The Doll Maker (36 page)

They met in her office.

‘So you evaluated all the children who came into intake for Vista House?’ Byrne asked.

‘Myself and another fellow, yes. It was all supervised by a psychiatrist who was on the board.’

‘As I said on the phone, we’re trying to locate a boy and a girl who came to Vista at that time. They would have been about six years old.’

‘What are their names?’

‘That I don’t know. They entered and left the Mahoning and Allegheny County welfare systems as a John and Jane Doe.’

Dr Allen nodded. ‘There were a few at Vista House at the time.’ She stood, crossed the office, opened a file drawer. After a few minutes she returned. She had eight photographs in hand. She arrayed them on the desk. Four boys, four girls.

She pointed at two of the pictures. ‘These children were older. They were closer to eight.’

Byrne looked at the other six children. Two were biracial. Two looked similar enough to be brother and sister, though not enough alike to be twins. He pointed at those photographs.

‘I think these might be the children.’

Dr Allen looked at the pictures. ‘Yes, okay,’ she said. ‘I remember them.’

‘There are no names on the photographs.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We only knew them by their case numbers.’

‘Do you remember anything about their session?’

‘I can do better.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘For three years every child’s intake, county wide, was videotaped. I made copies of all the sessions in which I was involved for a documentary I considered producing at the time, a film about the long-term effects of foster care. Something akin to the
Seven Up!
series.’

‘What happened to your film?’

‘Life, work, my own children, but mostly funding.’

‘And you’re saying you still have some of the taped interviews?’

‘I have them all.’

Byrne tapped the two photographs on the table. ‘Do you know where these children went when Vista House closed?’

‘No idea,’ she said. ‘Could have been anywhere. There may be records buried somewhere in the county system. I can try to find someone who might know where to begin looking.’

Byrne made the note. ‘Before we get started, do you mind if I ask your opinion on something?’

‘Not at all.’

Byrne reached for his bag, took out the drawings he’d found buried in the walls of his house. He smoothed them out on the desk.

Dr Allen put on her glasses, looked at the drawings.

‘Can you tell me anything about them?’ Byrne asked.

Dr Allen pointed to one drawing, one that depicted a boy with a large head and arms. ‘This might display a central language disorder in the child. You see how there was poor planning? No room for legs.’

She picked up a second picture. This one was of a tree. ‘This shows an unhappy child, but one of higher intelligence.’

‘Unhappy how?’

‘The leaves are falling off the tree, and there are dark clouds overhead. Plus, the drawing of the tree’s roots continue underground. This is a smart child, but quite a sad one. Unless the scene is in bright colors, and there’s a sun shining, falling leaves is never a good thing.’

‘So dark colors are a warning sign?’

‘As a rule of thumb. Children generally have the full palette from which to choose. If they pick dark colors exclusively, it’s for a reason.’

Room is blue
, Byrne thought.
Room is dark.

He picked up a drawing. ‘What can you tell me about this one?’

‘This is quite compelling. You see how all the elements of the figure are present – head, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arms, and legs?’

‘Yes.’

‘But notice also how the figure is disjointed. Nothing is attached.’

Byrne just nodded.

‘This means that the child was from a dysfunctional, broken home. Very insecure. And probably excessively fearful of the unfamiliar.’

Byrne took a moment to absorb the information. He gathered the pictures together.

‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all of this.’

‘Happy to help,’ Dr Allen said. She stood up. ‘Shall we begin?’

The play therapy room was small, windowless, the walls painted a cheerful primrose yellow. Along one wall was a series of two-way mirrors. At the far end was a 24 × 36 inch box filled with white sand, standing about 24 inches from the floor.

The other side of the room, floor to ceiling, were shelves.

‘And this room is essentially the same as it was twelve years ago?’ Byrne asked.

‘It is,’ Dr Allen said. ‘The carpeting has changed. Twice, I think. It’s certainly been painted. When you have children passing through all day every day things can get messy.’

Byrne pointed at the bookshelves. ‘What about these objects?’

‘We’ve added some things, got rid of some. Many have been broken, of course, and had to be replaced.’

Byrne walked over to the built-in shelving, looked a little more closely at the objects. Because everything in the room was scaled for children, he felt like Gulliver among the Lilliputians.

On the two top shelves on the right were buildings – houses, school, stores, castles, churches, a gas station. Two of the larger structures on the shelf looked to have doors that opened and closed. Beneath those objects were two shelves of vehicles. There were a number of cars and trucks, bicycles, airplanes, a pair of steam shovels. The lower shelf was devoted solely to prams and baby carriages, bassinets and high chairs.

The shelves on the left, floor to ceiling, were people – babies, children, teenagers, adults. The adults appeared to represent every imaginable profession, plus, as expected, kings, queens, princesses, and superheroes.

‘I’m not sure I know what play therapy is,’ Byrne said.

‘Play therapy is a way for a child to convey thoughts and feelings – what’s happening inside of them – without using words,’ Dr Allen said. ‘We ask them to create a world in the sand tray using figurines and other toys. There they can address their problems in a non-threatening environment.’

‘Is it easy to spot aberrant behaviors?’

‘Not easy,’ she said. ‘But young children aren’t yet practiced in hiding or masking their feelings. What we do is really equal parts art and science.’

‘How so?’

‘It is an art because a good deal of the therapy is based on the therapist’s ingenuity, sensitivity, and impulsiveness.’

‘And the science?’

‘This is where the research and clinical studies come in.’

Byrne looked back at the shelves. He thought about his own childhood, one about which he held no bad memories. He wondered what world he, as a six-year-old, would have created in a sand tray.

‘Are you ready to watch the video?’ Dr Allen asked.

‘I am.’

The adjoining room was long and narrow, and ran the length of the mirrored wall in the play therapy room. Along one wall was a built-in desk with four computer monitors.

Dr Allen sat down at one of the monitors. She motioned for Byrne to do the same at another. At the moment the screensaver on all four terminals was Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.

‘What you are going to watch is a play therapy session which I had with the two children. It’s about ten minutes long.’

‘Did you have contact with them before or since?’

Dr Allen shook her head. ‘What you’re about to see is my first contact with the children. And my last.’

She tapped a key. The same image appeared on both monitors. The first shot was a title and time code. The image then cut to the room next door.

It was an eye-level shot about three feet from the floor, perhaps slightly higher. It allowed a clear view of the sand tray.

When the boy and girl walked into the frame, Byrne felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck.

Was he really looking at a pair of cold-blooded killers at six years old
?

The girl was pretty and prim. She wore a white cardigan sweater and dark skirt, along with a white hat. The boy’s hair was neatly combed. He wore a white shirt, buttoned to the top, and dark trousers.

For ten minutes or so Byrne watched the girl and the boy create scenarios in the sand tray. The girl went to the shelves first. She seemed to hesitate before taking any of the dolls from the shelf.

‘When you present a grouping of dolls like this, what choices do they generally make?’ Byrne asked. ‘Do they pick a mom and dad and kids? Do they pick just themselves and one parent?’

‘It depends. Their choices often reflect their home environment.’

‘And if they were abandoned?’

‘Then they might not choose any of the adult dolls.’

As if on cue, the little girl brought a handful of dolls to the sand tray. None were adults. Only one was a boy. She put them in a circle, facing in. She put the boy behind one of the girls.

A few moments later the boy brought over an adult doll, a woman. He placed the doll outside the circle, behind the boy doll, facing the other way.

After a few moments, he began to dig a shallow hole, a hole into which he placed the woman doll, burying her up to her neck.

Was this his mother
?
Had the boy gotten the note from Crystal Anders, and now she was all but dead to him?

Byrne watched the little boy and girl carefully. They were never more than a few feet from each other. Every so often, when the girl dropped something, or got sand on her dress, the boy would pick up the object, or brush her off.

He was very protective.

Every so often, the girl would turn two of the dolls to face each other, pairing them off, two by two.

‘Why is she doing that?’ Byrne asked.

‘The dolls become the child’s family. They will act out, with the dolls, often what happens at home. So, if they are experiencing violence, they may bang the doll’s head, or hit another doll. They can act out not only what they see, but what they wish would happen.’

‘Is this typical of play therapy?’

‘I expected to see them again, so I treated this as a first session. I allowed them to see a spectrum of things, and do whatever they wanted,’ she said. ‘You don’t allow a child to hurt themselves, of course, but you want them to tell their story and feel comfortable doing it.’

The boy and girl stood next to the sand tray. The girl held a doll that could have been herself. The boy held the adult woman doll. He held it upside down.

‘Whenever you approach the child, you allow them to displace what is going on in the home with these creatures,’ she said.

Onscreen, the little girl took out the tea set, and placed a small cup in front of each one of the dolls. As she lifted each cup to the doll’s lips, the boy followed her. When the girl moved on – after every doll had a sip of tea – the boy took each doll, and placed it face down in the sand.

When they were done, the little girl sat on a chair, facing the camera. She took off her hat, and placed it on her lap.

There, on the left side of her head, was a barrette. A barrette in the shape of a swan.

The same barrette they’d found on Nicole Solomon.

A few minutes earlier Byrne had wondered if he was looking at a pair of cold-blooded killers at the age of six.

Now he was certain.

Byrne stood on the bank of the Schuylkill River, near the East Falls Bridge. He often came to the rivers to think.

Dr Allen had graciously allowed him to take the videotape with him, and promised to make the calls necessary to try and track the path of the boy and girl after Vista House closed.

They now had a direct line from that moment, eighteen years ago, when a teenaged girl in Weirton, West Virginia met a long-haul trucker, a malevolent spirit that haunted the corridor from Atlanta to Detroit.

When Byrne got back in the car he looked at the drawings on the seat next to him. The picture on top was the one with the obliterated little girl.

Room is blue. Room is dark.
 

By the time he reached the expressway he understood.

When Jessica entered the Video Monitoring Unit, located on the first floor of the Roundhouse, Maria Caruso was chatting with one of the officers assigned there.

The large room was arrayed with three tiers of long tables, each with a handful of wired terminals where a technician could jack in a laptop, or an all-in-one desktop, and from there monitor any of the city’s hundreds of pole cameras.

At the front of the room was a huge, ten-foot diameter screen, a display available to mirror any of the terminals. Right now, on the screen, was a frozen, high-angle daytime shot of a Philadelphia street corner.

‘What do we have?’ Jessica asked.

‘This is surveillance video of the street corner where Nicole Solomon was last seen with her friend, Naomi Burris.’

‘We have a pole cam there?’

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘This is a SafeCam video.’

SafeCam was a fairly new citizen outreach program whereby the location of private surveillance cameras – those owned by homeowners and business owners – were mapped by the PPD and Homeland Security.

If and when a crime occurred near the location of a particular SafeCam camera, the department would contact the homeowner or business owner to see if there was any footage. Not all SafeCam participants had systems that recorded audio and video to a hard drive, or Secure Digital card, and they were in no way legally bound by law to share the footage, if it existed.

The program had, to date, been a resounding success, at least as far as the department was concerned. With more than 2400 SafeCams in the program, in a little over a year there had been nearly two hundred cases solved.

On the screen, the angle showed Nicole Solomon, with her back to the camera, waiting at the light to cross the street.

Jessica found that she was holding her breath. It wasn’t often – in fact, she could only remember a handful of times, via videotape or surveillance footage – that she got to see a victim of homicide alive in the minutes or hours before they were killed. She couldn’t help but think that Sophie was just a few years younger than Nicole Solomon.

Soon a group of four people approached Nicole from behind. One was an older woman, with a cane in one hand, and a shopping bag in the other. The other was a tall man, African-American, talking on a cell phone. The other two – a young woman and young man – stepped up to the curb on Nicole’s left.