Brock looked up and the others followed his eyes. Gillian helped a man in his seventies to a chair, taking his place before the shop window. She spotted them across the street and managed a smile. All of them waved at her as Brock turned to Tanya.
"Call O'Brien," he said. I'm not waving and smiling at you, Gillian. It's a damned hostage crisis, twenty lives on the line, yours included—well, like she'd give a damn about that last bit. And he was forced to thank her deep inside for keeping her act up, and him annoyed.
Kurt spoke from the SCU office with an unusually dull voice.
"Be ready for a Greek tragedy, guys, 'cause this sure looks like one. Phil's mother, Lisa Palmer, divorced drunk abusive Robert Strafford when Phil was four, three months before his brother Collin was born. But she died only two years later, and the brothers ended up in despicable Strafford's custody. They stayed with him for four years, until their teachers got Social Services to check on the boys. Both of them had signs of severe abuse, so Social Services placed them in foster care, with the Cronwells."
The team listened to him as they leaned toward Tanya's screens to follow Phil's records. Russell and Brock kept their eyes on Orlando's, where Gillian stood as a part of the human shield, looking down. Behind her, Phil was sitting on a stool by the counter, eyes closed, troubled and exhausted.
"They ran away three years later, and the police found them sleeping on the street. Looks like dear Mister Cronwell would beat Phil on daily basis, and he had sexually abused little Collin more than once. So Social Services found another foster home for them. With the Mastersons. And things were good for them for a while. Until their foster mom died. Then nice Mister Masterson took them both out of school and forced them to work at his gas station. When they were not slave-laboring, he'd keep them locked up in the storage backroom."
Behind the police barrier, TV crews lurked around, but the uniforms kept them away.
"They lived like that until Phil became of age. Then he left, got a job and appealed for Collin's full custody, which he got. And then they lived together and finally a little happy. That is, until those ex-cons attacked them and stabbed Collin to death. And that's it. Now I'm gonna slain some hundred monsters, to vent out and pretend no child's ever put through so much shit, so don't call me for a week."