Presumption of Guilt Read online

  He was sweating, and his breath came harder. All of the heat of Florida seemed contained in this attic, locked in with no escape, just like him.

  He stood there, motionless, listening. He could hear her downstairs, doors closing, footsteps moving across the floor. Was she looking for him? Had she figured out that the voice on the phone wasn’t a wrong number? What if the puppy somehow led her to him?

  He shone the beam around him again, looking for a hiding place, and he saw lots of them. Places where mice, too, could hide. Spiders. Snakes, even. There was no telling what could be in an attic in such an old house.

  He eyed the window again, and tried taking another step. It didn’t creak. Taking a deep breath, he tiptoed across the floor, walking as lightly, as quietly as he could, until he reached the window. He unlocked it and tried to slide it up, but it was stuck. With all his might he tugged, but it didn’t budge.

  For a panicked moment, he thought of breaking the glass and making a run for it, but it was a long way down. By the time he figured out a way to get to the ground without breaking both legs, she would have the whole police force surrounding the place.

  He was stuck here. Stuck until she went to sleep. Then, if he was very careful, and the floor didn’t creak, and the dog didn’t bark, maybe he could get out. Bill would be furious that he hadn’t made it to the gas station on time, and Jimmy would probably have to make it all the way back to the children’s home on foot—unless he could get to a phone and call for someone to come get him. He reached into his empty pocket, wishing he had a quarter. Maybe the lady who lived here had one lying around somewhere. Maybe he could find it before he left.

  Maybe.

  He wondered what Bill would do to him for messing this up. Quickly, he shifted his thoughts. He couldn’t dwell on that. He had to go back, and that was that. Lisa would bear the brunt of his punishment if he didn’t. He couldn’t let that happen.

  He heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and quickly dove behind a box in the corner. He held his breath and listened. Her footsteps moved across the office floor; she was going to her desk. He realized that he had forgotten to turn the answering machine back on. How could he be so stupid?

  He should have worn gloves. Could they trace the fingerprints of ten-year-old boys? And once they found him, would they put him in jail or send him to the detention center? Did they really have that room with the black walls and only a slit that they slid bread through—the room Bill had warned him about? Is that where they would keep him locked up until he was old enough for prison?

  He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. He could hear her out there, doing something in her office, moving around. He heard her saying something to the puppy, heard the little animal yelp and scratch on the floor. Would the dog lead her to him?

  “Please don’t let her find me,” he whispered. “Please . . .”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nick Hutchins stuffed the duffel bag full of the clothes the two frightened little boys—six and eight years old—would need, and wished they didn’t have to listen to the string of expletives flying from the foul mouth of their drug-dealer father, who stood handcuffed in the corner of the living room. His wife, also involved in the family business, screamed over his curses that they couldn’t take her children away. Tony Danks and Larry Millsaps, the cops who had called Nick to come take the children into state custody, ignored her pleas and continued recording the evidence they’d compiled.There was enough crack cocaine in the house to ruin the lives of everyone in St. Clair.

  It wasn’t an unusual event, but Nick had never gotten used to it. He zipped up the bag and went back into the living room where the two boys sat huddled together.

  “My daddy didn’t do anything!” the older child cried. “Neither did my mom. Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

  “Please don’t take my kids!” their mother cried. “I didn’t know nothing about what he was doing. He did it behind my back! Please!”

  Nick glanced hopefully at Larry. If there was some way they could avoid arresting the mother tonight, then he could spare the children the trauma of being taken from their home, at least temporarily. But Larry shook his head.

  “We caught her dealing on videotape,” Larry said. “And with all the stuff we found in the back room, there’s no way she didn’t know what was going on.”

  Nick looked at the distraught woman. “Do you have any relatives we can call? Someone who can take the kids tonight?”

  “No, my parents are dead,” she cried. “And we don’t even know where his parents are.”

  “Any cousins or aunts or uncles? Sisters or brothers? Anyone?”

  “No!” she cried, struggling to make him understand. “So you have to let me stay with them. They don’t have anybody to take care of them.”

  Wearily, Nick slid the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder, then took the children’s hands. “We’ll see that they’re cared for.”

  “But I can take care of them! Please don’t take them.”

  “Come on, kids,” Nick said. “Let’s go.”

  The woman screamed and fought to get to her children, but the officers restrained her. “You’re making this harder on them!” Tony shouted over her cries. “If you love them, help them through this.”

  “You’re not—taking—my kids!” she screamed, fighting to break free.

  The children pulled out of Nick’s hands and ran to their mother, but with her hands cuffed, she couldn’t hold them. As they screamed, Nick wrenched them away and hurried them out to his car and into the front seat. He positioned one wailing child in the middle of the bench seat, hooked his seat belt, then hooked the other one in on the passenger side. Agency policy was to put kids in the backseat, but Nick could imagine how lonely the backseat could be when you didn’t know where you were going.

  For a few moments after he got in, he could hardly speak. He cranked the car and pulled out of the driveway to get them away from the house as quickly as possible. Then he looked down at the kids, who were still sobbing quietly.

  “My name’s Nick,” he said, patting the leg of the boy next to him. “And I promise you, this isn’t going to be so bad, okay? We’ll just find you a place to stay tonight, and you’re going to be all right.”

  “But I want to stay at home tonight,” the younger one cried. “I want my mom!”

  “Are you taking them to jail?” the older child asked in a shaky voice. “For a long time?”

  “I can’t answer that, because I don’t know,” Nick said. “But you don’t have to worry, because you’ll be taken care of.”

  The children cried quietly now, tears glistening on their faces. His heart ached for them, but that voice that played like a tape in his mind reminded him not to get involved. His job was to find a place to put them tonight; tomorrow, he would try to find a more permanent temporary home. There was no rational reason for the guilt and grief that he felt; it wasn’t his fault that these two boys were becoming wards of the state of Florida. He just wished their parents had thought about their kids before they’d started dealing drugs.

  A few minutes later, Nick parked in front of his office. The building, a branch of the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, or HRS, was small, dirty, and structurally unsound, but it was all they could afford on their small budget. He dreamed of the day they could get a nicer place, with a playroom to cheer up broken- hearted kids as they waited to be processed. He unhooked the apprehensive boys and slid them across the seat and out of the car.

  “Please, mister. Take us back to our mom. She’s really nice.”

  The eight-year-old wiped his face and hiccuped a sob. “She won’t do anything bad or nothing.”

  Nick stooped in front of them and wiped the tears on both their faces. “The police have your parents,” he said softly. “I can’t do anything about that, and I can’t make any promises about what’s going to happen. But I can promise that we’ll take good care of you and find you someplace nice
to stay.”

  The boys clung together, weeping, and Nick stroked both of their heads. He couldn’t mend their broken hearts or erase the trauma their parents’ arrest had caused. But he could help with some of the uncertainty. “This is just my office, okay? Let’s go in and see if I can find you a coke or something, maybe a couple of candy bars.”

  “We’re not allowed to take candy from strangers.”

  The irony. Drug dealers for parents, and they’d managed to teach these kids not to take candy from strangers. “Then I’ll give you each fifty cents and let you get it out of the vending machine yourself. And while you eat it, I’ll make some phone calls and find a nice family who’ll let you spend the night with them tonight. Sound fair?”

  The boys shrugged.

  No, you’re right, Nick thought. None of it is fair. “Call me Nick,” he said. “And I’ll call you Matthew and Christopher, okay?”

  “Matt and Chris,” the little one corrected through his tears.

  “Okay, Matt and Chris. Let’s go on in. Nothing in there for you to be afraid of—just an ugly office and me.” He glanced up at the other car parked next to his. “And it looks like my boss is here, too. But that’s all. No big bad wolves.”

  He led them in and saw Sheila Axelrod, his supervisor, sitting at her desk, talking on the telephone. In a car seat on her desktop lay a screaming baby that couldn’t have been more than three months old. She hung up the phone as Nick came in. “There’s got to be a better way to make a living,” she said listlessly.

  Nick fished some quarters out of his pockets for the vending machine. “Who’ve you got there?”

  “Abused baby,” she said. “Police intervened in a domestic fight and saw her. Cigarette burns on her little legs prove the abuse. But it’ll take a miracle to find anyone to take her tonight.” She nodded toward the two still-crying boys beside him. “You’re lucky. At least they’re old enough for SCCH. I’ve got to go down the list until I find a taker.”

  SCCH—the St. Clair Children’s Home—was the only private children’s home in town. It had once been Nick’s first choice in cases like this, but not anymore.

  “I’m not calling SCCH,” he said, going to the car seat and lifting the crying baby out. Instantly, the child grew quiet and lay her head on Nick’s shoulder. He felt a wave of gratification—and concern—flood through him.

  “What do you mean you’re not calling them? Who will you call?”

  Still holding the baby, Nick ushered the two little boys to the vending machine and handed them some quarters. They took them grudgingly and chose their candy. The baby on his shoulder whimpered softly as her eyes slowly closed.

  “Did that baby’s mom get arrested, too?” the younger boy, Matt, asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nick evaded. “But it looks like she’s in the same boat you’re in. Tell you what, guys. You’re older than she is. If you’ll calm down and not look like we’re sending you to the dungeon, 21 maybe she’ll quit feeling like something bad is about to happen.

  What do you say?”

  Chris shrugged. “What’s SCCH? Is that where we’re going?”

  “No.”

  Sheila had the phone to her ear, but she put her hand over the receiver and asked, “Why not, Nick? They have a whole cottage just for temporaries. It’s the easiest thing, and if this is long term, that’s probably where they’ll end up anyway.”

  “I told you, I have too many suspicions about some things going on at the home. Until I can give the place a clean bill of health, I’m not going to send any more kids to them.”

  Her face hardened, and her voice changed. “Nick, those two kids have to be placed tonight. You’ll send them where I tell you to!”

  He touched the baby’s head again, trying to keep it calm in spite of Sheila’s ranting. “Sheila, if I can find a home to take them tonight, what difference does it make to you?”

  “Because I’m trying to find someone to take the baby. It’s not likely that we can find more than one family this late to take them, and nobody’s gonna take all three!”

  “Let me try,” he said. “That’s all I ask, Sheila. Just give me a while to try.”

  She moaned. “If you don’t send them to the home, you might have to split them up.”

  One of the boys gasped, and the other burst into tears again.

  “No! Please don’t do that.”

  “We won’t,” Nick assured quietly. He pulled a tissue out and wiped the little boy’s nose as he shot Sheila a look. “Sheila, why don’t you let me take care of this, and you go on home? I can handle it.”

  “Really?” She looked at him as if he’d just offered her a week’s vacation. Then she seemed to deflate. “I can’t. Not until they’re placed. I’ll give you an hour to try to find a family to take them. If you don’t, I’m taking them to SCCH myself. I’ll work on the paperwork, and you work on the phone calling. Here, give me the baby.”

  “No, she’s fine,” he said softly. The baby was relaxing on his shoulder, and he could feel that she was close to falling asleep. “I can call while I hold her. And if I need a hand, my buddies here can help me, can’t you, guys?”

  The boys nodded quietly.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll be in here. Buzz if you need me.”

  He ushered them down the hall to the corner of the building he sometimes shared with two other caseworkers—except that they had both quit in the last month and hadn’t yet been replaced. He looked over the baby’s head to the boys. “You gonna eat that candy, or just let it melt in your hands?”

  Matt put it into his mouth, but Chris just sat there. “Do we have to go anywhere with her?”

  Most of the kids didn’t like Sheila, which didn’t surprise Nick. She could be cold sometimes, but he knew her coldness was stress-induced. She’d been at it longer than he had, and it was a job that got to you over the years. He sat down and leaned back in his chair, still stroking the baby’s head. “I’ll try to find a place for you myself, guys. And if I can, then I’ll take you there.”

  “Why can’t we stay with you?” the little one asked.

  Nick smiled and messed up the boy’s hair. “Because I’m not home much, kiddo. I couldn’t watch you.”

  “We can watch ourselves. We’d be okay. We do it all the time.”

  “No can do. But trust me with this.” He picked up the phone, breathed a silent prayer for help, and dialed the number of his first choice—a family he’d saddled with four new kids just this past week.

  When they turned him down, he tried the next one on the list, and then the next, until he had almost given up. Little Matt had lain down on the small, garage-sale sofa against the wall, and had gone to sleep with his head in his brother’s lap. The baby slept soundly, too. Chris just stared back at him with red, dismal eyes.

  Not the St. Clair Children’s Home, Nick prayed. There’s got to be somebody else.

  Holding the phone between ear and shoulder, he dialed the next number—a new family on their list. A retired couple who had volunteered to be foster parents, they had just today completed all the requirements to be accepted into the program. This would be their first placement call. He wondered if dumping three children on them this late at night their first time might frighten them away. He had no choice but to try.

  “Hello?” The woman sounded kind—a good sign. He hadn’t been the caseworker assigned to her—Sheila had done it—so he hadn’t met her before. He hoped her voice wasn’t deceiving.

  “Mrs. Miller? This is Nick Hutchins with HRS. I have three children I need to place temporarily tonight. They’re from two different families, so if you can’t take all of them, we can give you one or two of them. But I’d at least like to keep the brothers together—”

  “We’d be delighted to have them!” the woman said, then put her hand on the receiver and shouted, “Honey, they’re bringing some children tonight.” She came back to Nick. “Please, bring all three of them. What ages are they?”

  Nick
couldn’t believe his ears. “The baby girl is probably three months, and then I have two brothers, six and eight. The baby’s an abuse case, and the boys’ parents are in police custody.”

  “Oh, the poor little things. Please, bring them right over. We’ll have their beds all ready when you get here. I’ll tell Vernon to get the crib out of the attic. We’ll get it all dusted.”

  Nick mouthed “thank you” to the ceiling as he hung up the phone. He hurried to Sheila’s door. “I found someone to take all three, Sheila. Grace and Vernon Miller. She’s even excited about it.”

  Sheila didn’t look impressed. “I wasn’t planning to give them a trial by fire. I was going to ease them in. But I guess it can’t be helped. Remind her not to get emotionally involved with them, Nick. They’re new at this.”

  “I will,” he said. But in his heart, he hoped they’d get a little involved. These kids were going to need someone who cared about them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Beth ignored her puppy as he whimpered and scratched at the attic door. Instead, she stared down at the answering machine. Why was it turned off? She had left it on; she was sure of it. Maybe the power had flickered, and the machine hadn’t come back on.

  Maybe. But that didn’t explain the person who had answered the phone when she’d called.

  Maybe the cellular phone company had mixed the signals. She’d heard of it happening. The fact that she was being followed at the time had made it all seem suspicious, but that didn’t mean that the two events had anything to do with each other. She was probably being paranoid.

  She started to turn the machine back on, but the yelping puppy distracted her. She scooped him up and stroked his head. “What’s the matter, boy? You want to play?” He wiggled in her hands and reached up to lick her face. “We’ll go down and play in a minute,” she said, walking to the window near the apex of her roof. She peered out into the night, looking for headlights, any sign that Bill Brandon was out there, waiting, watching, ready to pounce.

  No, of course he wasn’t out there. She’d chosen this house very carefully. No one could just accidentally find it, and no one would be able to look her up, either. Her address was a post office box. It wasn’t listed in the phone book, and it wasn’t even in her files at school or the paper. Since she rented, there was no public record of where she lived. The only way to find her house would be to follow her here.