The Doll Maker (32 page)

She was finally able to choke out the words. ‘Where … where did y’all
find
this?’

‘We’ll get to that in a while,’ Byrne said. ‘For the moment, tell us what you know about it.’

Crystal shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Byrne said. ‘Are you saying you can’t remember, or you can’t tell us what you know about it?’

‘I-I can’t,’ she repeated.

‘Were you in Philadelphia last Saturday, Crystal?’

She again shook her head, then dabbed at her eyes with the back of her right hand.

‘I need you to help me understand, then,’ Byrne said.

‘Understand
what
?’

‘I need to understand how this item, with your fingerprint on it, ended up at a crime scene in Philadelphia last Saturday.’

Seeing the barrette, and being hit with the questions, might have been too much. The color was rapidly draining from the woman’s face. It appeared as if she might be getting ready to faint.

Byrne pressed on. ‘Tell us about the barrette.’

‘I … I ain’t seen that in years.’

‘So you do recognize it?’

She rocked back and forth, nodded slowly.

‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Tell me about it. How did you come across this before?’

‘I … I stoled it.’

‘You stole it?’

She nodded.

‘From where, Crystal?’

She pointed at one of the walls. ‘It was one of them places with all the sunglasses and things at the mall.’

‘You mean a kiosk? A vendor that sets up in the middle?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What mall?’

Another point. ‘The Richmond one.’

‘Okay, then,’ Byrne said. ‘What did you do with it afterward?’

Now came the real tears. Jessica had no idea what complicity, if any, this woman had in murder. She still couldn’t just sit there. She reached into her bag, pulled out some Kleenex, reached across the table and handed them to Crystal. The woman nodded a thank you.

‘Crystal,’ Byrne said. He had softened his tone. ‘Tell me what you did with that barrette.’

‘I gave it to my baby girl.’

‘Your daughter?’

Crystal nodded.

‘When was this?’

She shrugged. ‘I was eighteen, some.’

‘How old was your daughter then?’

‘She was three. It was her birthday.’

Jessica looked at the sheet. Crystal was now thirty-two. This was fifteen years ago.

‘Where is your daughter now, Crystal?’

More tears. This time the woman leaned forward, placing her face almost on the battered metal table. For a long time no sound emitted, then:

‘
I … don’t … know
.’

Byrne looked at Paris. Paris nodded.

‘Crystal, we’re going to take a little break,’ Paris said. ‘Can I get you a water or something?’

The woman didn’t look up.

They stood outside the interview room. Paris had gotten them both a cup of coffee. It was truly awful.

‘I’ve had this coffee before,’ Byrne said. ‘I thought it was a Philly blend.’

‘I think it’s universal,’ Paris said.

The door to the interview room was closed. Still, they spoke in hushed tones.

Jessica had read the rest of the notes on Crystal Anders. According to the report, Crystal was found to have left two children at Richmond Mall, a mall on the city’s east side. The children were put into emergency foster care. When Crystal was picked up, she spent three days in county jail. When she was bailed out, she skipped town.

‘The report says two kids,’ Jessica said.

‘It’s my understanding that she had two, a boy and a girl.’

‘Do we know where they went?’ Jessica asked.

‘As you know, this is ancient history,’ Paris said. ‘But I can make a few calls. Chances are they went into the county system, and they tend to keep better records than the city.’

‘What do we know about the father?’

‘Not a clue,’ Paris said. ‘I haven’t really dug into this yet. The only reason she’s on my radar is because of your department’s request. I ran across her three years ago when D’Shawn Thomas killed one of our own, but she wasn’t directly involved. She was just a KA.’

Jessica knew what he meant. Crystal Anders was a known associate.

‘I’ve got a younger detective pulling everything we can find together for you,’ Paris added.

‘Much appreciated,’ Byrne said.

Paris looked at the monitor on the nearby table. It showed a high angle shot of the interview room and its occupant.

‘It looks like she’s calmed down a bit,’ Paris said. ‘Ready for round two?’

Byrne just nodded.

‘Crystal, it’s important that we trace the history of this barrette, from the time you gave it to your daughter, right up until last Saturday,’ Byrne said. ‘I can’t promise you anything on your other charges, but everything you do – good or bad – goes into the file.’

No response.

‘Are you with me, Crystal?’

She nodded. At Byrne’s request, they had taken off the shackles. She dabbed at her eyes and nose with a big wad of tissue.

‘The report says there were two children at Richmond Mall that day,’ Byrne said. ‘Is that accurate?’

She nodded.

‘Was the boy your son?’

A few more tears, but not like earlier. Crystal Anders was understandably cried out. ‘My baby boy.’

‘How old was he?’

‘He was three.’

‘So the boy and girl are fraternal twins?’

She did not respond. It was possible that she was unfamiliar with the term.

‘Where was the father in all this?’

This time there was not a shrug or a tear. This time Jessica saw the woman stiffen, and shift her eyes side to side. She raised her right hand to touch the scar on her neck.

‘Crystal?’

‘We was never together like that,’ she said. ‘We was never a couple or nothing’.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

‘I ain’t seen him or heard from him in years. No mind to.’

Byrne made the note. ‘Did he give you that scar?’

She shook her head, but she wouldn’t look up. She was lying.

‘What’s his name?’ Byrne asked.

Another shrug, but Crystal knew immediately this wouldn’t fly.

‘Crystal?’

‘His name is Ezekiel,’ she said. ‘They call him Zeke.’

‘Ezekiel what?’

Crystal mumbled something unintelligible.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Moss.’

Jessica had been looking in Paris’s direction when Crystal said the name. As soon as Paris heard it Jessica saw the color rise in his face. He uncrossed his legs, sat a little straighter. It looked like he wanted to jump into the interview, but he said nothing.

This name had meaning for him.

‘So a man named Ezekiel Moss is the children’s father,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you think the children may be with him now?’

She shook her head.

‘And why is that?’

‘He was a trucker. He didn’t call no place home. Not mine, sure.’

‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Where and when did you meet him?’

She pointed at the wall again. ‘Down to Weirton.’

‘And when was this?’

‘I was fifteen, some.’

‘Is that where the children were born?’

She nodded.

‘We’ll need to know the name of the hospital.’

Crystal looked up. She almost smiled, as if this were the dumbest question imaginable. ‘Weren’t no
hos
pital.’

Byrne stared at her for a moment. ‘So you’re saying there are no birth certificates for the children?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘When was the last time you saw your children?’

At this Crystal looked at her hands. She began to shake. Jessica figured that this was as much from this interview as it was from her paroxysms of withdrawal.

The interview was over.

The detective that Paris had put on background had made a few hits. When the two children were put into emergency foster care it was at the county level. The group home was located on the city’s near east side.

When the children went through intake, the case worker did not have an ID on them, so they entered as a John and Jane Doe.

Jessica knew this often happened, especially if the father was unknown. The children were not given the last name Anders because there was no birth certificate for them, no birth records of any kind.

The detective learned that, at this group home, there were eight children that were unidentified at the time – four boys and four girls –ranging in age from three to seven. They were all Jane and John Does, so the trail on Crystal Anders’ children grew a little fuzzy at that time.

When the home was closed due to cutbacks, the forty-one children were sent to different homes. Where the two children in question went was still unknown.

The CPD detective was working the phone and fax machines at that moment.

He did provide a lead that might have been useful. Crystal Anders’s probation officer still worked for Cuyahoga County. His name was Marc Santos, and he had first met Crystal about a year after she had abandoned her children.

Marc Santos was in his mid-forties, rotund and easy going. Jessica could see how that affability could turn to discipline in short order. If there was a profession that heard more lies on a daily basis than a police officer, it was a probation officer.

What the two jobs had in common was that each of them had the legal right to take away a person’s liberty.

They met in the lobby of the Justice Center. Santos had brought with him some documents.

‘I remember her well,’ he said. ‘She was one of my cases at two different times. Once when she was nineteen, and once when she was twenty-six.’

Santos put two photographs down on the bench. They were not police mug shots, but rather Polaroids taken at the probation officer’s office. Both had a painted white concrete wall as a background.

But that’s where the similarities ended.

At nineteen, Crystal Anders had been a pretty young woman. Her blue eyes were clear, her skin was smooth. The photograph, and its lighting, was not particularly flattering, but despite this she was quite attractive.

The photograph of her at twenty-six was a shock, especially in contrast, side by side, to her younger self. In the second photograph she had open sores on her forehead and chin. She had cut off the left side of her hair – or had it roughly done for her. As bad as the woman looked today, at thirty-two, she did not look quite as bad as she had six years earlier.

‘I’d like to tell you that her appearance in these two photos is a rarity, but I see it every day,’ Santos said.

‘These were both for drug offenses?’

Santos nodded. ‘She did a year and change on the first one, about ten months on the second.’

‘And she never violated her probation?’

‘Hard to say. Random drug testing back then was expensive and infrequent. But I can say she kept her appointments with me.’

‘Did she ever mention her children?’

‘Just once, that I can recall.’

‘How so?’

‘She knew they were in foster care, and she wanted to see them. I told her that it wasn’t going to happen.’

‘This was during her first probation?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did she react?’

‘Not well,’ Santos said. ‘I see it all the time. At first, when I started – I’d been a PO about a year when I got Crystal’s first case – I was a lot more sympathetic to it all. Now, I’m sorry to say, I’m unmoved. I’ve seen women who have sold their newborns for a five dollar rock, then come crying about how they love their baby. Once you cave, you crumble.’

‘What was the upshot?’

Santos looked out at the huge lobby, back. ‘I probably shouldn’t have done this – and it’s something I’ve only done a few times since, and not for a long time, now – but I told her that seeing the kids was not a possibility, not until she cleaned up her act, and went through court-appointed rehab. But I told her that, if she wanted to write a note, without using her name, I would get it to the director of the foster home.’

‘Did she write one?’

‘She did.’

‘Did you pass it along?’

Santos took a few moments. He nodded to a pair officers passing by. He seemed to be organizing his thoughts.

‘There’s this little piece of the world you get, you know?’ he said. ‘Some eight by ten room, some mansion, some cave, some utility room off a basement in Detroit or Baltimore or Mexico City. Maybe the room smells like mildew and mice, maybe you only get a moldy sandwich to eat, maybe not even that, but it’s some place where four walls meet, some place where you can be safe from all the knives this life throws at you, even if it’s just for a little while.’

Jessica and Byrne just listened.

‘These two kids got dealt a shit hand, and their mother probably did, too. I knew that someone else was going to make the decision on whether or not to give those kids Crystal’s note, if and when they were ready to read it. At the moment she handed it to me, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to pass it along. I’ve thought of a hundred since. But then? I just did it.’

Jessica didn’t want to ask if he’d read the note, but she had to. Marc Santos said he did not.

‘When you got Crystal’s case the second time, did she ask about the note?’ Byrne asked.

Santos shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She didn’t ask about the children, either.’

‘Any idea where the kids are?’

The man shrugged. ‘That’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid.’

As Santos walked out onto Superior Avenue, Paris got off the main elevator. He found Jessica and Byrne, walked across the lobby. He’d put his suit coat on, and had a smile on his face.

‘You know how a day starts off being about one thing, then it turns into something totally different?’

‘I do,’ Byrne said.

‘Well, I’ve got one for you and one for me.’

‘We could use one,’ Byrne said.

‘I found out about Crystal’s kids, and where they might have gone when the group home here was closed.’

He opened the envelope, took out a document, continued.

‘The forty-one children were sent to five different facilities.’ Paris read from the list. ‘Six went to Columbus, eight went to Indianapolis, ten went to Youngstown, eleven went to Toledo, and six went to Erie.’