And Then There Was One by Patricia Gussin Page B

with their video games. Obediently, Jackie sat down, staring straight ahead at the bare wall.
    “You have my patient records?” Katie seemed incredulous at the array of folders spread in front of her. “But they’re confidential.”
    “Not what’s on public record,” Streeter said. “Where you’ve testified.”
    Scott stayed focused on Jackie. Afraid to confront her mother, he felt he’d let Jackie down, and his chest contracted when she looked up at him as if to say, “that’s okay.”
    The triplets were used to Katie’s protective nature, which bordered on paranoia. They all reacted differently according to their personality. Sammie, with her rebellious streak, would challenge her mom. Alex, would comply, no questions asked, and Jackie tried to reason everything out in her logical, practical way. Scott told himself that he didn’t have favorites, but truth be told, he felt closer to Jackie than the other two. He, rather than Katie, had always been Jackie’s confidant. She was so like him. Congenial, but capable of a certain toughness. She might sit here in submission, but she’d take it all in and ask him about it afterward. Scott had always understood how Jackie at times resented being a triplet. He knew that she longed to be more independent, to have her own friends. That’s why she and Sammie were always going at it. Sammie, so determined to corral the other two into a tight threesome clique.
    “This is not going to be pleasant.” Streeter scanned his five colleagues seated around the conference room and gestured for one to turn on the projector.
    There followed a parade of unseemly characters. Katie seemed familiar with them and the atrocities they’d committed. Growing up in the Grosse Pointe suburb of Detroit, Scott lacked firsthand experience with bloodshed and brutality. Hurting a child was beyond his comprehension.
    When Streeter projected a toddler with its naked torso scarred by cigarette burns, Scott stood abruptly. “Katie, give me Jackie. We’re going to get that ice cream.”
    This time, without protest, Katie nodded her assent. Scott took Jackie by the hand and left the room.
    “Dad, did you see those pictures?” Jackie asked once they were out in the hall. Her voice shook and a trickle of tears appeared. “Of those kids who were hurt? Is that what’s happening to Sammie and Alex?”
    Scott flinched, horrified. Of course, what else would a smart child like Jackie deduce after exposure to Katie’s mutilated patients? “No,” he said as firmly as he could.
    “Dad,” she said, “where do you think they are? I keep thinking and thinking. We know not to talk to strangers. You and Mom are always telling us that. So where did Alex and Sammie go? Why can’t you find them?”
    Scott had to swallow hard to choke down the surge of acid. The anguish in his daughter’s voice, her fear for her sisters was destroying him. “We’ll find them, Jackie.” He felt he would gag on the promise, but he had to be strong for his daughter’s sake. “Now let’s find those vending machines.”
    Once Scott and Jackie left, Katie sat straighter in her chair, steeling herself to focus on her former patients and their abusers as Streeter continued the slide show, a parade of her forensic career. Those men and a few women whom she’d testified against in child abuse cases dating all the way back to the early nineties when she’d completed her residency at Columbia University, left New York City, and started a pediatric psychiatric practice in Tampa. She hadn’t intended to do forensic work, but the need was there and she had boards in pediatrics and psychiatry. Katie pressed her fingers against her temples. Why hadn’t she declined? Why had she let her professional ego drive her to these high-profile challenges? She’d taken a break after the triplets were born. But once they started kindergarten, she’d jumped back in.
    And why had she overstepped a professional ethical boundary in trying to