In the Spider's Web by Jerome Gold

Author:Jerome Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Heron Press
Published: 2015-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Though none of us but Jan had liked him, the first staff meeting without Julius felt as though there were a hole in its center. Nobody mentioned James except to say he hadn’t been hurt—that was Jan—and that his mother had retained an attorney to represent him in regard to Julius’ beating him up—that was me.

“Julius didn’t beat anybody up!” Jan said.

“Excuse me? I was there! Remember?”

“So was I,” Maggie said.

Everybody was looking at us: at Jan, at me, at Maggie.

Frank said, “Did somebody beat James up? Did somebody say somebody beat James up?”

“Where have you been, numbnuts? Isn’t he on your caseload?” Dick said.

“Yes, he’s on my caseload! What happened? Did somebody beat him up?” he asked me.

Time passed. Finally I said, “Yes.”

Dick said, “What the fuck do you put in your case notes? You spend your whole goddamn shift in the office—what the hell do you do in there, play with yourself?”

Layton started to say something, but Frank said, “He probably deserved it.”

“Nobody deserves it. At least no kid does,” Bernie said.

“You should try it and report back to the rest of us. Tell us what you think you learned from it,” I said.

Dick made a sound like a guffaw.

I didn’t understand why Julius had locked the room doors in the zone, pressed his body alarm, and only then hit James. I told Layton this. I also didn’t understand why I had taken Julius’ glasses when he handed them to me though I had refused them twice before; I didn’t mention this to Layton.

Layton said he understood. Julius locked the doors because he thought there were kids in those rooms and he didn’t want them to see anything. He didn’t know Maggie had put them in the craft room. And he pressed his body alarm because he wanted to make it look like James had struck him first, that he had simply fought back.

“That would mean that he expected me to lie for him,” I said.

Layton nodded his head with deliberation. He was looking at me.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said.

We were on the back porch. The kids were in school, Dick monitoring. Bernie was on the computer. There was no one to hear us. Layton asked me if I remembered Lani Hyatt. She had been a resident in Wolf and then she went to Andromeda. Of course I remembered her: her father had killed her brother for having slept with her, and when he got out of prison he killed her other brother for the same reason.

Well, when she was at Andromeda the first time, Boyd from Fox Cottage sometimes worked graveyard there to get some overtime. Layton knew this much without being told. But Lani told him that when Boyd was there he would find a reason to have her put in the quiet room. Then, after other staff had left, he would take her out into the office and screw her. There was also a guy who used to work Security—he was gone now—who screwed her.

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