Authors: Michael J. McCann
The boy looked up at her, his expression serious. “When I was Martin you didn’t like my mama because her name was Merry and she had blue eyes. And I had green eyes.”
The video abruptly ended.
Hank straightened and put his hands in his pockets. “That was interesting.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah. Martin Liu’s mother’s name is Meredith. She’s a Caucasian with blue eyes. Martin’s father was Chinese, of course, but Martin did have green eyes.”
Hank gestured at the laptop. “How reliable is the video? Did you consider that it might be a fake?”
“
We had a low level analysis done and we can’t find any evidence that the clip was fabricated or tampered with. No breaks, no audio dubbing.”
“
The kid might have been following a script.”
Josh shrugged. “Maybe. Bear in mind that we don’t see it as proof of anything definitive at this point. It’s simply a piece of evidence to be considered.”
“
All right,” Hank relented. “So what happened next?”
Josh returned to his notes. “So after the video was taken, the next incident was, uh, well, the same day. Mrs. Chan’s cousin Peter visited Taylor. She said that he only comes around on Taylor’s birthday to give him a present. It’s the only time they see him. According to Mrs. Chan, she was still upset about Taylor’s statements on the video at breakfast and she mentioned it to her cousin. She played the video for him and according to her, her cousin became quite concerned.”
“
Concerned how?”
“
I’m not quite sure,” Josh admitted. “Mrs. Chan said her cousin began to question Taylor about what he had said that morning. Usually he gives Taylor his present and leaves. Dr. Chan doesn’t like him. But this time her cousin asked for tea and sat down with Taylor. After a few minutes, according to Mrs. Chan, the conversation got a little strange.”
“
How so?”
Josh pointed to the screen. “This is a clip from our interview with Mrs. Chan. I excerpted it from the complete video so I could reference it easily. It’s her recollection of Taylor’s statements to her cousin Peter.” He tapped on an icon and the video began to play.
A young, well-dressed Asian couple was sitting on a sofa in a living room, presumably in the Chan residence. Mrs. Chan was speaking.
“
Peter asked Taylor if he liked to play video games and Taylor said that he did,”
Grace
Chan said. “He has an Xbox. He’s quite advanced for his age, and he already can use a computer. He learned his ABCs from a computer program over the winter. Anyway, then Taylor said to Peter that he was sorry he didn’t tell Peter about the secret bad thing he found out about.”
A female voice off-camera said, “He said this to Peter?”
“
That’s Dr. Walsh,” Josh said.
“
Yes,”
Grace
Chan said. “He said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the secret.’ I said, ‘What secret?’ Taylor said, ‘something bad.’”
Off-camera, Dr. Walsh asked: “How did Peter react to this?”
“
He said, ‘Who, Taylor? Who was doing it?’ Then Taylor said, ‘My friend. He played a game where he took people’s money but he gave it to these men. They hurt me when I found out. They wanted to know if I told anybody about it and they wouldn’t believe me when I said no. I wanted to tell you about it but I didn’t have time.’”
“
A game taking people’s money,” Dr. Walsh repeated, obviously puzzled.
Grace
Chan nodded. “That’s what he said. Peter asked him again who the friend was but Taylor wouldn’t say a name. Then Peter got a very strange look on his face and said, ‘Ah, that’s all right. I’ll find those people and make sure they don’t bother you any more.’ Taylor said, ‘Okay,’ and then didn’t say anything else about it.”
“
Was there anything else that Taylor said to your cousin at that time that may have related to these memories?”
“
Peter asked him a question.”
“
What was the question, Mrs. Chan?”
Grace
Chan looked down at her hands in her lap and said nothing for a few moments. Then she said, “He asked Taylor, ‘do you remember who hurt you because you found out about the game?’”
“
Did Taylor say anything to that?”
Grace
Chan kept staring at her hands. Her chin trembled slightly. Finally she said, “Yes, he said that Shawn and Gary hurt him.”
“
Shawn and Gary?”
“
Yes.”
Grace
Chan looked up at Dr. Walsh off-camera. “Peter asked if they were Chinese and Taylor said, no. He said Shawn was a black man and Gary was a white man.”
“
All right. Was there anything else?”
Grace
Chan glanced reluctantly at her husband, who was obviously unhappy about what his wife was saying.
“
Anything else?” Dr. Walsh prompted.
Grace
Chan nodded. “Taylor asked to see Peter’s pictures.”
“
Pictures?”
Grace
Chan wrung her hands in her lap. “Peter said, ‘what pictures?’ and Taylor said, ‘the pictures on your tummy.’”
“
What did he mean by this?” Dr. Walsh asked.
“
Tattoos,”
Grace
Chan said. “Peter has tattoos on his chest. But he didn’t show them to him right away. He asked Taylor what the pictures were like.”
“
And?”
“
Taylor said, um, he said, ‘birds, two funny birds with fire. Fire in their mouths.’”
“
I don’t think we need to go into this at all,” Dr. Chan interjected. “This is not relevant. Can we discuss something else? Do you have any other questions, Dr. Walsh?”
“
Does your cousin have tattoos on his chest, Mrs. Chan?” Dr. Walsh persisted.
Grace
Chan nodded.
“
Dr. Walsh, my wife’s cousin has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. Can we—”
“
Did he show them to Taylor at that time?”
Grace
Chan nodded again.
“
Dr. Walsh—” Dr. Chan tried again to interrupt.
“
How did Taylor react when he saw them?”
“
He laughed. He came up to Peter and touched them, and he laughed. Peter said, ‘another little secret, right?’ and Taylor said, ‘another secret.’”
“
Had he ever seen them before, Mrs. Chan? Had Peter shown them to him before or mentioned them to him before?”
Grace
Chan shook her head. “They’re secret tattoos, or whatever. Dragons. To do with Peter’s, um, affiliations. He doesn’t talk about them with anyone.”
“
Had anyone ever mentioned them before to Taylor or discussed them in Taylor’s hearing?”
“
Peter is not talked about in our house,”
Grace
Chan replied, looking miserably at her husband. We don’t discuss him around Taylor. So, no, Taylor had no way of knowing that Peter had tattoos, let alone what they looked like.”
The video clip ended.
Hank went back to his chair and sat down. He picked up his pen and jotted a few notes in his notebook.
“
This cousin Peter have a last name?” he asked, still writing.
“
Yeah,” Josh said. “It’s not Liu. Just a second, I’ll find it in my notes.” He tapped the touchpad and studied the display. “Here it is. Mah. M a-h.”
“
Peter Mah,” Hank repeated.
“
Yes, that’s right.”
Hank wrote it down, although he didn’t need to. He knew about Peter Mah, and he knew about the significance of the dragon tattoos on his chest.
“
There’s another one you may want to see,” Josh said, tapping again.
“
Oh?”
“
Dr. Walsh interviewed Taylor on-camera with his mother,” Josh explained, “but he wasn’t saying anything at all about the previous personality. So she closed it down and we talked about it in a sidebar. She thought maybe I could get him to say a few things if we made him feel more comfortable away from the camera. So I asked him to show me his room. We went into his room and I got him to show me his toys. We left the door open so his parents could hear what was going on and so he felt he could leave whenever he wanted. We just sat down on the floor, the two of us, and played with his toys for a while. I used my PDA to record our conversation.”
Hank got up and came around the table again so that he could see the screen over Josh’s shoulder.
The video began to play. It was a little grainy, but Hank could plainly see the little boy sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by action figures, die-cast cars and other toys. There was a dark shadow on the left edge of the frame.
“
That’s my knee,” Josh explained. “I put my PDA up on top of a dump truck. He didn’t really pay any attention to it. I think he considered it one of my toys and wasn’t interested in playing with it.”
“
Now I’m going to drive home,” Taylor said, pushing a car across the carpet.
“
Where have you been?” Josh asked.
“
At work,” Taylor replied. “I work at a big school, like Daddy.”
“
So do I,” Josh said, playing with another car. “It’s fun.”
“
Yeah.” Taylor left his car behind a pile of books. “Now I’m at home.”
“
Okay. Now what are you going to do?”
“
Play, before supper time.” Taylor picked up an action figure and waved it around.
Josh picked up another figure and pointed it at Taylor.
“
Bang, bang. Gotcha.”
Taylor stiffened, staring at Josh, and dropped his action figure. He said nothing for a moment, then slowly reached for a colored block. He took several blocks and started making a pile in front of his crossed legs.
Josh picked up the action figure that Taylor had dropped and held it out, but Taylor ignored it.
“
Come on, Taylor. Let’s play guns.”
Taylor shook his head emphatically, adjusting the pile of blocks in front of him.
“
Don’t you like playing guns, Taylor?”
Taylor said nothing, looking down at his blocks.
“
Do you have any toy guns, Taylor?”
“
No.”
“
How come? Are you afraid of guns?”
Taylor said nothing for a few moments, playing with his blocks. Finally he murmured, “He hurt me. In the leg.”
“
Who hurt you?”
“
With his gun.”
“
Who hurt you in the leg, Taylor?”
“
That man.”
“
Who, what man?”
“
Shawn. He was a black man, like you, but he didn’t have no hair.”
“
No hair?”
“
Yeah.”
“
Shawn hurt you?” Josh asked.
“
Gary was yelling and Shawn kept hitting me with the gun and it went bang and hurt my leg and there was blood.”
“
That’s terrible,” Josh said. “Where did this happen, Taylor?”
Taylor did not reply. He stared down at his blocks, not moving.
The video clip ended and Josh looked over his shoulder at Hank. “That was it. He didn’t want to talk about it any more.”
Hank realized he’d been holding his breath. He sat down again and jotted in his notebook. “So that gives the two names coming from him, not just from the parent. Interesting. There seemed to be emotion behind it.”
“
Yeah. Dr. Walsh has had a number of experiences with children who’ve been coached by someone in what to say,” Josh said. “She feels very strongly that Taylor’s statements are spontaneous.”
“
I have to admit,” Hank said, still writing, “this is very strange stuff. You’ve seen children make these kinds of statements before?”
“
Well, only the one time before personally. But I’ve watched a lot of video of other interviews as part of my dissertation research and a lot of it’s just like this. It can give you the chills. It’s like another person, an adult, speaking through the mouth of a child.” Josh laughed nervously. “Which is what it may actually be, another person speaking to us about their past life and their death.”
Hank set aside his pen and looked at him. “It’s hard to swallow. I mean, rationally, there’s nothing in our modern culture to prepare us for this kind of concept. People want to believe in life after death, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a scientific age with a very mechanistic view of existence that prefers to explain phenomena in purely physical and biological terms.”