“Okay, so for this test, the examiner builds a design with different colored blocks, and then the kid has to build the same design with their blocks.” I point to the screen. “Do you see what he made?” I give him time to take it in before scrolling to the next block-design test. “This test was given two years later at White Memorial. Look at the mistakes here.” Another second to take it all in, then the next one. “And six months later, here.” I stop scrolling and make eye contact. “Every intelligence test that he’s taken has the exact same answers. His IQ score is almost identical on every test. And the tests are timed.” I almost forgot to mention it. How could I omit something so critical? “He takes the same amount of time to answer too. Again, that’s almost statistically impossible to do on your own.”
“Seems pretty smart for someone with a mental age of four.” He sits up straighter in his chair, holding his coffee out in front of him. He’s finally catching on, but that’s only part of the discovery.
“It’s brilliant is what it is.” I grin with pride to have uncovered it on my own. “I’ve never seen anyone do it before. I don’t know why anyone would. But yeah, it’s not at a four-year-old’s level because that’s not where he’s at. If this is true, then who knows about all of the other stuff.”
He sits there for a few minutes, deep in thought. “Why would someone want to make a child look like they had intellectual impairments if they didn’t?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head in bewilderment. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’ve never seen anything like it. Never. And I’ve given hundreds, maybe even thousands, of cognitive tests over the years.”
“So he’s not intellectually disabled?” Skepticism lines his voice.
“Who knows.” I shrug my shoulders with my hands up. “It’s impossible to know based on these tests.”
“What about his autism? There’s no way for anyone to do that with his autism, right? Isn’t there a blood test for it?”
“There’s no blood test or brain scan to diagnose autism spectrum disorder. It doesn’t work that way. We make the diagnosis based on the presence or absence of certain behaviors. That’s really all the diagnosis is—the presence or absence of a group of behaviors. You could train those behaviors if you wanted to, even though I have no idea why someone would.”
“What do you mean?”
“Same as you’d teach them anything else,” I explain, but he looks just as lost. “For example, I lead groups where I teach social skills to kids with autism spectrum disorder, and one of the skills we work on is eye contact. Kids with ASD usually have a hard time with it.” I stay away from the traditional forms of applied behavioral analysis and apply a more flexible approach in my groups. I’m continually striving to treat kids with autism as naturally different instead of abnormal people needing to be fixed. I don’t waste time explaining that to Detective Layne, though. I focus on what’s important to the case. “For the kids who are comfortable making eye contact, we practice how to make appropriate eye contact, where to look, and when to look away. Things like that. Then there are other kids where direct eye contact is too anxiety producing, so I teach them to focus on the blank spot between a person’s eyes because it looks like they’re making eye contact and doesn’t make them so nervous. In the same way that I do that, you could do the opposite.”
“Teach them to look away?”
I nod. “The same principles of applied behavioral analysis that we use to help kids with autism could theoretically be used to create the disorder too.” It’s mind boggling to consider the possibility that someone would do that, but it’s entirely possible. Applied behavioral analysis is the longest-standing therapy we have for kids with autism, and despite all its controversy, there’s no denying its effectiveness at increasing desirable behaviors. “Kids respond well to rewards, and ABA is based on breaking desirable behavior into smaller steps and rewarding the child for completing each step along the way. It’s basic conditioning principles. You can condition any behavior you want if you work hard enough at it.”
“Why would anyone do that?” He shakes his head in disbelief. This case has taken its toll on him. There are bags underneath his eyes that weren’t there at the beginning of the week.
“I have no idea.” My reaction is similar to his, especially as a mom. I’ll never understand people who hurt kids on purpose.
“And who would do that to him?” That’s the most important question in all this.
“Genevieve was my first thought. Training him to respond in such a consistent and methodical way would take a huge amount of effort and time. She’s the only one who spends that much time with him.”
Detective Layne puts his elbow on the table and rests his chin on his hand. His eyes narrow and his forehead wrinkles as he considers the possibilities. “I’m not sure Genevieve makes the most sense. You’ve seen how she is with him. She practically worships that boy.” He waits a few seconds before continuing. “What about her husband?”
“John?”
He nods. “Up until six years ago, he was the other major person in his life, and he would’ve had just as much access to him as Genevieve.”
“I guess he could’ve been the one to do it. I just don’t really even think of him as being part of the equation.”
“Sometimes you have to think outside the box,” he says, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to teach me or insult me. Either way, he brings up a good point.
“Do we know anything about John?” I ask.
“Not really. Up until now, we haven’t had a reason to pay him any attention.” He sits back and runs his hands along the edge of the table. “Before we spiral too far down this hole, though, we need to make sure you’re right. I think you need to test him yourself and see what you can find.”
I was hoping he’d say that. “I’d love to test him and see how things play out.”
His belly rises with his deep breath. “We need to get Genevieve to let us do that. She has to do it on her own free will, though, because we have nothing on Mason or the case that would provide a compelling reason to have him undergo a full psychological evaluation. And even if we did, I wouldn’t be able to allow you to do it. I could request one be done if we had anything to base it on, but we’d have to get a forensic expert to be the one to do it.”
“I’ve given hundreds of evaluations in my career. For a while, psychological testing was the only thing I did. I’ve got hundreds of hours underneath my belt in all kinds of different settings.” I explained this to him before, but he must not have been listening.
He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. The court is only going to use experts they’ve appointed for something like this. The lawyers for each side would be the ones to hash it out. The district attorney doesn’t even listen to my recommendations half the time. He lets me give them out of protocol, but most of the time they work it out in front of the judge. So I’m not saying no because you’re unqualified, just because it’s impossible given how the system works.”