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we?”
    “The baby...”
    Connelly nodded. “I know...The dispatcher said there was trouble brewing over here.
    But I need you to answer some questions before we go and start causing a commotion
    about all this. I mean, you have to understand. We get calls about custody disputes all the time, and you said yourself that she’s the mother.”
    The woman shook her head, as though disgusted. “You need to go now. We have
    custody. I’ll show you the papers. She’s only allowed to see him here , when we can be around to supervise her. And she took him. And he’s not like other babies. Go...go now . I, I think she hurt him. I heard things snap when she...when she left here.”
    “She hit him?”
    The woman paused. Blew her nose. Rubbed tears away with liver spotted hands. “I-
    it’s hard to explain, but I think he’s hurt, pretty bad. And I think she meant to hurt him!”
    Shit. This wasn’t a routine take-crazy-hottie-to-the-hospital call. She wasn’t just
    breaking dishes or windows this time. This was gonna be an actual investigation. Time to go from calm-witness-down-mode to get-witness-talking-mode.
    “And you heard bones snap?” Christ, this wasn’t good news. Connelly didn’t know
    the whole story, but he remembered something about the kid being all messed up
    somehow or another. Lots of birth defects. Probably caused by the hottie smoking dope.
    ( But maybe , Connelly thought with an uncomfortable quiver down his spine, caused by all the crazy pills she’d been prescribed .)
    “Y-yes I did. Please, go now. You can get my statement later. Just find her!”
    “Is your daughter armed?”
    “No. She’s no threat to anyone except the baby.”
    “Looks like she was damned sure a threat to you, now.”
    The mother brought her hand up to cover the cigarette burn. Her face started to take
    on the same crimson shade that her nails had been painted. “What I mean is, she’s
    mentally ill but guns aren’t her style.” Then she took her hand away from the cigarette
    burn – maybe catching on to the silliness of trying to hide it, at this point. She now
    pointed to it. “ This is her style. This and raking her nails over your face and maybe, with a man, giving a kick to the groin. Nasty stuff, but not lethal. So don’t you go shooting at her, you hear? Just catch her. Put her away for a good, long while this time.”
    “And, of course, there’s the boy.”
    “Why, yes, of course. I mean, that’s the main point. To get him medical attention.
    He’s...fragile.”
    “What’s the child’s name?”
    “He’s only a baby. He doesn’t answer to his name yet.”
    “Yes, ma’am, I’m aware of that. But, for the paperwork I have to know. His name.”
    “J-Joshua.”
    “And the baby’s last name?”
    The mother coughed. “It’s...Morris. Joshua Morris. Lori never told us the name of
    the father, and no one ever came forward to claim paternity.”
    The cop scribbled in his notepad. “You said the baby was fragile. What do you
    mean? In detail, that is?”
    The mother shifted in her seat. Fidgeted.
    She was embarrassed. Of course she was. No one wanted to talk about shit like this.
    But Connelly knew this kind of thing tended to get taken more seriously if the kid was
    handicapped. “Isn’t he, well, you know, special in some way? I hate to put it like this, but it might help get more sympathy for your situation, with the courts and with the media, if they know all the details.”
    “He has several…conditions. Probably the worst one is called anencephaly. A birth
    defect. He’s quite vulnerable. His brain didn’t form right, in the womb. The skull and the brain didn’t form right, that is. So he only has a tiny bit of brain tissue, and most of that is actually outside of his body because there’s no skull to cover it.” She bit her lip. Blew her nose some more. “He’s too young, right now, to get any corrective surgery done. So he’s
    supposed to have a special covering on his head, where