Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Mattie

Since I didn’t personally work on Evan’s case, I don’t remember ever meeting his foster father, Andrew Strawn. If he came into the office at any point, I don’t remember seeing him. The file says his wife is named Margaret and they have a ten-year old son, Richie.

When we get to the home and ring the bell, a middle-aged man answers the door. “Hello, can I help you?”

“Yes” I respond politely. “I’m looking for Mr. Andrew Strawn.”

“That’s me.”

I jump right into the heart of the matter. “I’m Matilda Mathews a department manager at Las Salinas Child Protective Services. My partner and I want to ask a few questions about one of your former foster children, so we can close his case.”

The man steps out onto the porch and shuts the door behind him. “This must be about Evan. He’s the only foster child we’ve taken in. It was a rather bad experience for my family, and we decided that perhaps fostering isn’t for us.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, can you tell me a little bit about the problems that you had with Evan?”

“Sure,” the man responds tightly. “Evan was a problem from day one. He didn’t like to shower or brush his teeth. He would only wear the clothing he arrived in. He refused to follow directions, do his homework or be respectful of our family members. He was with us for almost a year, but we finally had to call it quits because my wife was having a nervous breakdown with his moodiness.”

“The report mentioned aggression, talk to me about what kinds of violence he exhibited in the home.”

“Jesus there was a ton of stuff, like becoming explosive if someone accidentally walked in the bathroom when he was showering or shoving my son aside to walk past him. He even took a swing at me one day because I asked him to clean his room. It was always a pigsty in there.”

In my opinion the things Mr. Strawn was describing were very typical adjustment type issues for troubled teens—or even just the spectrum of regular teen behavior. I wouldn’t have considered any of that worth ending a placement over.

“Can you tell me a little bit about his extracurriculars, I believe he was on the football team. “His coach reported he was oppositional there as well,” Mr. Strawn adds quickly.

Perplexed, I ask, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the coach at that time?”

“Well yes, I was the primary coach,” he admits reluctantly. My assistant was responsible for ensuring most of the exercises and scrimmage matches took place. He was the one who reported that Evan was constantly causing trouble and not following directions.”

“What was the assistant coach’s name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“What difference does it make? This case is eight months old.”

I lower my voice to appear less confrontational. “I just need to add it to my notes. When a child goes missing when in state care it is a very serious matter. I don’t want my superiors to think I didn’t conduct a proper closing interview with you.”

Strawn manages to dial back his frustration enough to answer. “His name was William Winslow. He’s no longer employed at Las Salinas High.”

“Speaking of Las Salinas High, it’s my understanding that you were one of Evan’s teachers. Isn’t that considered a conflict of interest, having a parent and in official teaching position for their own child?”

“No. Not at all. First of all, Evan wasn’t my child. I was simply fostering him on a temporary basis. In any event, parents sometimes end up teaching their own children in a public-school setting, especially in small towns. Evan was in my American history class.”

“What was his academic performance like?”

“Evan was a smart kid. He did well when he applied himself. Mostly he didn’t because he was too caught up in all the things going wrong with this life.”

I keep probing with open ended questions. “What kind of things were those?”

“If you’ve read his file it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that Evan didn’t want to be removed from his home, much less placed with the foster family. He had been living with his elderly grandmother until she ended up in a nursing home and could no longer care for him. Evan was furious that he couldn’t just stay in their family home.”

“Of course that wouldn’t have been possible,” I acknowledge.

There’s a brief pause and he then asks, “Is that it for questions? My wife is making dinner and I have some chores to do before we sit down to eat.”

Rigs speaks up. “When was the last time you saw Evan?”

“It was eight months ago, give or take a few days. I don’t remember exactly,” Strawn replies nonchalantly.

Rigs presses him for more information. “Do you remember who it was that picked him up from your home.”

I looked between Rigs and Strawn, noticing the tone of Strawn’s voice changes slightly once he’s talking to Rigs. Maybe he’s one of those men who don’t like women in authority. “You would know the answer to that question better than me, since it was someone from your department.”

“Humor me,” Rigs shoots back. “Was the person who picked him up a male or a female? What did they look like? What were they wearing? Did they show you an official ID? Surely, you must remember who picked up the child in your care. It was your job to take care of him, so I’m sure you were diligent about checking the person’s ID.”

“What has this got to do with anything? Look, I’m about done being interrogated by you two.”

Rigs keeps the pressure on. “You can either answer our questions or we can come back with a warrant and ask questions to every member of your family including your wife and son.”

Anger jumps onto Strawn’s face for a brief second before he wipes his expression clean. “If I remember correctly, it was a middle-aged white man, he did show his ID, and near as I can remember he was wearing a dark business suit.”

“Can you think of anything else that might have a bearing on his disappearance.”

“I’ve already been questioned several times. I already made it known that I think he ran away, in the last couple of weeks he was here he was moody, more so than usual. He’s probably creeping around his old house, still trying to live on his own. That’s all he talked about when he was with us.”

I step in and extend my hand “Thank you so much for speaking with us Mr. Strawn. We’re sorry to have kept you from your family. I hope you have a nice evening.”

“If you have any more questions for me, why don’t you e-mail them to me like your old supervisor did?”

“I’ll certainly do that. Thank you again for your cooperation.”

Rigs shoots me a knowing look as we approach his bike. He grabs his leather vest and puts it back on, he’d taken it off before we visited Strawn, as trying to pass himself off as a CPS worker while wearing an MC cut probably wouldn’t have been the wisest thing.

“Let’s talk about it at the clubhouse.” I say.

Glancing over his shoulder at the house, he agrees, “Yeah, that makes good sense.”

All the way back to the clubhouse, I think over Strawn’s squirrely responses to our questions. I know Rigs picked up on it as well. It was also strange that he didn’t have a kind word to say upon the child that he fostered for an entire year. Normally when placements go bad the exit interview reveals some guilt or regret by the foster parent. There was none of that going on with Mr. Strawn.

***

Once we get to the clubhouse, we grab a plate of food and head to our office to process what just happened. By this time I’m absolutely starving and go ahead and dig into my pork BBQ while Rigs is still getting settled.

“Damn girl, you must be famished.”

“I am. I got distracted at lunch and didn’t get to finish eating. I plan to make up for it tonight.”

“I think talking to Strawn made me lose my appetite. He’s a complete dickhead.”

“Yeah, I agree with you about that. I don’t know how some of these parents make it through the screening process without getting weeded out. Strawn didn’t strike me as a man with very much empathy or compassion for the child he agreed to foster.”

“The thing that stood out in my mind, was him being reluctant to admit that he was the boy’s football coach. For some reason that just seems shady to me.”

I swallow the food in my mouth before responding. “I thought it strange how he balked at giving us the assistant coach’s name too. I really got the impression he didn’t want us talking to Mr. Winslow about Evan. Also, the way he closed the door when we first arrived made it very clear that he didn’t want us talking to his wife or his son either. That’s the kind of thing that people do when they’re lying. They want to keep everyone separated, so their lies don’t accidentally end up being revealed.”

“That makes perfect sense and it’s exactly the reason why we should follow up with the assistant coach and maybe try to talk to the wife while he’s at work. I’ve asked Zen, our IT guy to run a background check on the entire family. Once he gets that information back to us, we’ll know whether or not she works, as well and where.”

“I’m not comfortable approaching their son without a parent present. That’s not appropriate and could get our department into trouble.”

“Maybe the wife will agree to let us talk to him as long as she remains present.”

“Anything’s possible, but I think the father will throw an absolute fit if he finds out.”

“Finding a missing kid trump’s his feelings on the matter,” Rigs says while chewing a mouthful of the BBQ.

“I agree, though everything has to be done by the book.”

Rigs pulls out his cell phone up again thumbing through it. “I’m going to ask Zen to see if he can verify that William Winslow once worked at Las Salinas High School, see if we can find out why he’s no longer there, and where he went. It shouldn’t take him long to get that information, and once we have it, we can pay him a visit too.”

I take a drink of my tea before asking, “Do you think what Strawn said about Evan going back to his old home was true?”

“It’s possible,” Rigs answers. “If that was the only place he knew as home. Maybe he thought his grandmother going into the nursing home was temporary, and he wanted to be there when she was discharged.”

“I can see how he might have thought that. Unfortunately, nursing homes are not like hospitals. Someone really should have explained the difference to him.”

“Maybe they did, and he just wasn’t listening. I think that teens in crisis often hear what they want to hear.”

“I know that to be true. I hope this turns out to be like Strawn said, and that Evan is with his extended family. I could see them not wanting to notify the department for fear that we might pick him back up. For some reason families that have a child removed are often reluctant to contact us, even in cases like Evan’s, when the removal was because his caregiver was hospitalized, rather than for neglect or abuse. I guess they don’t understand our primary goal is family reunification. They just see us as the bad guys taking their kids away and making them jump through a bunch of hoops to get them back.”

“It could also be that even though his extended family is willing to take him in, none of them would meet the official criteria to be approved as his guardian.”

“I can see how that would be possible. We do have to do in home visits and make sure that there’s hot and cold running water, there’s adequate parental supervision in the home and the individual has a private sleeping space.”

While Rigs sends off messages to the IT guy, I make fast work of the food, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I’d not been eating well lately, but now that we were starting to make headway with these cases I find my appetite has come back with a vengeance.