was he placed in a white foster home?”
Harrell made a snorting sound. I bristled. I knew the damage done to children who’d been placed in white homes or sent away to boarding schools.
“We only place children when it’s necessary for their own safety,” I said.
“Why, exactly?”
“I can’t share confidential client information with you, Mr. Harrell. I’m sure you understand.”
The reporter stiffened. “I suppose this is when you’re going to tell me that you only remove children from their homes when they’re in danger.”
“That is our policy,” I said.
“And yet it seems that the greater danger for Anthony Little Eagle was in one of your licensed white foster homes rather than in his own home.”
I cringed. Would Anthony Little Eagle still be alive if he hadn’t been removed from his home? Was there any way to have been certain where the greater danger lay? Following approved policies and procedures only went so far. In the end, ensuring child safety boiled down to professional judgment, which I knew from experience was subjective and not without bias.
“Mr. Harrell,” I spoke slowly and deliberately. “Our job is to protect children, and we try to do our best. I can assure you that our agency takes a child’s death very seriously.”
“Murder,” he said. “A child’s murder.” He turned his head and fixed his brown eyes on the Hopi Kachina doll on my desk.
I picked the doll up and moved it to the other side of my desk. “We will cooperate in every way we can with the police investigation,” I said. Why was I resorting to legal jargon? Why did I feel such a desperate need to defend myself?
“Every way you can?”
“Every way possible. I assure you.”
J. B. Harrell put his pen down and scooted back in the chair. He let out his breath with a whistle. “Ms. Jensen,” he said.
“Please, call me Sylvia.” I knew my smile was obsequious but I couldn’t seem to help it.
Harrell flipped back to the previous page of his legal pad. “The foster parents are Paul and Linda Mellon, right? So, was Anthony Little Eagle the first foster child ever placed in their home, Ms. Jensen?”
“No.”
“How many other children have been placed with them?”
“The Mellons have been foster parents for quite some time.”
“How long, exactly? How many children?”
“Since the late 1990s, I think. I don’t know how many children they’ve fostered. I’d have to look that up.”
“And do you know if any other children have been injured or died while in their care?”
I clenched my fists. Now he had gone too far. Yes, I felt responsible. Yes, I felt guilty. Yes, I was asking myself if there was something I could have done to prevent Anthony’s death. But to insinuate that other children had been injured, let alone died, in the same home? That was plain unfair. And was he actually accusing the Mellons of murder? I sat up in my chair and looked straight at him, daring him to look at me, to just this once for God’s sake look at me. But he didn’t. I was beginning to suspect that the man wasn’t as principled as I’d thought. That he might in fact just be full of himself, like so many men I’d known in my life.
“I can assure you, Mr. Harrell, that if any child had been harmed while in the Mellon home before, our agency would not have placed any other children with them.”
“I see.” He flipped through the pages of his legal pad until he found what he was looking for. “Then perhaps you can explain,” he said, running his finger down the page, “the incident that occurred in that home in 2000.”
A bead of sweat was making its way down my left temple. What incident was he referring to? Was it possible he already knew I’d been on leave in 2000, that I’d been arrested for driving with a blood alcohol level of .2 and would have lost my job if I hadn’t checked myself into a treatment center? Surely he didn’t know about the mornings I’d come to work late and hungover, about the bottle of wine I’d kept in the bottom left-hand drawer of my desk. I reached for a tissue, blew my nose, and wiped the perspiration from my upper lip. Harrell was studying his notes. I wondered if he was going to use my history against the agency, if he planned to make my drinking part of a series about the failings of the foster care system. Well, it wasn’t too late to stop him. I looked at the clock on my desk and feigned surprise.
“I have another appointment,” I said, with a smile I intended to appear apologetic. “I’m afraid our time is up.”
“Here it is,” he said. “A foster child, a five-year-old girl, was injured and taken by the Mellons to the hospital on June 8, 2000.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, no longer able to keep my voice from trembling. “I wasn’t here then, but if there was any suspicion that foster parents were responsible for a child’s injury, I can assure you that there would have been an investigation.”
“So you assure me that no child ever came to any harm at the hands of Mr. or Mrs. Mellon in the past but you provide me with no evidence, is that what you’re saying, Ms. Jensen?”
“I can assure you...I mean, I’m not aware of any other accident.”
“Incident,” he said. “Any other incident.”
“Mr. Harrell, I want to find out what happened to Anthony Little Eagle as much as you do, believe me.” I found myself experiencing a disturbing need for him to understand that I wasn’t the enemy, that I wasn’t your typical bureaucrat who didn’t understand issues of privilege and oppression. Couldn’t he tell that I was different?
“And you, of course, can assure me of that, too.” He tore a page from his legal pad and scribbled something, crumpled it up, and dropped it on the floor. Then he put his pen and legal pad away and closed his briefcase with a loud click.
His quiet hostility left a bitter taste on my tongue. I watched him glance around my office one more time. My head grew heavy. I rested my elbows on the desk and held my chin in the palms of my hands. Then I saw him looking at the picture on my desk of me sitting on a big rock.
“That was taken in Machu Picchu in the 1980s,” I said, glad to have something to say. “It was an incredible experience to be there and imagine the beauty of the city built on those rocks.”
“The city where they sacrificed small, perfect children to gain the favor of the gods,” he said.
His words jolted me back to my trip to Peru. I heard the voice of the Spanish tour guide describing the beauty of a ten-year-old child whose father had offered her to the Inca emperor as a Capacocha sacrifice, telling us that there were skull fractures on the backs of the heads of most of the sacrificial mummies.
I looked at Harrell. “I’m devastated about what happened,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can to find out what happened.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Ms.
