After that—after the park incident in which Dutch helps her father find the body of a little girl, a girl her own age, actually—her father goes to her one night. I’m there, too. I hadn’t been drawn there that night. I simply wanted to be there. To see her. To feel whole.
I stay back so I don’t scare her. Her father goes to her room and tells her they’ve found the little girl’s body. He is confused, I can tell. He’s scared. Not of Dutch, but of what she can do. What she can see.
“Of course you found her,” Dutch says. “She told me where she was.”
She is wearing a pink nightgown and lime green socks. Classic Dutch style.
“How?” he asks. He stands and rakes a hand through his hair.
Dutch is confused, too. “She opened her mouth and told me.”
“Charley,” he says, sitting beside her again.
She is holding a doll and twirling its hair in her fingers.
“How did she tell you, honey? I don’t understand.”
She lifts a tiny shoulder, unable to comprehend what his problem is.
“Sweetheart.” He takes the doll out of her hands and lifts her chin. “Explain to me exactly how … how she told you.”
“Daddy, I don’t understand now. She just told me. Was she not ’posed to?”
He lowers his head lets out a frustrated sigh.
“Oh, and Jacob wants me to tell you that his girlfriend killed him. No one knows. They think she was out of town, but she gave her credit card to a friend, broke into his house as he was taking a shower, and stabbed him.” She looks over at the man in her room. The naked one covered from head to toe in blood.
From the looks of it, the woman did more than stab him. He has burn marks on his body. Brandings. Like something ritualistic.
Neither the blood nor his nakedness throws Dutch. She is already used to such horrors. Such atrocities.
Maybe that’s why I long to be near her. Maybe it’s her sense of everydayness. Her acceptance of anyone, no matter how they died. No matter how they lived.
“Jacob?” her dad asks. “Jacob Townsend?”
She looks at the man. He kneels beside her bed so she doesn’t see him down there. He nods.
“Yep,” she says, picking up her doll again. “Her name is Beth and he says she’s crazier than a gallon of Pop Rocks.”
Her dad puts the doll down again. “Sweetheart, how do you know about Jacob Townsend? We just found his body two hours ago. It hasn’t been announced.”
“Oh.” She straightens. “So, I should wait until it’s announced to tell you?”
“What? No, honey, that’s not what I’m saying. How do you know about him?”
“He told me.”
His mouth falls open for a whole minute; then he asks, “How?”
Dutch giggles and her laughter lights up the room. Jacob smiles. He is as mesmerized with her as I am.
“He opened his mouth and told me. You’re funny, Daddy.”
He rakes a hand through his hair again. But slowly, as more and more departed go to Dutch for help, he begins to believe her. She simply knows too much. Sees too much. And this becomes her life. From that day on, she begins helping her father with cases. And her uncle Bob. For the most part, nobody knows. Denise, the stepmother from hell, begins to suspect. It seems to make her even more jealous, and she treats Dutch worse than ever.