Part 5
Naomi Kessler bent over Owen’s file. Owen had covered his face with both hands, and Dana couldn’t tell which feeling had finally caught up with him. The courtroom began moving again in small, hesitant ways: a cap retrieved, a whispered word, a stack of papers set straight.
Judge Bell called another recess. No lawyer challenged it.
Dana found Ellie in the hallway, drawing on a legal pad. Ranger lay close enough for his head to rest across her lap. The child had made a house, a girl, and a dog, with flowers crowded along the bottom of the page.
Dana lowered herself onto the tile nearby. Ellie was filling one flower with purple.
“He’s with the deputies now,” Dana told her when the child asked about the shouting man. “He won’t be allowed near you.”
Ellie considered this and returned to her flower. Dana told her she had been brave to speak, and Ellie rested a hand on Ranger.
“He helped me do it.”
“I know.”
The child set down her crayon. “Can I go to Mommy?”
Bethany was awake now, sometimes able to respond, but her recovery required careful limits. Her doctors had cautioned against too much stimulation. The placement workers and the court needed a safe plan for any visit.
Dana looked at Ellie rather than at the legal pad.
“I’ll speak to the people taking care of her,” she said. “If she can have a visit, we’ll arrange one for you.”
Ellie nodded, then tore the sheet slowly along the pad’s top edge. She handed it to Dana. Beside the enormous dog, the girl held a purple flower.
“You can have it where you work.”
Dana received the page on both palms. While she was finding something firm to put beneath it, Reed came down the hallway with his phone.
“Voss’s attorney has called,” he said quietly. “He wants a conversation.”
Dana glanced toward the courtroom, then tucked Ellie’s drawing safely into her folder.
“Arrange it,” she said. “We’ll hear what he has to say.”
Reed nodded and stepped aside to return the call. Dana left Ellie’s drawing in her folder when she went to face the reporters. She took only the statement she’d prepared, folded small enough to hold without its edges shaking in the breeze.
The courthouse microphones were clustered near the bottom step. News vans occupied the curb, and questions began before Dana reached the place beside Reed and Police Chief Denise Russo. She waited for a break in them, then stated what the office could release.
Grant Whitcomb had been arrested on evidence connecting him to the attack on Bethany Mercer. Proceedings against Owen Slater were suspended while his case underwent review. Derek Voss’s possible involvement was being investigated.
She declined questions about Ellie’s statements and the particulars of her care.
“The child is safe,” she said. “Protecting her privacy will be a priority as this investigation continues. She has already been asked to endure far more than any child should.”
A reporter called out a question about Ranger. Had the German Shepherd solved what the police couldn’t?
Through the glass entrance, Dana could see Ellie bending over the dog. She was applying a sticker to his vest with tremendous concentration. His handler studied the far wall, granting the decoration a little time before duty required its removal.
“Ranger made it possible for her to talk,” Dana said. “What she told us gave investigators things to check. We followed the evidence.”
She gave no account of the child’s private moments with him. When the next round of questions began, she thanked the reporters and returned inside.
By evening, the arrest was in the headlines throughout Oakmere. Some reports credited Ranger with finding the attacker. Dana put those accounts aside.
Two days later, at Mercy Ridge Hospital, she waited outside Bethany’s room with Han, Meera, and a social worker. Ellie stood close to Meera’s knee. Behind the half-open door, somebody adjusted the bed, and a monitor gave its regular quiet signal.
Bethany was sitting against pillows when they entered. Bruising remained along one side of her face, and her left arm was supported and wrapped. She moved her lips carefully before any sound came out.
Ellie stopped just inside the doorway.
Her mother raised her right hand from the blanket. The child ran toward the bed, then slowed at its edge, staring at the wires and at the arm she couldn’t climb against. Meera helped her onto the safe side, and Ellie fitted herself beside her mother without jarring her.
Bethany put her good hand over the child’s back. For several breaths, she kept her eyes closed.
“There you are,” she whispered at last.
Ellie examined the bandage. “Is that the hurting part?”
“It’s sore, honey.”
The child rested a fingertip on the outside of the wrapping, as lightly as she touched Ranger’s ears. “They took the shouting man away.”
Bethany looked toward Dana. Dana nodded, and Bethany’s fingers gathered the fabric of Ellie’s dress. She kept breathing carefully while the child leaned into her.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to you,” she said.
Ellie lifted her head. “When?”
“When you were waiting. I couldn’t stand up.”
The child looked at her mother’s legs beneath the blanket. Then she brought Pip out from under her elbow and laid him beside Bethany’s shoulder.
“He can wait in bed with you,” Ellie said. “He doesn’t mind.”
Bethany pressed the rabbit’s flattened ear against her cheek. Dana turned toward the window, giving mother and daughter a little less of the room’s attention. Outside, the hospital’s flag tugged at its pole above the wet parking lot.
During the following week, Grant retained attorneys of his own. Derek’s lawyer’s request for a conversation didn’t immediately turn into cooperation; Derek resisted until more transfers gave investigators additional questions he could no longer easily dismiss. Owen was released while the prosecutor’s office reviewed the full case against him.
Dana took care with every public update while the remaining records and claims were examined.
With Judge Bell helping coordinate the paperwork, child services obtained an emergency placement order allowing Ellie to stay with Bethany’s sister, Rachel Sutton. Her mother would continue recovering with family close at hand. Meera began sorting the child’s small collection of clothes into a suitcase.
She carried a cardigan into the laundry room so she could have a moment alone. By the time she had folded it, Ellie had appeared in the doorway with Pip.
The child studied her face. “Did something make you cry?”
Meera crouched beside the suitcase instead of pretending her eyes were dry. “I’m going to miss having you here.”
“I have to go to Rachel’s.”
“I know. I’m glad you can. I can be glad and miss you at the same time.”
Ellie moved close enough to lean against her shoulder. Meera held her there, careful not to turn the goodbye into something the child had to fix.
After a moment, Ellie placed Pip in her lap.
“You can borrow him. Till I visit.”
Meera couldn’t answer immediately. She held the rabbit against her chest while Ellie inspected the nearly packed bag. Before it closed, she tucked him among the clothes, where his ears would be the first thing Ellie found at the other house.
Ranger visited twice during those last days at Meera’s. The appointments were recorded as witness support. Ellie got to see that he would still come when there were no questions to answer.
Rachel lived in a modest brick house on Oakmere’s west side. She had cleared a bedroom with pale peach walls and a window facing a tall sycamore. Ellie’s drawing of Ranger went beside the bed, where she could see it from the pillow.
The first night, Pip lay under her arm and a night-light shone near the door. Ellie woke twice. Both times Rachel came before the child had to call again, sat beside her, and stayed until she settled.
There was no angry voice in the doorway. In the morning, Rachel asked whether Ellie wanted toast as though needing her in the night had caused no trouble at all.
A little over two weeks after Grant’s arrest, Judge Bell proposed a private gathering at the courthouse. Dana raised her concern that returning might be too much. Han agreed that Ellie should decide without any suggestion that she owed the court another appearance.
He explained that Ranger would be there for a visit. Ellie immediately asked whether her mother could come.
“We’ll ask her doctor,” Han said.
The child thought about that. “Will the shouting man be there?”
“He won’t.”
“Do I have to do the talking?” “There’s nothing you have to tell anybody. You can just visit.” With those conditions, Ellie wanted to go. Bethany’s doctor approved an outing of no more than an hour, and the gathering was arranged for a quiet Friday afternoon…
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