JUDA COUNTY PROSECUTOR Harry Putnam was pacing back and forth behind his desk, his short, stocky frame occasionally bouncing on the balls of his feet to punctuate a point as he lectured the small circle of county staff assembled in his office.
“One—we still don’t have our hands on Mary Sue Fellows or little Joshua. Two—we’ve got a hearing coming up in Joe Fellows’ case at the end of this week. Three—like I said, we still haven’t located the Fellows woman or her kid. Are you all starting to see a pattern in my comments this morning?”
Putnam stared at Otis Tracher, the tall, thin plainclothes detective with a bland expression and an unruly tuft of hair that seemed to defy combing. Tracher sat up a little straighter and volunteered a thought.
“I know that finding the perpetrator and her victim is the number-one priority here,” the detective said. “I’ve got two other officers working this in addition to myself.”
“I am not happy,” Putnam snapped out, bouncing up with the last word. “In fact, I am very unhappy. I asked you to tail the Indian—”
“Harry, we did. The Indian didn’t take the flight.”
“And why not?”
“Maybe someone tipped him off. All I know is that when that plane landed in Albuquerque, he wasn’t on the flight,” Tracher explained.
“Where does that leave us?”
“Wherever he came from, he returned by another route.”
“He disappeared?”
“Yeah.”
“Like magic?” Putnam rapped out sarcastically.
“We’re going to get him. Just a matter of time,” said the detective in a voice that struggled to carry conviction.
“Let me remind you,” Putnam continued, “that it really isn’t about the Indian. It’s the Fellows woman and the kid I want. The Indian is just one clue.”
“I’ve got the PD out there in his hometown in New Mexico checking with the community college where he teaches. Talking to his neighbors. We’re running all the leads. We’ll get a bead on where the guy is.”
“When are you going to be finished interviewing all of Mary Sue’s relatives about her whereabouts?”
“Maybe a couple days.”
“That brings me to point number two,” Putnam said. “Joe Fellows’ bail hearing is coming up at the end of the week. I’m not sure what the defendant is doing about an attorney, but the judge is going to make a decision about bail. I need you there at the hearing”—and with that, Putnam pointed at Liz Luden, the social worker.
“I’ve got it in my calendar.”
“You’ve got to really spread on the ghoulish stuff. We’re fighting bail because the mommy is still out there with the kid. Daddy isn’t stepping up to the plate to tell us where the kid is so we can save him from his abusive mother. Liz, you’ve got to be able to hammer the stuff we talked about so we can keep Joe in jail till he breaks and tells us where they are.”
“Right,” she said. “We’ve got the medical information.”
“Yeah—that’s dynamite. But I don’t want too much out of the bag. Just enough to let the judge know that we’ve got absolute medical proof that she’s been slipping the kid brake fluid instead of orange juice.”
The social worker continued. “I’ve also got some policy ammunition we can use at the hearing.” She turned to the young intern sitting next to her and motioned for the notebook on her lap. The intern quickly handed it over to her supervisor.
“Thanks, Julie,” Luden said while she was turning to a page she had marked with a yellow sticky note.
“Here it is. Part IV of my CRAM—”
“Your what?” Putnam blurted out with arched eyebrows.
“CRAM. Child Risk Assessment Manual,” Luden explained. “It lists standard risk-assessment modalities for evaluating children suspected of being neglected or abused. Or their families. Risk factor seven says the index of suspicion rises with ‘parents who hold rigid, authoritarian religious beliefs. Be on the lookout for absolutist child-rearing strategies that are potentially harmful—such as corporal and physical punishment, spanking, or verbal abuse cloaked in religious language.’”
“So?” Putnam asked.
“This Fellows woman is rigidly religious,” the social worker continued. “Fundamentalist. Bible-this and Bible-that type. The medical records from her primary health-care provider indicate that she made statements that God is the ultimate healer—or something like that—and she believes in spanking and does use that form of discipline on Joshua. I think we can argue that she meets the criteria for a heightened risk of being a child-abuser.”
“No,” Putnam said slowly, squinting his eyes as he paced, “let’s leave that one alone right now. Play that one close to the vest. That courtroom may have reporters crawling all over the place. I don’t want any of these civil-liberties types to say we are anti-religious down here in Delphi, Georgia. After all, we are all good, God-fearing, churchgoing folks.”
Luden nodded with a smile.
“We’ll wait till some of the medical evidence starts coming out—when people start seeing that she must be some kind of monster. That’s when we start talking about her being a Bible-banging psycho.”
Putnam leaned over his desk, giving his final command. “Let’s get this woman, take her and her husband to trial—and then let’s get a double conviction.”
He straightened up and added a final thought. “No reason why we can’t wrap this whole case up by Christmas. No, sir. No reason at all.”