sound familiar. How long was he missing?”
“About a year.”
“That long? I need to warn you, in missing child cases that take so long to resolve, the parents have often procreated a replacement. You’re not the jealous type, are you, Nathan?”
“No, sir.”
Officer Danbury opened a thick, dusty book and began to flip through the pages. “Let’s see…ah, look at this, I turned to it on the fourth try. Nathan Pepper. Apparently you’re dead.”
“But I’m not,” Nathan insisted.
“Well, you know that, and I knew that the moment you walked into my office, but according to my official Missing Children Cases logbook, you were reported as deceased by a Bernard Steamspell of Bernard Steamspell’s Home For Unfortunate Orphans. It lists your cause of death as ‘Eaten.’ I assume that was meant to indicate that you were eaten by some sort of animal, and not that anybody is confessing to cannibalism.”
“But I wasn’t eaten.”
“Obviously. I may not be the most perceptive cop in the department, and in fact I’ve been told time and again that my skills in that area are inadequate, and it tends to be a sticking point each year when it’s time for my performance review, which is frustrating because it has a negative impact on my pay raise, and even with a generous raise I’d still be just barely scraping by, what with my wife and three children, and though I try to raise my awareness of the world around me much of it remains a blur, something that actually got worse with medication, but despite this lack of perceptive abilities I can clearly see that you were not eaten.”
“Good.”
“Is it? When I was your age I would’ve loved to have everybody think I’d been eaten. I would have milked that for weeks. Then I would have twisted my arm behind my back and said ‘It’s okay, they only got one limb!’ Have you ever seen that trick where you can pretend to shove your thumb into the soft spot in the back of somebody’s head? Sorry, I’m getting off the subject. Look at that, you were from the original Bernard Steamspell orphanage. You’re a long way from home. That was the village of Hammer’s Lost. This is the town of Giraffe Pond, a town which those into trivia have often noted contains no pond and few giraffes. There’s a goodly distance between the two.”
“The original orphanage?” asked Penny. “There are others?”
“Mr. Steamspell is the most successful owner of orphanages around! He opens a new one every month! If I knew the secret of his cost efficiency, I wouldn’t be working in this dump of a law enforcement station, I can tell you that much.”
“Is he a kind man?”
“Steamspell? I think the majority of his success comes from other attributes besides kindness, but you can’t argue with his results. You’re in luck. He has a brand-new facility not ten miles from here.”
Nathan felt as if he’d been gored in the stomach by a rhinoceros. The eggs he’d eaten for breakfast immediately threatened to spew from his body in a yellow-and-white waterfall of terror.
“Isn’t there another option?” asked Penny. “Foster care, perhaps?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid there isn’t.”
Penny looked over at Nathan. “I don’t think the orphanage is the most enriching environment for a boy like him.”
“I agree with you completely,” said Officer Danbury. “There are countless better places for a child to grow up, but the other options are all based on the assumption that the child’s parents aren’t dead. If one parent is alive, then the options increase by about fifty percent, but in this case there’s really nothing else we can do.”
“What if…” Penny cleared her throat again. “What if we wanted to keep him? Just for a short while?”
“Oh, no, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. You could be an unfit parent. If you want to adopt him, you’ll need to get him from the orphanage. We can’t just hand him over to you—I mean, I’d be a pretty
“About a year.”
“That long? I need to warn you, in missing child cases that take so long to resolve, the parents have often procreated a replacement. You’re not the jealous type, are you, Nathan?”
“No, sir.”
Officer Danbury opened a thick, dusty book and began to flip through the pages. “Let’s see…ah, look at this, I turned to it on the fourth try. Nathan Pepper. Apparently you’re dead.”
“But I’m not,” Nathan insisted.
“Well, you know that, and I knew that the moment you walked into my office, but according to my official Missing Children Cases logbook, you were reported as deceased by a Bernard Steamspell of Bernard Steamspell’s Home For Unfortunate Orphans. It lists your cause of death as ‘Eaten.’ I assume that was meant to indicate that you were eaten by some sort of animal, and not that anybody is confessing to cannibalism.”
“But I wasn’t eaten.”
“Obviously. I may not be the most perceptive cop in the department, and in fact I’ve been told time and again that my skills in that area are inadequate, and it tends to be a sticking point each year when it’s time for my performance review, which is frustrating because it has a negative impact on my pay raise, and even with a generous raise I’d still be just barely scraping by, what with my wife and three children, and though I try to raise my awareness of the world around me much of it remains a blur, something that actually got worse with medication, but despite this lack of perceptive abilities I can clearly see that you were not eaten.”
“Good.”
“Is it? When I was your age I would’ve loved to have everybody think I’d been eaten. I would have milked that for weeks. Then I would have twisted my arm behind my back and said ‘It’s okay, they only got one limb!’ Have you ever seen that trick where you can pretend to shove your thumb into the soft spot in the back of somebody’s head? Sorry, I’m getting off the subject. Look at that, you were from the original Bernard Steamspell orphanage. You’re a long way from home. That was the village of Hammer’s Lost. This is the town of Giraffe Pond, a town which those into trivia have often noted contains no pond and few giraffes. There’s a goodly distance between the two.”
“The original orphanage?” asked Penny. “There are others?”
“Mr. Steamspell is the most successful owner of orphanages around! He opens a new one every month! If I knew the secret of his cost efficiency, I wouldn’t be working in this dump of a law enforcement station, I can tell you that much.”
“Is he a kind man?”
“Steamspell? I think the majority of his success comes from other attributes besides kindness, but you can’t argue with his results. You’re in luck. He has a brand-new facility not ten miles from here.”
Nathan felt as if he’d been gored in the stomach by a rhinoceros. The eggs he’d eaten for breakfast immediately threatened to spew from his body in a yellow-and-white waterfall of terror.
“Isn’t there another option?” asked Penny. “Foster care, perhaps?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid there isn’t.”
Penny looked over at Nathan. “I don’t think the orphanage is the most enriching environment for a boy like him.”
“I agree with you completely,” said Officer Danbury. “There are countless better places for a child to grow up, but the other options are all based on the assumption that the child’s parents aren’t dead. If one parent is alive, then the options increase by about fifty percent, but in this case there’s really nothing else we can do.”
“What if…” Penny cleared her throat again. “What if we wanted to keep him? Just for a short while?”
“Oh, no, I’m afraid that isn’t possible. You could be an unfit parent. If you want to adopt him, you’ll need to get him from the orphanage. We can’t just hand him over to you—I mean, I’d be a pretty
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