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Nichola gave him two whole days before fleeing like a coward. The only thing the kid wanted to eat were the dogs’ toys and random bits of trash he found hiding in the strangest corners of the house. The social worker didn’t seem to have a whole lot to say, once she decided the house was clean and the finances stable enough for this arrangement to continue. She was no help whatsoever.
That didn’t change the fact that there was clearly something wrong with the kid. Wilford hadn’t been around many kids, but he had a feeling they were supposed to be loud, obnoxious brats. Michael just babbled and cried. He was still obnoxious, but in a different way.
Something had to be done. Even if that something was just figuring out what information he was going to relay to the next person. Abe hadn’t called back yet, but he would. Wilford knew that sometimes these things took a little time, but until then, he was going to do everything to make the next couple of weeks go as smoothly as possible. And that started with giving Dr Taylor a break from being on blast, and calling the medical centre about finding a pediatrician. Wilford wasn’t sure what information he’d need when he took the kid in, but he grabbed everything he had. All the court documents, everything Tiffany had scribbled down, and a little bit of what he could find about Michael’s mother online. It probably wasn’t anything useful or relevant, but it couldn’t have hurt either. If nothing else, ‘his mother appears to have murdered his father’ brought some context to the table.
Nichola had put the ridiculously complicated seat into Wilford’s back seat, but hadn’t left any instructions on how to use it before she ran away. Trying to keep the kid within an arm’s reach and try to look up on the internet how the stupid thing worked was a task for someone with four arms. It was a goddamn good thing there was an eight-foot-tall gate between them and the road, because the kid would have run into traffic about ten times before Wilford figured out what he was doing. Finally, he managed to figure out all the belts and buckles and snaps, and get the kid tied into the seat. By then, he was running late, and didn’t even have time to wonder what in the hell he was even doing with his life.
He’d signed himself in to plenty of clinics in the past, but trying to fill out the forms for a kid he had next to no information on was a different beast entirely. He didn’t know the insurance situation, and was glad he’d brought all the court documents, because consent was a confusing can of worms. He assumed, at least, that the court documents gave him the ability to deal with these things. Nobody was saying otherwise, so it must have been the case.
The kid was already getting fussy by the time they were called back. Apparently the animal crackers he’d had for breakfast hadn’t quite done it, but they were the only thing he’d ever eat, aside from chicken nuggets. And Wilford was not going to get the kid chicken nuggets three times a day. Wilford didn’t like holding the sticky little monster any longer than he had to, but he’d planted himself on the floor and frowned like he was trying to make himself cry. Not having much of a choice, Wilford picked him up and hauled him back through the door, following the doctor back to her exam room. Like the waiting room out front, the walls had been painted with friendly woodland creatures having picnics and playing badminton. It was awful.
“I’m Doctor Ross,” she said, looking over her chart while Wilford tried to get the kid to stop fussing. “We’re here for a wellness check?” she asked.
The kid was about three seconds from melting down, and Wilford was already done with the day. He pulled a box of crackers out of his inventory and opened them up. “I’d be angry all the time if that’s all I ate too,” he said, handing the crackers over. It seemed to do the trick for now.
“He doesn’t eat?” Dr Ross asked.
Wilford shook his head, finally turning to face her. “I just got him on Monday from his mom. I don’t know if he doesn’t like me or if he’s always like this.”
“You’re separated?” Dr Ross asked.
“He’s my grandson.” That still left a foul taste in his mouth. Wilford couldn’t figure out which scenario he liked worse though.
Dr Ross nodded and made a note on the kid’s chart. “What else is he eating?”
“Chicken, but only if it comes from a drive-thru. He won’t touch anything I make at home.” The kid was going to waste away at this rate.
“It’s a stressful time for him, I’m sure,” Dr Ross said, still writing. “A white diet can usually help kick these habits a little faster. Pastas with just a little bit of sauce, cereals, oatmeal. Try to hide some fruit in there if you can. If he chokes or makes himself try to vomit, then we’d start to be a little more concerned.”
“Haven’t noticed him doing anything like that. Just screaming and throwing things.” Apparently they were going shopping on the way home. Great. Exactly what Wilford wanted to do with a two-year-old in tow.
“But let’s take a look,” Dr Ross said, setting her charts aside. “Hey, Michael. How are you doing?” she asked, stepping close to him.
The kid looked up at her, ‘ba-ba-baing’ and holding up a half-eaten cracker.
“Oh, Grandpa gave you some crackers. Yum!”
Yep. Wilford hated that more, he decided. He reminded himself that it would all go away soon, and then he’d be done with all of it forever.
He watched the doctor get her readings and write down numbers, all the while with a concerned look on her face. Wilford hadn’t mentioned his primary reason for bringing the kid in, but it was clear he didn’t have to. She saw it plain as day.
“He’s three next month?” she asked, looking up at Wilford.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She grabbed her auriscope and checked the kid’s ears. “I don’t think there’s a hearing issue, but we’ll schedule a test just to be sure,” she said. Every time she tried to look into the kid’s ears, he turned sharply to look at her. After the third time, Wilford reached out to hold him still.
“Just you, or is there a partner in the house?” she asked.
“Just me,” Wilford said, watching Dr Ross try to do her job with the kid still squirming around. “I had help for a few days, but she had her own stuff to deal with.”
“Does he have many toys he plays with?” she asked, throwing the cap to her scope into the trash and making more notes.
“Yeah, he’s got a whole bunch. Most of them, he’s either stuffed into my shoes or tried to feed to the dogs, if that matters.”
Dr Ross was writing everything down again. “It does,” she says. “He knows his name, from what I saw?”
Wilford nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
“Does he understand when you ask him to do something?” Dr Ross asked.
“He understands ‘knock it off.’ And then starts crying about it,” Wilford said.
Dr Ross nodded and lowered her charts. “Michael, what have you got there?” she asked with an exaggerated grin.
Michael grinned back and ba-ba-ba’ed some more, holding up his box of crackers. She spent the next few minutes playing with him, getting him to point at things and making him laugh. Wilford wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be all about, but he stood back quietly and let her do it.
“The situation’s new. It’s probably stressful and scary,” she said once she seemed convinced with whatever she was doing. “He’s testing boundaries, which is a good thing. You can probably expect it to get worse before it gets better. But before I go throwing big, scary words around, what was his home life like with his mother?”
Wilford shook his head and shrugged. “I didn’t know he existed until a couple weeks ago,” he said. “I haven’t exactly been on speaking terms with his grandmother.” He picked up his folder and started digging through the papers in it. “His mom’s in prison. That conviction was last month?” He double checked the dates. “Yeah. Grandmother didn’t want him, so she sent him out here instead. His father’s parents are both a couple of felons too, from the sounds of it.”
“What about his father?” Dr Ross asked.
“Dead. A few months ago.”
Dr Ross started to say something, but nodded instead and wrote all this down as well. “It’s possible we’re dealing with some form of regression from trauma,” she said. “Did his grandmother say anything?”
Wilford shook his head. “She did everything she could to dump the kid on me and run away back to DC.”
“Okay.” She looked back over to the kid, where he was still happily munching on animal crackers, and trying to feed one of them to the rabbit painted on the wall behind him. “The other likely alternative is we’re seeing a profound language delay. Without knowing what his home life was before, it’s difficult to say which one it is. Were you able to get any medical records from DC?”
“I don’t think there were any. There wasn’t even a birth certificate anyone could find,” Wilford said.
Dr Ross nodded. “All right. Since we don’t have any records, we’re going to want to run some blood tests so we can see which, if any vaccines he’s had. He might have a lot of catching up to do, but there are some vaccines that we don’t want to over-do it on.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a series of small tools. “He’s not going to be very happy about it. Why don’t we sit you both down here, so you can hold him still?”
She pointed to a chair as she got herself set up.
Not sure what else to do, Wilford picked the kid up and took him over to the chair. He got a half-eaten animal cracker shoved in his face before they even sat down. “Which ones does he need by now?”
She listed off a lot of letters Wilford didn’t really understand. “You don’t do any of the lycanthropy or anything like that?” he asked, trying to wrestle away the cracker.
Dr Ross sighed. “We can do it at twenty-four months, but it’s a hard one for little bodies to cope with. We only do it if the living situation requires it. Otherwise, we schedule mutative vaccines to after twelve.”
Wilford shook his head. “No, nothing like that.” It made sense now that she’d said it. Some of the ones he had to get for work knocked him on his ass for a week.
“All right. We might have to do a few pokes to get everything we need. Try to hold him real still for me.”
It took almost twenty minutes of poking the kid’s fingers with a barbaric little tool, every second of which he spent screaming bloody murder. Dr Ross was right. He didn’t like it. They left with a bunch of colourful band-aids on his fingers, an obnoxious new toy, and a stack of referrals and instructions for both getting the kid to eat and getting the kid to talk.
“Someone will call you soon to set up appointments,” Dr Ross said as Wilford was on his way out.
He hoped it wasn’t too soon. But he’d got the paper trail started, so hopefully the next person would be a little more willing to take him. Wilford took the kid out to the car and got him strapped into his seat, letting him whine out the rest of his upset. Once he was in the car, Wilford turned on the AC and pulled out his phone. Abe always seemed to answer by the third ring, no matter what he was doing. Today was no exception.
“What’s the good news?” Wilford asked.
The way Abe sighed suggested there was no good news. “This Linda’s a real piece of work. You sure she’s yours?”
“What’s going on?” Wilford asked.
“It sounds like she needed money. I mean, no shit, she and that boyfriend of hers were Bonnie and Clyde-ing their way across town. But before they did that, she paid Mr and Mrs Benson a little visit,” Abe said. “Tied them both up in their bedroom and sacked the entire house. Didn’t even have the decency to untie them when she was done. Took two days before anyone found them.”
“Jesus Christ.” He looked in the mirror back at the kid. He seemed to have forgotten all about his ordeal back in the clinic already.
“So, they’re not really willing to take a kid they’re afraid might wind up even worse. If you could even imagine a worse.” Abe said. There was a tapping sound on the other end of the line, like a pen against a table. “They’ve got two other kids, and they all seem to feel the same. I think that’s when word started to spread, because I can’t get anyone to talk to me now.”
“Fuck,” Wilford hissed.
“There’s grandparents on the other side that seemed eager, but there’s a lot of debt there. I wasn’t very sure about that,” Abe said.
Wilford remembered what Tiffany had said about the father’s parents. “Absolutely fucking not,” he said. Whether or not there was truth to what she’d said, it wasn’t a chance Wilford could afford to take. He knew the farther removed family got, the more likely it was that people expressing interest probably didn’t want the kid at all. And then he was back at square one.
“What about the other thing? What have you got for me there?” he asked, hoping to get some sort of good news.
Abe sighed again. Good god. “Your friend’s parents are starting to cause waves. They just want to take him home and bury him.”
“And they’re not releasing the body,” Wilford guessed. Great. “Where are they staying?”
“Is that a good idea?” Abe asked.
Wilford looked back at the kid again. “Nope,” he said. “But my day’s already fucked. Might as well go all-in.”
He got the address from Abe and hung up. This was an awful, terrible, stupid idea, but things couldn’t manage to get much worse. “Well, pipsqueak, you want to go help me fix a problem?” he asked.
The kid didn’t have much to say about it.
The hotel was in Vinewood, and not too far from the clinic. It wasn’t exactly a nice hotel, either. Wilford was able to walk straight from the car to their door, without ever stepping foot inside. The kid was starting to get fussy, but maybe that meant he’d nap in the supermarket.
For a brief moment, when the door opened, Wilford thought he’d knocked on the wrong door. He’d never met Kevin’s parents before, and had no idea his mother was white. “Mrs Imahara?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, confirming what her tired posture and dark circles under her eyes suggested. “I… know who you are. Come in, I guess.” She stepped aside, letting Wilford inside. The room was small — a single bed, with a night stand, and an old CRT TV on a crumbling dresser. The place didn’t look like it had been upgraded since the 80s. “I’m surprised you’re here.”
Wilford shrugged, trying to adjust the kid as he tried to squirm away. “Lawyer said to stay away.” Being a suspect and all, it was probably good advice. “But I heard you’re having some issues with the cops. I just wanted to… I don’t know.” He shrugged. Say he was sorry? For what? He had nothing to do with this.
Mrs Imahara laughed joylessly. “My husband’s down there right now, arguing with someone. The last time we talked, Kevin said he was getting his own show online. He was so excited about it. It’s never going to happen now.”
“Yeah. I was going to produce it. He had a lot of good ideas.” Ideas that didn’t fit with Wilford’s show, so it made sense to branch out and share resources that way. The kid was trying to squirm right out of his arms. Wilford thought he was about to get bitten if it kept up any longer.
Mrs Imahara stepped forward. “Let me take him,” she offered. Wilford gladly handed the kid over. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice more gentle suddenly.
“Michael,” Wilford said. “He doesn’t talk.”
Mrs Imahara looked very sad again for a moment, but then she lit up with the sort of false cheer that the kid seemed to go nuts over. “Hi! Aren’t you a cutie!” she said.
Michael scrunched up his face and laughed. If nothing else, he was good as an icebreaker. Mrs Imahara sat down on the bed, letting the kid go so he could explore. There wasn’t a whole lot in the room he could break.
“We just want to take our son home, Mr Warfstache,” she said finally. “He’s not evidence; he’s a person. What more do they need from him?”
Wilford shrugged. He could give some bullshit explanation that didn’t really say anything. Or he could tell the truth. “They’re looking at me pretty hard,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I saw someone camping this place across the street, actually.”
Mrs Imahara looked to the window and moved like she was going to get up to close the curtain, but Wilford shook his head. “Don’t do that,” he said. “That looks like we’re sharing secrets. I think they probably know I’ve got a PI snooping around, and they’re trying a power play to make me do something stupid. So, here. I’m going to do it.” He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through the stack of business cards he’d accumulated since moving to LS. He kept all of them because sooner or later, they always came in handy. “I can’t give you my lawyer, because he wouldn’t be able to take you on. But this guy is very good. He deals with cases like this. He’ll get you all the media coverage you need to shame the department into letting you take Kevin home.”
He handed the card over, watching her examine it.
“You sound very different in person,” she said finally.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Wilford said.
“This will work?” she asked.
Wilford nodded. “You’ll be home in a week.”
Mrs Imahara stood up and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said.
Wilford wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now.
They survived the supermarket and got home in one piece. Following Nichola’s example, when she’d taken his car to go shopping, Wilford parked out in the driveway. Getting the dogs up and down the spiral stairs inside was enough of a hassle. He didn’t want to try to cart groceries and a kid up them as well. The outside stairs up to the balcony were much less precarious.
By the time they were inside and had everything put away, they were both starving. He cooked for the dogs first, like always, and then started trying to figure out dinner for him and the kid. His sole experience with Italian food was boiling noodles and opening a jar of sauce, and that was exactly what he did. He wasn’t really in the mood for pasta and tomato sauce, but he was even less in the mood to cook three meals.
The doctor had said to try small portions with large noodles. He hoped penne was what she meant, because that’s what he bought. The sauce was bland as hell, with just enough seasoning to separate it from plain boiled tomato sauce, but Wilford didn’t want to risk trying to spice it up and scare the kid off it. He dished both of them up, giving the kid about a dozen noodles with the tiniest splash of sauce, and sat both plates on the coffee table. Maybe if he sat down next to the kid, he could convince him to eat something.
“Eat it,” Wilford said, pointing at the kid’s plate. “You need to eat something that isn’t a cracker today.”
The kid curiously picked up one of the noodles and examined it. He threw it back onto his plate and picked up another.
“Stick it in your mouth,” Wilford said. He took a bite off his own plate. He’d actually managed to make something even more flavourless than the crap he’d get delivered at 4am.
The kid put the noodle into his mouth and immediately started to cry. Burying his face in both hands, Wilford fell back onto the floor, almost wanting to cry as well. Why was everything so awful all of the time?
That didn’t change the fact that there was clearly something wrong with the kid. Wilford hadn’t been around many kids, but he had a feeling they were supposed to be loud, obnoxious brats. Michael just babbled and cried. He was still obnoxious, but in a different way.
Something had to be done. Even if that something was just figuring out what information he was going to relay to the next person. Abe hadn’t called back yet, but he would. Wilford knew that sometimes these things took a little time, but until then, he was going to do everything to make the next couple of weeks go as smoothly as possible. And that started with giving Dr Taylor a break from being on blast, and calling the medical centre about finding a pediatrician. Wilford wasn’t sure what information he’d need when he took the kid in, but he grabbed everything he had. All the court documents, everything Tiffany had scribbled down, and a little bit of what he could find about Michael’s mother online. It probably wasn’t anything useful or relevant, but it couldn’t have hurt either. If nothing else, ‘his mother appears to have murdered his father’ brought some context to the table.
Nichola had put the ridiculously complicated seat into Wilford’s back seat, but hadn’t left any instructions on how to use it before she ran away. Trying to keep the kid within an arm’s reach and try to look up on the internet how the stupid thing worked was a task for someone with four arms. It was a goddamn good thing there was an eight-foot-tall gate between them and the road, because the kid would have run into traffic about ten times before Wilford figured out what he was doing. Finally, he managed to figure out all the belts and buckles and snaps, and get the kid tied into the seat. By then, he was running late, and didn’t even have time to wonder what in the hell he was even doing with his life.
He’d signed himself in to plenty of clinics in the past, but trying to fill out the forms for a kid he had next to no information on was a different beast entirely. He didn’t know the insurance situation, and was glad he’d brought all the court documents, because consent was a confusing can of worms. He assumed, at least, that the court documents gave him the ability to deal with these things. Nobody was saying otherwise, so it must have been the case.
The kid was already getting fussy by the time they were called back. Apparently the animal crackers he’d had for breakfast hadn’t quite done it, but they were the only thing he’d ever eat, aside from chicken nuggets. And Wilford was not going to get the kid chicken nuggets three times a day. Wilford didn’t like holding the sticky little monster any longer than he had to, but he’d planted himself on the floor and frowned like he was trying to make himself cry. Not having much of a choice, Wilford picked him up and hauled him back through the door, following the doctor back to her exam room. Like the waiting room out front, the walls had been painted with friendly woodland creatures having picnics and playing badminton. It was awful.
“I’m Doctor Ross,” she said, looking over her chart while Wilford tried to get the kid to stop fussing. “We’re here for a wellness check?” she asked.
The kid was about three seconds from melting down, and Wilford was already done with the day. He pulled a box of crackers out of his inventory and opened them up. “I’d be angry all the time if that’s all I ate too,” he said, handing the crackers over. It seemed to do the trick for now.
“He doesn’t eat?” Dr Ross asked.
Wilford shook his head, finally turning to face her. “I just got him on Monday from his mom. I don’t know if he doesn’t like me or if he’s always like this.”
“You’re separated?” Dr Ross asked.
“He’s my grandson.” That still left a foul taste in his mouth. Wilford couldn’t figure out which scenario he liked worse though.
Dr Ross nodded and made a note on the kid’s chart. “What else is he eating?”
“Chicken, but only if it comes from a drive-thru. He won’t touch anything I make at home.” The kid was going to waste away at this rate.
“It’s a stressful time for him, I’m sure,” Dr Ross said, still writing. “A white diet can usually help kick these habits a little faster. Pastas with just a little bit of sauce, cereals, oatmeal. Try to hide some fruit in there if you can. If he chokes or makes himself try to vomit, then we’d start to be a little more concerned.”
“Haven’t noticed him doing anything like that. Just screaming and throwing things.” Apparently they were going shopping on the way home. Great. Exactly what Wilford wanted to do with a two-year-old in tow.
“But let’s take a look,” Dr Ross said, setting her charts aside. “Hey, Michael. How are you doing?” she asked, stepping close to him.
The kid looked up at her, ‘ba-ba-baing’ and holding up a half-eaten cracker.
“Oh, Grandpa gave you some crackers. Yum!”
Yep. Wilford hated that more, he decided. He reminded himself that it would all go away soon, and then he’d be done with all of it forever.
He watched the doctor get her readings and write down numbers, all the while with a concerned look on her face. Wilford hadn’t mentioned his primary reason for bringing the kid in, but it was clear he didn’t have to. She saw it plain as day.
“He’s three next month?” she asked, looking up at Wilford.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She grabbed her auriscope and checked the kid’s ears. “I don’t think there’s a hearing issue, but we’ll schedule a test just to be sure,” she said. Every time she tried to look into the kid’s ears, he turned sharply to look at her. After the third time, Wilford reached out to hold him still.
“Just you, or is there a partner in the house?” she asked.
“Just me,” Wilford said, watching Dr Ross try to do her job with the kid still squirming around. “I had help for a few days, but she had her own stuff to deal with.”
“Does he have many toys he plays with?” she asked, throwing the cap to her scope into the trash and making more notes.
“Yeah, he’s got a whole bunch. Most of them, he’s either stuffed into my shoes or tried to feed to the dogs, if that matters.”
Dr Ross was writing everything down again. “It does,” she says. “He knows his name, from what I saw?”
Wilford nodded. “Yeah,” he said.
“Does he understand when you ask him to do something?” Dr Ross asked.
“He understands ‘knock it off.’ And then starts crying about it,” Wilford said.
Dr Ross nodded and lowered her charts. “Michael, what have you got there?” she asked with an exaggerated grin.
Michael grinned back and ba-ba-ba’ed some more, holding up his box of crackers. She spent the next few minutes playing with him, getting him to point at things and making him laugh. Wilford wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be all about, but he stood back quietly and let her do it.
“The situation’s new. It’s probably stressful and scary,” she said once she seemed convinced with whatever she was doing. “He’s testing boundaries, which is a good thing. You can probably expect it to get worse before it gets better. But before I go throwing big, scary words around, what was his home life like with his mother?”
Wilford shook his head and shrugged. “I didn’t know he existed until a couple weeks ago,” he said. “I haven’t exactly been on speaking terms with his grandmother.” He picked up his folder and started digging through the papers in it. “His mom’s in prison. That conviction was last month?” He double checked the dates. “Yeah. Grandmother didn’t want him, so she sent him out here instead. His father’s parents are both a couple of felons too, from the sounds of it.”
“What about his father?” Dr Ross asked.
“Dead. A few months ago.”
Dr Ross started to say something, but nodded instead and wrote all this down as well. “It’s possible we’re dealing with some form of regression from trauma,” she said. “Did his grandmother say anything?”
Wilford shook his head. “She did everything she could to dump the kid on me and run away back to DC.”
“Okay.” She looked back over to the kid, where he was still happily munching on animal crackers, and trying to feed one of them to the rabbit painted on the wall behind him. “The other likely alternative is we’re seeing a profound language delay. Without knowing what his home life was before, it’s difficult to say which one it is. Were you able to get any medical records from DC?”
“I don’t think there were any. There wasn’t even a birth certificate anyone could find,” Wilford said.
Dr Ross nodded. “All right. Since we don’t have any records, we’re going to want to run some blood tests so we can see which, if any vaccines he’s had. He might have a lot of catching up to do, but there are some vaccines that we don’t want to over-do it on.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a series of small tools. “He’s not going to be very happy about it. Why don’t we sit you both down here, so you can hold him still?”
She pointed to a chair as she got herself set up.
Not sure what else to do, Wilford picked the kid up and took him over to the chair. He got a half-eaten animal cracker shoved in his face before they even sat down. “Which ones does he need by now?”
She listed off a lot of letters Wilford didn’t really understand. “You don’t do any of the lycanthropy or anything like that?” he asked, trying to wrestle away the cracker.
Dr Ross sighed. “We can do it at twenty-four months, but it’s a hard one for little bodies to cope with. We only do it if the living situation requires it. Otherwise, we schedule mutative vaccines to after twelve.”
Wilford shook his head. “No, nothing like that.” It made sense now that she’d said it. Some of the ones he had to get for work knocked him on his ass for a week.
“All right. We might have to do a few pokes to get everything we need. Try to hold him real still for me.”
It took almost twenty minutes of poking the kid’s fingers with a barbaric little tool, every second of which he spent screaming bloody murder. Dr Ross was right. He didn’t like it. They left with a bunch of colourful band-aids on his fingers, an obnoxious new toy, and a stack of referrals and instructions for both getting the kid to eat and getting the kid to talk.
“Someone will call you soon to set up appointments,” Dr Ross said as Wilford was on his way out.
He hoped it wasn’t too soon. But he’d got the paper trail started, so hopefully the next person would be a little more willing to take him. Wilford took the kid out to the car and got him strapped into his seat, letting him whine out the rest of his upset. Once he was in the car, Wilford turned on the AC and pulled out his phone. Abe always seemed to answer by the third ring, no matter what he was doing. Today was no exception.
“What’s the good news?” Wilford asked.
The way Abe sighed suggested there was no good news. “This Linda’s a real piece of work. You sure she’s yours?”
“What’s going on?” Wilford asked.
“It sounds like she needed money. I mean, no shit, she and that boyfriend of hers were Bonnie and Clyde-ing their way across town. But before they did that, she paid Mr and Mrs Benson a little visit,” Abe said. “Tied them both up in their bedroom and sacked the entire house. Didn’t even have the decency to untie them when she was done. Took two days before anyone found them.”
“Jesus Christ.” He looked in the mirror back at the kid. He seemed to have forgotten all about his ordeal back in the clinic already.
“So, they’re not really willing to take a kid they’re afraid might wind up even worse. If you could even imagine a worse.” Abe said. There was a tapping sound on the other end of the line, like a pen against a table. “They’ve got two other kids, and they all seem to feel the same. I think that’s when word started to spread, because I can’t get anyone to talk to me now.”
“Fuck,” Wilford hissed.
“There’s grandparents on the other side that seemed eager, but there’s a lot of debt there. I wasn’t very sure about that,” Abe said.
Wilford remembered what Tiffany had said about the father’s parents. “Absolutely fucking not,” he said. Whether or not there was truth to what she’d said, it wasn’t a chance Wilford could afford to take. He knew the farther removed family got, the more likely it was that people expressing interest probably didn’t want the kid at all. And then he was back at square one.
“What about the other thing? What have you got for me there?” he asked, hoping to get some sort of good news.
Abe sighed again. Good god. “Your friend’s parents are starting to cause waves. They just want to take him home and bury him.”
“And they’re not releasing the body,” Wilford guessed. Great. “Where are they staying?”
“Is that a good idea?” Abe asked.
Wilford looked back at the kid again. “Nope,” he said. “But my day’s already fucked. Might as well go all-in.”
He got the address from Abe and hung up. This was an awful, terrible, stupid idea, but things couldn’t manage to get much worse. “Well, pipsqueak, you want to go help me fix a problem?” he asked.
The kid didn’t have much to say about it.
The hotel was in Vinewood, and not too far from the clinic. It wasn’t exactly a nice hotel, either. Wilford was able to walk straight from the car to their door, without ever stepping foot inside. The kid was starting to get fussy, but maybe that meant he’d nap in the supermarket.
For a brief moment, when the door opened, Wilford thought he’d knocked on the wrong door. He’d never met Kevin’s parents before, and had no idea his mother was white. “Mrs Imahara?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, confirming what her tired posture and dark circles under her eyes suggested. “I… know who you are. Come in, I guess.” She stepped aside, letting Wilford inside. The room was small — a single bed, with a night stand, and an old CRT TV on a crumbling dresser. The place didn’t look like it had been upgraded since the 80s. “I’m surprised you’re here.”
Wilford shrugged, trying to adjust the kid as he tried to squirm away. “Lawyer said to stay away.” Being a suspect and all, it was probably good advice. “But I heard you’re having some issues with the cops. I just wanted to… I don’t know.” He shrugged. Say he was sorry? For what? He had nothing to do with this.
Mrs Imahara laughed joylessly. “My husband’s down there right now, arguing with someone. The last time we talked, Kevin said he was getting his own show online. He was so excited about it. It’s never going to happen now.”
“Yeah. I was going to produce it. He had a lot of good ideas.” Ideas that didn’t fit with Wilford’s show, so it made sense to branch out and share resources that way. The kid was trying to squirm right out of his arms. Wilford thought he was about to get bitten if it kept up any longer.
Mrs Imahara stepped forward. “Let me take him,” she offered. Wilford gladly handed the kid over. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice more gentle suddenly.
“Michael,” Wilford said. “He doesn’t talk.”
Mrs Imahara looked very sad again for a moment, but then she lit up with the sort of false cheer that the kid seemed to go nuts over. “Hi! Aren’t you a cutie!” she said.
Michael scrunched up his face and laughed. If nothing else, he was good as an icebreaker. Mrs Imahara sat down on the bed, letting the kid go so he could explore. There wasn’t a whole lot in the room he could break.
“We just want to take our son home, Mr Warfstache,” she said finally. “He’s not evidence; he’s a person. What more do they need from him?”
Wilford shrugged. He could give some bullshit explanation that didn’t really say anything. Or he could tell the truth. “They’re looking at me pretty hard,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I saw someone camping this place across the street, actually.”
Mrs Imahara looked to the window and moved like she was going to get up to close the curtain, but Wilford shook his head. “Don’t do that,” he said. “That looks like we’re sharing secrets. I think they probably know I’ve got a PI snooping around, and they’re trying a power play to make me do something stupid. So, here. I’m going to do it.” He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through the stack of business cards he’d accumulated since moving to LS. He kept all of them because sooner or later, they always came in handy. “I can’t give you my lawyer, because he wouldn’t be able to take you on. But this guy is very good. He deals with cases like this. He’ll get you all the media coverage you need to shame the department into letting you take Kevin home.”
He handed the card over, watching her examine it.
“You sound very different in person,” she said finally.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” Wilford said.
“This will work?” she asked.
Wilford nodded. “You’ll be home in a week.”
Mrs Imahara stood up and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said.
Wilford wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now.
They survived the supermarket and got home in one piece. Following Nichola’s example, when she’d taken his car to go shopping, Wilford parked out in the driveway. Getting the dogs up and down the spiral stairs inside was enough of a hassle. He didn’t want to try to cart groceries and a kid up them as well. The outside stairs up to the balcony were much less precarious.
By the time they were inside and had everything put away, they were both starving. He cooked for the dogs first, like always, and then started trying to figure out dinner for him and the kid. His sole experience with Italian food was boiling noodles and opening a jar of sauce, and that was exactly what he did. He wasn’t really in the mood for pasta and tomato sauce, but he was even less in the mood to cook three meals.
The doctor had said to try small portions with large noodles. He hoped penne was what she meant, because that’s what he bought. The sauce was bland as hell, with just enough seasoning to separate it from plain boiled tomato sauce, but Wilford didn’t want to risk trying to spice it up and scare the kid off it. He dished both of them up, giving the kid about a dozen noodles with the tiniest splash of sauce, and sat both plates on the coffee table. Maybe if he sat down next to the kid, he could convince him to eat something.
“Eat it,” Wilford said, pointing at the kid’s plate. “You need to eat something that isn’t a cracker today.”
The kid curiously picked up one of the noodles and examined it. He threw it back onto his plate and picked up another.
“Stick it in your mouth,” Wilford said. He took a bite off his own plate. He’d actually managed to make something even more flavourless than the crap he’d get delivered at 4am.
The kid put the noodle into his mouth and immediately started to cry. Burying his face in both hands, Wilford fell back onto the floor, almost wanting to cry as well. Why was everything so awful all of the time?
