until the EMTs arrived, and she was the one who rode with him to the hospital. She had been the first to tell him he couldn’t have done anything against a man with a knife and a gun. It wasn’t surprising that he would turn back to her now, and trust her with his memories of the horror. She’d seen it, after all, and carried the same images in her head.
“Jere?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think you could sit in there with me when I talk to her?”
“If your folks say it’s okay, I absolutely will.”
He took a shaky breath. “Could you go ask now so I’ll know?”
“I would, but they’re probably sitting out on the benches by the office. If I go, that leaves you in here alone for a few minutes.” He might not want to talk, but being alone would send him into a panic that included cold sweats and hyperventilating. Only in his bedroom, which now had bars on the windows, where a lamp was always on, and where Riley slept every night, could he be by himself.
He’d asked for a deadbolt on the door too, at one point, that he could lock from the inside, but his parents were afraid he’d hurt himself—or worse—even though they never voiced that fear to him. That was, in fact, how he ended up with Riley.
“How about getting him a therapy dog?” I’d suggested. “Like, a big dog that would make him feel safe and, you know, is geared to his needs. Someone to talk to and be his buddy.”
When they had brought it up to him, he’d agreed, but only as long as the dog they got was big and strong and basically invincible. It was a tall order. He liked golden retrievers and beagles, and he loved pit bulls, but he didn’t want anything, any dog, that he could imagine getting hurt, and every pit bull he’d ever come across, like his grandmother’s three, were sweet and trusting. He couldn’t lose anything else.
“You know,” I told him as we walked together around the woods near his house, “any dog you have could conceivably be hurt.”
“I know, but there are certain dogs people don’t even try to mess with in the first place.”
“That’s valid.”
When he turned, I’d gotten a rare smile.
His parents found two Dobermans, brother and sister, Riley and Rhett, each trained as service dogs, and adopted them both. Riley, the female, took to Creese immediately, and sleeping on one side of his bed every night suited her just fine. His parents had both been overwhelmed when they’d checked on him that first night and found him sleeping peacefully rather than passed out from sheer exhaustion. He’d always refused to be medicated, he could never be vulnerable again, but now, with Riley there, he didn’t need to be hypervigilant. He could wear his AirPods again and drown out the noise around him, because his dog was there. He’d seen her go from lying on the floor, splayed out, looking dead to the world, to rolling to her feet, head down, teeth bared, snarling like a hellhound, in seconds. It was extremely comforting for a seventeen-year-old boy who’d been abducted and assaulted.
Now, confident in his karate training as well as in his pet, he scoffed at my concern as though I were ridiculous. Even that little sign of normalcy was such a step in the right direction.
So I headed down to the office, and everyone turned to me when I reached them at the benches. They were all sitting, except Detective Turner and Fiona.
“Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, Creese has a request.”
Mrs. Robinson gave her daughter the keys to their minivan, parked only a few car lengths away, and sent her to sit in it while we talked.
When I explained what their son wanted, they immediately agreed.
“He has a lot of confidence in you, Detective,” I told her.
She nodded, evidently unable to speak.
“He knows you’ll protect him, and that’s”––I shrugged––“really the most important thing.”
More nodding.
I turned to the ADA. “And if you have a woman in your office, I think he would be open to letting her sit in with the detective. I’m not promising anything, but he sees Detective Turner as his champion, and at the moment, he’s far more comfortable with most women than he is with any man.”
“I understand. It makes perfect sense,” McCauley agreed.
I was surprised, and it must have shown on my face.
“God, what you must think of me.”
Detective Turner cleared her throat, and I refocused my