Violence + Sex = Love Prologue (Part 1)

Prologue



It seemed like a bitter thing, Father Taylor thought, that the lights coming from the bar across from his little church lit up the tiny, stained glass windows better than the morning sun ever could. The bar, which was taller than the church, would block the rising sun, as it always did, but it’s neon red, yellow, and blue lights cast the virgin Mary in a bright, blue glow and the angel Gabriel in yellow and red, making Him look like He was on fire. Father Taylor couldn’t see out the little windows, which was just as well. There wasn’t anything pleasant to see out there, especially in the dead of night. Still, he knew, by habit alone, that drunken husbands would be stumbling out of the bar hourly. Standing outside the bar would be a young woman, barely dressed at all. It was always a different woman, but in a way, always the same. There would be a group of younger men leaning near the doorway of his church. He had given up telling them to go away years ago, knowing that they would never listen to an old man, especially a priest.

         The life of a priest was repetitive, in more ways than just mass and confession. Once again, Father Taylor found himself wide awake in the middle of the night like this, sitting on one of the pews near the alter, pouring over the church’s monetary statements. He knew he should be doing work like this in his office, but this place was more open, less stuffy, and he could just barely smell lemon from the cleaner that Sister Abigail had used this afternoon. It was a silly thing to think about, but that smell made the old church seem more like a home. Maybe most priests wouldn’t be too concerned with a thing like that, but St. Angeline was his home, had been for the last thirty years and was also an orphanage housing no less than twenty orphans at one time. Little, domestic things were just as important as anything else.

         Most of the orphans they cared for had come from broken homes, or from the streets. They were more likely to run away for some frivolous reason than to stay, especially in a church turned orphanage. These children were used to adults betraying them, having to live on their own and support themselves. Adoption just sounded like more of the same to them. Or worse, they wouldn’t be adopted and they would chained down by ‘the system’ until they turned eighteen, then they would just go back to the streets anyway. They were practically looking for an excuse to leave, so Father Taylor tried his hardest to be lenient and make this house of God into a stable environment for the children.

         The grey-haired priest was roused from his thoughts by a sharp banging sound. He quickly realized that someone was knocking on the front door of the church and rose to his feet, putting his papers on the pew. The center room of the church he was in was large and made entirely of wood, making the sound echo. He looked briefly down on the cheap watch he wore. 11:12 P.M. What could anyone want from them at this hour? This wasn’t the best of neighborhoods. They had never had any trouble, though there were a few gangs around, many of them were members of this very church and kept more trouble away from them than they brought. Still, he was hesitant to open the door as he walked out into the hall and approached it, but the banging only increased in volume and intensity. At first, he was worried that the violent knocking would wake Sister Abigail and the children upstairs, then, as the knocking grew more and more frantic, he realized that this was a much more serious matter.

         Father Taylor opened the heavy, wooden door and could only gape at what the night had put on his doorstep. A boy, no older than thirteen, stood there shaking, his dull brown hair plastered to his dirty face by the rain that the Father hadn’t even realized had started. The boy was painfully thin and the state of his torn clothes screamed ‘street’ to the man that had seen many of these boys in his lifetime. He held in his arms another child, though Taylor was only able to tell because of the blonde hair that poked out of the blanket the little thing was wrapped in. The older boy’s shirt, it seemed, had been a dusky blue once, but now it was impossible to really tell with the blood that was soaked into it. On the left shoulder and stomach of the shirt, there were clear bullet wounds. The boy’s cheek had a reddish tinge to it, but Taylor couldn’t tell if it was blood because of the rain. The boy’s dark brown eyes had a hint of madness to them, a mix of terror and intense pain.

         “Please…” the boy choked out and the priest could see that there was blood dripping from the side of his mouth.

         ‘Internal bleeding,’ Taylor thought in complete shock.

         He quickly moved to the side and the brunette stumbled into his church, blood dripping onto the recently cleaned floors, not in little drips, but in rivers.

         “Oh, God,” Taylor whispered as the blood told him what the rain was trying to hide.

         In the brunette’s arms, the little child clung to the older one, hiding his face from the man.

         “Help,” the older one pleaded, then fell to his knees, a huge pool of blood forming under him.

         Taylor tore his gaze from the wounded boy and ran the couple of feet to the steps.

         “Abigail!” he shrieked and didn’t wait to hear if he had woken her, turning back to the two children.

         The priest ripped a curtain off a nearby window and tried to use it to stop the bleeding, even though he knew it was useless, not with the hole in the boy’s stomach. The younger child, a boy, finally let of his friend and sat in the blanket that was covering him, watching everything that was going on, but not saying a word. Taylor felt sick with the size of the hole in the brunette’s stomach, it was almost gaping, as though he had been shot with a land mine instead of a bullet. Taylor knew that there was a word for that kind of ammo, but couldn’t think of anything. He heard people coming down the stairs, but could only focus on the blood pouring out of the boy, staining his hands. The brunette’s eyes were closed, but the priest refused to accept that he was doing anything except sleeping.          

         “Oh, my God!” Sister Abigail gasped as she ran down the stairs to a sight that, little did she know, would haunt her for the rest of her life.

         Taylor finally acknowledged her, seeing that one of the older boys had followed her down.

         “Call an ambulance!” he barked him.

         The teenager, bless him, gave the priest a little nod and then ran full speed to find a phone. Sister Abigail had to force herself to look away from the gory scene and focus on the younger boy, whom nobody was paying any attention to. The green, bloody blanket hung around his little shoulders, the boy couldn’t be any older than six or seven, and his golden hair was stained with blood in a few places. His skin was pale, and Abigail couldn’t tell if it was from shock or natural. His eyes were large and haunted as he watched the priest with the other boy. The nun was briefly entranced by the strange mix of blue and violet that was the boy’s eye color, like a mating of a twilight sky and amethyst. His tiny hands, clutching tightly on his blanket, shook almost violently and Abigail realized in revulsion that he wasn’t looking at the wounded boy, but at the puddles of blood on the floor. It hit her like a tidal wave, that she was standing there doing nothing as the little boy watched his dying friend.

         Sister Abigail knelt in front of the frightened child, blocking his view of the bloody scene.

         “What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked in the gentlest voice she could muster.

         Those wide, horrified eyes fell on her and for a moment, she thought that the boy was going to faint. She hated the look of fear there when he looked at her.

         “I… Ian…” the boy said in a voice so tiny, it was almost inaudible.

         “Ian, that’s a darling name,” Abigail encouraged him with a smile, but the boy seemed to shrink further into his jacket.

         Abigail swallowed roughly, trying not to be daunted by the large smear of blood across his face, realizing sickly that she didn’t know whose blood it was, Ian’s, the older boy’s, or someone else’s. She put a hand on his shoulder and was alarmed at the amount of fear he displayed at the little touch.

         “Ian, why don’t we get you a bath, huh?” she tried to convince him to get far away from what she was sure was going to be a murder scene, “You look so cold…”

         And he did, but the little blonde shook his head violently, his blue-violet eyes darting to the side, as though he could see his friend around her.

         “Matt…” he cried out in alarm.

         Taylor let out a sigh of slight relief as the brunette’s eyes slid open, though just barely.

         “Teddy…” the injured boy murmured, “You gotta… gotta go with her… ‘k, buddy?”

         Ian didn’t make a sound, but when Abigail lifted him into her arms, he didn’t fight her. He wrapped his arms around her neck and buried his face into her shoulder.

         “Get him out of here,” Taylor said.

         Abigail gave him a little nod and hurried back up the steps, holding Ian close to her.

         “Take care of him…” Matt murmured, his eyes starting to droop closed again.

         Taylor vainly tried to put more pressure on the wound on the boy’s stomach, but with the amount of blood staining Matt’s shirt, the priest knew that the boy had either a wound that was too serious to fix, or he had been bleeding for too long.

         “Everything’s going to be fine,” he tried to assure the adolescent.

         Matt snorted in a parody of a laugh, blood bubbling between his lips.

         “Good one… old man,” he gasped out, his eyes closing.



*****



         

         Ian’s body, lighter in Abigail’s experience than most his age, was lifeless and still as she carried him into the bathroom. She worried that he might be hurt, too, but when she put him down, he sat on the tiled floor and looked up at her with cleared eyes, still afraid, but a little bit less. That fear edged off even more as Abigail started to fill the tub with hot water. Ian was so quiet, so still, just taking in his surroundings like a skittish deer, it was unnatural for a boy his age. Sister Abigail smiled at him kindly, hoping that his silence was just because of shock and the more that she talked to him, the more he would come back to himself.

         “You’re very well behaved,” she complimented, “We have a little boy your age here. His name is Timmy. He hates taking baths. Every night, he hides and when we finally find him, he acts like we’re trying to punish him.”

         Ian continued to look at the tub and Abigail would swear that the look he had was longing, though for what was impossible to tell.

         “I like it when Mommy gives me baths,” he murmured, his voice still small and insignificant.

         Abigail’s smile grew as she started to take off Ian’s clothes, glad that the blonde wasn’t fussy with her undressing him. Almost all of the children that came to their orphanage had lost both of their parents in some way, or the parents had just taken off. It was a welcome change, hearing Ian talk about his mother. She lost her smile as she finally got his pants and long-sleeved shirt off of him. Ian was thin, not thin enough to be a street kid, but too thin for a boy that was being properly cared for. On his pale, almost snowy white, skin were dark bruises on his wrists, collar bone, and stomach. She had been dealing with children from broken homes long enough to know the difference between bruises from falling off of trees and abuse. With how Ian had talked about his mother, she wanted to say that the woman wasn’t responsible for those deep looking bruises, but she knew that love and pain weren’t always separate.

         She lifted Ian and put him in the tub. The indefinable tension that the child had been displaying seemed to vanish at the feeling of the warm water. Taking a sponge, Abigail soaked his hair, trying to get the blood off the golden locks.

         “Where is your mommy, Ian?” she asked, “If we know where she is, we can get you home.”

         She got rid of most of the blood and parted his hair at his neck to see if there was anymore. Her hand froze as it revealed a large spot on his neck covered in dry blood. Across his thin neck, in a downward, diagonal slash, was a deep cut that only could have been made with a large knife. To her relief, it didn’t look like it was bleeding anymore, but it still looked horrible.          

         ‘God,’ she thought in shock, ’Who would do such a thing?’

         There weren’t any other cuts on the boy’s body, which begged the question of why he had a cut in such a strange place. To hide it? But the wound was deep, deep enough that it made it look like whoever had done hadn’t done it just to hurt him. A few inches deeper, and Abigail believed Ian would be dead by now. It would definitely need stitches.

         “Daddy cut her lots,” Ian informed the nun, his voice as tiny and blank as always, though there was some emotion to it that disturbed Abigail, even though she couldn’t put a name to it.

         The redheaded woman felt her entire being freeze at the dark words coming out of the innocent child. She found her blue eyes staring, transfixed, at the cut on the back of his neck, easily imagining the kind of knife that could do that kind of damage. The kind of knife that, she had no doubt, had cut through his mother’s body. Oh, God… was she even alive? And had this poor little boy been there to see it, or had he just found her? There was some things in this world that she could never understand. She had accepted that as a young teenager, but at the very core of herself, she was an optimist. She believed in people, in their goodness. She didn’t think that a woman could become a nun or any other person of faith without that quality. But things like this… she couldn’t even comprehend them. In taking care of children, she had to, but in moments like this, it seemed beyond her.

         “I… I’m sure your mommy is still alive, Ian,” Abigail tried to assure the boy, but the words sounded hollow and unconvincing even to her, “And we’ll help her, just like we helped you.”

         She doubted it. The cut on Ian’s neck, the gun wounds on the boy downstairs… she was sure that Ian’s mother was dead, or by the time they reached her, she would be. She didn’t want to believe that. She wanted to believe that this night would turn out to be just a bad dream, for the both of them, that the child downstairs would be saved and Ian was mistaken about his mother.

         “No…” the blonde said, looking down into the water, “She’s dead. Matt says that being dead is when people can’t get up anymore, and no matter what, you can’t ever see them again. Mommy wouldn’t get up, even when I screamed and screamed.”

         Tears pricked Abigail’s pale blue eyes and she had to squeeze them shut for a moment to keep them from falling. She wouldn’t fall apart in front of Ian when he clearly needed her. Ian’s mother was a stranger to her and Ian, on the outside, seemed calm about the whole thing, but she knew better. She saw the pain in his violet eyes, a pain that was sharper and more agonizing than any adult’s she had ever seen. Those eyes were dry, but Abigail knew that, deep in his soul, Ian was sobbing. Even if he was too young to really understand what death was, somewhere, he knew. It was like he said, he would never be seeing his mommy again. She buried her face in his gold hair for a moment, then collected herself again.

         “Matt?” she asked, resuming her cleaning with a burdened heart, “Is that the boy that brought you here?”

         Ian nodded.

         “Matt lives Outside,” Ian said the word like it was important and Abigail easily translated it into Matt being a street kid, “We play sometimes. Mommy knows. She makes him sandwiches sometimes. It was our special secret. If Daddy finds out, he’ll be mad.”

         The way that Ian talked about his mother, in the present tense, made the nun feel truly horrible. It just drove home to her that the little boy didn’t really know what had happened, or he was trying to deny it. She lightly touched one of the bruises on Ian’s shoulder.

         “Did your Daddy hurt you?” she asked lightly, treading on the subject carefully.

         She knew, too well, that the love a child had for their parents rivaled the love of God. What was that saying? Oh, yes… ‘Mother is God in the eyes of a child.’ Ian’s ‘God’ was dead, in a way that was truly terrible, but he spoke of his father without hate. When Ian was older, he probably would hate the man, but deep inside, he would always love him. That was why Abigail couldn’t stand dealing with abused children. It would be much easier if they hated the people who hurt them, but the world wasn’t so black and white and it definitely wasn’t easy. Ian nodded to her question.

         “Daddy gets mad sometimes,” he told her, “Mommy said that he wouldn’t hurt me anymore, but he hurt her, so she couldn’t promise anymore.”

         Abigail closed her eyes again. It was so easy to piece together, too easy, almost like a cliché. Ian’s father had hurt him and his mother, so his mother, a woman that Abigail was starting to admire by the minute, had tried to run away with Ian. But his father had caught them and had killed her. He had probably tried to kill his son, too. Maybe that was where Matt had come in. If he lived ‘Outside’, maybe that meant near Ian’s house. He had heard the screaming and had interfered… she shook her head. He had given his life to get Ian somewhere safe. It made her hate some of their parishioners, the ones that gave money to them every Sunday and called themselves ’good Christians’, but showed disdain towards their orphans, thinking them dirty and uncultured, yet one of those ’less fortunate’ was dying in their own church right now, having given the ultimate sacrifice… 

          Sister Abigail wrapped the little boy in a towel, the air in the small bathroom heavy and sad. Her thoughts went around in circles in her head, threatening to drive her mad and she couldn’t even begin to imagine what Ian was thinking and feeling right now. In her thoughts, she prayed to God that Ian’s mother was still alive, or that he had other family that would take care of him and help him understand what had happened. A light knocking on the bathroom door roused her and she stood to answer it. Ian didn’t move or protest her leaving, seeming content to just sit there on the bathroom floor and burying himself further into the towel, reminding Abigail of a hermit crab that sensed a predator around. His constant hiding and meekness worried her. The boy who called for the ambulance was standing outside of the bathroom, looking nervous and very uncomfortable.

         “The police are on their way, Sister,” he said, rubbing on his arm and not meeting her eyes.

         She smiled down at him.

         “Thank you, Kevin,” she said.

         Kevin gave her a brief nod, then quickly walked to his room. Sister Abigail didn’t fault him for his anxiety and hesitance. Kevin was a good boy, one of the few that wasn’t rambunctious or acted out. He was one of their… well, she hated to use the world ‘failures’, but that was what his case was, though it reflected worse on her and Father Taylor than Kevin. The tall, brunette teenager had come to them ten years ago right off the streets, having been arrested for shoplifting. Since then, they hadn’t been able to place him in a single home. The potential parents always brought him back, complaining that he was too timid, too quiet. Adults seemed to think that if a child of that age wasn’t screaming and running around, then there was something wrong with them.

         Now, Kevin was seventeen years old, would be eighteen in just under a year. At that time, he wouldn’t be able to live here anymore. As much as she would love to just keep him here, out of affection and sympathy for him, they didn’t have the money to feed or cloth him without the pitiful government grants they received for the orphans under their care. It saddened her every time she thought about it. Kevin was kind, smart, and respectful, even to the younger orphans. He didn’t bully them or take his anger out on them like some of the other boys that lived in the church. It might seem strange, then, that such a well mannered boy like him was afraid of the police, but Abigail understood that it was a fear that all street kids shared.

         Children without homes and parents had to live on their own and do whatever it took to survive. By their nature, they had to break the law. And the police seemed to have little kindness towards them, seeing them simply as troublemakers. Kevin probably feared them because he knew that his time was coming up. She doubted that he thought they were going to take him away, but the fear was there. The other children would come and watch the goings on downstairs out of curiosity, but once the police showed up, they would scatter. They would do what they had done for most of their lives: run and hide in some dark corner that no adult could get into. They would come out eventually, when breakfast came, no doubt.

         Abigail dug through the drawers under the bathroom sink, trying to find clothes that would fit Ian. She always kept extras for the smaller boys, who liked to splash around or fight a bath, getting their clothes thoroughly soaked in the process. There was no way she was redressing Ian in those bloody clothes of his. Ian’s eyes were on her the entire time, as though he were afraid that, if he looked away for even a second, she would vanish. She felt that twinge of worry again, but brushed it aside. She knelt down in front of him, clothes in hand.

         “Do you know how to dress yourself?” she asked, not expecting him to know how, but wanting to get him to speak up.

         To her surprise, Ian nodded.

         “Mommy taught me how,” he murmured.

         Abigail smiled fondly at him. It wasn’t right, and it was a dangerous thing, but she already was feeling attached the soft spoken, but intelligent little boy. She lightly touched his golden hair, fighting the urge to kiss his forehead. Taking care of the hundreds of orphans she had met in her ten years at this church had made her maternal instinct grown a mile wide.

         “Alright, then. I have to go down and talk to Father Taylor. He’s the man you met, the one with the grey hair,” she told him and Ian nodded in remembrance, “You’ll stay here, won’t you?”

         Ian nodded again, taking the clothes from her and Abigail was sure that he would stay. In a way, he was just like Kevin. Silent, but always did what he was told. She didn’t know if that was a good thing in this case, if Ian was always like that, or if it was because of his father’s abuse. She left him, more worried than she had been in a good long time. She was glad to see that, when she reached the entrance of the church down the steps, no other orphans had gone down to see what was going on. Her stomach sank to her gut and tears filled her eyes as she saw Father Taylor sitting on the bench next to the door, no longer at the wounded boy’s side, trying to stop the blood. It was obvious why. She could see a form covered by one of the drapes, no longer green, but a rust-colored red, an enormous pool of blood underneath it.

         “Is he…” she asked cautiously, even though she knew the answer.

         Father Taylor looked up at her, his brown eyes haunted, making him look older than she ever remembered him looking before. He nodded.

         “He went shortly after you went upstairs,” Taylor said, subdued, “The police will be here to question us in a few minutes.”          

         Abigail bent her head, slipping her fingers together and folding her hands as she prayed for the dead boy, who had given everything for another, not even his own family.

         “How is the little one?” Taylor interrupted the nun.          

         She looked up at him with blue eyes as haunted and old as his, those she didn’t even realize it.

         “Ian,” she reminded him, “He’s quiet. Very quiet. He did manage to tell me that he saw his father… he saw him kill his mother.”

         Taylor glanced at the sheet covered body on the floor, putting the pieces together far too easily. What he wouldn’t give for things like that to not come to him so quickly, to have some measure of obliviousness. He sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands. Was there no limit to evil in the world? For a man to kill his wife, in front of his child, no less? And to kill another, who was only trying to help…

         “Oh, God,” he whispered, lifting his face to stare at the cross on the far wall, “I asked for this. This area… I thought I could do some good,” Abigail put a hand on his, “I suppose every place in the world has its share of sadness, but everyone here is so desperate, so lost. I asked to be placed here because I knew it would be hard, because there were so many children here who are uncared for, but there is such violence, such… senselessness…” he shook his head.

         The both of them jumped a little when someone knocked loudly on the door, only a foot away from them. Taylor rose and opened it, nodding to the two policemen who stood there, their black uniforms wet with the still pounding rain.

         “Father,” one of them greeted respectfully.

         Taylor recognized the man outside of the uniform as one who went to their mass regularly. He shook his hand.

         “Officers,” he beckoned them inside.

         The one policeman that he recognized noticed the body as they entered and, to Taylor’s relief, looked saddened by it, unlike his partner, whose expression remained flat and professional.

         “This is the older one?” the first officer, Taylor thought his name was Brennen, asked.

         Taylor nodded.

         “His name is Matt,” Abigail interrupted, “The younger one is named Ian.”

         “Perhaps you could get him, Sister?” Taylor said, “Let’s make this as quick and painless for the boy as we can.”

         The redheaded nun nodded and hurried up the stairs. Brennen breathed in relief as she left. Maybe he was too traditional, but he hated having women around in crime scenes like this. He wasn’t so old fashioned that he was prejudiced around female cops, but a civilian like the Sister seeing something like this made his stomach feel weak. He lifted the sheet off the boy and winced.

         “Damn,” he muttered, then felt ashamed for having sworn, not only in front of his priest, but in the Church, “Sorry, Father.”

         Taylor smiled at the officer, but it was sad and pained.

         “That’s quite alright, Officer, I think tonight both God and I are lenient with such things,” he assured him.

         Brennen and the other cop examined the boy’s body with clinical eyes. His shoulder and stomach were a mess of torn flesh and blood and Taylor had to look away in sickness. Brennen noted that the boy’s eyes were closed and knew that, if the priest had done it, he should scold him for touching a crime scene, but didn’t blame the religious man for that one ounce of respect.

         “Even if the other kid can’t tell us anything, it shouldn’t be too hard figuring out who did this,” the other cop mentioned, “His wounds are too severe for him to have walked very far, especially with a kid in his arms, and hollow-points are easy to track, if he got them legally.”

         Brennen nodded, but felt doubt in his heart. He wasn’t sure where the surety had come from, his gut, probably. After all these years of being a cop, you just could feel a case. Sometimes, you knew you were going to catch your guy and justice would be served. This time… he had this tight, anxious feeling that this night would haunt him for a long time and the worst was yet to come.



*****



         Abigail, given Ian’s silence and what he had told her, had expected to find him exactly where she had left him, staring off at nothing. To her immense relief, though he was still sitting on the same spot on the floor, in his hands was a little plush starfish, only a little bit bigger than the little boy’s hands, probably left in the bathroom by another child, and was fiddling with it. He was still silent, but his blue-violet eyes looked a little bit brighter. As she knelt down in front of him, he clenched the starfish tighter in his hand and looked scared, as though he thought she was there to take the tiny plushie away from him.

         “There are some men downstairs who want to talk to you about your mommy, sweetheart,” she said softly and kindly, feeling like she was trying to coax a mouse out of a hole in the wall, “Do you think you can tell them what you saw?”

         Ian looked away from her and down at the star fish. It was a sad, thread-worn thing, like all the toys here at the orphanage, pale blue on the top with sewn-on black dots for eyes. The underside had been white once, when they had first bought it years ago, but was now dirty with soot and soil and who knew what else. There were pale pink circles on the starfish’s ‘arms’, which Sister Abigail assumed were supposed to be suckers. As she talked to Ian, he continuously squeezed the starfish, like a small child would a squeaky-toy, but the plush made no sound, he seemed to simply like squeezing it.

         “You can bring that with you,” she suggested.

         Ian suddenly graced her with a tiny, adorable smile. It wasn’t much, but it was the most since they had met. She reached her hand out to him. Ian cradled the starfish to his chest with one hand and took the nun’s in the other, following her out of the bathroom and down the steps as though he were dreaming. As the two of them came down the stairs and into the front part of the church, Ian glanced at the two uniformed men standing near the priest, his eyes clearly avoiding the drape covered body. Abigail wondered if Ian was doing it subconsciously, or if the little boy actually realized what was under there. A terrible sadness suddenly filled her. It was very possible that Ian’s mother was dead. But worse, Ian believed that she was, and now his friend was dead, too.

         Ian hid slightly behind her, peeking around her at the policemen. She didn’t discourage him for his shyness, only patted the top of his head, hoping that her affection would make him bolder, or at least relax him a little. As he let go of her hand to clutch at her nightgown, Abigail could feel him trembling with fear. She knew what was going on, why he wasn’t as scared of her as he was the men. Ian truly believed that he had lost his mother, so he was clinging to the only other woman in his life that had shown him kindness, or so she assumed. It was just human nature, but it made Abigail wonder if she could really give the boy what he needed.

         Brennen was the first one to approach the boy. He, like Abigail, felt worry and sympathy with the amount of fear Ian was showing. He knelt down in front of the nun, examining the boy quickly. He definitely didn’t recognize the kid, but that didn’t really mean anything besides that his family didn’t go to this church. They might still live around here and his father might still have a record. Deep down inside, Brennen thought of how much he hated cases like these. He hated dealing with women and children who had been hurt or killed, especially by their own families. He was a true family man. He had been married to the same woman for thirty years and had two kids, a boy and girl, though neither had been Ian’s age for quite some time.

         “Hey, there,” he said to Ian with an encouraging smile, sure not to smile so big that his excitement would scare the little guy, but not so small that it would seem insincere, “You must be Ian. I’m Officer Brennen.”

         Ian stared at the man for a moment and Abigail worried that this might be too much for him. Then, very slowly and tentatively, Ian seemed to realize that Brennen wasn’t going to hurt him and let go of Abigail’s nightgown to shake the officer’s hand. The way that Brennen’s hand dwarfed Ian’s was nearly comical. When they let go of each other, Ian finally stopped hiding behind the nun, but still seemed nervous.

         “Do you know why I’m here, Ian?” Brennen asked gently, trying to get the story out on the boy’s terms.

         Ian nodded.

         “Because of what happened to Mommy,” he whispered.

         “That’s right,” the cop nodded, “Can you tell me what happened to your mommy? If we know what happened, we can help her.”

         “No one can help her,” Ian protested and for the first time, tears filled his eyes, but they didn’t fall, “She’s dead. Daddy said so, and Matt, too.”

         Abigail put her hand on Ian’s head, trying to soothe him, but his voice sounded twisted, like he was holding back his pain. She had seen teenagers do that, when they thought about the bad things in their pasts, but never from a boy Ian’s age. If they were sad, they cried, angry, they screamed. They didn’t hold back, didn’t even try to hide.

         “We can always try,” Brennen promised him, “And we can help you.”

         Ian chewed on his lip for a few seconds.          

         “Mommy got angry ‘cause Dad hit me lots,” Ian struggled to explain, “I di’n’t like it neither ‘cause it hurt, but Mommy promised that Daddy wouldn’t hit me no more. She said we were going on a vacation ‘n she’d make it all better. I wanted to go. Mommy’s nice. She doesn’t hit or yell. I love Daddy, but I don’t like it when he get’s mad like that. We were supposed to go on a plane tonight. I’ve never been on a plane before, but Mommy said it would be fun. But Daddy found out. He got angry. Really, really angry, more than he’s ever been. He told Mommy that if she took me away from him, he was gonna kill her. She said she didn’t care, she wanted to protect me.”

         From behind Brennen, Father Taylor shook his head sadly. During his early days as a priest, he had been a part of a community service that helped shelter battered women and children and had heard this kind of story a thousand times. A wife would live in silence as her husband abused her, but then he would go too far and she would feel that there was nothing she could do but run away. Usually, it was when their children were in danger that they got the courage to leave their husbands or boyfriends. But… not all of them made it. Not all of them got the chance to run away. He had taken confession from such men and every time he did it, he felt an excruciatingly painful tug between his religious duties and his moral ones. He had looked these men in the eye and had heard their stories, but he still couldn’t understand how anyone could do such a thing, let alone to a child.

         “Daddy stabbed her,” Ian whispered and a single tear tracked down his right cheek.

         “Where did your Daddy stab your Mommy?” Brennen demanded.

         He knew better, but hope, a tiny, fragile thing, blossomed in his heart. Maybe Ian had just thought his mother was dead because his dad had stabbed her. Maybe it had just been a non-fatal wound and the poor woman was bleeding in their house right now, but still alive. He knew that he shouldn’t hope. How many times had he gotten cases like these, only to find the worst? But still, after all these years, his job hadn’t quite beaten him down completely. Then, Ian looked at him with a sad, horrified expression and something cold and sharp settled in Brennen’s gut.

         “Everywhere,” the little boy whispered, putting emphasis on the word, “I tried to help her…” he sniffed, “But Daddy cut me, too.”

         Ian touched the back of his neck where the deep cut was still stinging and burning.

         “I fell asleep, but Matt woke me up. He said we had to go, that Daddy was going to kill me. But Daddy wouldn’t do that!” Ian yelled, the first time his voice had ever risen above a whisper, “He just… he wouldn’t…” more tears ran down his cheeks, but his words lacked any conviction, as though he were trying to convince himself, “I screamed and screamed at Mommy, but she didn’t wake up like I did. Matt said it was because she died, that that’s why there was blood everywhere. Dad came back ’n said it, too, that Mommy wasn’t gonna get up no more. He said it was my fault, ’cause Mommy wanted to break up the family. He shot Matt.”

         At this point, Ian seemed incapable of speech, his body doubled over as he sobbed, tears pouring from his eyes. Abigail made a pained noise and scooped him up into her arms, rocking him as she sat on the floor.

         “Ssh,” she soothed, “It’s ok… everything is going to be fine now. Your Daddy can’t hurt you or your Mommy anymore.”

         Her words didn’t seem to help Ian at all and he just clutched at her clothing and cried harder.

         “I think that’s enough for now,” Taylor urged, his heart hurting at the little boy’s sorrow.

         “Can we get his last name, at least?” the other cop asked uncomfortably.

         Abigail and Taylor shared a look and she nodded. The nun whispered something to Ian, but he shook his head vehemently, his face buried in her shoulder. She shook her head at Brennen.

         “I think he’s scared to tell you,” she said quietly.

         To Abigail’s relief, Brennen nodded in agreement.

         “It’s too soon,” he said, “I don’t want to make him more anxious. We should have enough to find out who Ian’s father was or where they lived. Hollow point bullets, even illegal ones, aren’t that common around here. They should be simple to track down. We can ask around at the shelters in the area, find out where Matt liked to hang out. Because of Ian’s eye color and his father’s abuse, we should be able to find medical records, too. That will make things easy.”

         “Then what?” Taylor asked, “Ian’s young, a court might not accept his version of events.”

         “Even if there is a doubt of who kil… who did this, Ian won’t go back to his father,” the other cop assured them, “Hopefully, he has aunts or other relatives that will take him. If not… he’ll probably end up here.”

         Abigail tightened her arms around Ian, who seemed oblivious to what they were saying, but she wouldn’t underestimate him, even as his cries were starting to lessen. The last thing she wanted was for Ian to end up here. His father was a brute and a murderer, but she didn’t feel any happier about them being separated. Issues like these were so complicated. No matter what happened, Ian’s family was broken and always would be. She would love to care for him, to show him that he could still have a chance at happiness, but if he lived here, it would just mean that no one else in the world who wanted him.

         “In the meantime, I think it’s best if he stays here,” Brennen suggested, “He already knows you folks and we can keep you in the loop.”

         Taylor shook Brennen’s hand.

         “Thank you for your patience and your time,” the priest said.

         Brennen shook his head.

         “Just doing my job, Father. The sooner we can get Ian to a proper home, the sooner he can put all this ugliness behind him, though I doubt he ever will,” he said sadly.

         With a bittersweet smile, Brennen ruffled Ian’s hair. Ian looked up at him, his blue-violet eyes red, but his sobs had finally stopped.

         “We’ll find your Daddy, ok? In the meantime, you can stay here with Sister Abby. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?” the cop asked gently.

         Ian hesitated, then nodded slowly. Abigail wondered if the boy truly understood what was happening, that when the cops found his father, they would never see each other again, that he would never be going home ever again. Officer Brennen opened the door and let in the paramedics. Abigail was momentarily shocked by their arrival, but then realized the red lights that had been cast through the windows had been there since she had come down the stairs. She immediately walked up the steps with Ian. She didn’t want him to see them taking his friend’s corpse away on the gurney. Didn’t want him to see them marking the scene with tape and picking up samples or whatever these people did when they came to crime scenes. God… was that what her church… her home was now? But mostly, she didn’t want to see it. She looked down at Ian and saw that he was slumped in slumber, but his face was still pinched in worry.

         For a moment, the nun almost went to the room where the other orphans slept, then thought better of it. She didn’t know how Ian would react if he woke up in a strange room with a dozen other kids. She didn’t know how the other orphans would react to find a stranger in their room. She walked towards her own room, the door still gaping open from when she had run out of it at the Father’s yelling. She closed the door behind her and gently laid Ian down in her bed. His tiny hand was still clutching the starfish and she tucked him in with it. She paused for a moment, then leaned down and kissed his forehead. Ian made a little snuffling noise, reminding her of a puppy, and curled up into a tiny ball, hiding under the sheets. Her bedroom was nearly pitch dark with only the neon lights from the bar lighting it.

         Abigail went to her closet and opened it, turning on the light inside and keeping the door open just a jar. She knew how children were, and Ian had just watched his mother be brutally murdered by his own father. She had absolutely no doubt that he would have nightmares tonight. But, if she took one of the empty beds where the other children slept, she would probably be able to hear if he did have a bad one.

         “Good night,” she whispered and crept out the door.