Andrea Bauer took the center chair without instruction. “Interesting. I imagine the environment alone intimidates suspects.”
Milo said, “All kinds of people come in here.”
“Such as?”
“People helping us out.”
He sat across from her. I took the side chair.
“What do you call them, sources? Informants?”
Milo smiled. “People helping us. So what would you like to tell us about Benny Alvarez?”
Andrea Bauer’s thin lips turned down. “This has been incredibly difficult, I’ve never dealt with anything like it. Benny was a sweet, innocent human being, Lieutenant. I was pleased to be able to take him in. Was he probably abducted on the way from work?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can you tell me if he suffered greatly?”
“I don’t believe he did.”
“It’s utterly mad,” said Andrea Bauer. “I can’t imagine anyone deliberately wanting to hurt him. But I suppose I’m being naive. There’s all sorts of evil out there, isn’t there?”
“Unfortunately, ma’am. How did you come to take him in?”
Andrea Bauer crossed stick-legs and looked up at the ceiling. “It was a couple of years ago. I was full-up at the Skaggs facility but a caseworker called and just about begged. There was a vacancy at my place in San Diego, it’s the largest—twenty residents—but the worker felt the move would be difficult for Benny, his experiences had been rather limited.”
I said, “Emotionally or geographically?”
“Both. From what I gathered, he’d lived with mother in Echo Park then with his fosters only half a mile from there. The worker described him as having the mind of a child though I learned later she was selling Benny short.”
I said, “He functioned higher than she thought.”
“Most people don’t understand but I’m sure you do, Dr. Delaware. The concept of mental age is given more credit than it deserves—mind of a six-year-old, mind of a ten-year-old. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?”
I shook my head. “A slow adult is qualitatively different than a normal child.”
She turned to Milo. “What your psychologist means, Lieutenant, is that an adult with cognitive impairment can function low on one measure and high on another. Benny was a prime example. His reading skills were just about nil but his vocabulary was pretty darn good—you’d meet him and think he was okay. On top of that, he could function socially and had no physical stigmata—small stature but he looked normal…no pain? You’re sure?”
Milo said, “He died by a single gunshot that would’ve been rapidly fatal.”
Andrea Bauer sank an inch. “Oh, God, how grotesque. And you havenoidea who could’ve done this?”
Milo said, “Not yet. Could we go back to his history, for a sec? You had no vacancies but you found a way.”
“I had to do some shuffling, make sure no one else was put at a disadvantage. I’d just accepted a resident at Skaggs but she hadn’t moved in yet. Williams syndrome, slightly lower-functioning than Benny but one part of that diagnosis is extreme sociability. On top of that, she’d moved around a bit so I thought she might be okay in San Diego. So off she went and Benny got the slot at Skaggs.”
She recrossed her legs. “Small victories, gentlemen. That’s how you need to look at it.”
I said, “You take a personal interest in the residents.”
“There’s no reason to work with people unless you’re interested in them.”
She edged closer to the table, grazed a water bottle with her fingernails. Clipped utilitarian nails but nothing ascetic about her: The hoodie was cashmere, a four-carat diamond stud glinted from each ear, and a platinum ring set with a round yellow diamond at least twice that weight banded her left ring finger.
“That probably sounds glib but I mean it,” she said. “I never set out to run facilities, fell into it after my husband died. He owned all kinds of things—office buildings, apartments, shopping centers, reinsurance companies, and just before his stroke, he picked up four dozen old age homes and drug rehab centers as part of some sort of trade. I was ready to sell everything, wanted no part of warehousing human beings. But then I thought,Hey, it’s been years since I’ve worked with human beings, why not give it a try?So I held on to a few locations. The goal was to create spaces for unaddicted people born with cognitive problems. Nothing grand. Bill—my husband, was allaboutgrand, I’d had enough of grand.”
“Something manageable,” I said.
