Little Lies

In this riveting prequel to her novel Little Mercies, New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf explores how even the smallest lies can have far-reaching consequences

When the body of a woman is discovered in a local park—with her bewildered four-year-old son sitting beside her—veteran social worker Ellen Moore is called in to assist in the police investigation. Positioned beneath a statue of Leto, the goddess of motherhood, the crime is weighted with meaning and, Ellen discovers, remarkably similar to one from a decade past.

Ellen’s professional duty is to protect the child, but she’s not equipped to contend with a killer. As she races to connect the dots, she knows her time is running out. And the stakes are high: if she fails, another mother is sure to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Little Lies

Heather Gudenkauf

Also by Heather Gudenkauf

The Weight of Silence

These Things Hidden

One Breath Away

Look for Heather’s latest novel, Little Mercies, coming in July 2014!

Dedication

In memory of Kimbra Valenti

Contents

Little Lies

About the Author

I’m used to getting phone calls in the middle of the night, like firefighters, doctors and priests. But the calls I receive aren’t to put out a blaze, perform an emergency C-section or administer last rites to the dying. When my phone rings at 2:00 a.m., I know it’s regarding one of my children. Not my biological children, but those that I come to know in my work as a social worker with the Cedar City, Iowa, Department of Human Services.

The late-night calls mostly bring news of violent domestic disputes when a child needs to be removed from the home for his or her safety. They are depressingly similar and rarely have positive outcomes: a father on a drunken binge could mean cracked ribs and broken bones, unsupervised children with access to lighters equal third-degree burns, a marital spat can turn into a gunshot wound to the head or knife wounds. All leave the children traumatized from the horror they have witnessed and reeling from being torn from the life they have known, no matter how dysfunctional and damaging.

So I’m not surprised when my cell phone on my bedside table shrills loudly. Though I’m still half-asleep, my hand automatically grabs to answer it before it can ring again and wake Adam, who is next to me, or my three children, who are fast asleep down the hall. “Hello,” I grunt into the phone.

“Ellen,” comes a gruff voice from the other end. I push the sheets and blankets aside and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

“Joe?” I ask in confusion. It’s not Caren Regis, my supervisor at DHS, but Joe Gaddey, a detective with the Cedar City Police Department and one of my best friends.

“Sorry to wake you up,” he says. His voice is tense but not at all apologetic.

“What time is it?” I ask, squinting at the clock next to Adam’s side of the bed, but I can’t decipher the numbers.

“One-thirty. Listen, we’ve got a situation here at Singer.” Singer is a four-acre green space punctuated with sculptures purchased and donated by Medwyn Singer, a wealthy Cedar City businessman. Twenty unusual and striking sculptures of various sizes and subjects once populated the park, attracting families and tourists, but during the floods of ’93 water covered 1,300 city blocks, and Singer was submerged at one point under twenty-three feet of water, destroying several of the sculptures and much of downtown Cedar City. Despite efforts to refurbish the park, Singer never returned to its earlier glory, now attracting more unsavory types than families.

“What’s going on?” Moving slowly, trying to stay as quiet as possible, I creep from my bedroom into the hallway, pausing to peek into first Leah’s then Lucas’s room. They are both sleeping soundly.

“We’ve got a DOA in the park. Beneath the statue of the lady with the two kids,” Joe says, and I freeze just outside Avery’s room. Just five months old, my youngest has yet to sleep through the night.

“The Leto?” I ask, though I know that sculpture well, better than I want to. I don’t want to know what Joe is going to say next, though the twist in my stomach tells me I already know what is coming.

“Yeah,” Joe says. “Can you come?”

“There’s a child.” It’s not a question. We’ve been here before.

“Yeah,” Joe says again. “Looks like he’s three or four. Doing fine, just really cold. And confused.”

“I’ll be right there,” I say, shivering. It’s January and Iowa winters are brutal. My maternity leave ended just eight weeks ago, I’ve barely adjusted to my old schedule, but here I am, back in the mire of my job. I want to crawl into bed next to my husband, absorb the warmth of his body, but instead I dress quietly and quickly. Before I leave I gently rouse Adam, tell him that I’m going to check on an abandoned child.

“Be careful,” he says sleepily before rolling over again.

“Will you listen for Avery?” I ask. He grunts in response and I take it for a yes. I pause outside Avery’s bedroom door, fighting the urge to open it and kiss her goodbye. Even though she’s my third I still marvel at her tiny fingers, the way her eyelashes fan out, casting shadows on her cheeks, the sweet plumpness of her lips, pursed as if deep in thought. Instead, I blow a silent kiss through the closed door. It wouldn’t be fair to wake her and then leave. Adam is just as exhausted as I am and has to rise at 6:00 a.m. in order to take the kids to school and day care before he begins his day as a high-school history teacher and coach. It’s basketball season and sometimes he doesn’t get home from out-of-town trips until close to midnight.

In the dark, I zip up my winter parka, pull on a wool cap and gloves, and step out into the bitter late-January cold. Dirty snow covers lawns and is piled into jagged dunes where shovels and snowblowers tossed the results of the last snowstorm. My breath emerges ghostly white beneath the streetlamps as I unlock my van that is parked in our driveway and turn the heater to High. I grab an ice scraper. We have a one-car garage, and since Adam has been the one to take the kids to day care and school, I insisted that he park his truck in the garage, so it will be at least somewhat warm when they leave in the morning. I slide the scraper against the windshield; the frost peels away in icy curls. The only sounds are my breathing and the soft rasp of the scraper sliding across the window.

Singer Park is usually a fifteen-minute drive from my house, and though I’m anxious to get there and have so many questions for Joe, I force myself to drive slowly. The streets are cleared of snow, but still there are slippery spots and I don’t want to end up plowing into a tree or telephone pole. Cedar City is a different place in the middle of the night. By day, the bustling city is the second largest in Iowa with a population of just under 200,000. Like all communities of this size there are neighborhoods that hold families of all sorts: the large brick homes of the affluent, the more modest middle-and working-class communities, and the neighborhoods lined with narrow row houses converted into low-income apartments. There are the stark commercial areas with factories, car dealerships, restaurants, even a few strip bars. But on this Wednesday morning the streets of Cedar City are all but deserted and my hometown, the town I grew up in, appears peaceful.

By the time I arrive at the entrance of Singer Park, twenty minutes later, the heater has finally warmed the interior of the van and I’m reluctant to step out into the frigid air. A young, nervous-looking police officer, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, approaches my van and I roll down the window.

“Park’s closed, ma’am,” he says. “You’ll need to leave.”

I fumble in my purse for my license. “Detective Gaddey called me. I’m Ellen Moore, the social worker.” I hand him my identification and he examines it carefully from behind the glare of his flashlight.

“I’ll be right back,” he says and steps away from the van, and I quickly roll up the window, but all the warm air has been leached away. I watch as the officer speaks into his radio and I know he’s checking to see if I’m who I say I am. After a moment he jogs back to the van and once again I roll down the window. “You can drive on in,” he says, returning my license. “Drive right up to the next set of yellow crime tape and park. You can’t miss it.”

I follow his directions and within a minute I see what he was talking about. Six police cars are parked in a half circle, their headlights facing the eerily lifelike statue, a rendition of the goddess Leto.

I put the van into Park and open the door. A biting gust of wind tries to slam the door shut again, driving me back inside, but I return the favor with equal force and clamber outside before it can gather its breath again. Another officer asks for my identification and once again I explain who I am. She nods somberly. “The kid’s in the ambulance.” She points toward an area not illuminated by the headlights, and just to the right of the statue I see the emergency vehicle. I crane my neck, trying to find Joe, but there are about a half-dozen people bundled up in thick coats, hats pulled down low, scarves wrapped around necks, making it impossible to tell who is who. Their attention is focused at their feet, their chins identically lowered as if in prayer. But I know better—they aren’t praying. They are assessing, scrutinizing a crime scene.

As if being pulled by an invisible thread I numbly move toward the group of police officers. It’s not that I want to see the body—I don’t—but to best take care of the child waiting in the ambulance I need to find out all that I can about the person who died. I’ve seen my share of death. In fact, fourteen years ago, my very first case as a social worker involved a set of six-year-old twin boys, a five-year-old girl, their mother, their father and a baseball bat. Only one of the boys survived. Joe Gaddey was the officer positioned outside the front door of the home. When they brought out the body bags, he held me up when I nearly fainted, and we’ve been friends ever since.

A large shape steps away from the group and I recognize Joe. He is a big man in regular clothes, but dressed in a down coat, knee-high winter boots, a hat and gloves, he is downright massive. Standing well over six feet tall and weighing at least two hundred and fifty pounds, an angry Joe could make even the toughest criminal shrink in fear. But his baby face and shy smile are disarming and indicative of his gentle disposition. He takes me by the elbow, deftly trying to lead me away from the crime scene, but it’s too late. I see the body of a young woman who appears be in her early twenties and I shiver at the inadequacy of her dress even though I know she is well beyond feeling the cold. She is wearing leggings and a short-sleeve white t-shirt, something I might wear to bed. Her feet are bare. She is lying on her back, her long dark hair is fanned out in stark contrast against the snow, her eyes are opened wide and unseeing, a look of curious consternation on her face as if her final thought was, This wasn’t what I was expecting at all. There doesn’t appear to be any blood or obvious wounds that would suggest a cause of death.

“Can’t see it from here, but it looks like blunt force trauma to her head,” Joe says as if reading my mind. He has this uncanny ability to know what I’m thinking before I can even utter a word. “Looks like she was killed somewhere else and dumped here.”

“Do you know who she is?” I ask, unable to pull my eyes away from the woman’s face. Her t-shirt is pulled up to just below her breasts and I want to go to her and pull it back down to cover the twinkling belly-button ring in her navel.

Joe shakes his head. The tip of his nose is bright red and frost is collecting on his newly grown goatee. “No ID. A call came into Dispatch saying that it looked like a woman and a kid needed help in the park.”

“Who would be here in weather like this in the middle of the night?” Joe doesn’t speak and I study his troubled face. “You think it was the person who killed her?” I ask, taking a step closer to him.

“Don’t know for sure,” Joe answers and touches me softly on the back and guides me toward the ambulance. “The whole thing is very strange.”

“And familiar,” I add.

“Maybe,” Joe concedes. “The little boy found with her looks like he’s around three years old. Like I said on the phone, he doesn’t appear to be hurt, but the EMTs are checking him over before they take him to the hospital and have a doctor take a look at him and give him a thorough exam.”

I look curiously up at Joe. Typically, the ambulance would be long gone by now. “Has he said anything yet?” I ask as Joe lightly raps his knuckles on the back door of the ambulance.

“Nope, he’s a little freaked out right now, and understandably so.”

“Ahh, you were hoping that I would be able to wield my magical child-communicating powers and get the kid to tell me who the bad guy is, right?”

The ambulance door opens to reveal a small child wrapped in a warm quilt. Upon seeing Joe, the boy begins to wail in fright. “Like I said, he’s kind of freaked out. Every time one of us gets near him he starts to scream.”

“You are kind of intimidating,” I say as I lightly nudge him from the child’s view. “I think it’s your hat.”

“What’s wrong with my hat?” Joe asks as he pulls the fur-lined aviator hat from his head and examines it.

“It looks kind of like a wild animal sitting on your head. Now stay here for a minute and I’ll see if he can at least tell me his name.” I remove my own hat and hoist myself into the back of the ambulance and pull the door closed behind me where I find the boy’s howls have dimmed to a mournful sob. I reach into my coat pocket and dig around until I find what I’m looking for: a small unopened package of animal-shaped crackers. “Is it okay?” I ask the EMT, who nods permission.

“Physically he seems fine,” the EMT explains. “I’ll give you a few minutes and then we need to get him over to St. Raphael’s.” The EMT moves to the front of the ambulance and I sit on a gurney across from the little boy, who is curled up on the padded bench that runs the length of the ambulance. I know I need to tread lightly in my interactions with this boy. Whatever he’s been through tonight has been incredibly traumatic. There are only two ways this can go: I can make it a million times worse, or I can make it infinitesimally better.

I pull my mittens from my fingers, carefully open the bag of crackers and shake a few into my hand. Sad little hitches of breath come from the boy’s mouth as he eyes me suspiciously. Strangely, unlike his mother, if that’s who the dead woman is, the boy is dressed warmly in a navy blue winter coat, gray mittens made of wool, a matching hat and winter boots. It doesn’t make sense. I pop a cracker into my mouth and chew for a few moments before speaking. “My name is Ellen. What’s your name?” I make a point to not stare directly at him for fear of frightening him. “I have three children. My oldest is eight years old. Are you eight years old?” The boy thinks about this for a moment and shakes his head no. “My son is five. I bet you’re five,” I say with confidence. “You look like you’re five.” Again he rotates his head in the negative. “Are you two?” He seems offended by this question and shakes his head with vehemence. “Of course you’re way older than two. Are you four?” He nods shyly. “I have two daughters. One is named Leah and the other one is Avery. She’s just a tiny baby. My son’s name is Lucas. Can you tell me your name?” I try again. He is silent.

“I help boys and girls who are scared and sad.” Again, no response. “You seem like you’re a little bit sad.”

The boy’s lower lip quivers and fresh tears begin to fall as his eyes swing to the window of the ambulance. “Mommy,” he says thickly.

“What’s your mommy’s name?” I keep my voice light, conversational. He gives no response.

“Is that your mommy outside?” I ask, trying not to sound too eager. “Is your mommy the lady with the brown hair? She’s wearing a white shirt?” The boy swipes the back of his hand across his runny nose and nods. I smile encouragingly at him and tilt the bag of crackers toward him. “Want one?” He shakes his head no. Despite the frigid air outside, the back of the ambulance is warm and I unzip my parka. The little boy’s cheeks are bright pink and slightly scaly, as if windburned. “Can you tell me your mommy’s name?”

I can barely hear him speak; his voice is soft and thick from crying. I lean in more closely. “Mommy’s hurt?” He looks pleadingly at me as if begging me to say no, that his mommy is going to be just fine.

“Yes,” I say.

He lets out a long, tremulous breath and begins to weep again, his eyes screwing tightly shut as if trying to block out all that he must have seen tonight. I move to sit next to him, but before I’m even seated, he is in my arms. His arms, thin even within his heavy coat, wrap tightly around my neck as the ambulance sets off quietly without its sirens blaring, so as to not alert the local residents of the violence that has occurred just outside their doors. The journey to the hospital is a short one, but by the time we arrive, my neck is damp with his tears and he refuses to release his grasp on me. Awkwardly, I climb from the back of the ambulance, still holding the child. We are greeted with a polar blast of air and flashing lights. A lone photographer is snapping our picture. I wonder how the press could have learned so quickly about this. “Keep your head down,” I whisper to the boy. “The wind is cold.” I do my best to keep his face covered as we move to the hospital’s emergency entrance.

After much cajoling and reassurance that I’m not going anywhere, the boy surrenders to the care of a nurse. I should be contacting the emergency foster care family who is poised to step in during extreme situations such as this, but I delay the inevitable. I promised the boy that I would be nearby while he was being checked over by a doctor and I will. Right now I’m the only friend he has in the world. Fatigue sweeps over me and I sink into an empty chair to wait.

* * *

I wake to the sound of a crying infant and for a moment I think it’s Avery. I gather my bearings and quickly realize I’m still at the hospital. A thin gray light barely penetrates the windows and I glance at my watch. 7:25 a.m. “He’s sleeping,” the same nurse who took the child when we arrived says, pointing to an examination room. I stand, stretch and peek into the room, and the boy is tucked beneath a white blanket and sleeping peacefully in a toddler-sized hospital crib.

“He’s okay?” I ask. “Did he tell you his name?”

“He’s not hurt,” the nurse assures me, “but he wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us anything about who he is and where he came from.”

“Well, certainly someone will come looking for him today,” I say with more conviction than I feel. “I have to make a few calls. Will you come get me if he wakes up?” The nurse nods and I move toward a window in hopes of better cell reception. First I call Caren Regis, my supervisor at DHS, and fill her in as to what is happening, then I try to get ahold of Joe to find out if the woman in the park has been identified, but his phone goes right to voice mail. Finally, I phone Martha Renner, the foster mother that I hope will take the boy in for the time being. She has often worked with children who have been through unthinkable experiences. I don’t know what our world would be like if we didn’t have such selfless women and men step in to be surrogate mothers and fathers for these children. In fact, she was the foster mother of a child who appears to have gone through the exact same situation as our little John Doe. Thirteen years ago.

I sense a presence behind me and turn to find Joe. He looks as spent as I feel. “Nice hair,” he says as he hands me one of the two cups of coffee he is holding. My free hand flies to my head and I self-consciously run my fingers through the matted mess, wild after being stuffed inside a wool hat all night.

“Nice hat,” I shoot back, nodding pointedly at his own head. “You look like a Russian hunter.”

He shrugs good-naturedly. “Keeps my ears warm. How was the kid’s night?”

“He’s still sleeping. Martha Renner, his temporary foster care mother, will be here in a few minutes. Listen, we’ve got to talk about this. The more I think about the similarities to...”

Joe holds up a hand and looks around the hospital hallway, now filling with doctors and nurses. “Let’s go somewhere a little more private.”

“I promised I wouldn’t go far in case the boy wakes up.” I shake my head in disgust. “We can’t go on calling him the boy. We need to find out his name, find out who he is.”

“We will,” Joe assures me. “Someone will come forward soon. He was obviously well cared for. Clean, dressed warmly. A husband, boyfriend to the woman will call us looking for her.”

“Unless he was the one who murdered her.”

Joe nods thoughtfully. “That’s usually the case.”

“But you don’t think so in this one?” I ask, fearing his response. Together we return to the area just outside the room where the boy is sleeping and sit down.

“You tell me what you’re thinking,” Joe says. “And I’ll play devil’s advocate.”

“How about, you tell me what you’re thinking and I play the devil’s advocate,” I counter. “You always get to play Satan.”

“Fair enough.” Joe drinks deeply from his coffee cup before speaking. “Thirteen years ago, a homeless woman and her five-year-old son were found in Singer Park. The woman had been murdered and her body placed beneath a statue of a nearly naked woman.”

“It’s a statue of a Greek goddess,” I clarify. “And she’s not naked.”

“A Greek goddess,” he amends. “The woman was identified as Nell Sharpe and her son, Jonah, who was unharmed, was put into foster care. The crime was never solved.”

“All true,” I agree.

“Thirteen years later, we find the body of an unidentified woman and her unhurt son in the same park, beneath the same statue.”

“A body is found in that park at least once a year. Granted most aren’t murders, but it has happened,” I say in my role as devil’s advocate.

“The victim from thirteen years ago died from blunt force trauma to the head. This victim appears to have died in a similar way.”

“Coincidence,” I counter.

“I hope so—something we’ll have to look into anyway,” Joe says, standing and stretching his large frame. “How’s Jonah doing now? He has to be, what, nineteen years old?”

“He’s eighteen, almost nineteen. Never was legally adopted by anyone. Kept coming back to live with Martha Renner when he got kicked out of other foster and group homes. Good kid at heart, but made some poor choices.”

A nurse in bright pink scrubs approaches us. “The little boy is just waking up now,” she says. “I’ll make sure he gets some breakfast.”

I thank her and as Joe and I go to the examination room I reach up and pluck the fur hat from his head. “No need to scare him first thing in the morning.”

The boy is curled up in a tight ball, his thumb in his mouth, eyes opening and closing slowly, still heavy with sleep. “Morning,” I say in a whisper and he scrambles to his feet, fingers clutching at the rails of the crib. I reach down and lift him from the bed. “Are you hungry?” He nods, his eyes fixed uncertainly on Joe. “This is Joe,” I tell him. “He’s a police officer. He helps people.”

“Nice to meet you,” Joe says, offering his large hand to shake. The boy reaches out, but instead of taking Joe’s hand he pulls at the hat Joe is holding in his other hand. He takes it into his arms and hugs it as if it was a favorite blanket or stuffed animal. I smile. Joe will never get his hat back.