“Officer Bayard?” Jennifer stammered as she picked herself up off the ground.
“Ms. Barry?” Maverick extended a hand to help the woman up, “that was quite a bump. Are you alright?”
“No. They’ve taken Aiko. You have to help me. We have to get her back. She’s only been gone a few minutes. If we start looking now, we can—
“Ms. Barry, who’s taken her?”
“The strangers. That one in her room—Mr. Sandman, whatever she calls him. We have to find her.”
Dr. Rainy appeared in hot pursuit of Jennifer Barry. “Did you find her?” he panted.
Maverick paid him little attention. He grabbed Jennifer by the shoulders and looked her in the eye, “Ms. Barry, you need to calm down. Have you called the police?”
“What the hell are you talking about? She’s only just been taken. And you are the police. We have to go now and get her back.”
Â…
Jennifer was mostly silent during the drive back to her house. Even Maverick and JulianÂ’s direct prompts elicited little more than passive grunts and sighs. The two men used the time to get better acquainted.
“Do the police know any more about these strangers than the rest of us?” Julian asked from the back seat.
“Hard to say,” Maverick admitted, “at least—we didn’t know a whole lot more than what the papers print, before I was, um, suspended.”
“Suspended?” Julian let out a very unprofessional gasp. Getting no further information from Maverick, he went on, “So what do we do, when we get to Jennifer’s house, I mean?”
“We call the police. Someone will come to the house and Ms. Barry will fill out a missing persons report. In the meanwhile, since I have been suspended from duty, there’s nothing preventing me, as a private citizen, from proceeding with a search. I have a few favors I can call in. We’ll go from there.”
Arrival at the Barry home found Aiko sitting on her bed crying, her bedroom window wide open. After the seemingly endless barrage of hugs and kisses from her mother, Aiko was sat down on her bed and asked what had happened.
“He made me mad,” she said, pointing accusingly at Dr. Rainy, “and I came home,”
“How did you get in, sweetie?” Jennifer asked, “You don’t have a key, and the door was locked when we got here.”
“I locked it,” the little girl answered simply.
“It wasn’t locked when you got here?”
“It was locked. Mr.—I mean, no, it was unlocked. I locked it.”
“Aiko,” Julian said, “What were you going to say just now?”
“When?”
“You started to say Mister,”
“No I didn’t.” She turned suddenly to face Maverick, “Hey, you’re that policeman.”
“Aiko,” Jennifer said sternly, “You need to stop telling stories. How did the window get open?”
“It was already open.”
“Who opened it?”
“You did,”
Jennifer Barry threw up her arms in disgust and sent Aiko to sit in the kitchen. When the police did arrive, a search of AikoÂ’s walk-in closet revealed the fact that someone had been living inside. There were crumbs ground into the carpet, AikoÂ’s small desk chair and a stack of newspapers. The original assumption was that Aiko had simply gone off the deep end, but a nineteen-fifty-seven copy of the Washington Bi-weekly Harold soon put that concern to rest.
A constant line of questions caught Aiko in a lie more than once, but it was no use. If the child was caught lying, she would simply say that she hadnÂ’t been. If she was offered proof, she would say she was misunderstood. When asked what she actually meant, she would ask when. If Julian or Jennifer or any of the social workers present were inexperienced enough to give her a time, she would look devilishly perplexed and ask them what they were on about.
After nearly six hours, the police left. Jennifer Barry was fully intent on suing them for improper conduct, but in the meantime, resolved to spend the night in AikoÂ’s room, if for no other reason than her own piece of mind. Aiko was clearly upset and Jennifer decided to tell her a story to calm her.
“Not that one!” the child shouted, when her mother picked up her favorite book.
“You love this one, honey,” Jennifer said.
“I’ve heard it lots,” Aiko insisted, “I want to hear the other one. The one with the frogs,”
“But honey—
“No! The frog one. Please, Mommy?”
Jennifer sighed and set the book on AikoÂ’s dresser. It slipped off quietly and no amount of AikoÂ’s screams could prevent her mother from picking up the note that fell out of it. It was very short, written messily in black crayon on a colouring book page:
AIKO I AM SORY I HAD TO GO. WEN YOU REED THIS I WANT YOU TO NOW I MISS YOU EVERYDAY BUT I COODNT LET THE GROWNUPS CACH ME. ALWAYS LUV FROM MR. SANDMAN
“Aiko,” Jennifer stammered, “what is this?”
“I don’t know,”
“It says it’s from Mr. Sandman,”
“I don’t know who that is,”
“I thought you said Mr. Sandman couldn’t read or write.”
“Oh,” momentary satisfaction flashed in the little girl’s eyes, “I teached him. I mean—