Dark Web (10 page)
Janine spoke into her recorder.
“Name: Simpkins, Braxton Thomas. Date of birth: October 22, 2001. Date of death: February 17, 2015. Age: Thirteen. Body Identified by Callandra Mary Simpkins, mother. Medical Examiner’s case 2014-227. Case number 003428-23E-2015. Investigative Agency: Bureau of Crime Investigation, New York State Police.”
She circled around the table and continued to record her observations. “The autopsy is begun at 6:14 a.m. on February 17, 2015. The body is presented under a white evidence sheet. The hands have been bagged. The decedent was wearing black pajama pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt with detailed art work on the front. Socks and sneakers on the feet. No jewelry. Upon removal of the clothing, an odor of urine was detected. Areas of the body were swabbed and submitted for detection of uric acid, as were the pajama pants and t-shirt. Following removal of the shirt, various scars were observed along the left forearm that suggest possible cutting and at least one mark from ligature, as if the victim’s left wrist had been bound at some point. A second ligature mark, which will be known throughout this report as Ligature B, was observed on the decedent’s neck. The mark is dark red and encircles the neck, crossing the anterior midline of the neck just below the laryngeal prominence.”
She stopped recording for a moment and took another long look at the young body. Virtually hairless. Thin, pale. A typical teenage boy. The marks on the forearm that indicated cutting were not surprising — in her twenty-five year career as both a pediatric and adult forensic pathologist, she had seen more young people who cut than she could count. It was a sad, disturbing trend.
The anomaly lay in the ligature around the one wrist. There was no matching mark on the left arm, which was pristine. Who tied up only one arm?
The mark around the neck was a different story. Upon first glance it looked like it could be caused by attempted suicide. But a closer inspection suggested otherwise. Janine began to envision an odd and rather gruesome scenario wherein the teenager had tied his wrist to his neck, and perhaps applied force to tauten the ligature and maybe to cinch the windpipe, shutting off the blood and oxygen to the brain. It could even have been a perverse kind of “high,” or a new type of sadomasochism she hadn’t yet encountered.
She clicked the record button, her gaze resting on the mark around the neck.
“The width of the mark varies between 0.7 and 1cm and is horizontal in orientation. The skin of the anterior neck above and below the ligature mark shows petechial hemorrhaging. Ligature B is potentially consistent with the apparatus that caused Ligature A. The absence of abrasions associated with Ligature B, along with the variations in the width of the ligature mark, are consistent with a soft ligature, such as a length of fabric, rather than a belt or a rope.” She clicked off, thought, then resumed recording. “Or a soft belt. No trace evidence was recovered from Ligature B that might assist in identification of the ligature used.”
She paused again. For a moment, she felt light-headed. She needed to take one of her pills — the early call from the State Police had disrupted her morning routine.
That job as Commissioner of Health looked better all the time. An office, not a lab. A desk, not an operating table. She’d heard through the grapevine that John Swift was also considering a slight career change, and that the Attorney General’s office had made him an offer to investigate for them directly. Corporate and political malfeasance was a tropical paradise compared to the lab and the streets and the ripped-apart families. When this was over, she would offer to buy Swift a cup of coffee and the two of them would convince one another to make the transition without further ado. Just two aging divorcees, urging one another a little farther along the path. He was a handsome man, too, in a Clint Eastwood kind of way, so a coffee could have other perks.
Then she looked up from the body and into the observation room, and there was the senior investigator, raising his hand in a wave.
* * *
“You scared the hell out of me.”
Swift smiled. “What’ve we got?”
She went through the external examination with him as they stood next to the body, giving him an overview rather briefer than her more detailed notes. “I’ll have the whole Summary Report to you by midday,” she said, searching his face. “But something tells me you don’t want to wait.”
“You mean other than the fact that I just showed up and scared the hell out of you?”
“Meaning I can see it in your eyes.”
“Yeah. We’re struggling with a spoiled crime scene and hysterical parents and an antsy-pants new ADA looking to prove himself to the District Attorney. I understand you offered the mother a mild sedative?”
“We did. Unusual, but I had to do something. She seems to be coming around. Where’s the father?”
Swift pulled in a slow breath. “There are two little girls . . .”
“Oh God,” Janine said, dropping her gaze and looking away.
“Yeah. And they’re with him.”
“Poor things.”
“Yeah. So I’m going to go ahead and speak with the mother and father separately; try to get them together later in the day.”
Her eyes opened wider as she looked at him again. “Don’t overwhelm them, John. They’ve been through just about the worst thing that can happen to a person.”
“I know. And I believe there are three kids sitting in Essex County right now who are responsible, or at least know who or what is to blame. But I need something to link them to it. Sounds like what you’ve got so far is taking me in the other direction — ligature marks, self-inflicted wounds.”
“I haven’t done an internal. You want me to do it?”
He scowled. He wanted her to do one. And she knew she was compelled to. But to cut open that kid . . . Her job had never before affected her like this. All through her career, friends and family had wondered, how do you do it? How can you cut open a dead human being and poke around inside them? She’d never been bothered by the biology of humans or animals. In high school she’d dissected insects and amphibians with total aplomb and made the transition to grad school cadavers without batting an eye. It was just how she was. She was easily able to compartmentalize. But it had become harder and harder over the past few days, or weeks. She was really feeling it today.
“I’ll get started on the internal,” she said.
Swift stood still, looking at her, his eyes still fixed on her.
She squinted at him. “You’re not telling me to hurry are you? You’re not telling me to rush the internal examination of a human being in a homicide case, are you, Detective Swift?”
He pursed his lips, suppressing a smile, and exhaled through his nose. “Of course not.”
“Back later,” he called on his way out of the door.
She watched him exit the room and took some small comfort from the fact that his job was, in many ways, as tough as hers. She had to internally examine the boy who lay on the table; Swift now had to go talk to the mother.
“He was very gifted.”
“How do you mean?”
Callie Simpkins had composed herself somewhat. She must have gone into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face, tying her long, sun-streaked hair back into a ribbon. She and Swift were sitting in a small café down the street from the morgue. The place was quiet, the only sounds coming from the cook in the kitchen, banging around with steel pots. The air smelled of fresh coffee and old bacon grease.
“I mean, gifted.” Her eyes were red from crying, the surrounding skin shrink-wrapped. But her look was focused, despite the sedative she’d been given. “And like most gifted people, that came at a certain cost.”
“Special schools, that sort of thing?”
She was shaking her head emphatically. “No. No special schools.” She took a deep breath and her gaze wandered, leafing through the scrapbook in her mind. “We had him tested once. We didn’t know what to do — he was very quiet and withdrawn a lot of the time. And he fell along the autism spectrum. Not quite autistic, however they test for that. But they said he had Asperger’s syndrome. And if he was diagnosed, we could get insurance to cover his therapies and any meds, and I was like, ‘What?’ You know?” She looked at Swift now. “Like, ‘What?’ I don’t want my kid on pills, going to see shrinks all the time. I didn’t think it would be good for him. Plus, I think as a society we over-medicalize. First they wanted to tell us he had ADHD. Then I read that, you know, they take these kids who are younger — I started him in kindergarten early — and they’re maybe a little less emotionally mature and they say, ‘the kid has a disorder.’ Today’s world, you walk just a little out of the marching line, you know, because maybe your left foot turns a fraction of a centimeter, you’ve got ‘Left Foot Turn-out Disorder,’ or something. You know what I mean?”
Swift nodded. He kept his opinions to himself. They didn’t matter here. But she was genuinely funny, and he cracked a smile at her comments. He liked her immediately. He could see that, through all the grief she was battling, Callie was a survivor, a firebrand. Probably had a tattoo hidden away somewhere. Maybe two.
“I wanted to nurture
who he was
, does that make any sense? Not try to change him . . .”
But then, inevitably perhaps, Callie Simpkins lost herself to sorrow again, and Swift’s smile faded as he watched her face crumble, and her eyes fill, then overflow with tears. She averted her gaze and took a breath, her lip trembling. She took her hand and rubbed at her eyes, smearing away the moisture, and pressed her fingers to her lips, as if to stop them from quivering. Swift seized the moment, and redirected the conversation.
“Mrs. Simpkins. What do you think Braxton was doing tonight? Why do you think this happened?”
She gave him a hard look. “Do I think this happened because of Braxton’s limitations?”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean at all. I mean, what was he doing? Did he wake up because something disturbed him? Or was he already awake?”
She lost some her defensiveness.
“Oh, he was probably up. He wakes up in the night. Almost every night. Never bothers anyone. Just sits there in his bedroom. Lately, he’ll play his game.”
“His game?”
“Yeah, some game on his laptop. It was on when I came into his room tonight. Is it still ‘tonight,’ or is it ‘last night’ now?”
Swift was jotting down some notes. “I think we can say ‘last night.’ Do you know what the game was called?”
“Uhm, I don’t know. I can’t think of the name. Mike would know. Brax played all sorts of games. He loves them. I know you’re supposed to . . . what’s the word . . . to moderate what your kids do with games and computers and phones, and we do all of that. Reno, that’s our six-year-old, she already wants a phone. You know? She says it’s not fair that the three of us have cell phones and she doesn’t.”
The tears spilled now, and she took a hasty swipe at her cheekbones.
“Braxton had a cell phone?”
“Well, sort of. We call it the ‘house phone’ and he only has it if he’s going to be out somewhere. Lately he’s been taking it more often because we’ve moved and are getting into a new routine and there’s been a lot to do. But Braxton and his games.” She shook her head, in a mixture of pride and disbelief. “He’s always been something. Can solve any game in, like, minutes flat.” She snapped her fingers. “He would play the games on my phone when he was younger. You know, the apps. And he would just chew through them in minutes.” She snapped her fingers a second time. “Amazing.” Then she grew troubled again.
“So that’s what you mean when you say he was gifted? I mean, one of the ways he showed it.”
“Sure. Yes. Definitely. He had that sort of mind. Problem-solving. Way ahead of other kids his age. But that’s not . . . that’s not everything.”
“What else?”
“He was . . .” She fought hard against another tide of emotion. “You know . . . he’d get upset.”
“How so?”
She shrugged, but Swift knew she was certain of what she was talking about. “He’d get very down on himself if he lost at something. Not because he was competitive with others so much, but he was competitive with himself. Does that make sense?”
“Absolutely.”
She searched Swift’s face with that penetrating look she had. “But don’t think for a minute I mean he was violent. Brax was incredibly kind. Ethical. He was protective of others, never wanted to hurt anyone.”
Callie bent forward and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed silently, her shoulders rising and falling.
Swift was tempted to reach out and comfort her, but it was best he didn’t. “Mrs. Simpkins, we can do this later, when your husband gets here.”
Her head came up and she sniffed back mucous and wiped away tears from her face again. “No,” she said. “What, am I going to sit around here and lose my mind? No, let’s figure this out.”
Swift nodded. He admired her attitude. She brought to mind a younger Janine Poehler. She was a bit like Brittney Silas, too. That reminded him; he needed to check in with Silas as soon as possible. Between preliminary autopsy results and the statements of his mother, self-harm — in this case fatal — was beginning to sound more plausible.
Swift took a sip of his coffee and set the cup back down.
“Everything okay at bed time last night? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, everything’s sort of out of the ordinary. We just moved two months ago.”
“That’s stressful.”
She gave him a look that seemed to detect criticism. “Sure. But we’ve done alright.”
“I’m sure you have. How’s he adjusted to the new school?”
“He’s done fine.”
“And he was in which grade?”
“He’s in seventh.” She paused for a moment. Swift wondered if she was aware how she switched back and forth between the past and present tense. That was usually the way of things soon after losing someone. Likely she was not cognizant of it. “I said that we started him early, but after all the other stuff, we had him repeat a grade. Second grade. We thought that would take the edge off, and it did. It helped.”
“When you say, ‘we,’ you’re referring to you and the educators, or your husband, Michael? Any others involved?”
“I mean Michael . . . But sure, there were other people too . . .” There was a hint of a question in her voice.
“I know that Braxton is not Michael’s biological son. What sort of role does his biological father play?”
Her look instantly hardened. “None. Mike and I have been together for eight years. When we met, Braxton was five. I had been raising him alone for three years. Mike adopted him, that’s why his last name is the same. His biological father has no involvement.”
“His name?”
“His name is Worthless Deadbeat Dad.”
“Any aliases to that?”
Her eyes narrowed, but her mouth twitched in a smile. “Tori McAfferty.”
“And where does he live?”
“I don’t know. He never paid child support; I never wanted to see him or think of him again.”
Swift made a couple more notes. When he looked up, Callie was staring at his notepad. “I know what you’re thinking.”
He set his pen beside the notepad and looked at her.
“You’re thinking that Braxton is a troubled kid. Parents divorced, raised by a stepfather, recently moved far away from home, started a new school, and has a different mind than most people. You’re thinking he did something to himself.”
“I just need to get as much information as possible. In no way am I jumping to any conclusion.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“I believe you.” Of course he did; a mother never thought her child would do such a thing. There was no mechanism that could support the idea. Swift took a moment to deliberate if now was the right time to tell Callie about the three kids who were picked up. If anything, he was wondering if Braxton was
pushed
into doing something to himself. Peer pressure. It happened more and more these days, especially with the internet and on social media. “Have you spoken with your husband since you left the house?”
She looked remorseful. “No. I left my phone at home. I haven’t called. I need to.”
“I think that’s a good idea. But, before you do; your husband was standing beside me when I got word that the troopers picked up a car which had left the scene just after the witness arrived.”
Her eyes lit up. “And . . .?”
“And I’ve questioned two of the three young men who were in the car.”
“Are they suspects?”
“I think what we would say at this point is that they are persons of interest. They have not yet been formally charged as suspects.”
She was sitting upright now, her back rigid, her eyes wide. “Who are they?”
So much for the sedative they gave her
, he thought again. He flipped back a couple of pages in his notepad. “Are any of these names familiar to you? Robert Darring, Hideo Miko, Sasha Bellstein?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Who are they?”
He took a breath and shrugged. “We don’t know, exactly. They say they were friends with your son. That they knew him from online. You say he played some games. So, maybe from one of these games. They’re young. Two teenagers, and one older, in his twenties.”
“What the hell did they say they were doing up here?”
She was getting agitated. Swift saw that same ‘mother bear’ who had run shoeless out of the house. He’d made the call to tell her about the three kids — he was seeking a way to tie them more definitively to Braxton, but it was at the cost of her trust in him. He could tell she would become adamant that the kids were prosecuted. He understood that. But it just wasn’t so simple, and the ponderous machinery of the justice system was always hard for the bereaved to accept. They wanted fast action and instant results. Who could blame them? He merely tried to serve that up as best he could.
“They said they were visiting. That it was a planned occasion. They alleged that your son was involved in this plan, and expecting them. Did he give you any indication? Did he act strangely at all last night? Maybe he . . .”
“What? Acted like he was going to run away with them? No way. Braxton wasn’t running away anywhere. Who are these kids? Have you contacted their parents?”
“Yes. The Assistant District Attorney spoke with the parents of two of them.”
“The Assistant attorney? Why not the District Attorney?”
“Cobleskill? She might get involved down the line, might not. It all depends on the case. Anyway, none of the parents were aware their children had gone anywhere. None of them knew your son.”
She seemed to be waiting for more, but there was nothing else, not yet. Swift knew in his bones, that the three young men who’d come up to pay a visit were not telling him everything. The Asian-American kid had even shut down on him, acting afraid to talk. He doubted that Braxton Simpkins had invited them, or wanted them to come. It was instinct, but instinct backed up by some persuasive facts.
For one, Braxton had been in his pajamas. He didn’t have a bag with him, packed and ready to go. He’d gone out into the dark and cold with nothing.
When she spoke again, breaking into his thoughts, Callie’s words were soft, contemplative, and yet ruthlessly precise. “Three kids — or, a man and two kids — drive up to our town in the middle of the night and are seen leaving the scene where my son lies all alone in the middle of the road. Dead. My son is dead.”
She regarded him levelly across the table. All the emotion had drained from her face. Swift had seen this before, usually in men, but sometimes in the women too. She was now a heat-seeking missile. She would want justice for her son. And she would stop at nothing.
Swift closed his notepad and stuck it in his inner breast pocket. He clicked off his pen and slid that in beside it. He began to feel the first smoky curls of fatigue creeping around the edges of his thoughts, his vision.
“You need to get some rest,” Swift said, as much to himself as to Callie. “I’m going to have a trooper drive you back to your home.”
“No. I’m not leaving him.”
He leaned across the table, and this time he did touch her hands. They felt cold and dry. “Mrs. Simpkins, there is nothing you can do for your son here. The best thing you can do for him is to go and be with your daughters, your husband.”