Once Shunned Read online

  She said, “Oh, no. Surely you don’t suspect that Wesley …”

  Her voice trailed off and she glanced about uneasily.

  Trying to sound reassuring, Riley said, “We don’t know what to think, Dr. Rhind. We just need to talk with Wesley.”

  Dr. Rhind said, “I’m not sure whether it is possible. You see, Wesley is severely autistic. And like many autistic people, he has serious problems with social and language skills. He was making great progress for a while, and the work program seemed to be doing him a world of good, really drawing him out of his shell.”

  With a sigh, Dr. Rhind added, “Then the night before last, the Public Works Department called to report that he’d gone missing. We were terribly worried, but he did show up here a couple of hours later. He apparently walked all the way back from wherever he’d been. But …”

  She squeezed her hands together worriedly and continued. “He’s had some kind of terrible setback. He was getting along so well, but now he’s returned to being completely uncommunicative. We had no idea why, although we seldom do know why with our autistic residents. Their progress is often touch and go, and we have to deal with our share of disappointments. But from what you’re saying, maybe his setback had something to do with …”

  Dr. Rhind looked deeply troubled now.

  She added, “I really can’t believe that Wesley would ever hurt anybody. He’s not at all prone to violence.”

  Jenn said, “We have no reason to think otherwise, Dr. Rhind.”

  Bill added, “But we do need to talk with him if it’s at all possible.”

  Dr. Rhind thought quietly for a moment.

  Then she said, “His mother is with him in his room. She’s been trying to help him through this setback. Let’s go see how she’s doing.”

  As Dr. Rhind led Riley and her four companions into the facility, Riley was surprised by her surroundings. She remembered all too well the last time she’d been to any kind of a care facility. It had been back in Mississippi when she, Bill, and Jenn had interviewed a man suffering from dementia.

  That had been a home for the elderly, and the place had made Riley distinctly uneasy. It had all felt fake somehow, and more like a funeral home than someplace where living people were actually cared for.

  But this place was entirely different.

  For one thing, the people in the hallways were of all different ages, ranging from children to the elderly. And many of faces the were happy faces. Several residents waved and smiled at Riley and her companions.

  Wait—are they residents or staff? Riley wondered.

  No one seemed to be wearing uniforms of any kind, so Riley couldn’t be sure she could tell residents from staff members.

  They passed by a comfortable sitting room where people sat around talking and playing board games and eating snacks, and a classroom where a small group of students took notes and listened attentively to their instructor.

  As they continued on past spacious apartment-style rooms, Riley said to Dr. Rhind …

  “I’m impressed. This seems more like a combination school and dormitory than a …”

  Riley stopped herself from finishing her sentence, but Dr. Rhind smiled broadly.

  “Don’t be afraid to say it,” she said to Riley. “You mean a mental institution.”

  Riley nodded, blushing a little.

  Dr. Rhind said, “We try not to treat our residents like … well, patients. Instead, we treat them as individuals, with their own problems, hopes, changes, challenges, abilities, limitations, and needs. We try to foster a feeling of family for residents and staff alike. This leads to positive networking and relationships that might last a lifetime, even after some of them leave here to live in the outside world. Our ‘alumni’ often come back to help others, to teach them valuable life skills and other lessons that they’ve learned. Above all else, we try to foster independence.”

  With a sigh she added, “We’d had such hopes for Wesley. He’d seemed to be doing so well.”

  Dr. Rhind stopped and knocked on a door to one of the rooms.

  Riley heard a woman’s voice say, “Come in.”

  Riley and her three companions followed Dr. Rhind into the large, pleasant studio apartment. A middle-aged woman and a young man were seated at a table near a fully equipped kitchen area.

  The woman was watching the young man with a wistful, caring expression. The young man’s attention was focused on an object spinning on top of a little stand on the table.

  A toy gyroscope, Riley realized.

  She’d had one herself when she was a little girl.

  Wesley Mannis’s focus on the gyroscope seemed to pass beyond mere fascination. He seemed positively rapt, almost hypnotized. He didn’t even blink as the upright spinning object slowed, then leaned, then finally dropped off its stand onto the tabletop.

  Without a word, Wesley threaded a piece of string into a hole in the gyroscope’s axis, meticulously turned the axis until the string was wound neatly around it, and pulled the string to send the wheel spinning again.

  Then he set the gyroscope back on the stand and watched again as it whirled and hummed.

  Dr. Rhind quietly asked the woman. “Has there been any change?”

  The woman shook her head and said, “At least he hasn’t had any more meltdowns. He’s been stimming like this ever since you were last here.”

  That word caught Riley’s attention …

  Stimming.

  She’d heard it used in reference to people with autism, but she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. In a hushed voice Dr. Rhind introduced Riley and her companions to Wesley’s mother, Gemma Mannis.

  But Dr. Rhind hesitated, as if groping for a way to explain a visit from the Chief of Police and three FBI agents.

  With good reason, Riley thought.

  The woman already had more than enough to worry about without being told that her son just might be a murder suspect.

  Instead, Riley said to Gemma, as casually as she could …

  “We just want to ask him some questions about the night before last, when he went missing for a little while.”

  Gemma squinted curiously at Riley, then at Riley’s colleagues.

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, and Riley knew it. She hoped Gemma wasn’t going to start asking questions. But to Riley’s relief, the woman simply nodded. Riley guessed that she didn’t simply want to hear the whole truth right now.

  Whatever “the truth” turns out to be.

  Riley thought that Gemma Mannis was about her own age, although the years hadn’t been kind to her. Her eyes were hollow and worried-looking, and her face was deeply lined with anxiety. Riley also noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, although there was a very slight telltale indentation on her finger where a ring used to be.

  Divorced, Riley thought. It seemed likely that many years of raising a disabled son had taken their toll, both on Gemma’s emotional well-being and her relationships.

  Riley wondered whether Gemma’s husband might have been like Duane Scoville, too shallow and selfish to follow through on the “for better or worse” part of his wedding vows. If so, Gemma may have had to persevere mostly on her own.

  Riley couldn’t begin to imagine the burdens she must have carried.

  As for Gemma’s son Wesley, Riley found him to be a baffling presence.

  He seemed to be in his early twenties, though he had his mother’s hollow, anxious eyes. His features were long and thin, and he had a slight stubble on his chin. Riley wondered …

  Can he shave himself?

  The apartment was equipped for someone with fairly good life skills, so perhaps he could. But he probably hadn’t shaved since whatever had happened a couple of nights ago.

  Riley and her colleagues remained standing while Dr. Rhind sat down beside Wesley.

  Dr. Rhind said to him quietly, “Wesley, you have visitors.”

  Winding the gyroscope string again, Wesley said in a stiff voice …

&
nbsp; “I can see that.”

  “They’d like to talk to you,” Dr. Rhind said.

  “I don’t want to talk to them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

  He pulled the string and set the gyroscope spinning on the stand again.

  Since their arrival, Riley hadn’t seen his eyes budge once from the gyroscope.

  Even more unsettling, Wesley Mannis was simply a blank to her.

  Not only did Riley’s powers of empathy help her get into criminals’ minds, it also helped her communicate with victims and witnesses. She’d often been able to draw people out, sometimes in spite of themselves.

  But she could sense nothing about this intense young man.

  Dr. Rhind spoke again. “Wesley, we know something happened to you the night before last. We need for you to tell us about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Wesley said. “I want you to go away. Except Mom. I want the rest of you to go away.”

  “Wesley—” Dr. Rhind began.

  “I mean it,” Wesley said, his voice shaking now. “Go away.”

  “OK,” Dr. Rhind said.

  Then she led Riley and her companions out into the hallway.

  “I’d been hoping he might have improved a little,” Dr. Rhind said. “But he hasn’t. I’m really worried that this setback might be irreversible.”

  Chief Brennan looked puzzled. He said, “Surely he isn’t going to say anything as long as he’s playing with that toy. Can’t you just tell him to stop? Can’t you just tell him to look at us?”

  Dr. Rhind sighed. “One of our newer staff members made that mistake a little while ago—politely asked him to stop stimming and to make eye contact with her. He had a terrible meltdown. Believe me, we don’t want that to happen again if we can possibly help it.”

  “Stimming?” Riley asked.

  “Self-stimulatory behavior,” Dr. Rhind explained. “People with developmental disabilities often stim as a way of coping with overstimulation from the outside world, the terrifying onslaught of sensory input. That’s what he’s doing with the gyroscope. It’s his personal favorite way of stimming. Believe me, it’s very benign in comparison to some of the stimming I’ve seen in patients, which can include head-banging and other forms of self-harm.”

  “So you can’t get him to stop?” Chief Brennan said.

  “We wouldn’t want to,” Dr. Rhind said. “Right now, he feels like he really needs it. And we need to respect that feeling—that’s part of our philosophy here at Wilburton House. As for making eye contact …”

  Dr. Rhind shrugged slightly and continued, “Wesley is averse to eye contact, even when he’s doing well. Just trying to make that kind of personal connection overloads him, sends him into a meltdown. That’s common with autistic people. And we don’t believe in trying to force the issue.”

  Riley’s heart sank at what she was hearing, and she could see that Chief Brennan was about to protest. Riley silenced him with a shake of her head.

  She asked the doctor, “So are you saying we’ve got no way to reach him?”

  “Not right now,” Dr. Rhind said. “We’re looking into every possibility, but we can’t rush it.” She pressed her lips together and added firmly, “We won’t rush it. I’ll be sure to let you know if there’s any change.”

  It was clear to Riley that there was nothing more to be done right now. She and her team would just be in the way if they hung around. But before they left Wilburton House, she asked Dr. Rhind to check on Wesley’s whereabouts on the morning of Vincent Cranston’s murder down in New Haven. According to the records, Wesley had checked back into the facility after his garbage shift and had spent that whole day right where he was supposed to be.

  It was evening by the time they left the building. In spite of their success at accessing the security camera recording and tracking down Wesley Mannis, they had made no actual progress on the case. As Riley tried to think what to do next, she became aware that Bill was watching her.

  He said, “We should regroup, discuss what we have, and get some sleep.”

  Riley nodded, but it felt like a defeat.

  Chief Brennan drove the three agents to a charming little Colonial-era hotel called the Ramsey Inn. As he dropped them off, he said that he’d send a car over later for them to use for as long as they were in Connecticut.

  After Riley, Jenn, and Bill got settled into their rooms, they all went downstairs to the restaurant. The place was cozy, with large paintings hung on dark antique wood paneling. The menu was pricier than their usual fare, since they usually tried not to charge too much to the FBI. But they decided to indulge themselves in some excellent-looking seafood dishes.

  While they waited for their orders, Jenn was looking preoccupied.

  “What’s on your mind?” Riley asked her.

  After a moment, the young agent muttered, “I’ve got a bad feeling about Wesley Mannis.”

  Bill scoffed and said, “Surely you don’t think he’s our killer.”

  Jenn shrugged and said, “Well, he apparently didn’t kill Vincent Cranston down in Newport. But Robin Scoville? That’s another story. The way he disappeared on that night at that time strikes me as very weird.”

  Riley squinted skeptically. Bill looked doubtful as well.

  Bill said, “He didn’t strike me as aggressive.”

  “Maybe not,” Jenn said. “But I lived around an autistic kid … where I grew up.”

  Riley knew, of course, that Jenn meant Aunt Cora’s foster home.

  Jenn continued, “He was a brilliant kid, a real savant. But his meltdowns were terrible. We couldn’t control him, and he hurt some of us pretty badly. He really could have killed somebody. And Dr. Rhind said that Wesley does have meltdowns.”

  Riley could well imagine Aunt Cora taking in an autistic kid with extraordinary abilities. She’d find him useful for her insidious purposes, but what might have finally become of a kid like that?

  At least Jenn escaped that woman’s clutches, Riley thought.

  Jenn added, “I don’t think we should count Wesley out as a suspect.”

  Bill shook his head. “Isn’t it kind of a coincidence, two killings so close together in time, both of them in Connecticut, both with the same unusual murder weapon, carried out by two completely unrelated perpetrators?”

  Jenn nodded toward Riley and said, “A coincidence, maybe, Bill. But Riley taught me that coincidences are a fact of life in investigative work. We can’t dismiss a possibility just because it seems coincidental.”

  Riley shrugged silently. It was true that she had taught this lesson to Jenn. Riley’s own mentor, Jake Crivaro, had taught her the same thing many years ago. For all any of them really knew, Jenn might well be right.

  If we only knew.

  Over dinner, they discussed their plans for tomorrow. There seemed to be nothing left for them to do in Wilburton, at least for how.

  Riley said, “We might as well head back down to New Haven in the morning, have a look at the trail where Vincent Cranston was killed.”

  Bill nodded and took out his cell phone and tapped in a number. He said, “I’ll message Agent Sturman right now and arrange to meet him.”

  After the excellent dinner and dessert, they all returned to their rooms. Hoping to relax and get a good start tomorrow, Riley took a hot shower and went straight to bed.

  But she was still thinking about Jenn’s words …

  “I don’t think we should count Wesley out as a suspect.”

  Riley knew that Jenn was right, of course, about coincidences. And since ice picks were coming back in style as murder weapons, maybe it wasn’t as much a coincidence as it seemed.

  And yet …

  She pictured that strange young man staring at a spinning gyroscope. Did he become violent when he had a meltdown?

  Back in Robin Scoville’s house, Riley had sensed that the killer was cold, calculated, and efficient. Couldn’t those be the charac
teristics of someone with autism?

  Riley had no idea.

  Her thoughts drifted to Gemma, Wesley’s mother.

  The poor woman.

  Riley felt grateful to be raising two healthy teenagers, neither of them with developmental problems. True, both April and Jilly presented their own sorts of parental challenges, sometimes including more than their share of adolescent rebellion.

  But nothing like Wesley.

  Riley picked up her phone and sent text messages to both her daughters.

  “Missing you,” she wrote to April.

  “Proud of you,” she wrote to Jilly.

  Then Riley hesitated. Shouldn’t she also text Blaine something personal, maybe even something sexy? But she felt too tired to think up something clever. Finally she just entered the words, “Hope to see you soon.”

  Now, sleep started closing in around Riley.

  Even so, an image stayed vividly with her.

  It was that spinning gyroscope.

  *

  The gyroscope kept coming and going through Riley’s dreams all night. It was whirling close to her, becoming larger and larger …

  Then her cell phone rang.

  Riley’s eyes snapped open.

  The early morning sun was lighting up her window.

  She reached over to her phone and looked at it. She didn’t recognize the number, but she took the call.

  A man’s voice said, “Hello, am I speaking to Special Agent Riley Paige of the FBI?”

  “Yes,” Riley said.

  “My name is Bayle,” the man said. “Kevin Bayle. I don’t imagine you’ve heard of me.”

  Feeling puzzled now, Riley said, “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

  “Well, I’ve heard of you. In fact, I know quite a bit about you. And I’m anxious to meet you in person. Today, if possible.”

  Riley felt a prickle of irritation at the man’s rather flat, almost sinister voice.

  A stalker? she wondered.

  He was certainly starting to sound like one.

  Anyway, meeting him today was certainly out of the question. Agent Sturman was expecting Riley and her colleagues in New Haven in a little while, and they had important work to do there.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Riley said. Her brain clicked away as she tried to think about what to say to him if he insisted or wanted to meet her at another time. She felt sure she wanted nothing to do with him.