a medium-sized child, the smaller of which was picking bits of foam out of the chair.  “And you had the baby with you when you arrived home?”
         Looking confused, “Yes, of course.  I brought the baby seat in, and the baby was in it.  I put it on the kitchen table.”  Pointing. 
I wandered towards the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by low dirt-brown cupboards.  In front, the table, your typical 70s marble-veneer-and-chrome variety.  The infant car seat, looking like it had held all seven of the earlier Spears children, too, was still on it, sans baby, of course.  “Then what did you do?”
         Pause.  “I…” Deep contemplation. 
         Mrs. Bixby, still holding the teacup, rubbed her daughter’s back.  Carrie-Ann Spears shuddered and coughed. 
         “I went to… my bedroom, to put away the… my bag.”
         Glancing into the piled-up kitchen, I followed the coffee-dregs carpet further down the hall to the bedrooms.  The double-wide held four bedrooms and a single bathroom.  Seven children?
         “Was the baby alone at this point?”
         “No,” aghast.  “No, my husband Darren was there, (pointing) in the living room, and the other kids.  Carrie-Ann was with the baby, here.”
         “Carrie-Ann?”
         Slightly perplexed, “Our oldest daughter.”
         The first bedroom contained bunk beds and a crib, a changing table surrounded by diapers, piles of clothes, and a few garage-sale caliber toys.
         “Your daughter is called Carrie-Ann too?”
         A nod.
         “How old is she?”
         The bedroom across from it had two unmade twin beds and a wooden trunk.  Each furnishing was piled with clothes, stuffies, and little-boy toys.  Probably the den of the two recliner-dwellers.
         “Sixteen.”
         “And where is Carrie-Ann, your daughter, now?”
         The next bedroom held a pink loft bed over top of a gray metal writing desk, and opposite, a mate’s bed, the kind with drawers underneath.  The loft bed was neatly made, and a shelf above it displayed teenage-girl items. 
         “I’m not sure.  She went out.”
         “Your newborn baby has disappeared, and your eldest daughter, who was watching him at the time, went out?”
         The mate’s bed, like the ones in the other rooms, was unmade and scattered with an array its owner’s belongings, dominated by boxer shorts, while the surrounding wall was obliterated by death metal and skateboarding images and amateur graffiti.  This room, like the others, was dim, tinfoiled, and brown.
         More crying.
         “Mister Spears, do you mind if I have a few words with you?”
         “I ain’t got nothin’ to say.  Baby’s gone, that’s all I know.”
         The bathroom, though decorated with blue fuzzy mats, was badly mildewed; the powder-blue sink cowered under soap scum and shaving residue.  The toilet tank ran.
         “It would help our investigation if I could ask you a few questions, Mr. Spears.  It can be here or down at the station.”
         Heavy sigh of irritation.  “Fire away.”
         The end of the hall held the master bedroom, another dim lair, this one containing a headless double bed sporting black sheets, which were spotted with various substances.  Matching black-and-chrome dresser, vanity, and mirror.  More brown.
         “Where were you when the baby disappeared?”
         “I dunno when he disappeared.”
         “Mrs. Spears says she put him here on the table and went to her room, and when she came back he was gone.”
         No answer.
         There was no baby cot anywhere in the home. 
         “Where were you while this was happening, Mr. Spears?”
         Another exasperated sigh.  “When we got home, I come in here and set down to watch TV.  This’s where I was till she started screaming about the baby bein’ gone.  That’s all I can tell ya.”
         A shout from the other officers, working outside, brought me back to join Chan at the front door. 
         “Excuse us.”  We went outside.  As usual, an audience had gathered; the entire population of the mobile-home park spread up and down the road.  Some of the other homes were fronted with tiny patches of manicured lawn, flower beds, garden gnomes.  Our uniformed officers were converging on the blue BFI bin at the end of the street, summoned by Griegs and Lafeyette.
         Chan and I walked down there, calmly so as not to alarm the onlookers.  The other uniforms held people at a respectable distance. 
         Lafeyette said “baby in the bin.”
         The radios were buzzing and squelching frantically.  It was a hot day; sweltering, even; cloudless sky.  Dust hovered in the air, thrown down by truck tires from the highway above. 
         Among the putrid garbage bags in the bin, the receiving-blanket bundle was silent, formless, inert.  Rot-scented heat radiated off the bags in shimmering waves; I reached into the bin and gingerly brushed the flannelette blanket away from the baby’s face. 
         Mrs. Spears and Bixby, trailing children, had arrived; the officers held them back. 
         The face, a little cantaloupe, was waxy, yellowed.  It seemed hollow.  A hospital-issue white toque still covered the small bald head.
         Sirens.
         Among low murmurs, an onlooker retched, and the muffled sounds of despair began to penetrate.
         Randy, the coroner, pronounced the infant dead in a low voice, flicking his eyes at me.  Despite the reek, I reached down into the bin to place the tiny corpse into a miniature body bag so that none of the onlookers, especially Mrs. Spears, would see him as I lifted him out.
         I hurried him into the ambulance and it left, silent.
         Back at the double-wide, it occurred to me that one other child was missing from the Spears clan.
         “Bobby, their oldest son,” Mrs. Bixby informed us.  “He’s at his friend Clark’s house.  Been there since Wednesday.”
         “Does Bobby often stay at friends’ houses for long periods of time like that?”
         “As often as he can.”
         Mr. Spears mutely continued to watch television.  The children had followed their moaning matriarch to the bedroom at the end of the hall, and Mrs. Bixby excused herself to join them.
         
         Back at the station. 
         Randy informed us that the baby had died of exposure while in the bin, shortly after he’d disappeared, about noon the previous day.
         “Well?” Chan asked nobody in particular.
         “We need to find Carrie-Ann junior,” I said.  “And get a warrant.  We need to sift through the debris at that disaster-home.”
         Chan nodded.  “I think we should bring the husband in,” she said.
         “Why didn’t they call this in until today?” I wondered.
         “Seemed like Mrs. Spears wasn’t surprised to find out he was dead,” Chan said.
         “We need to find Carrie-Ann,” I repeated.  “Let’s bring in Mr. Spears.”
         
         Mr. Spears was very uncommunicative.  We left him with Officers Connolly and Curtis and returned to the mobile home park. 
         The rest of the uniforms were still around, talking to neighbours, sifting through stewing garbage, examining tracks in the gravel road.  Nobody had seen anything.
         “Middle of the day, and nobody saw anyone dumping a baby in a bin?” Commented Chan.  “He wasn’t even in a garbage bag.  Just went over there and dropped the baby in the bin.”
         
         We had easily gotten a warrant and started dusting everything.  I dusted the table, baby seat, and other dining room furniture.  Chan dusted the front and back doorknobs, doors, and door frames.
         I turned to find a very small child, perhaps four years old, standing behind me.  I smiled as nicely as I could despite the image the child’s familiar face brought back – the lifeless cantaloupe face between the hospital baby toque and receiving blanket.
         “What’s your name?” I asked.
         Medium length hair, dirty yet silken; enormous blue eyes, grubby face and clothes.  It was difficult to determine the gender of this little person in its hand-me-down polyester track suit.
         “Jimmy Spears.”
         Boy.  “Which is your room?” I asked.  Jimmy pointed down the hall.  Not very helpful.
         “Show me,” I said.  Thinking of my little guy at home, I added, “Can you show me your toys?”
         Jimmy didn’t move.  He was clutching a dirty stuffed Barney.
         I smiled some more.  “Barney, eh?  I like Barney.  Do you have any more Barneys?”
         This got a smile.  Jimmy trotted across the dingy brown carpet to the first room I’d looked into.  He showed me his bed – the lower bunk – and, reaching across, produced a Sponge Bob. 
         “Sponge Bob!” I said.  Jimmy smiled in approval.  Sponge Bob had sticky grunge on its yellow fur.
         Patting Sponge Bob’s head, I said, “Jimmy, did you see the baby?”
         Jimmy nodded.
         “Do you know where the baby went?”
         Jimmy nodded.  “The baby died,” he said.  I reached out to put my hand on his little corn-silk head and he flinched; a common sign of abuse.
         “Do you know who took it outside?”
         Jimmy nodded.
         “Who, Jimmy?”
         Jimmy looked down.  “Maybe it was Carrie-Ann,” he murmured. 
         
         Mr. Spears was not being cooperative.  He didn’t know where his daughter was; he didn’t even know where his eldest son was.  He hadn’t seen anyone else around the house after bringing the baby home.  All he knew was that he’d gone to pick up his wife, daughter, and the new baby from the hospital, brought them back to the mobile home, and put on the TV because there was a Steelers game on.
         We spoke to Bobby, the Spears’s twelve-year-old eldest son, at his friend Clark Masterson’s house.  Bobby hadn’t even been informed that the baby had been born, let alone that he’d been killed.  Bobby wasn’t very distressed and he wasn’t very talkative.  The only thing he would share was the possible location of his sister.  “Prob’ly with her boyfriend,” he said.
         “What’s his name, Bobby?”
         “Gary.”
         “Do you know his last name?”
         Shrug.  “Maybe like Sam… Samuelson.  Or Sanderson.”
         “Thanks.  You’ve been very helpful.”
         Sneer.
         
         We tracked down Carrie-Ann’s boyfriend through the high school records.  It was Sanderson, and he lived in the more affluent neighbourhood on the other side of the highway. 
         Gary wasn’t home; he was at his friend, Cody’s, house, studying.  The Sandersons hadn’t seen Carrie-Ann for a long time.  A few months, in fact.
         Cody’s house was a ten-minute drive away.  Gary was a clean-cut boy; spiky crew cut, polo shirt, Nokia N-series phone.  Probably the kind of studious, upwardly-mobile, future-oriented boy the Spears would disapprove of.
         Cody’s parents hovered as we talked to Gary in the doorway of the two-story, double-garaged, cream-carpeted, Jacuzzi-laden house. 
         “When’s the last time you saw Carrie-Ann Spears?” Chan asked.  She had a more pleasant manner with people.  I usually only speak to people when they’re being really difficult.
         “Carrie-Ann?  A few weeks ago.  She dumped me.  Again.”  Sincere grimace from Gary; barely shielded smirk from Cody.
         “Sorry to hear that.  Have you spoken to her at all?  Even on the phone?  Text message?”  Gary was shaking his head.
         “What about at school, Gary?  Cody?”
         Both boys shook their heads.  Gary said, “Carrie-Ann hasn’t been at school in a while.”
         We looked at each other.  “How long?”
         Gary shrugged.  “Couple months maybe?”
         “Have you seen her since she left school?  Do you know why she stopped going?”
         “I’ve seen her, yeah, but she wouldn’t tell me nothin’.”  Gary was looking down at his scuffed navy Converses.
         Cody’s father asked, “What is this regarding, officers?”
         “Is she ok?  Is she in trouble?” from Gary.
         “We need to talk to her regarding, uh, a family issue.”
         You could tell by the look on his face that Gary was going to clam up.  Cody seemed about to talk but changed his mind at a glance from his friend.
         Chan sighed.  “If you hear from her, or hear anything about her, let us know, please.  We just want to ask her a few questions; she’s not in trouble.  Here’s a card.”
         Gary nodded.  Chan gave her card to Cody and Cody’s father, as well.
         
         Mr. Spears was still being uncooperative, but he had been right there when the baby and Carrie-Ann, the younger, had disappeared from the house.  They had to keep at him until he let something out.  He didn’t know where anyone was.  He’d been watching football.  He’d missed the middle of the game when his wife had called him to pick them up.  He didn’t know why they couldn’t have chilled at the hospital for just another hour or so.
         At this point we were watching through the one-way window.  It was Lafeyette who had the pleasure of chatting with Mr. Spears this time.  “It was your wife that called you?”
         Affirmative grunt.
         “Your oldest daughter was there with her?”
         No response.
         
         Chan turned to me.  “Why was the younger Carrie-Ann Spears there at the hospital?”
         “I guess someone has to be with you when you’re having a baby.  I was with Carol when she had Ginny and Kip.”
         Chan nodded.  “But what about Mr. Spears?  You’re the father; you’re supposed to be there.”
         Mr. Spears had already witnessed, presumably, seven of his children flailing and mucking their way into our world.  “The Steelers game must have been more suspenseful,” I said.
         “And Mrs. Bixby?”
         “Looking after the rest of the brood.”  I shuddered.  My wife, Carol, and our two children were my life blood.  Imagine watching a football game while your mother-in-law takes care of your children, and your oldest daughter holds your wife’s hand as she pushes out your latest progeny.
         Chan said, “There should be a license required for procreating.”
         
         At the hospital we followed the orange line to maternity.  The form for the birth certificate was still in the hospital’s file.  It wouldn’t be sent in till Monday.  I wondered which would arrive first: birth or death certificate.
         The details revealed nothing.  Mother: Carrie-Ann Spears, Green Meadow Mobile Home Park, Sparrow Road, Lot 26.  Father:  Darren Spears, same address.  The baby had not yet been named and was recorded as Baby Boy Spears, 5 lb 2 oz, 15 cm.  His tiny footprints were on the bottom of the form; each little crease, each flawless little toe was perfect.
         The baby had been delivered by a midwife, Nurse Jenson.
         “Could we possibly talk to Nurse Jenson?”  Chan asked the nurse at the desk.
         The nurse at the desk pursed her lips and rather glared at us.  “She’s a bit busy; we all are.  Cutbacks.  May I ask what this is all about?”
         Chan never liked being glared at by someone with his or her lips pursed.  “This baby’s dead,” she snapped, jabbing her finger at the form.  “We’re trying to find out why.”
         Suddenly despaired, the nurse at the desk unpursed her lips and dialed a desk phone.  A few minutes later a middle-aged, dumpy Nurse Jenson appeared through the swinging textured-glass door, clutching a clipboard.
         We introduced ourselves and the case.
         “Did you deliver this baby, Baby Boy Spears, Thursday morning, Nurse Jenson?”
         Nurse Jenson nodded.  “The baby was nearly a month early.  It shouldn’t have gone home, really.  Strange thing; they didn’t have a family doctor.”
         Chan and I looked at each other.  That was strange, considering the size of the family.
         Jenson was shaking her head.  “So young, the mother.”
         She did seem young.  Though her eyes were tired and lined, she could have been around thirty-five.  We nodded in agreement.
         Jenson went on.  “And Mrs. Spears, only 34 and already a grandmother!  Can you imagine?  I’m 39.”
         It took several minutes for this statement to make any sense.
         I was the first to respond.  “The mother… Carrie-Ann Spears, the younger?”
         Nurse Jenson looked up at me, and baffled, said, “You thought it was the older?  The older Carrie-Ann Spears – her baby’s not due until May.  It was her daughter who had this baby.  Still a little girl herself.”  She grimaced.  “My daughter’s 15.  I can’t imagine it.”
         
         I took a turn to talk, being as how I was so angry.  I was shouting in the interrogation room at Gary Sanderson, with his father, who happened to be a lawyer, sitting next to him.
         “You’re saying you didn’t know,” shouted I, in a conversation that had been going around in circles, “that you got Carrie-Ann pregnant?”
         Gary Sanderson was shaking his head, mystified; he now had moisture pooling at the brims of his eyes.  “We never slept together,” he said, looking at his father, who didn’t know whether to be furious or sympathetic.
         My arms were crossed over my chest and my legs were spread shoulder width; my most formidable stance.  “You don’t need to have penetrable sex to conceive a child,” I explained to the boy.  “Don’t they teach sex ed in Central High?”  I leaned across the table to appear more menacing, though the boy was already spasming and the tears were starting to dribble down his face.  “You deposited seminal fluid anywhere near her vagina, those little fellas would work their way up there.  It’s happened before.  Some girls don’t even realize they’re p--”
         He cut me off.  “We never did anything… sexual.  She always freaked out; she wouldn’t let me touch her, except to hold hands or sometimes kiss.”  The boy’s voice was low and had an almost reflective quality.
         Possible sexual abuse: she thinks sex is dirty; she thinks making out with her boyfriend would make her a whore.  She may have been threatened.  Gently I asked, “Why?”  He looked at his father and his father looked at him.
         His father asked, “Did you ever think about why, Gary?”
         Gary nodded but wouldn’t say anything else.  Probably because he was trying not to break down in front of us as the realization sank in all around the room.
         I walked out.  Chan was on the other side of the glass.  Lafeyette was still with Mr. Spears in the other interrogation room.
         “I’m going to talk to that…” I was searching for something really nasty to call Mr. Spears as I walked out of the room.  Chan chased me and caught me by the bicep. 
         “I’ll take it, Sam,” she said, her hand working its way up to my shoulder.  I was shaking.  She was right.  I was too furious to speak to a monster just then.
         Chan called Lafeyette out and told him what had happened with the boy.  Then the two of them went back in on Mr. Spears, armed with assumptions and fury.  I stayed on the safe side of the glass.
         They spoke for several minutes, in voices that became progressively louder and more accusatory, then decided that Mr. Spears had the right to an attorney.  We unfortunately had to release him for the time being.
         As he walked out the door of the station, we received word that Carrie-Ann Spears, the younger, had been found.  She’d been found in a locked ladies’ room stall in the Greyhound station, nothing on her person except for the clothes she’d disappeared in, a brief suicide note, and an empty bottle of her mother’s prescription sleeping pills.
         …
         …
         -So you shot him.
         -We went to the house to pick him up.
         -He resisted arrest?
         …
         -Not exactly.  He spat at me…
         …
         -Did he assault you with a weapon?  Threaten you with a weapon?
         …
         -If I’d brought him in he would have been charged – with sexually abusing his daughter.  Not with destroying her, not with forcing his progeny into her – herself his first child; driving her to kill the infant and then herself.  Not with whatever he’s doing to his other children, his wife, perhaps…
         -We don’t support vigilantes.  I mean, Peters, you’re going to be charged with first degree murder.  There’s nothing I can do to protect you.  Chan saw you take Mr. Spears down in cold blood.
         -Chan saw the withered infant in the trash and the rotting body of a sixteen-year-old sexually-abused girl in the bus station latrine, too. 
         …
         -I understand your feelings on this, but… there’s nothing I can do.  Officer Michaels, take Officer Peters downstairs, please.  I’m sorry, Sam.
         -I’m sorry too.
         

Lost Babies





-It wasn’t his death that was so disturbing; it was the circumstances. 

Officer Chan and I were called to investigate the disappearance of a newborn baby.  It happens; it happens frequently in some bigger cities but it was the first time it had happened here. 

Newborn.  Disappeared on the way back from the hospital… or perhaps it had been just after arriving home. 

There were three adults and seven children living in the double-wide mobile home.  Mrs. Spears was sobbing, clutching a dishrag.  Mr. Spears was reclining on the tattered sofa, in boxers and a yellowed undershirt, scratching himself and fixated on Saturday morning cartoons with three of the smaller Spears draped over him.  Mrs. Bixby, the elderly mother of Mrs. Spears, was patting her daughter on the shoulder and trying to offer her a cup of tea.

I looked around the dusky living room, scattered with Walmart toys, various items of children’s clothing, beer bottles, oil-crummy dishes, TV guides, and garbage in various states of decay,  while Chan questioned the adults.  “What is your full name, please, Mrs. Spears?”

Stifling sobs, “C-C-Carrie-Ann.  Carrie-Ann Spears.”

The windows were covered with tin foil and shaded with 30-year-old curtains, which matched the low-pile carpet, fraying at the edges, and dilapidated sofa in various shades of coffee-dregs brown.  “Which hospital was the baby born in?”

Mrs. Spears didn’t answer at first, as she collected herself.  “Central, like all the others.  It’s on the other side of the park.”  Sniff, sniff.

There was a potted plant withering in one corner and the old console television sat on a wooden board held up by cinderblocks.  “And when did you bring the baby home?  Yesterday, right?  What time?”

Sob, gasp.  “Um, it was, my husband picked us up; I think about 10.”

“In the morning?”

“Uh-huh.”  Snorting up mucus.

There were two brown recliners, one picked to death at the armrests and the other held together with duct tape.  Each recliner held a medium-sized child, the smaller of which was picking bits of foam out of the chair.  “And you had the baby with you when you arrived home?”

Looking confused, “Yes, of course.  I brought the baby seat in, and the baby was in it.  I put it on the kitchen table.”  Pointing.  I wandered towards the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by low dirt-brown cupboards.  In front, the table, your typical 70s marble-veneer-and-chrome variety.  The infant car seat, looking like it had held all seven of the earlier Spears children, too, was still on it, sans baby, of course.  “Then what did you do?”

Pause.  “I…” Deep contemplation. 

Mrs. Bixby, still holding the teacup, rubbed her daughter’s back.  Carrie-Ann Spears shuddered and coughed. 

“I went to… my bedroom, to put away the… my bag.”

Glancing into the piled-up kitchen, I followed the coffee-dregs carpet further down the hall to the bedrooms.  The double-wide held four bedrooms and a single bathroom.  Seven children?

“Was the baby alone at this point?”

“No,” aghast.  “No, my husband Darren was there, (pointing) in the livingroom, and the other kids.  Carrie-Ann was with the baby, here.”

“Carrie-Ann?”

Slightly perplexed, “Our oldest daughter.”

The first bedroom contained bunk beds and a crib, a changing table surrounded by diapers, piles of clothes, and a few garage-sale caliber toys.

“Your daughter is called Carrie-Ann too?”

A nod.

“How old is she?”

The bedroom across from it had two unmade twin beds and a wooden box.  Each furnishing was piled with clothes, stuffies, and little-boy toys.  Probably the den of the two recliner-dwellers.

“Sixteen.”

“And where is Carrie-Ann, your daughter, now?”

The next bedroom held a pink loft bed over top of a gray metal writing desk, and opposite, a mate’s bed, the kind with drawers underneath.  The loft bed was neatly made, and a shelf above it displayed teenage-girl items. 

“I’m not sure.  She went out.”

“Your newborn baby has disappeared, and your eldest daughter, who was watching him at the time, went out?”

The mate’s bed, like the ones in the other rooms, was unmade and scattered with an array its owner’s belongings, dominated by boxer shorts, while the surrounding wall was obliterated by death metal and skateboarding images and amateur graffiti.  This room, like the others, was dim, tinfoiled, and brown.

More crying.

“Mister Spears, do you mind if I have a few words with you?”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say.  Baby’s gone, that’s all I know.”

The bathroom, though decorated with blue fuzzy mats, was badly mildewed; the powder-blue sink cowered under soap scum and shaving residue.  The toilet tank ran.

“It would help our investigation if I could ask you a few questions, Mr. Spears.  It can be here or down at the station.”

Heavy sigh of irritation.  “Fire away.”

The end of the hall held the master bedroom, another dim lair, this one containing a headless double bed sporting black sheets, which were spotted with various substances.  Matching black-and-chrome dresser, vanity, and mirror.  More brown.

“Where were you when the baby disappeared?”

“I dunno when he disappeared.”

“Mrs. Spears says she put him here on the table and went to her room, and when she came back he was gone.”

No answer.

There was no baby cot anywhere in the home. 

“Where were you while this was happening, Mr. Spears?”

Another exasperated sigh.  “When we got home, I come in here and set down to watch TV.  This’s where I was till she started screaming about the baby bein’ gone.  That’s all I can tell ya.”

A shout from the other officers, working outside, brought me back to join Chan at the front door. 

“Excuse us.”  We went outside.  As usual, an audience had gathered; the entire population of the mobile-home park spread up and down the road.  Our uniformed officers were converging on the blue BFI bin at the end of the street, summoned by Griegs and Lafeyette.

Chan and I walked down there, calmly so as not to alarm the onlookers.  The other uniforms held people at a respectable distance. 

Lafeyette said “baby in the bin.”

The radios were buzzing and squelching frantically.  It was a hot day; sweltering, even; cloudless sky.  Dust hovered in the air, thrown down by truck tires from the highway above. 

Among the putrid garbage bags in the bin, the receiving-blanket bundle was silent, formless, inert.  Rot-scented heat radiated off the bags in shimmering waves; I reached into the bin and gingerly brushed the flannelette blanket away from the baby’s face. 

Mrs. Spears and Bixby, trailing children, had arrived; the officers held them back. 

The face, a little cantaloupe, was waxy, yellowed.  It seemed hollow.  A hospital-issue white toque still covered the small bald head.

Sirens.

Among low murmurs, an onlooker retched, and the muffled sounds of despair began to penetrate.

Randy, the coroner, pronounced the infant dead.  Despite the reek, we reached down into the bin to place his tiny corpse into a miniature body bag so that none of the onlookers, especially Mrs. Spears, would see him as we lifted him out.

We hurried him into the ambulance and it left, with its entourage.

Back at the double-wide, it occurred to me that one other child was missing from the Spears clan.

“Bobby, their oldest son,” Mrs. Bixby informed us.  “He’s at his friend Clark’s house.  Been there since Wednesday.”

“Does Bobby often stay at friends’ houses for long periods of time like that?”

“As often as he can.”

Mr. Spears mutely continued to watch television.  The children had followed their moaning matriarch to the bedroom at the end of the hall, and Mrs. Bixby excused herself to join them.



Back at the station. 

Randy informed us that the baby had died of exposure while in the bin, shortly after he’d disappeared, about noon the previous day.

“Well?” Chan asked nobody in particular.

“We need to find Carrie-Ann junior,” I said.  “And get a warrant.  We need to sift through the debris at that disaster-home.”

Chan nodded.  “I think we should bring the husband in,” she said.

“Why didn’t they call this in until today?” I wondered.

“Seemed like Mrs. Spears wasn’t surprised to find out he was dead,” Chan said.

“We need to find Carrie-Ann,” I repeated.  “Let’s bring in Mr. Spears.”



Mr. Spears was very uncommunicative.  We left him with Officers Connolly and Curtis and returned to the mobile home park. 

The rest of the uniforms were still around, talking to neighbours, sifting through stewing garbage, examining tracks in the gravel road.  Nobody had seen anything.

“Middle of the day, and nobody saw anyone dumping a baby in a bin?” Commented Chan.  “He wasn’t even in a garbage bag.  Just went over there and dropped the baby in the bin.”



We had easily gotten a warrant and started dusting everything.  I dusted the table, baby seat, and other dining room furniture.  Chan dusted the front and back doorknobs, doors, and door frames.

I turned to find a very small child, perhaps four years old, standing behind me.  I smiled as nicely as I could despite the image the child’s face recalled – the lifeless cantaloupe face between the hospital baby toque and receiving blanket.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

Medium length hair, dirty yet silken; enormous blue eyes, grubby face and clothes.  It was difficult to determine the gender of this little person in its hand-me-down polyester track suit.

“Jimmy Spears.”

Boy.  “Which is your room?” I asked.  Jimmy pointed down the hall.  Not very helpful.

“Show me,” I said.  Thinking of my little guy at home, I added, “Can you show me your toys?”

Jimmy didn’t move.  He was clutching a dirty stuffed Barney.

I smiled some more.  “Barney, eh?  I like Barney.  Do you have any more Barneys?”

This got a smile.  Jimmy trotted across the dingy brown carpet to the first room I’d looked into.  He showed me his bed – the lower bunk – and, reaching across, produced a Sponge Bob. 

“Sponge Bob!” I said.  Jimmy smiled in approval.  Sponge Bob had sticky grunge on its yellow fur.

Patting Sponge Bob’s head, I said, “Jimmy, did you see the baby?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Do you know where the baby went?”

Jimmy nodded.  “The baby died,” he said.  I reached out to put my hand on his little corn-silk head and he flinched; a common sign of abuse.

“Do you know who took it outside?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Who, Jimmy?”

Jimmy looked down.  “Maybe it was Carrie-Ann,” he murmured. 



Mr. Spears was not being cooperative.  He didn’t know where his daughter was; he didn’t even know where his eldest son was.  He hadn’t seen anyone else around the house after bringing the baby home.  All he knew was that he’d gone to pick up his wife, daughter, and the new baby from the hospital, brought them back to the mobile home, and put on the TV because there was a Steelers game on.

We spoke to Bobby, the Spears’s twelve-year-old eldest son, at his friend Clark Masterson’s house.  Bobby hadn’t even been informed that the baby had been born, let alone that he’d been killed.  Bobby wasn’t very distressed and he wasn’t very talkative.  The only thing he would share was the possible location of his sister.  “Prob’ly with her boyfriend,” he said.

“What’s his name, Bobby?”

“Gary.”

“Do you know his last name?”

Shrug.  “Maybe like Sam… Samuelson.  Or Sanderson.”

“Thanks.  You’ve been very helpful.”

Sneer.



We tracked down Carrie-Ann’s boyfriend through the high school records.  It was Sanderson, and he lived in the more affluent neighbourhood on the other side of the highway. 

Gary wasn’t home; he was at his friend, Cody’s, house, studying.  The Sandersons hadn’t seen Carrie-Ann for a long time.  A few  months, in fact.

Cody’s house was a ten-minute drive away.  Gary was a clean-cut boy; crew cut, polo shirt, Nokia N-series phone.  Probably the kind of studious, upwardly-mobile, future-oriented boy the Spears disapproved of.

Cody’s parents hovered as we talked to Gary in the doorway of the two-story, double-garaged, cream-carpeted, Jacuzzi-laden house. 

“When’s the last time you saw Carrie-Ann Spears?” Chan asked.  She had a more pleasant manner with people.  I usually only speak to people when they’re being really difficult.

“Carrie-Ann?  A few weeks ago.  She dumped me.  Again.”  Sincere grimace from Gary; barely shielded smirk from Cody.

“Sorry to hear that.  Have you spoken to her at all?  Even on the phone?  Text message?”  Gary was shaking his head.

“What about at school, Gary?  Cody?”

Both boys shook their heads.  Gary said, “Carrie-Ann hasn’t been at school in a while.”

We looked at each other.  “How long?”

Gary shrugged.  “Couple months maybe?”

“Have you seen her since she left school?  Do you know why she stopped going?”

“I’ve seen her, yeah, but she wouldn’t tell me nothin’.”  Gary was looking down at his scuffed navy Converses.

Cody’s father asked, “What is this regarding, officers?”

“Is she ok?  Is she in trouble?” from Gary.

“We need to talk to her regarding, uh, a family issue.”

You could tell by the look on his face that Gary was going to clam up.  Cody seemed about to talk but changed his mind at a glance from his friend.

Chan sighed.  “If you hear from her, or hear anything about her, let us know, please.  We just want to ask her a few questions; she’s not in trouble.  Here’s a card.”

Gary nodded.  Chan gave her card to Cody and Cody’s father, as well.



Mr. Spears was still being uncooperative, but he had been right there when the baby and Carrie-Ann, the younger, had disappeared from the house.  They had to keep at him until he let something out.  He didn’t know where anyone was.  He’d been watching football.  He’d missed the middle of the game when his wife had called him to pick them up.  He didn’t know why they couldn’t have chilled at the hospital for just another hour or so.

At this point we were watching through the one-way window.  It was Lafeyette who had the pleasure of chatting with Mr. Spears this time.  “It was your wife that called you?”

Affirmative grunt.

“Your oldest daughter was there with her?”

No response.



Chan turned to me.  “Why was the younger Carrie-Ann Spears there at the hospital?”

“I guess someone has to be with you when you’re having a baby.  I was with Carol when she had Ginny and Kip.”

Chan nodded.  “But what about Mr. Spears?  You’re the father; you’re supposed to be there.”

Mr. Spears had already witnessed, presumably, seven of his children flailing and mucking their way into our world.  “The Steelers game must have held more suspense,” I said.

“And Mrs. Bixby?”

“Looking after the rest of the brood.”  I shuddered.  My wife, Carol, and our two children were my life blood.  Imagine watching a football game while your mother-in-law takes care of your children, and your oldest daughter holds your wife’s hand as she pushes out your latest progeny.

Chan said, “There should be a license required for procreating.”



At the hospital we followed the orange line to maternity.  The form for the birth certificate was still in the hospital’s file.  It wouldn’t be sent in till Monday.  I wondered which would arrive first: birth or death certificate.

The details revealed nothing.  Mother: Carrie-Ann Spears, Green Meadow Mobile Home Park, Sparrow Road, Lot 26.  Father:  Darren Spears, same address.  The baby had not yet been named and was recorded as Baby Boy Spears, 5 lb 2 oz, 15 cm.  His tiny footprints were on the bottom of the form; each little crease, each flawless little toe was perfect.

The baby had been delivered by a midwife, Nurse Jenson.

“Could we possibly talk to Nurse Jenson?”  Chan asked the nurse at the desk.

The nurse at the desk pursed her lips and rather glared at us.  “She’s a bit busy; we all are.  Cutbacks.  May I ask what this is all about?”

Chan never liked being glared at by someone with his or her lips pursed.  “This baby’s dead,” she snapped, jabbing her finger at the form.  “We’re trying to find out why.”

Suddenly despaired, the nurse at the desk unpursed her lips and dialed a desk phone.  A few minutes later a middle-aged, dumpy Nurse Jenson appeared through the swinging textured-glass door, clutching a clipboard.

We introduced ourselves and the case.

“Did you deliver this baby, Baby Boy Spears, Thursday morning, Nurse Jenson?”

Nurse Jenson nodded.  “The baby was nearly a month early.  It shouldn’t have gone home, really.  Strange thing; they didn’t have a family doctor.”

Chan and I looked at each other.  That was strange, considering the size of the family.

Jenson was shaking her head.  “So young, the mother.”

She did seem young.  Though her eyes were tired and lined, she could have been around thirty-five.  We nodded in agreement.

Jenson went on.  “And Mrs. Spears, only 34 and already a grandmother!  Can you imagine?  I’m 39.”

It took several minutes for this statement to make any sense.

I was the first to respond.  “The mother… Carrie-Ann Spears, the younger?”

Nurse Jenson looked up at me, and baffled, said, “You thought it was the older?  The older Carrie-Ann Spears – her baby’s not due until May.  It was her daughter who had this baby.  Still a little girl herself.”  She grimaced.  “My daughter’s 15.  I can’t imagine it.”



I took a turn to talk, being as how I was so angry.  I was shouting in the interrogation room at Gary Sanderson, with his father, who happened to be a lawyer, sitting next to him.

“You’re saying you didn’t know,” shouted I, in a conversation that had been going around in circles, “that you got Carrie-Ann pregnant?”

Gary Sanderson was shaking his head, mystified; he now had moisture pooling at the brims of his eyes.  “We never slept together,” he said, looking at his father, who didn’t know whether to be furious or sympathetic.

My arms were crossed over my chest and my legs were spread shoulder width; my most formidable stance.  “You don’t need to have penetrable sex to conceive a child,” I explained to the boy.  “Don’t they teach sex ed in Central High?”  I leaned across the table to appear more menacing, though the boy was already spasming and the tears were now running down his face.  “You deposited seminal fluid anywhere near her vagina, those little fellas would work their way up there.  It’s happened before.  Some girls don’t even realize they’re p--”

He cut me off.  “We never did anything… sexual.  She always freaked out; she wouldn’t let me touch her, except to hold hands or sometimes kiss.”  The boy’s voice was low and had an almost reflective quality.

Possible sexual abuse: she thinks sex is dirty; she thinks making out with her boyfriend would make her a whore.  She may have been threatened.  Gently I asked, “Why?”  He looked at his father and his father looked at him.

His father asked, “Did you ever think about why, Gary?”

Gary nodded but wouldn’t say anything else.  Probably because he was trying not to break down in front of us as the realization sank in all around the room.

I walked out.  Chan was on the other side of the glass.  Lafeyette was still with Mr. Spears in the other interrogation room.

“I’m going to talk to that…” I was searching for something really nasty to call Mr. Spears as I walked out of the room.  Chan chased me and caught me by the bicep. 

“I’ll take it, Sam,” she said, her hand working its way up to my shoulder.  I was shaking.  She was right.  I was too furious to speak to a monster just then.

Chan called Lafeyette out and told him what had happened with the boy.  Then the two of them went back in on Mr. Spears, armed with assumptions and fury.  I stayed on the safe side of the glass.

They spoke for several minutes, in voices that became progressively louder and more accusatory, then decided that Mr. Spears had the right to an attorney.  We unfortunately had to release him for the time being.

As he walked out the door of the station, we received word that Carrie-Ann Spears, the younger, had been found.  She’d been found in a locked ladies’ room stall in the Greyhound station, nothing on her person except for the clothes she’d disappeared in, a brief suicide note, and an empty bottle of her mother’s prescription sleeping pills.

…

…

-So you shot him.

-We went to the house to pick him up.

-He resisted arrest?

…

-Not exactly.  He spat at me…

…

-Did he assault you with a weapon?  Threaten you with a weapon?

…

-If I’d brought him in he would have been charged – with sexually abusing his daughter.  Not with destroying her, not with forcing his progeny into her – his first child; driving her to kill the infant and then herself.  Not with whatever he’s doing to his other children, his wife, perhaps…

-We don’t support vigilantes.  I mean, Peters, you’re going to be charged with first degree murder.  There’s nothing I can do to protect you.  Chan saw you take Mr. Spears down in cold blood.

-Chan saw the withered infant in the trash and the rotting body of a sixteen-year-old sexually-abused girl in the bus station latrine, too. 

…

-I understand your feelings on this, but… there’s nothing I can do.  Officer Michaels, take Officer Peters downstairs, please.  I’m sorry, Sam.

-I’m sorry too.