The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,133

and chased away the lynch mob and we went to sleep and when we woke up the next morning we were on television so I got on the phone and called Dad.”

The assembled audience of adults stared at Brandon with perplexed mouths agape and brows wrinkled, each mystified by the nonsensical details of Brandon’s story and his straightforward and sincere way of recounting them, and the way Keenan sometimes nodded in confirmation of what his brother said. Adults and children had been momentarily transported into a shared state of mystery and innocence, a kind of mental blankness where anything was possible, and the adults allowed themselves to entertain, for the briefest instant of grown-up time, the possibility that these two well-spoken boys had actually returned from a magical land. Even Olivia Garza, who believed she had heard every kind of story a child could tell, did not know precisely what she should make of Brandon’s monologue, so she simply looked at her digital recorder and turned it off.

Detective Blake and Assistant District Attorney Goller rose to their feet simultaneously, while a second detective named Harkness patted both Brandon and Keenan on the head and said, “Thanks guys.” Detective Blake called back the parents from their temporary exile in the kitchen and left the boys with them, and the committee retired to the backyard for a tête-à-tête. For a few moments, they stood in a circle and looked at one another with now-what expressions.

“I don’t know what to make of that,” Detective Blake said finally. “That kid’s got quite an imagination.”

“This is what happens when you leave them alone too much, in my opinion,” Olivia Garza said. “Whether it’s TV, or books, or computer games. There are drawbacks. They slip into their own world.”

“God knows what really happened to them,” Assistant District Attorney Goller said. “I’m not a psychologist, but maybe this is some sort of emotional fantasy response to severe trauma.”

The eyes of everyone present turned to the staff psychologist from Child Protective Services, a twenty-nine-year-old recently minted PhD from UCLA named Jennifer Gelfand-Peña. This was Dr. Gelfand-Peña’s first time with the so-called emergency intervention team and she had overdressed for the occasion in her best, virgin-wool business skirt, and now she thought it strange that they were meeting with a representative of the district attorney’s office and two detectives, given the manifest innocuousness of the case.

“What do I think?” she said with a pretty-woman cheerfulness that made everyone else in the group deepen their growing irritation with her. “I think the view up here is spectacular. I’m sort of bummed because I think we’re missing the sunset. I also think this desert garden is really beautiful, but it’s kind of over the top.” Her colleagues shot her stony glances, but she seemed unconcerned. “And in my professional opinion, this kid Brandon is a fascinating case. He’s got the verbal and reading skills of an eighteen-year-old. And the socialization of a seven-year-old, which isn’t surprising, since he’s very sheltered up here, and since he goes to the most expensive, touchy-feely private school in the county. So I think what’s probably going on is that he’s just read too many books.”

“Well, the way I see it, the boy basically confirmed what the maid told our detective here,” Olivia Garza said. “She said she was taking them to the grandfather. Right, Detective? And that’s what the boy said. He said they were alone in the house with the maid and they left to look for the grandfather.”

“But he didn’t know since when,” Detective Blake offered.

“Yeah, kids are terrible with time,” the staff psychologist said.

“No harm, no foul, as far as I’m concerned,” Detective Blake said. “I don’t see what we can hold this Mexican lady on.”

“So we’re going to throw the parents’ statement out the window?” Goller said. “Shouldn’t we be investigating, at least, for child endangerment?”

“Eleven one sixty-five-point-two?” Blake said. “By the parents? Or the maid?”

“No, not the parents, because they left the boys with an adult guardian,” Goller said. “But I wasn’t thinking about that so much as a two-seventy-three-A.”

“Interesting,” said Dr. Gelfand-Peña, which was her ironic way of saying a child abuse charge seemed far-fetched.

“Really?” Olivia Garza said.

“Do we have evidence of either of those crimes?” Detective Blake asked.

“Remember that address our victims appear to have visited first?” Goller said. “I called the LAPD. It’s smack in the middle of the ganginfested garment-factory district of L.A. If taking two Orange County kids to that hellhole isn’t two seventy-three-A, then