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“No, uh…no. I ran into a door.” Conway and I both gave him the look that lie deserved and like clockwork, his face started glowing red. I’d love to play poker with this guy. Or any other games he wanted to play for that matter.
“Now explain that mark on your neck,”
A momentary flash of panic swept over his face, which was gone again so fast I might have imagined it. “Look, I-I don’t know, okay? I guess I cut myself shaving.”
“You guess you cut yourself shaving.” I repeated in a flat tone and stared at him until he blushed and lowered his eyes. “Why are you lying to us, Jace?”
His head shot up and he gave me an angry look. “Why would I make up all of that?”
“I don’t know, Jace. Why would you?”
He turned red again, and I was pretty sure the continued, frequent use of his first name was rattling him and pissing him off. It was also deliberate and meant to be insulting, a tactic I’d used before, to put a suspect on the defensive. I wanted him to think I considered him to be some kind of lowlife, unworthy of respect. Except that the more I talked to him, the less I believed it. He was a victim, and I felt pity for him. But emotions like that wouldn’t help either of us and would only get in the way.
He glared at me, and I smiled, nodding toward his arms. “Would you mind slipping off that robe for a moment?” I’d noticed the bruises around his neck and chest as well, and I wanted a better look at them. I was about ninety-nine percent sure he was telling the truth, but that leftover one percent was niggling at me.
He obviously did mind very much, but I think he wanted to appear cooperative. He untied his robe and slipped it off his shoulders. A pink flush still stained his cheeks. Both Conway and I stared long and hard at his multiple bruises and abrasions.
“How did you get all these bruises, Jace?” I had to ask. “Did the little old lady do that to you too?”
He stared up at me defiantly and pulled his robe back on. “No. These are all from my little brother.”
“Ah. Your little brother—and how old is he?”
“He’s fourteen.” He must have seen my eyes narrow, so he quickly stammered out more excuses. “He’s got some mental challenges and sometimes he gets upset. He doesn’t mean to hurt me.”
Pity twisted again in my chest, but I ignored it. We’d been after Malone for a long time and Jace was obviously his blood thrall. Undoubtedly, his sex thrall too, and he was already deeply under his influence. Maybe he was already unsalvageable. Too far gone, like Conway believed, and I needed to remember that.
“When did this happen?”
“What, the bruises? I have them all the time. My skin bruises easily, and my brother gets…upset a lot.”
Conway poised his pen over his notebook. “What’s his doctor’s name?”
“Dr. Greg Carter at St. Joseph’s is his internal medicine doctor. Dr. James Albertson is his psychiatrist. He prescribes all his medications.”
“What kind of medications is he on?”
“Psycotrophics. He takes Thorazine. Sometimes Ativan and some others, but only as a last resort. He takes a drug called Aptiom for seizures. He’s epileptic too. Actually, I have a list. I can get it for you. I’ve taken to carrying a list around with me in my wallet because I couldn’t remember all of them and he’s on a lot of different medications.”
I nodded and he went to one of the back rooms to get the list, then came back to hand it to me.
I glanced down at it. Shit. The kid had issues. He must be a zombie when he took these. “Heavy-duty stuff,” I said, passing it over to Conway, who started writing the medications down.
“Yeah. He has some heavy-duty problems. I’m trying to get him off a few of these. He hasn’t had the sedatives for months.”
“What’s his diagnosis?”
He shrugged. “My brother has Fragile X syndrome.”
“That’s like autism, isn’t it? What’s the shrug about? Am I wrong or do you disagree with the diagnosis?”
“No, but it’s not autism exactly. Fragile X isa genetic disorder caused by changes in a gene calledFMR1.It’s a gene that makes a protein that’s needed for brain development. People who have Fragile X don’t make that protein.”
I kept looking at him as he rattled that off, and he cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. He had spoken so mechanically I figured he’d had to explain it a lot.
“It’s also one of the known causes of autism,” he continued. “It causes intellectual disability like Tyler has and some behavior and learning challenges.”
He had nothing else to say but seemed nervous. I had that effect on people sometimes.
