Deeper Than the Dead

67

“No law enforcement agent can legally talk to the boy without a parent or guardian present,” Dixon said. “I’ve got everyone looking for Frank, but no sign of him. And no sign of Mrs. Farman, either.”

They stood in the coffee room watching Dennis Farman on the monitor. The boy had not moved since he had been put in the room.

Anne stared at the black-and-white image of Dennis, thinking he looked very small from the point of view of the video camera high up on the wall. He sat drawing with his finger on the tabletop, looking strangely calm.

Vince had come for her, catching her just as she had been leaving the house to go grocery shopping. There she had been, trying to do one normal thing, and suddenly an FBI agent was asking her to come to the sheriff’s office to speak to her student who had allegedly knifed two kids in the park.

She was beginning to think she would never know “normal” again.

“I’ve called Child Protective Services, but Vince suggested you’re probably more qualified than anyone to try to communicate with him,” Dixon said. “You certainly know him better than anyone here.”

Detective Hicks had called with the names of the two children Dennis had attacked: Cody and Wendy. Cody had been taken to surgery. Anne could only imagine how terrified he must have been. Wendy had no life-threatening wounds. She had been lucky by comparison. But she had already been through an ordeal with Dennis trying to shove a dismembered finger down her throat. Now this.

“I’m not qualified for this,” she said. “I can handle a fight on the playground. But this . . .”

“You’re more qualified than any of the rest of us, Anne,” Vince said. “The boy needs someone to try to reach out to him. At least until his parents get here. He hasn’t said a word to anyone.”

Anne stared at the monitor, at Dennis. He was eleven years old and he had tried to murder two other children. “What if I say the wrong thing? What if I make it worse?”

“He knifed a ten-year-old boy,” Vince said. “How much worse could you make it?”

Anne thought back to Thursday—God, was that all? Two days ago?—to Dennis’s outburst and what she had told him as they sat together, alone in the classroom. She had told him she would be there for him. She knew he had no one else on his side.

“All right.”

She went into the hall with Vince, then took a deep breath and let it out as he opened the door to the interview room for her.

“I’m right out here if you need me,” he whispered.

Anne nodded and went into the room.

Dennis wouldn’t look at her. He stared down at the blank tabletop, drawing patterns on it with his finger. Anne studied him, wondering if she had ever really noticed that his hair was so red, or that his ears sat a little too low on the sides of his head. Someone had taken him out of his bloodstained shirt and jacket and put him in a man’s sheriff’s office T-shirt that swallowed him up.

“Dennis,” she said softly, carefully easing herself down onto the nearest chair as if she was afraid he might spook like a wild pony.

“I know something really bad happened today. I don’t know exactly why.” Her voice was gentle, quiet, the kind of voice she might use to tell a bedtime story or confess an innocent secret to a friend. “I won’t pretend that I understand what you’re going through. I don’t have any idea. I have a feeling you’ve seen things and been through things I wouldn’t want to imagine.”

He lifted his head then and looked at her. A bruise was spreading across his left cheek, blackening the skin beneath his eye. Coagulated blood knit together his swollen lower lip.

“When can I go home?”

The question was stunning. He wasn’t joking. He wasn’t being sarcastic. An hour ago he had stabbed a playmate so seriously the child could die, and Dennis just wanted to go home.

“Dennis, you won’t be going home,” she said. “You hurt somebody really badly.”

“Just Cody,” he said, as if Cody Roache was no more important to him than a toy he had broken.

Anne didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if this was a hardwired part of Dennis Farman’s psyche or a by-product of the day’s trauma. Could he really care so little about the only boy who had ever tried to be his friend?

“I’m so sorry, Dennis,” she said. “I wish I could have helped you sooner. I wish I had a clue how to help you now, but I don’t. All I can do is sit here with you until someone who knows more than I do can come and try.”

“What’ll happen to me?” he asked.

As horrible as his crime was, Anne felt her heart break for Dennis Farman. She didn’t know if it was a trick of the harsh lighting or the dimensions of the room, but he seemed smaller to her now than he had in her classroom. And she had the strangest, saddest feeling as she sat there watching him that he was getting smaller and smaller before her very eyes, that the light inside him was getting dimmer and dimmer, and before long he would disappear altogether.

“The sheriff is trying to find your mom so she can come and be with you,” she said. “Do you know where she might be?”

He looked up at her for the first time since she had walked in.

“She’s dead,” he said without emotion. Then he looked past her to the glass inset in the door.

Anne turned to see Frank Farman’s face in the window.

“He killed her.”