Live to Tell

CHAPTER SEVEN

D.D. slept until seven the next morning, an unusual luxury when working a high-burn case. She needed the two extra hours of shut-eye, given the late-night trip to the hospital. More to the point, today would be about interviewing friends and family, and they generally didn’t care for detectives knocking on their doors before nine.

She showered, downed two shots of espresso, and considered the morning. Neil had agreed to spend the day with the ME, attending the autopsies. That left her and Phil to follow up on the initial canvass of the Harringtons’ neighbors.

D.D. swung by HQ long enough to skim the pile of reports on her desk, including the transcripts from interviews conducted last night with available neighbors. Two individuals stood out: a Mrs. Patricia Bruni and a Mr. Dexter Harding. Both claimed to know the Harringtons well: Mrs. Bruni attended the same church; Mr. Dexter hosted poker night with the father.

As good a starting point as any, D.D. decided. She took the transcripts with her, then headed into Dorchester, where Phil had promised to meet her outside of the Harringtons’ sealed-off home.

Neighborhood was quiet this morning, maybe even somber, but that could’ve been D.D.’s imagination. She always found it eerie to visit a scene the day after. The blood was no longer fresh, the sounds and smells had faded into memory. The house became a shell of what used to be. Once a family had lived here. Maybe they’d laughed and loved and been happy. Maybe not. But one way or another, they’d been carving out a life. And now they weren’t. Just like that.

D.D. pulled in behind a Chevy Tahoe. She spotted Phil up ahead, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Beside him was his new shadow, Police Academy professor Alex Wilson.

D.D. frowned, already aggravated, though she couldn’t say why. She opened her car door, felt the ripe August heat slap against her face, and scowled harder. She clipped her creds to the waistband of her jeans, wished she could’ve been wearing a tank top instead of a short-sleeved blue cotton shirt, and got on with it.

Phil and Alex stood head-to-head in dark suits, apparently becoming fast friends. Both men looked up when she approached. Phil wiped a smile from his face; that already had her suspicious.

“Hey,” she tossed out to Phil, then turned her attention to Alex. “Back for more?”

“Glutton for punishment,” he assured her.

“We’re interviewing today, building profiles of the vics. Not exactly crime-scene material.”

The professor shrugged. “Never know when you might learn something useful.”

She remained skeptical. Alex wore a charcoal-colored jacket over a blue dress shirt, dark slacks. He should be sweating, she thought, given the heat. It bothered her that he didn’t sweat, especially when she could already feel the first bead trickling down her spine to pool at the small of her back.

“Okay,” she said crisply, unfolding her paperwork. “We have two primary targets this morning. Mrs. Patricia Bruni and Mr. Dexter Harding. In the interest of time, I’ll take Bruni. You two can take Harding.”

Phil looked her. Alex looked at Phil.

“What?” she demanded.

“It would be better if we did them together,” Phil told her. “Multiple impressions of what the individual has to say.”

“Three on one? We’ll intimidate them before they say the first word.”

“Then you take the lead,” Phil replied easily. “We’ll hang back, blend into the backdrop.”

“Ride my coattails?”

“Exactly.” Phil took the first sheet from her. “Patricia Bruni. Lives four houses up. Let’s go.”

He started walking before she could say another word. Alex paused a beat, then fell in step beside her. “Heard you had an interesting night at the hospital,” he commented.

“Not really.”

“I caught the Red Sox game myself.”

“Never follow baseball.”

“More of a Patriots fan?”

“More of a homicide fan. In case you forgot, fieldwork doesn’t keep regular hours.”

She sounded prickly even to herself. Alex just grinned. That was it. He and Phil were up to something.

“What are your thoughts on Italian food?” Alex asked.

“Food is good,” D.D. allowed.

“Great. We’ll have to get some later.”

They arrived at Patricia Bruni’s house, another triple-decker with a broad front porch. D.D. was distracted.

“When? Do you mean for lunch?”

“Something like that,” Alex said, and with that enigmatic grin still on his face he followed her up the front steps.

Patricia Bruni turned out to be a wizened old black lady who went by Miss Patsy and believed in serving her guests, even cops, megaglasses of iced tea. D.D. had a good feeling about Miss Patsy, and not just for the cold iced tea; in D.D.’s experience, wizened old ladies always knew the most about what was going on in the neighborhood.

Miss Patsy invited them inside, “out of the heat,” she said, and they gratefully followed her into her lower-level unit, where window air conditioners chugged away at full throttle. Her home was modest, boasting six rooms, lots of furniture, and an impressive collection of Hummel figurines. From what D.D. could tell, if it was small and breakable, Miss Patsy collected it.

D.D. took up the antique wooden chair across from Patsy. It was fun to watch Phil and Alex stand awkwardly in front of the camel-backed love seat, trying to figure out how to sit on its broken-down form. Alex finally perched gingerly on the edge. Older and heavier, Phil reluctantly followed suit. The love seat groaned, but held.

“You’re here about the Harringtons,” Miss Patsy said straight off, patting her tightly coiled hair. “I tried to tell that officer last night, don’t you be thinking this was drugs or any of that other nonsense. Patrick and Denise were nice folks. Good Christian couple. We’re lucky to have them on the block.”

“They live here long?” D.D. asked, sipping her iced tea. Sweet and cold. She loved Miss Patsy already.

“Bought the house last fall,” Patsy provided, confirming the timeline D.D. already had in her head. “Duffys lived in it before that. Kept a lot of late hours, the Duffys did. Seemed to entertain on a regular basis, if you know what I mean.”

“Drug dealers?” D.D. ventured.

“Didn’t hear it from me,” Patsy said, while nodding with her entire upper body.

“So the Duffys moved out, the Harringtons moved in. Get to see the new family very often?”

“Yes, ma’am. Denise came by the very first week with some pumpkin bread. She introduced herself and the kids, had ’em all lined up proper like. Said they were real excited to be living in the neighborhood and wondered if I could recommend a family-friendly church for them.”

“Did you?”

“First Congregational Church. Good community church and you can walk from here to there.” Patsy leaned forward again. “I’m not supposed to drive, you know. Had a little problem hitting the wrong pedal last year. But it’s okay, they’ve repaired that wall of the pharmacy now. Good as new.”

Alex made a sputtering noise from the love seat; iced tea down the wrong pipe. Phil obligingly whacked him on the back.

D.D. ignored them both. “How often did you see the family?”

“Oh, least once a week at church. More during the summer. This is a nice neighborhood. Lots of kids play outside during the day. I like to take my tea on the front porch and watch the little ones riding their bikes and whatnot. Does a body good.”

“And the Harrington kids? What did they like to do?”

“Football, the boys. You’d see the older one and younger one playing catch. The girl, she was getting to that age where she just wanted to hang out with her friends. Denise commented that Molly was always pestering her for a ride to the mall. But sometimes, on the cooler evenings, you’d see a whole group out playing capture the flag or maybe hide-and-seek through everyone’s yards. Not a bad place to live, our neighborhood.”

D.D. made a note. “What were the kids doing this summer? Once school was out?”

“Summer camp at the Y,” Miss Patsy answered. “’Course, their father was home during the day, working on the house. Sometimes you’d see them hanging out with him. They liked to take breaks on the front porch. Renovation this time of year had to be pretty hot work.” Miss Patsy fanned herself.

“Family entertain much? Socialize with the rest of the block?”

“Yes, ma’am. They were happy to live here, wanted to get to know everyone. I had the impression their previous home wasn’t in a very safe neighborhood-not a good place for kids, Denise would say. Like I said, they were real happy to move here.”

“You ever hear them fighting?” D.D. asked bluntly. “Patrick and Denise?”

“You mean screaming at each other in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah, that sort of thing.”

“No, ma’am.” Miss Patsy said it primly.

“We heard Patrick lost his job. Money must’ve been tight.”

“Tough times all over,” Miss Patsy observed. “I still saw them putting a dollar or two in the tithe plate when it passed; they weren’t destitute yet.”

“Never heard them argue about it? Or taking an extra cocktail or two to help them unwind?”

“Never saw them drinking anything stronger than wine and beer. They were responsible people.”

“Drugs?”

“I already told you-no need to go down that road. Not with the Harringtons.” Miss Patsy gave a little sniff, as if maybe the same could not be said for some of the other neighbors.

“What about Denise and the kids? Did they have a tendency toward large bruises, broken bones? Report a lot of strange accidents?”

“Like falling down the stairs or running into doorknobs?” Miss Patsy asked.

“Exactly.”

“No, ma’am. Patrick didn’t beat his family. Maybe he should’ve with the younger one. Lord knows I watched that kid provoke his father time and time again. But Patrick held his temper. He was a good man. In church, he would pray for patience. He knew what he was up against.”

D.D. exchanged glances with Phil and Alex. “What do you mean, ‘what he was up against’?”

“The younger son, the adopted child, he was trouble. Face of an angel, soul of the Devil, if you ask me.”

“The youngest child was adopted? The boy?” D.D. flipped through her notes. “Oswald?”

“Ozzie’s mother died when he was three years old. Guess folks didn’t find her until months later. All that time, he lived in the apartment with her body, eating every last piece of food in the cupboards, including flour, cardboard, powdered lemonade. Denise told me when the social workers tried to take him away, the poor child broke down and started screaming uncontrollably. He spent some time in a psychiatric unit for little kids. I never knew they even had such a thing.”

This was news. D.D. could feel both Alex and Phil leaning forward. She kept her eyes on Miss Patsy. “Know the name of the hospital where they admitted the child?”

“Someplace in Boston. He was there until last year. They brought him home once they moved here.”

“Sounds like you and Denise spoke quite a bit,” D.D. probed. “She come over often? Maybe join you for iced tea on the porch?”

Miss Patsy nodded easily. “Sure. This summer she came by couple of times a week. Sometimes she brought me cookies, maybe a pie. She’s a very gracious woman, Denise. And yes, she was probably looking for a little time away from the family.” Miss Patsy held up a hand. “Not saying that she and her husband were fighting. But she worked all day, then came home to three kids, one of them right demanding. Can’t blame the woman for seeking out a little iced tea and adult company, can you?”

“Probably not. Denise ever mention any… extracurricular activities? Maybe she and Patrick weren’t fighting. But maybe she’d met someone who’d caught her eye, or he’d found someone who caught his eye. These things happen. Maybe Denise was looking for a little womanly advice?”

“Never mentioned it,” Miss Patsy said, folding her hands on her lap. There was a moment of silence, then Miss Patsy regarded D.D. straight in the eye. “Did Ozzie do it? Rumor mill is the whole family was slaughtered like chickens. Always thought that boy would do something terrible one day. Though maybe,” she sighed, “not as terrible as this.”

“Miss Patsy, what makes you think Ozzie might be capable of doing something like murder?”

Miss Patsy sniffed a little. “Heavens, what to mention? Boy was up and down, up and down the street all day, sunup to sundown if they’d let him. At church, he still had to attend the toddler room, ’cause he couldn’t make it through the service. Had the worst case of fidget you ever did see. Rolling up his pant legs, rolling down his pants legs. Sitting up, sitting down, shifting right, shifting left. Never saw a child so ready to burst out of his own skin.

“And no sense of boundaries. Child would walk through your front door without knocking if you left it unlocked. Several of the neighbors kept finding him in their yards, sitting on their patio furniture as if he owned the place. Then there was the incident with him and Mr. Harding’s barbecue. Boy said the grill turned over by ‘accident,’ but I gotta say, I wouldn’t put it past him to dump hot coals on a wooden deck. When he felt slighted, he could be cruel. Did I mention the squirrels?”

“You haven’t mentioned the squirrels.”

“He liked to throw stones at them. I yelled at him more times than I could count to leave the poor squirrels alone. Then you know what he did? I caught him one day in my own backyard, yanking a squirrel off the bird feeder. Guess he’d crept up on it while it was eating. Why, he grabbed it by its tail, whipped it around two or three times, then slammed its head into the feeder post. Terrible, terrible thing. Blood everywhere. He just stood over the poor creature, and smiled.

“Normal boys don’t smile like that, Mrs. Detective Sergeant. Normal boys don’t lick the blood off their hands.”

D.D. couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Apparently, neither could Phil or Alex. “When… when did this happen?” she ventured finally.

“May, or maybe June. Beginning of summer, we’ll say. Ozzie wasn’t allowed out of the house alone after that. Mostly, his older brother, Jacob, came out to keep tabs on him. Now, Jacob’s a good boy. Strong and fast. Good arm, I’m told. Makings of a first-rate quarterback, to hear his father speak. Jacob seemed to be able to keep Ozzie in line.”

Miss Patsy paused, seemed to realize she had just spoken of Jacob in the present tense, and caught her breath in a small hiccup. “Oh,” she said, and that one sad word spoke volumes of a family that did not exist anymore.

D.D. gave the woman a moment. She took another sip of her iced tea. She was almost done with her glass; Alex and Phil were as well.

Alex leaned forward, seemed to have something to say. D.D. nodded slightly and he cleared his throat.

“Miss Patsy?” he asked gently.

The old woman turned her gaze to him.

“Were you home last night?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What exactly did you hear?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. But I was inside, had the air conditioners running. Can’t hear much of anything over that hum.”

“Did you talk to any of the family members earlier in the day?”

“No, sir. Just saw Denise out, sweeping the front porch, when I went on my evening shuffle. I gave her a little wave and she waved back.”

“Did she mention having company?”

“Not to me, sir.”

“Notice any strange cars in the neighborhood?”

“Oh, there were several. Always is this time of year, with all the summer barbecues.” She smiled faintly. “We folks in Dorchester like to have fun.”

“Do you know of anyone who might bear a grudge against Patrick or Denise?” D.D. spoke up. “Did either of them mention getting in a fight with anyone? How was their relationship with their ex-spouses?”

“Patrick was a widower; Denise never spoke of her former husband. I got the impression he was out of the picture. Maybe not so interested in domestic life. I certainly never saw anyone coming by to take the kids every other weekend.”

D.D. made a note. “Times are hard,” she said softly, looking at Miss Patsy. “Sounds like Patrick and Denise had a lot on their plate. Three kids to manage-one with some challenges. Plus, they had an entire triple-decker to remodel, then Patrick lost his job. That’s a lot of stress for one family. Things happen when people are under that kind of stress.”

“The Harringtons are good people,” Miss Patsy repeated firmly.

“And the last time you spoke to either Denise or Patrick…?”

“Two days ago. Denise came by around nine o’clock and we had a little wine on the front porch. Jacob was starting up football practice and had just been picked for the first string. She was gonna take Molly back-to-school shopping this weekend.” Miss Patsy shrugged. “We talked of normal things, everyday things. Denise seemed happy enough to me.”

D.D. nodded, made another note-Money??-then rose off the chair, digging out her card. “Thank you for your time, Miss Patsy. If you think of anything else, please give me a call. Oh, and, of course, thanks for the excellent iced tea.”

Miss Patsy nodded, shuffled to her feet. Phil offered to carry their glasses and iced tea pitcher back to the kitchen. Miss Patsy let him.

“It’s true they’re all dead?” Miss Patsy asked as she escorted them to her front door. “Patrick, Denise, Jacob, Molly, and Ozzie?”

“Patrick’s hospitalized. Critical condition.”

“Poor, poor man,” Miss Patsy murmured. “I don’t know what’s worse: for him to join his family in Heaven, or for him to recover all alone. Sad choices for a good man. I guess you just never know what’s really going on with your neighbors, do you?”

“Nope,” agreed D.D. “You never do.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time they were done with Mr. Dexter Harding, it was after twelve and D.D. was starving. Alex proposed that they break for lunch. He knew a great little Italian bistro not far from here. He said this more to D.D. than to Phil, and Phil took the hint, ducking out with some mumbled excuse about stacks of paperwork waiting for him on his desk.

D.D. was suspicious of her partner’s abrupt departure, but it was Italian food, so she didn’t press the matter.

She and Alex caravanned to the corner restaurant, which featured green awnings and the smell of garlic and fresh baked bread. D.D. inhaled twice and decided she’d found a new home.

Alex ordered lasagna. She went with chicken parm. The waitress brought fresh bread to dip in olive oil. D.D. tore her way through the steaming loaf while checking phone messages. Patrick Harrington remained in a drug-induced coma. Neil, D.D.’s other squadmate, had made it through the autopsy of the wife with no surprises. The ME would start in on the girl after lunch.

Finally, she had a message from Chip, the almost-got-laid accountant, wondering if D.D. wanted to try dinner a second time around. She did, but given the way the morning was going, Chip was going to have to be a very patient man.

“Okay,” D.D. declared half a loaf later, trying to check surreptitiously for olive oil dripping down her chin. “We spent last night with one crime scene and the morning with two neighbors. You’re the professor-what d’ya think?”

“Will there be a quiz later?” Alex asked mildly; he’d also been checking messages. Now he put away his phone and reached for the bread basket.

“Please. This case was supposed to be wrapped up five hours ago. You’re gonna have to start detecting a lot quicker if you wanna roll with my squad.”

He arched a brow, seemed amused. He was a good-looking guy, D.D. decided. The charcoal-colored suit worked with his dark blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair. A good-looking guy with good taste in restaurants. Hmm.

“Let’s review the basics,” he said now, his deep baritone sounding very much like the teacher he purported to be. “We have a crime scene with four stabbed and one shot, close contact to the head. Blood evidence tells us the victims were taken out one by one. The pattern would at first blush appear to be a murder-suicide, with the head of the household, Patrick Harrington, stabbing his entire family before shooting himself in the head.”

“At first blush,” D.D. agreed.

“Now, we’d love Patrick’s take on this, but so far he’s one step above a vegetable in the ICU, so that’s not going to happen yet.”

“Darn convenient for him,” D.D. groused, then went for more bread.

“Which brings us to impressions of the family by friends and neighbors. We have the lovely Miss Patsy-”

“Very lovely,” D.D. interjected.

“Fabulous iced tea,” Alex agreed. “Though a little heavy on the breakable figurines.”

“Don’t sneeze in that house; it’ll cost you.”

“Miss Patsy likes Denise and Patrick very much. Considers them stand-up parents, good Christians, and all-around nice neighbors, who did have a lot on their plate but were holding up well enough. On the other hand, she is not a fan of their adopted son, Ozzie, who has a history of creepiness.”

“Licking the blood off his hand…” D.D. shivered.

“Now, the second neighbor, Dexter Harding, had a bit to add to that puzzle. Economic situation was a bit more dire than Miss Patsy understood from Denise. According to Dexter, Patrick considered them down to their last two months of operating income. Not a good place to be.”

“Ah, but according to Dexter, Patrick had a plan,” D.D. countered. “Patrick believed he was just two weeks from finishing the second floor. Say he gave himself six weeks to get it rented, asking for first and last month’s rent, plus deposit. That would be a significant cash injection due in the next two to eight weeks.”

“So we have a family in a tense economic condition, but not hopeless. Few things go according to plan, they could pull out of it.”

“Which suggests,” D.D. commented, “that Patrick has reason to be stressed, but perhaps is not yet suicidal. I mean, why go postal now? You’d think if he’s gonna lose it, it’ll be eight weeks from now when he can’t find a renter, doesn’t get the money, etc., etc.”

“Logically speaking, yes,” Alex agreed. “But he’s still stressed, the wife’s still stressed. Maybe someone said something last night at dinner. The daughter charged too much at the mall, the expenses for the older son’s football uniform were higher than expected. All you need is a trigger. Things unfold from there.”

“Patrick can’t stand the thought of his family ending up homeless, his kids becoming wards of the state…” D.D. filled in. “All of a sudden, Patrick convinces himself that killing his own family is the right thing to do. And our solid Christian neighbor turns into a family annihilator.”

The waitress appeared, sliding oval plates smothered in red sauce in front of each of them. The smell alone made D.D.’s mouth water. She loaded her chicken parm with grated cheese and went to town.

“Brings us back to the kid,” she managed after the third bite.

“Ah, but which one?” Alex asked with an arched brow. He was taking more time with his lasagna. A patient man, she observed. Probably had to be for working crime scenes. She wondered what had taken him from the field to the classroom, and what now made him want to be out in the field again.

“I mean Ozzie,” she prompted. “You know, the one that kills squirrels for sport. Why? You’re not suspecting the oldest, are you?”

The neighbor Dexter Harding had had some news: The Harringtons were not a family of five after all. They were a family of six. Patrick had an oldest son from a previous marriage who was currently in Iraq. In honor of Private William Edward Harrington, aka Billy, Denise often set a sixth plate at the table. The Harrington version of tie a yellow ribbon ’round the old oak tree.

It appeared they didn’t have to worry about a mystery guest anymore. Unfortunately, Billy Harrington was about to get some very bad news from home.

“We should at least confirm the kid’s in Iraq,” Alex said.

“Well, duh.”

He grinned at her. “How’s the chicken parm?”

“Love it.”

“I can tell.”

“How’s the lasagna?”

“Almost as good as my grandmother’s.”

D.D. eyed him suspiciously. “With a last name like Wilson, you want me to believe you know about red sauce?”

“Ah, but my mother’s a Capozzoli.”

“I stand corrected. With a name like Capozzoli, your grandmother can probably make some gravy.”

“She taught me everything I know,” Alex commented.

D.D. paused, fork midair. “You can cook?”

“It’s my passion. Nothing like a Sunday afternoon rolling out pasta while simmering a nice sauce Bolognese.”

D.D. couldn’t swallow.

“You should come over for dinner sometime,” Alex said.

D.D. finally got it: the whispers, the exchanged glances… “Phil sold me out. Told you the quickest way inside my pants is through my stomach.”

“Didn’t even cost me thirty pieces of silver,” Alex confirmed cheerfully. “You should still come over for dinner.”

“I don’t date fellow detectives.”

“I’m not a detective.” He smiled at her. “For the next month, I’m just playing the part on TV.”

“Problem with dating another detective,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him, “is that all you end up doing is talking shop.”

“We can talk food. What I enjoy cooking, what you enjoy eating.”

“I enjoy eating everything.”

“Works for me.”

She eyed him skeptically. “Don’t let my current good mood fool you; I’m a bitch most of the time.”

“Don’t let my current charm fool you; I get as pissed off as the next guy.”

“Why the classroom?” she asked. “Why leave the field for the classroom?”

“Had a wife. Wanted kids. More traditional hours seemed a good idea at the time.”

“What happened? She change her mind about Bolognese sauce?”

“Couldn’t get pregnant. When my wife couldn’t become a mother, she decided she didn’t want to be a wife either. We split amicably two years back.”

“You’re still teaching.”

“I like it.”

“But you’re here now.”

“I like this, too.”

“That’s awfully likable,” D.D. said with a scowl.

“Which is why you should come over for dinner.”

“I don’t do kids,” she warned. “I’m too old, too cranky.”

“Perfect, because I was just hoping for lots of sex.”

D.D. laughed, surprised and a little charmed. Laughter felt good after eighteen hours of working a crime scene. So did lunch. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. She took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Now, back to the matters at hand: What do we make of nine-year-old Ozzie Harrington?”

“Kid’s tricky,” Alex said at last.

“Kid’s dead.”

“We’ve already had allegations of animal cruelty and petty arson. I’m guessing there’s bed-wetting in there somewhere, which makes him a textbook serial killer.”

“Dexter thought the barbecue accident was really an accident,” D.D. countered.

“Dexter fidgeted uncontrollably every time we mentioned Ozzie’s name. Kid gave him the heebie-jeebies. He was just trying to be polite about it.”

“He said Patrick and Denise could control Ozzie. Also, that Ozzie worshipped his older brother Jacob. Seems unlikely, then, that Ozzie would turn on them, especially one by one like that.”

“That’s the problem,” Alex said. “A nine-year-old boy with a history of severe psychiatric problems could absolutely take out an entire family. In the middle of the night, armed with a shotgun or baseball bat, going from bedroom to bedroom… If that were our crime scene, I’d say the freaky son did it and Patrick was lucky to get out alive.”

“But it’s dinnertime with a kitchen knife,” D.D. said quietly. “Patrick’s not a small guy. Then you have fourteen-year-old Jacob, also athletic. Seems like the two of them would be able to wrestle a scrawny nine-year-old to the ground.”

“And you’d see more defensive wounds,” Alex said. “From the girl, everyone. Ozzie’s the smallest member of the household. They’d absolutely put up a struggle. For that matter, I’m not sure a nine-year-old would have the strength to strike the mortal blow to Mrs. Harrington. We’ll get a report back soon enough, but I’m already guessing the angle of the blow suggests someone taller than Denise, not shorter.”

“Methodology makes it tricky,” D.D. commented. “Assuming Ozzie is the perpetrator, that means he, what? Shot his father with a gun. Then grabbed a kitchen knife and killed his mother with a single blow, killed his older brother with a single blow, then chased his sister through the house before ultimately catching her and strangling her. Then, after all that, he slit his own throat? Tough way to commit hara-kiri.”

“Actually, I’ve seen it done.”

“Really?”

“Case back in ninety-seven. Depressed ad executive slit his own throat. We had our doubts, given the injury, but the ME could prove it from the angle of incision. Don’t ask me. There are times forensics seems like pure voodoo.”

“All right. So Ozzie slit his own throat. Then he carried the bodies through the house to a single location? It just doesn’t make sense. Blood tells us Ozzie’s throat was slit in the sister’s bedroom. Physical size tells us there was no way Ozzie would’ve had the strength to drag his mother or father through the house.”

“Which brings us back to Patrick,” Alex agreed. “Only logical explanation.”

D.D. pushed back her plate. “So why don’t I feel good about it?”

“Because sometimes, we never understand our neighbors, not even after the fact.”

D.D. sighed, thought he had a point. “We dig into the financials, bet we’re going to find some consumer debt, some past-due bills. We’ll see just how on edge the Harringtons were living. Then we’ll pay a visit to the kids’ school, Denise’s work, Patrick’s former employer, round out our victim profiles.”

“We should also pay a visit to the psychiatric unit where Ozzie stayed. Remember, Miss Patsy said he was hospitalized for a bit.”

“I thought we just ruled out Ozzie.”

Alex shrugged. “There’s still something we don’t know. Or, for that matter, someone.”

CHAPTER NINE

Lucy escaped shortly before three.

I should’ve seen it coming. She’d started the day remarkably calm. By eight a.m., she’d eaten dry Cheerios without throwing the cup at anyone passing by. At eight-thirty, she crept out of her room long enough to swipe a toy car Benny had left in the hall. She’d tucked it under her chin as she scampered on all fours to a corner of her room. Then she’d set the Hot Wheel on the floor and proceeded to bat it around like a cat toy.

Benny cried when he discovered the car gone, then stopped crying when he saw the crazy naked girl smiling over it. She caught him watching her, too, and simply went back to playing, versus throwing feces at him.

I was so pleased by this progress, I decided to make an attempt at basic hygiene.

We don’t force our kids to shower. We don’t force them to eat, brush their teeth, or even get dressed. We understand that some of these kids, because of sensory issues, feel the spray of a shower as a thousand needles stinging their skin. We understand some of these kids, because of various compulsions, can only eat frozen food, or mashed-up food, or yellow food, or prepackaged food. We understand that some of these kids, because of limited social skills, can’t walk down the hallway without picking a fight.

Hygiene’s complicated. Mealtimes are complicated. Just getting up each morning is complicated.

So we take a broad approach. This is our schedule. We’d like you to follow it, but we’re willing to work with you. Tell us what you need. Together, we can make this happen.

Some parents hate us. They view our ward as nothing but summer camp, kowtowing to their problem child’s every whim.

Of course, half of these parents are as traumatized as the kids. They’ve spent years being kicked, hit, bit, screamed at, and otherwise verbally abused by their own child. Maybe on Mother’s Day, their ten-year-old drew a picture of Mommy being stabbed to death, and signed it Die Bitch Die. Now a part of them wants to see their son finally be held accountable for his actions, or feel that their daughter is being ground to dust. We’re the professionals. We should force each child to color within the lines. But we don’t. We let the kids watch TV. We bring them Game Boys, we engage them in board games, we let them rollerblade down the hall.

We’re acute care. Our goal is to reduce agitation so a kid can finally get through the day without exploding. Then, once the child is “workable,” we hope to gain insight into that kid’s behavior that will be valuable for long-term care.

There are two questions we’re trying to answer with each child:

What’s going on in this child’s head that I wish weren’t (e.g., cognitive distortions)? What isn’t going on in this child’s head that I wish were (e.g., cognitive deficiencies)? You answer these two questions, you can learn a lot about a kid.

Twenty-four hours later, I needed to learn a lot more about Lucy.

First, I filled a giant bucket with water, then carried it to her room. I didn’t look at her when I entered, didn’t acknowledge her in any way. I set down the bucket, then gave her my back.

I counted to ten.

When she didn’t attack, I moved to phase two: I pulled a small sponge out of my pocket, dipped it into the water, and starting scrubbing the nearest wall. I still didn’t look at her. If attention is one of her triggers, then my job’s not to give her any attention.

After another minute, I started to hum. Something low and melodic. Some children respond positively to rhythmic music; I was curious about Lucy.

She still didn’t react, so I grew more serious. I scrubbed feces and blood off all four walls. Then I picked up my bucket and disappeared.

Now the moment of judgment: Will Lucy leave the space as is, or will she feel a need to trash her room again, to violate her personal space as she seems to feel a need to violate herself?

When twenty minutes passed without any drama, I brought her lunch. Cut-up vegetables, a cheese stick, some fresh bread, a cup of water. I stood in the hallway where I could monitor her reflection in the silver ceiling globe without being seen.

Lucy went after the bread first. She picked it up between her hands and squished it into a ball, then placed it on the floor and watched it slowly expand. Then she resquished it, until the bread was balled tight enough to bat around on the carpet.

She played with her food for a bit, content in her catlike alter ego. I wondered why a cat. What was it about felines that she thought would keep her safe?

After a bit, she picked up the bread ball between her cupped hands and ate it. She licked her hands afterward, then lapped up some water from the cup. The cheese suffered the same fate as the bread. She didn’t eat the vegetables but hid them under her mattress. I wasn’t surprised. Lots of kids hoarded food, maybe due to compulsion, or from a long history of going hungry. I left the vegetables for now, if only to see what she’d do with them later.

Thirty minutes later, I entered Lucy’s room to fetch her plate and cup. I kept my back to her. No displays, so we were making progress.

Back in the kitchen, I filled a smaller bowl with warm water and found a clean sponge. This time when I entered Lucy’s room, I sat sideways to her. She was by the window, studying a giant square of light on her floor, formed by the sun. She splayed her fingers in the sunbeam, watching the shadow made by her fingers. Then she turned toward the window, closing her eyes and letting the sun fall upon her face.

For an instant, she wore an expression that could almost be called happiness.

I gave her a bit. When she finally seemed to be tiring of sun and shadows, I picked up the sponge, dipped it in the bowl of water, and held it over my bare forearm. I squeezed out droplets, letting the water trickle down. I wanted her to notice this new, intriguing game.

I played for a bit. I dropped water here and there, making dark patterns on my clothes, the flooring, wherever I felt like it. When working with kids, it’s always helpful to be childish.

After a while, I could tell Lucy was watching me. She wouldn’t draw closer, but she was curious. So I stretched it out five more minutes. I splashed water on my face, trickled it in my hair. Then I got up and walked out of the room, leaving the water and sponge behind.

It was tempting to stop and watch. But she was a child, not an exhibit at the zoo. So I kept marching. One of our recent charges, Jorge, ran up to me. I agreed to play dominoes with him. Then it was craft time with Aimee, a twelve-year-old girl admitted for attempted suicide. She sat with her body collapsed on itself, drawing a black sky with black rain. I suggested she add color, so she dotted red on top of the black. Now the sky was bleeding.

I hugged her before I headed back down the hall.

I found Lucy, sitting back in the sunbeam. She had the water bowl beside her, the sponge in her hand.

Her face was finally clean. She’d wiped off streaks of feces, used the water to smooth back her matted hair. She sat now, with her clean face held up to the sun, and the small curve of her lips almost made my heart break.

The next time I checked in, she was gone. The empty water bowl and sponge were stacked neatly in the sunbeam. Otherwise, the room was empty. Lucy had flown the coop.

I didn’t worry at first. We’re a lockdown ward, meaning Lucy was here somewhere. I just had to find her.

I contacted the milieu counselor in charge of “checks”-accounting for every child’s position every five minutes. Greg had the duty, meaning he’d been roaming the unit for the past hour. He hadn’t seen Lucy-she was the exception to our five-minute check rule; her assigned staff member, namely me, was supposed to write down her location every twenty minutes. Greg passed the word along, and soon we were all on a Lucy hunt.

Kids joined us. This was hide-and-seek on a grand scale, and the kids who’d been with us for a while knew the drill and were happy to help. Since our unit didn’t have video cameras, we took advantage of the silver globes in the ceiling, searching for Lucy’s reflection. According to the globes, she wasn’t in the main hallway, the dorm rooms, or the family room. Now we got serious.

We went through cupboards, wardrobes, nightstands, bathrooms, and closets. The kitchen area was locked, but we checked anyway, just in case. The Admin space was locked; we tossed the warren of small rooms as well.

By three-fifteen, when we still hadn’t found Lucy, the staff, not to mention some of the kids, started to grow agitated.

Greg took charge of the kids. Time for afternoon snack. The staff peeled off, returning to the business of running the unit. Karen, the nurse manager, pulled me aside.

“When did you last see her?”

“Two-fifteen,” I reported.

“What was she doing?”

“Sitting in a sunbeam, making shadows with her fingers.”

Karen arched one brow, intrigued. “When did you notice she was missing?”

I hesitated. “Two forty-five.”

Karen looked at me. “That’s thirty minutes, Danielle, not twenty. We agreed someone would check her every twenty minutes.”

I had no good excuse, so I simply nodded.

Karen regarded me for a moment. She’d been working most of her adult life with troubled kids and her gaze was penetrating. I could tell she’d finally noted the month and day and made the connection I thought she’d make at least a week ago.

That’s the life of the sole survivor: You never escaped the anniversary date.

“Is Lucy too much for you?” Karen asked abruptly.

“No.”

“We’ve always been willing to work with you, Danielle,” she stated crisply. “But you have to be willing to work with us. Understand?”

“Lucy’s not too much,” I said, voice stronger.

But Karen remained uncertain. She finally sighed, moved along. “Is Lucy still naked?”

“Last I saw.”

“Then she couldn’t have gotten far.”

Karen made the decision to contact the medical center’s security. The full hospital went to lockdown, and I felt about three inches tall. I’d lost my charge. I’d breached protocol in a place where protocol breaches were unacceptable. And while my personal life wasn’t anything to write home about, I took my job seriously. I was a dedicated nurse. Some days, I was even a great nurse.

Apparently, today wasn’t one of those days. We had an emergency staff meeting, with Karen briskly assigning hospital floors to each of us to search. Security was also making a sweep.

I had the first and second floors. I headed out, feeling sick in my stomach.

Where would Lucy go? What would she do?

Then I had an idea.

I bolted for the hospital solarium.

Ten minutes later, I’d found Lucy. She was behind a potted palm, in a full-blaze sun, curled up like a cat and sound asleep with her head on her joined hands. Somewhere during her adventures, she’d found a green surgical scrub top and was now wearing it like a gown. She nearly blended into the floor, her dark hair obscuring her freshly scrubbed face.

I radioed upstairs that I’d found her.

Then, because this was the best rest I’d seen her get, I took a seat on the floor and waited.

Greg eventually came down, sat beside me. “Tough day,” he said, after a moment.

“She’s okay. That’s what matters.”

“Bad luck, getting out. Must have snuck through the doors when an outsider was coming or going.”

He said it casually, but we both knew there would be an investigation. It was extremely bad luck Lucy made it through two sets of locked doors. Such bad luck, it’d never happened in all the years I’d worked here, and I still couldn’t imagine how a naked nine-year-old girl had done it now.

Heads would roll over this. Maybe mine.

I felt anxious. I couldn’t lose this job. I loved this job, especially this time of year, when-Karen was right-I wasn’t altogether sane and they kept me anyway.

Greg touched my cheek. For a change, I didn’t flinch. Greg and I had been coworkers for years. He was a good-looking guy. Tall, fit, a natural jungle gym for small boys bursting out of their own skin. He dressed like a football coach, and spoke with the best baritone on the unit. Even the worst kids shut up just to catch the timbre of his speech.

He’d asked me out for the first time two years ago. I’d never said yes. He’d never stopped asking. I didn’t know how one guy could take so much rejection and still come back for more, but maybe that went with the job.

Now I found myself thinking of Sheriff Wayne again. But I refused to cry, because that would be stupid.

Lucy finally stirred. She raised her head, blinked her eyes, regarded us owlishly.

Quickly, before she was awake enough to fight, Greg and I tucked her between us and hustled her to the elevators.

I was still thinking of too many things. That it was three days away. That it shouldn’t matter anymore. A date on a calendar, a day that rolled by once a year. And I knew Karen had finally figured out my schedule, why I’d been logging so many hours. Because the date did matter, somehow it always mattered, and in another twenty-four hours or so, I’d have to disappear. I wouldn’t be fit for the kids. I wouldn’t be fit for adults.

And I certainly wouldn’t be fit for a decent guy like Greg, who’d want to hold me and make it all better.

Once a year, I didn’t want it to be all better.

Once a year, I liked honing my rage.

Because I am the lone survivor, and I’m still pissed off about that.

The elevator took us up to the eighth floor. I waved my ID to enter the lobby. Karen was waiting for us, but not alone. A blonde woman with curly hair and a salt-and-pepper-haired man in a charcoal-colored suit stood beside her. Both were holding out police shields.

“Danielle,” Karen began.

And I knew, right at that moment, that it had started again.

CHAPTER TEN

What does it feel like for a father to leave his child? Does he wake up in the morning remembering his son’s first smile? Maybe the way his baby used to fit in the curve of his arm, solemn blue eyes peering up, rosebud lips pursed thoughtfully?

Does he remember the first time his boy said “Daddy”? Or the way Evan used to run to the door and throw his arms around his father’s legs?

Does he torture himself with the what-ifs, the might-have-beens? The vision he had of one day coaching his son’s soccer team? The dream of attending their first Patriots game together, or maybe cheering for the Celtics at the Garden? Does he consider the gaping hole in his future where the driving lessons, man-to-man talks, and first shave should’ve been?

Does he know that in the days and weeks afterward, Evan fell asleep still crying for the father who never came?

When Michael and I finally brought Evan home from the NICU, we were convinced the worst was behind us. He sat up at three months. Crawled at ten months. The pediatrician was impressed.

He cried, sometimes for hours at a stretch. Sleep was difficult, naptimes nearly nonexistent. I read books on various sleep techniques while reporting the challenges to the doctor. Babies cried, he assured me. Evan wasn’t exhibiting any signs of colic and was steadily gaining weight, always a concern with a preemie. As far as the medical experts were concerned, Evan was fussy but fabulous. Michael and I took that to heart. This was our son, our parenting experience, fussy but fabulous.

Michael was hands-on in those days. When he came home from work, he’d take his turn pacing the house with Evan crying against his shoulder. He’d encourage me to take some time for myself. Read a book, indulge in a bubble bath, take a nap. Together we could handle this.

At fourteen months, Evan made the transition from crawling to running. Suddenly, he slept much better at night, maybe because he raced around like a rocket all day. I went from endlessly soothing a baby to frantically chasing a toddler. Evan didn’t seem to have a sense of his own space. He ran into walls, fell off chairs, and walked in front of moving swings. At the playground, he was a threat to himself and others.

He didn’t fear strangers. He didn’t believe other kids ever wanted to play alone. He ran into groups, elbowed his way into other children’s sandboxes. He had this hundred-watt smile and these brilliant blue eyes. At fourteen months, it was as if the world already wasn’t big enough for him. He had so much to do, so much to see, and so much to say.

An older woman once sat beside me on a park bench just to listen to the magic of Evan’s laughter as he rolled in a pile of fall leaves.

“He is an old soul,” she told me before leaving. “A very old soul. Watch him. Listen to him. He will teach you what you need to know.”

Around this time Evan stopped wearing clothes. He’d always cried if we dressed him in anything other than cotton. Now he refused even that. I found shirts, socks, pants, diapers strewn down the hallway, and sometimes across swing sets. I put the clothes back on. He took them back off.

We stayed home more often; naked eighteen-month-olds weren’t always welcome at a public park.

Evan also started some new and alarming habits. For example, he took to climbing onto the kitchen counter so he could play with the knives. He liked to hold them by the blade, as if he needed to slice open his palms in order to understand how sharp the edges were. The same went with the stove. I gave up cooking unless Michael was home. Evan was obsessed with the burners. The more we told him they were hot, the more he needed to place his fingers across the glowing red coils.

It was like living with a bull in a china shop. One day he broke all the eggs in the kitchen in order to hear how they would sound (I was on the phone). The next afternoon, he smashed every bottle of perfume I owned against the tile floor, to see how far the glass would shatter (I was in the downstairs lavette). I caught him climbing the china cabinet one afternoon, and wisely padlocked the doors (I’d been in the shower, but realized I couldn’t hear Evan and went bolting through the house in nothing but a towel).

We saw our first expert, a child development specialist. We received our first diagnosis. Evan suffered from global Sensory Integration Disorder; his brain was properly receiving input from his five senses, but could not prioritize the sensations. Meaning he existed in an overstimulated state-a full cup, the specialist explained to us, where each new sound, scent, touch, smell, and taste was another drip, drip, drip into an overflowing vessel. Some things he could not tolerate at all: the rasp of a zipper, the feel of denim. Other sensations he fixated on, trying to get them to penetrate the clutter of his brain-what is sharp, what is hot, what is pain. He was like a moth, drawn to the flame.

Evan started to receive occupational therapy. Michael agreed that I needed help, so we hired our first in a string of what would become fourteen part-time nannies.

I went on walks to clear my head and refresh my body. Then I came home to my crazy, exuberant wild child. He would bowl me over with his hugs. Light up the world with the exuberance of his laughter. We would wrestle, tickle, and play endless games of hide-and-seek.

Then he would scream over having to brush his teeth. Or fly into a rage over having been served pasta on the wrong-colored plate. He threw one of Michael’s golf balls through our family room window when we asked him to put on shoes. He slapped me across the face when I told him it was time for bed.

Our first nanny quit, then the second, the third.

When Evan was happy, he was so happy. But when he was angry, he was so angry, and when he was sad… he was so, so sad.

We received our second diagnosis: Mood Disorder NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). At four, we put him on clonidine, a drug generally used with ADHD to help moderate impulsive and oppositional behavior. We hoped the clonidine would take off the edge, allowing Evan to find some measure of self-control.

He improved in the short term. Slept better at night. Less manic during the day. Between the clonidine and a one-to-one aide, it appeared he might survive preschool.

Time, Michael and I told ourselves. Evan just needed time. Time for the occupational therapy to assist with the hypersensitivity. Time to better develop his own coping skills. We had challenges, but all parents had challenges. Right?

Evan started kindergarten. He interrupted the teacher. He laughed at inappropriate times. He screamed if told to stop doing an activity he wanted to do, and refused to engage in an activity he didn’t want to do.

In the first eight weeks, Michael and I were summoned to the school nearly a dozen times. We sat there self-consciously. Well-groomed, professional parents who had no idea why our child was a five-year-old hoodlum. We loved Evan. We set boundaries for him. We fought for him.

Still, Evan wanted to do what Evan wanted to do and he was willing to employ any means necessary to get his way.

Third and fourth diagnoses: ADHD and Anxiety Disorder NOS. At the school’s insistence, we put him on the antidepressant Lexapro. Lexapro affects the serotonin levels in the brain. We were told it would calm Evan, help him focus.

Your son’s brain is a busy, busy place, the specialist told us. Imagine standing in the middle of a parade and trying to remain still while hearing the horns blow in your ear and feeling the marchers sweep by. Evan loves you. Evan wants to do well. But Evan can’t exit from the parade long enough to be Evan.

We dutifully filled the prescription. It’s the American way, right? Your child is disruptive, misbehaving, nonconforming. Drug him.

Two weeks later, while quietly sketching a picture of a race car, Evan sat up and drove his pencil through the eardrum of the five-year-old girl sitting beside him.

That was the end of kindergarten for Evan.

Later, we learned Evan suffered from a paradoxical reaction to the Lexapro. A paradoxical reaction is when a drug has the opposite effect than intended. For example, a pain reliever causes pain. Or a sedative causes hyperactivity. Lexapro was supposed to calm our son. Instead, it sent him into a new orbit of agitation, and he acted accordingly.

We found a new doctor for Evan. Best Ph.D. in Boston, we were told. I hired nanny number nine and settled in to home-school Evan.

Michael started working longer hours. Gotta pay for the specialists, he would say, as if I couldn’t smell the perfume that lingered on his coat, or see how many times he checked his cell phone for text messages.

I wondered if she was young and beautiful, maybe with frosted blonde hair that didn’t suffer from neglected roots. Maybe her womb had never filled with poison. Maybe she could take her son to the grocery store without him hurling produce at the other shoppers. Maybe she went to restaurants without her child dumping pasta on the floor and making handprints out of red sauce.

Maybe she slept through the night and read the newspaper each morning and could converse wittily on a variety of adult topics.

Or maybe she just giggled, and told Michael he was perfect.

You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair.

You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

It’s four in the afternoon on Friday, and the sky is dark with thunderclouds. Given the intense August heat, most people are grateful for the upcoming relief. I don’t care. I left the house five minutes late and now I’m driving too fast, trying to make up for lost time.

I have only two hours. I get them twice a week. It’s not like I can leave my eight-year-old with the teenager down the street. But Michael pays child support, and I use that money for respite care, so that twice weekly a specially trained person comes to watch Evan. One of those days, I go to the grocery store, pharmacy, bank, doing all the things I can’t do with Evan in tow. That was last night. Tonight, my second night off for the week, I drive to Friendly’s.

My daughter is waiting for me there.

Chelsea sits in a back booth; Michael’s across from her. He’s wearing a light summer suit over the top of a striking blue Johnston & Murphy shirt. The suit drapes his muscled frame nicely. Obviously, he’s been keeping up with his weekly boxing habit. You can take the boy out of the neighborhood, but not the neighborhood out of the boy.

When Michael spots me weaving my way through the crowded dining room, he puts away his BlackBerry and slides to standing.

“Victoria,” Michael says.

“Michael,” I answer.

Same exchange, every week. We never deviate.

“I’ll be back at six-thirty.” He says this more to Chelsea than to me, bending down, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

Then he’s gone and I’m alone with my daughter.

Chelsea ’s six. She has Michael’s dark hair, my fine features. She holds herself tight, tall for her age, mature for her years. Living with an older brother like Evan can do that to a girl.

“Have you ordered?” I ask, sliding into Michael’s seat, placing my purse beside me on the red vinyl.

She shakes her head.

“What looks good?” I sound forced. It’s like this every week. I have one evening to try to prove to my daughter I love her. She has six evenings that tell her otherwise.

Chelsea closes her menu, doesn’t say anything. A balloon pops across the room, and she flinches. By the terms of our divorce decree, Michael’s supposed to provide counseling for Chelsea, but I don’t know if he’s doing it. After all the experts we saw for Evan, he’s soured on that sort of thing.

But Chelsea isn’t Evan. She’s a lovely little girl who spent her first five years never knowing if her brother would hug her with affection or attack her in a psychotic rage. She learned by age two when to run and lock herself in the nearest bathroom. By three, she could dial 911. And she was there, eleven months ago, when Evan found the crowbar in the garage and went after every window in the house.

Michael and Chelsea left the next day. It’s been me and Evan ever since.

“How’s school?” I ask.

She shrugs. I have to honor the mood, so I reach across the table for the cup filled with crayons. I flip over my place mat and start drawing a picture. After a moment, Chelsea does the same. We color a bit in silence, and I tell myself it’s enough.

The waitress comes. I order a garden salad. Chelsea goes with chicken fingers.

We color some more.

“I get to be the flower girl,” Chelsea says abruptly.

I pause, force myself to find yellow, add to my gardenscape. Wedding? The divorce was only finalized six months ago. I knew Michael was seeing someone, but this… It seems undignified somehow. A gross display in the middle of a funeral.

“You get to be a flower girl?” I ask.

“In Daddy and Melinda’s wedding. It will be during Christmas. I get to wear green velvet.”

“You’ll… you’ll look beautiful.”

“Daddy says Melinda will be my new Mommy.” Chelsea ’s not coloring anymore. She’s staring at me.

“She’ll become your stepmom. You’ll have a stepmom and a mom after the wedding.”

“Do stepmoms like to eat at Friendly’s?”

I can’t do it. I put down the crayon, stare hard at the tabletop. “I love you, Chelsea.”

She picks up her crayon and returns to coloring. “I’m mad,” she says, almost conversationally. “I don’t want a new mom. Sarah has one, and she says stepmoms are no fun. And I don’t like green velvet. It’s hot. The dress is ugly.”

I say nothing.

“I want to rip the dress,” she continues. “I want to get scissors and cut it up. Cut, cut, cut. Or maybe I could drip paint all over it. Drip, drip, drip. Then I wouldn’t have to wear it.” She looks up again. “Mommy, am I turning into Evan?”

My heart twists. I take her hand. There are so many things I’d like to say to her. That she’s special, unique, beautiful. That I have loved her since the moment she was born. That none of this is her fault, not her brother’s illness and certainly not the Sophie’s Choice made by her mother every day.

“You’re not your brother, Chelsea. Evan… Evan has things in his head no one else has. His brain works differently. That’s why he gets so mad he can’t control himself. You’re not like that. Your brain isn’t his brain. You are you. And it’s okay if you get mad. Sometimes, we all get mad.”

“I don’t like Melinda,” Chelsea says, more plaintive now. “Daddy’s always at work. He’s no fun anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Weddings are stupid. Stepmoms are stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why can’t Evan go away? Daddy says that if Evan would just go away…”

I don’t answer. This is where Michael and I diverge. He wants his children to be fixable, whereas I’ve come to accept that our son has an illness no doctor can currently cure. Evan’s still our child, however, and just because he’s troubled is no reason to throw him away.

The waitress arrives with our food. She slides two oval plates onto the table. I rearrange my salad. Chelsea pokes at her french fries.

“Evan misses you,” I say after a moment. “He wishes you could both go to the park.”

Chelsea nods. There were times she and Evan were close. When he was calmer, in his sweet, charming mode. He would play dress-up with Chelsea, even let her do his hair. They’d play hide-and-seek, or form a rock band using all the kitchen pans. Those times, he was amazing and I imagine she misses that big brother. I also imagine there are plenty of other incidents she wishes to forget.

Chelsea is why Michael left me. He claimed my inability to institutionalize Evan was putting our daughter’s life at risk. Is he right? Am I right? How will we ever know? The world doesn’t give us perfect choices, and I couldn’t figure out how to sacrifice my son, not even for my daughter.

So here I am and here she is, and I love her so much my chest hurts and I can’t swallow my food. I just sit here, across from this quiet little girl, and I try to will my love into her. If I force my love across the table, form it in a tight little ball, and hit her with it again and again, maybe she will feel it. Maybe, for one instant, she will know I love her more than Evan, which is why I had to let her go.

She’ll be okay. Evan, however, needs me.

We draw some more. I ignore my salad. She eats french fries. She tells me she got to try the violin at music camp. And Sarah and her got into a fight, because Sarah said Hannah Montana was better than The Cheetah Girls, but then they both agreed that High School Musical is the best ever and now they’re friends again. Dance starts in two weeks. She is nervous for the first day at school. She wants to know if we can go shopping together for school clothes. I tell her I will try. I can tell from the look on her face she already knows it won’t happen.

The waitress clears our plates. Chelsea perks up at the thought of ice cream. She goes with the junior sundae. I decline, though ice cream would be good for me. I could use some weight on my frame. Maybe I should go on an ice cream diet. I will eat a gallon a day and balloon out to three hundred pounds. It’s not like anyone would care.

Self-pity gets me nowhere, so I reach across the table and hold my daughter’s hand again. Tonight, she lets me. Next week, I’ll have to wait and see.

She’s going to have a second mother. Some woman I’ve never met. I try to picture her, and my brain locks on some twenty-something blonde. Younger, prettier, perkier than me. She’ll help Chelsea pick out clothes for school, maybe braid her hair. She’ll be the first to hear of Chelsea ’s school dramas, perhaps give her advice for handling her equally dramatic friends. They will bond. Maybe there’ll come a week when Chelsea won’t want to come to Friendly’s anymore.

I want to be bitter, but what would be the point? Chelsea ’s job is to grow up, move forward. My job is to let her go. I just didn’t think it would be happening at the age of six.

Michael appears in the dining room. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there. Chelsea and I take the hint. I place money on the table for the check, then gather my things. By the time I slide out of the booth, Michael is already at the front doors, Chelsea lagging somewhere in between, trying to split the difference between her father ahead, her mother behind.

I catch up with her and we push out through the glass doors, where the storm has finally broken and cooling rain comes down in sheets. We hesitate under the awning, gathering ourselves for the sprint to the cars. Michael uses the moment to say, “I’m sure Chelsea mentioned the wedding to you.”

“Congratulations,” I say. Then ruin the moment by adding, “When would you like Evan to get fitted for a tux?”

The look he shoots me would’ve killed a lesser woman. I deliver it right back. I dare him to deny our firstborn child, who still asks when his father will be coming home.

“I didn’t leave you,” Michael states crisply, voice low, so Chelsea won’t hear. “You left me. You left me the second you decided his needs mattered more than anyone else’s.”

“He’s a child-”

“Who needs professional full-time care.”

“An institution, you mean.”

“There are other ways to help him. You refused to consider any of them. You decided you knew best. You and only you could help him. After that, Chelsea and I didn’t matter anymore. You can’t blame us for getting on with our lives.”

But I do, I want to tell him, I do.

He motions to Chelsea that it’s time to go. Her head is down, her body language subdued. Even if she can’t hear the words, she knows we’re fighting and it’s hurt her.

I put my arms around my daughter. I feel the silk of her hair, the lightness of her slender body. I inhale the scent of coconut shampoo and Crayola markers. I hug her, hard, for this hug has to last me an entire week. Then I let her go.

She and her father bolt across the rain-swept parking lot, hands over their heads to protect themselves from the deluge. Minutes later, they’re both in Michael’s BMW and it’s pulling away, rear lights glowing red in the gloom.

I don’t know how it feels for a father to leave his son. I only know how it feels for a mother to leave her daughter, my heart driving away from me and leaving a gaping hole in the middle of my chest.

I step out in the storm, unhurried now. I let the rain soak my hair, batter my white blouse. I let the deluge pound against my face.

Friday night. Three more days, I think.

I drive home to Evan.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

D.D. had never been to a locked-down pediatric psych ward, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to start. But of all members of the Harrington family, Ozzie remained the most intriguing. Patrick’s former employer had nothing but positive things to say. Denise’s boss was so choked up over her murder he could barely speak. They got bursts of “great woman,” “devoted mom,” “heart as big as the sky,” in between fresh bouts of muffled sobbing.

Phil phoned in with the credit report; it was about what they’d expected. The Harringtons were down to their last eight hundred in the bank. They had a substantial mortgage payment due, not to mention ten grand in credit cards. Up until this point, the family had never missed a payment. Chances were, that had been about to change.

In the plus column, the Harringtons received a check every month from the state for Ozzie; also, Denise had just gotten a modest raise at her receptionist job. Judging by the going rate in Dorchester, the family could hang on if they got the upper two floors rented. Phil and Professor Alex were going to walk through the space this evening to estimate just how close Patrick might have been to that goal.

And if the Harringtons did lose the house? Patrick’s first wife was dead; Denise’s first husband, out of the picture. Did Patrick or Denise have other family that could take them in? Was there a possibility of them receiving assistance from the church?

D.D. wanted answers to those questions. Better yet, she wanted to find out if Denise or Patrick had made the same inquiries. From their perspective, how deep was the chasm that loomed in front of them? Was it a matter of Oh well, we can always move in with brother Joe? Or was it Dammit, we’re facing three kids in a homeless shelter with no hope of getting out?

Eighteen hours after the initial call, D.D. had four dead, and one in critical condition. For suspects she got to choose between a middle-aged family man and his nine-year-old psychotic son. The father had more physical capability. The son had more mental inclination.

Which brought her and her new shadow, Professor Alex, to the Pediatric Evaluation Clinic of Boston, part of the Kirkland Medical Center.

First steps into the locked-down psych unit weren’t what D.D. expected. The ceiling yawned nine feet above. Natural light poured in massive windows to illuminate pale green carpeting and soft blue walls. Built-in benches featured fabrics dotted with small yellow ducks, while a cluster of wooden tables bore buckets of Legos. Place reminded her of a waiting room in an upscale pediatrician’s office. Except the kids checked in for a much longer stay.

D.D. was just turning toward Alex when a black girl with twin braids flapping underneath her red helmet whizzed by on Rollerblades. A second later, a smaller boy in sagging blue sweatpants followed in hot pursuit, not as well balanced, but churning forward for all he was worth.

D.D. jumped back. Alex, too.

“Becca, Arnie, not beyond the orange cone!” a man’s voice boomed. The girl and boy each turned-her gracefully, him awkwardly-then raced back the other direction, barely missing D.D. and Alex a second time.

“Sorry,” the man called out, sounding more amused than annoyed. A younger guy with buzz-cut brown hair, he stood next to an orange cone in the middle of the hall. He looked like a gym coach, wearing blue sweatpants and a white T-shirt that defined a well-developed set of pecs. In his hand, he carried a clipboard, while a lanyard bearing ID and a set of keys jangled around his neck.

His charges zipped straight toward the large window at the opposite end of the long hallway. He turned to follow. “Slow down, Arnie. Easy, buddy; you don’t have to win the race your first time out.”

D.D. decided it was safer to stand with her back against the wall. So did Alex. They’d made it through the locked front doors into the lobby, then through the next set of locked doors connecting the reception area to the unit. Now they were waiting for their designated nurse, Danielle Burton, to join them; she’d needed to fetch Ozzie Harrington’s file, and had left them standing next to a common area.

The left half of the space was set up with half a dozen oak tables-the dining/craft/games space. The right half contained several comfy-looking couches lined up in front of a screen-the TV/movie lounge.

As D.D. watched, one dark head popped up from behind the first sofa, followed quickly by two more. The kids’ gazes zoomed in on D.D. and Alex, then the three boys scrambled over the furniture.

“Hola. ¿Cómo está?” the smallest boy said, running up, then stopping in front of them, his bare toes touching D.D.’s pointed black shoes, his face all earnest interest. His two friends lined up behind him. D.D. pegged the leader’s age at seven or eight. He had his jeans rolled up all the way to his thighs. As he stood there, he started folding and unfolding his right pants leg.

“Bueno,” D.D. ventured. “¿Y tú?”

“Que bueno. Did you find Lucy? Dónde está?”

D.D. didn’t know who Lucy was. She looked at Alex; he shrugged.

The door next to them opened, and Danielle Burton reappeared. All three boys turned to her, the first tugging on the hem of her T-shirt.

“¿Dónde está Lucy? ¿Dónde, dónde?”

“Está bien, está bien,” the nurse soothed. She ruffled the boy’s inky black hair. “Lucy está aquí. Tranquilo, okay?”

“Okay,” the boy agreed.

“This is Jimmy.” Danielle introduced the lead boy to Alex and D.D. “And here are his partners in crime, Benny and Jorge. If you ever want a dynamite game of Matchbox cars, these are your boys.”

Alex took the bait. He squatted until he was eye level with Jimmy and asked, “What’s your favorite car?”

“Monster car!” Jimmy whooped. He stuck out his arms and took off in a wide-arcing run, looking more like an airplane than a car to D.D. But Benny and Jorge apparently thought this was good enough, and they took off running around the tables in the common room as well.

“Walking feet,” Danielle called out.

The boys slowed to a trot. The nurse seemed to feel that was close enough. She gestured with her hand and D.D. and Alex followed her to the left, where a smaller corridor led to a bank of classrooms.

Danielle found an empty room, gesturing for them to enter. D.D. and Alex had started their inquiry with the nurse manager, Karen Rober. She wasn’t as hands-on, however, recommending they speak to Danielle, who, conveniently enough, walked through the front doors a moment later. The look that had passed over Danielle’s features when she’d spotted D.D.’s police creds had been interesting. A mix of horror and anger. And, immediately after, shuttered tightness.

Karen had assigned Danielle to the detectives. Otherwise, D.D. wasn’t sure the young nurse would’ve agreed to walk down the hall with them, let alone answer any questions. Now Danielle pulled out a chair at the wooden table, set down her files, sat, fidgeted, and got back up again.

“I’m gonna grab some water,” she announced. “Need anything?”

D.D. and Alex shook their heads. The nurse popped out; they took their seats.

“First impressions?” D.D. murmured.

“Twitchy,” Alex said.

“She should be twitchy. She’s being questioned by the police.”

“Twitchier,” he amended.

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too.”

Danielle reappeared, bearing a cup with a lid and a straw. She took a seat across from Alex and D.D., not as close as she could be, but not too far away. The nurse was younger than D.D. would’ve thought. Athletic build, dark hair swept back in a ponytail. Pretty, under normal circumstances. Tense, given these circumstances.

“Sure you don’t need anything?” the nurse asked, plucking at the manila folder in front of her.

“We’re good,” D.D. replied. “Busy afternoon?”

“We’ve had busier.”

“How many kids are out there?” D.D. asked, easing into things. She wanted to take her time with Danielle. She was curious what made the nurse tick-or fidget, as the case might be.

“Fifteen. More crowded than we’d like, but not acute.”

“Acute?”

Danielle had to think about it. “A psych ward is acute when we have more than we can handle. It’s not a specific number of kids; it’s the dynamics of the kids. Eight kids can send us over the top if they’re involved cases that didn’t mix well. On the other hand, we’ve effectively handled up to eighteen.” She paused. “Not that I’d like to do that again.”

“How long have you been here?” D.D. asked.

“Eight years.”

“Sounds like a long time, given the field of work.”

The nurse shrugged. “We’re a progressive unit, which makes us a better place to work than most pediatric psych wards. Some of our MCs have been here twenty years or more.”

“MCs?” Alex spoke up.

“Milieu counselors. Did you notice the guy in the hallway? The one with the great baritone?”

“The gym coach,” D.D. filled in.

“That’s Greg. He’s a milieu counselor. We refer to the environment within our unit as the milieu. Greg’s job is to help sustain that environment-safe, nurturing, dynamic. Mine, too, but I’m an RN. MCs don’t need to have a degree, just a lot of energy and creativity to work with the kids.”

“What makes this a progressive unit?”

“We don’t snow kids-”

“‘Snow’?” D.D. interrupted.

“Drug them senseless. Most of our kids are on multiple prescriptions. Plus we use PRNs-medications given as needed, say Benadryl-to help soothe a child having a bad day. But we medicate to a functional, not nonfunctional, state.”

Danielle fiddled with the straw in her cup. When D.D. didn’t immediately ask another question, letting the silence draw out, the nurse volunteered on her own:

“We also refuse to physically restrain the kids. During an outburst, most psych units will resort to tying a kid to a bed. They tell the kid it’s for his own good, but it’s still a shitty thing to do. Let me put it this way: Once we had a five-year-old girl whose shoulders wouldn’t stay in their sockets because her parents’ idea of babysitting was to hog-tie her so they could go drinking. When the girl was finally admitted to the ER for severe dehydration, an intern ordered physical restraints because the girl kept freaking out. Can you imagine how that must’ve felt to her? She finally gets away from her parents, and she’s still being trussed up like cattle. Eighty percent of our kids have already suffered a severe trauma. We don’t need to add to that.”

D.D. was impressed. “So,” she summarized, “no snowing, no tying. When the kids go all Lord of the Flies, what d’you do?”

“CPS-collaborative problem-solving. CPS was developed by Dr. Ross Greene, an expert in explosive children. Dr. Greene’s primary assumption is that a child will do well if a child can do well. Meaning, if we have children who won’t do well, it’s because they don’t know how-maybe they have issues with frustration tolerance, or rigid thinking, or cognitive deficiencies. Our goal then is to teach the child the skills he or she is lacking, through CPS.”

D.D. considered this. Tried it on a couple of times, actually. She didn’t buy it. She glanced over at Alex, who appeared equally skeptical.

This time, he took the lead: “You’re saying a child goes psycho and you… talk her out of it? Hey, honey, please stop throwing a chair out that window. Now, now, Georgie, no more strangling baby Jane.”

Danielle finally cracked a smile. “Interestingly enough, most of our parents sound just as convinced as you. Example?”

“Example,” he agreed.

“Ten-year-old girl. Admitted with a history of explosive rages and petty arson. Within two hours of arrival, she walked up to Greg-the gym coach-and decked him. Didn’t say a word. Hit first, thought later.”

“What did Greg do?” D.D. asked.

“Nothing. Guy’s a good two hundred and twenty pounds and the girl barely topped seventy. Blow glanced off his stomach. Then she tried to kick him in the balls. That got him moving faster.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “But no snowing, no tying?”

“Two male counselors intervened, trying to guide the girl back to her room. She lashed out again, screaming at the top of her lungs. Other kids started getting wiggy, so our nurse manager ordered the male MCs to disappear. Second they were out of sight, the girl calmed down and returned peacefully to her room on her own.”

“It was the men who set her off,” D.D. filled in. “The girl had an issue with men.”

“Exactly. Large men with dark hair, who may or may not bear a resemblance to the girl’s stepdad, as a matter of fact. That’s what triggered her outburst. Observing that gave us something to work with. Something we would not have learned if we’d restrained her or medicated her.”

“All right,” Alex granted. “No snowing, no tying. But where’s the talking?”

“Once the girl calmed down, I reviewed the incident with her. We discussed what she did. I talked to her about other options for approaching boys that didn’t involve trying to kill them. It was an ongoing process, obviously, but that’s what we’re here for-to help kids understand what’s going on inside their heads, and what they can do to manage their jumbled emotions. Kids want to do well. They want to feel in control. And they’re willing to work, if you’re willing to guide.”

“Did the girl get better?” Alex asked.

“By the end of her stay, she and Greg were best buds. You’d never know.”

“And Ozzie Harrington?” D.D. said. “Was he another success story-one day roaring like a lion, next day gentle as a lamb?”

Danielle shuttered up. She sat back, stroking the top of the manila file with her thumb. When she met D.D.’s gaze again, her blue eyes were wary, but also hard. A woman who’d been there, and done that. Curious and more curious, D.D. thought.

“Tell me what happened,” the nurse said, avoiding D.D.’s question.

“Been watching the news?” D.D. asked.

“No. Been working the unit.”

“Why do you assume an unhappy ending?” D.D. pressed.

“Ozzie’s dead,” Danielle stated.

“Again, why assume the negative?”

“Because Karen told me to talk to you, and if Ozzie were still alive, answering your questions would violate his rights.”

D.D. considered the matter. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Just him, or did he hurt others?”

“Why don’t you tell us what you think?”

“Fuck it.” Danielle broke open the case file and began.

“Oswald was admitted in the spring of last year. He’d spent six months with his foster family before suffering a ‘psychotic break.’ The parents had gone out for the evening, leaving him and their two other children alone with a babysitter. Halfway through dinner, both their cell phones started ringing. The babysitter and two kids were now locked in the bathroom. Ozzie was on the other side of the door, armed with a hammer and screaming he was going to kill them.

“The parents ordered the babysitter to call nine-one-one, then headed home. They arrived around the same time two officers were wrestling Ozzie to the ground. The EMTs sedated the boy and brought him to the ER, which referred him to us.

“Upon admittance, he was nearly catatonic. We see this often in a child who’s just experienced a significant traumatic event. We kept him on Ativan for the first forty-eight hours, while we caught up on his patient history. Ozzie’s file revealed multiple diagnoses, including severe ADHD, attachment disorder, Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Mood Disorder NOS, and other nonspecific development delays. The psychiatrist expressed concern that, due to the death of Ozzie’s birth mother, not enough was known about the first three years of his life.”

“Meaning?” D.D. prodded.

“Ozzie’s speech and social skills were delayed. At eight, he showed some traits that were autistic in nature-he wouldn’t make eye contact, he sat and rocked for hours, while mumbling sounds only he understood.”

“You’re talking Rain Man?” D.D. clarified, making a note.

“That would be one example of an individual on the Autism Spectrum Disorder,” the nurse answered dryly. “Bear in mind, it is a spectrum, and you shouldn’t count on Hollywood for information. In Ozzie’s case, we determined the traits weren’t due to ASD, but were more consistent with the kind of self-soothing techniques learned by severely neglected children. Ozzie was a feral child.”

“So not Rain Man, but Tarzan?” Alex spoke up.

Danielle shot him a look.

“With a feral child,” she continued pointedly, “there’s no caretaker present to meet the child’s needs, disrupting the normal development cycle. The child cries. Nothing happens. The child stops crying. And talking, and bonding, and having any sense of belonging to a larger world. Mentally, the child atrophies, leading to delayed speech and socialization in Ozzie’s case.”

D.D. frowned. “I thought Ozzie’s mom died when he was three. He was home alone with the body, but surely a couple of weeks of abandonment doesn’t cause everything you just described.”

“According to the ME, Ozzie’s mother had died eight to ten weeks prior to discovery. During that time, it appears Ozzie survived by eating dry cereal, uncooked pasta, and anything else he could forage from the cupboards. He was also a good climber, which helped him get water from the sink, etc. In fact, social services thought his survival skills were particularly well developed for a three-year-old-meaning maybe Ozzie’s mother was sick for a bit before she died. Maybe, in fact, Ozzie had been taking care of himself for a long while, which would explain his feral traits.”

“So Ozzie got off to a rough start,” D.D. summarized. “But eventually, the proper authorities got involved and…”

“And he ping-ponged through seven or eight foster families before landing with the Harringtons.”

“Why the Harringtons?”

“Have to ask the state. Though,” Danielle corrected herself, “the parents, Denise and Patrick, both seemed very committed to him. Some foster families request special-needs kids. They have a background with special needs-either grew up with a special-needs sibling, or have occupational training. Some believe they can make a difference and want to try.”

“And Denise and Patrick?” D.D. prodded.

“I don’t think they had any idea what they were getting into,” the nurse answered bluntly. “But they appeared committed to helping Ozzie. They struck me as the religious type-doing God’s will here on earth.”

D.D. made a note. That sounded consistent with other things they’d learned about the happy couple.

“So Ozzie had this psychotic break. What does that mean?”

“He stripped off his clothes, then went around the house with a hammer, trashing the furniture while screaming death threats.”

“So he had a particularly violent temper tantrum?”

“Oh, if he’d caught someone, he would’ve hurt them,” Danielle said seriously. “A kid in such an elevated rage-state is having an out-of-body experience. You can’t reach them with words, with love, with logic. They’re gone, in orbit. Afterward, they’ll remember almost nothing of what they said or did, including that they bashed the brains out of the family dog, or tore apart their own favorite teddy bear. Hiding is the best policy. And in the aftermath, the entire family needs post-traumatic stress counseling, especially the siblings.”

D.D. made a note of that, too. Therapist for the Harrington family? Things can come out in therapy…

“After Ozzie’s admitted here, then what happens?”

Danielle shrugged. “We started him on aripiprazole, often used for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. That seemed to pull him together for about eight weeks, then he began to suffer from akathisia and we had to take him off.”

“Akathisia?”

“Ozzie complained that it felt like little people were inside his skin, crunching his bones. That’s akathisia. He also started suffering from perseverative thoughts.”

“Perseverative thoughts?” D.D.

“It’s like OCD, except with thinking. He’d get a notion in his head, I want a red car, and then he couldn’t get it back out. He’d spend six, seven hours saying over and over again, I want a red car, I want a red car, I want a red car. Now substitute red rum for red car, and you can see the danger of perseverative thoughts.”

D.D.’s eyes widened. “He’s going through all this, and he’s what, seven, eight years old?”

“He’s going through all this, and yes, he’s eight. And we’re seeing more kids like him all the time. Parents think the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is cancer. They’re wrong; the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is mental illness. Cancer, the docs have tools available. Mental illness in prepubescents… There are so few drugs we can use, then the kids develop a tolerance, and by age eight we’re out of options. They require a lifetime regimen of anti-psychotic medication, except we don’t have anything left. One week we get them stabilized. The next they plunge back into the abyss.”

“Is that what happened to Ozzie?” D.D. asked.

Danielle picked up the case file, read briskly. “We took Ozzie off the aripiprazole. At which time he claimed ghosts were appearing in the windows of his room and ordering him to kill people. So we put him back on a very low dosage of aripiprazole, trying to minimize the side effects while still making some attempt at regulating his brain chemistry. In the short term, we noticed a positive change in behavior.”

“In the short term,” D.D. repeated. “Meaning in the long term…?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

The nurse shook her head. “His parents discharged him. Against our advice. They had moved, gotten a new place. Denise said it was time to bring him home.”

Alex held up a hand. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ozzie reports ghosts are telling him to murder people, and they take him home?”

“It happens.”

D.D. leaned forward. “Tell me, Danielle. Forget the file for a second. It’s you and me, trying to understand what happened to one boy. What made you think Ozzie had hurt someone? Why were you so certain this story had an unhappy ending? Why did he leave?”

Danielle didn’t answer right away. Her jaw worked. Then, just as D.D. was starting to lose hope…

“Denise found a spiritual healer,” the nurse expelled curtly. “A shaman who promised to make Ozzie all better. No chemicals. No crazy drugs. He was going to heal Ozzie by bringing him into the light.”

“Say what?”

“Exactly. This is a boy with severe psychoses. And she’s gonna cure him by bringing him to ‘an expert in negative and positive energies’? We tried to get her to reconsider, but her mind was set. We hadn’t helped her son, so she’d found someone who could.”

“I don’t think it took,” Alex said.

“Why? Your turn. What happened?”

“We don’t know. But the family’s dead.”

“The family? The whole family?” Danielle’s face paled. The nurse blinked, looking shaky, then almost panic-stricken. In the next instant, she blinked again, and her features smoothed to glass. “The news,” she murmured. “The family from Dorchester. I caught a snippet, just on the radio. That was Ozzie?”

“That was someone,” D.D. corrected.

“I thought the father did it. That’s what the reporter implied.”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Danielle looked down at the table, shaking her head. “Goddammit. We told them. We warned Denise… You have to… Andrew Lightfoot. That’s who you need to see. You want to know what happened to Ozzie Harrington, go ask Andrew Lightfoot. That arrogant son of a bitch.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

At 10:37 p.m., Patrick Harrington died. The news pissed D.D. off. It probably didn’t do wonders for him either.

She was at her desk. Not returning Chip’s phone call. Not exploring fine dining with Alex. It was Friday night, and she was doing what she inevitably did with her evenings, working her way through a stack of reports, trying to make sense of what had happened one evening in Dorchester that had now left five dead.

Physical evidence aside, D.D. liked the kid for it. She didn’t know why. The troubled history, the psychotic episodes, his penchant for beating squirrels to death, then licking their blood off his hands. If she got to pick her perp, she was going with Ozzie Harrington. In fact, she’d had a brilliant flash of insight regarding Patrick Harrington’s last word. What if he hadn’t been saying “hussy,” as the ER nurse had assumed? What if he’d been saying “Ozzie” instead?

Not an accusation against his wife, but a last-gasp effort to name the guilty party.

It all sounded good to her, until she went over the crime scene again. Fact: Whoever delivered the killing blows was most likely taller than five six. Fact: Ozzie could hardly slash his own throat in his sister’s bedroom, then carry himself to the screened-in porch. Fact: According to psychiatric nurse Danielle Burton, Ozzie’s first psychotic break had involved overall destruction. The Harrington crime scene, on the other hand, was methodical in nature. This wasn’t a kid going berserk. This was someone systematically hunting down individual members of an entire family.

Which brought her back to Patrick Harrington. He was a do-gooder. Trying to move his family to a better neighborhood. Trying to save a troubled kid. Trying to succeed at a second marriage with a blended family. Then he lost his job. Then he got behind in his renovations. Then his adopted son started taking out neighborhood rodents. Maybe the pressure mounted, the growing chasm between what life was supposed to be and what it was actually becoming.

Can’t save the world? Then he’ll leave it-and take his innocent darlings with him.

D.D. could buy that logic. A grand jury could buy that logic. Except Phil and Alex had swept through the upper two floors of the Harringtons’ home, and as far as they were concerned, Patrick was only days away from completion. Following that revelation, they’d searched the Boston Globe, and sure enough, Patrick had placed a rental ad, which had started running just this morning. So the guy finally makes arrangements to rent out the top two floors of his triple-decker, then decides, Fuck it, I won’t even give it one weekend for a potential renter to materialize, I’ll just kill everyone tonight.

Impulsive crime, Alex kept telling her. Impulsive crime.

D.D. wasn’t sure about that. She’d just worked her way through eight different character testimonies, and each and every one of them agreed Patrick was a stand-up sort of guy. How did a man leap from steady father figure to impulsive family annihilator in five minutes or less?

Dammit, she wanted a pepperoni pizza.

Actually, she wanted sex. On her desk would do nicely. Just sweep the papers aside. Toss the files on the floor. Strip off her jeans, rip off Alex’s starched blue shirt, and go to town. He struck her as the kind of guy who would be both patient and intense. She’d like patient and intense. She’d like strong male fingers gripping her ass. She’d like the sensation of a hard-muscled body pounding into hers.

She’d like one moment when she was not Sergeant D.D. Warren, Supercop, but a woman instead.

Is this what a biological clock did to a female? Fried her brain cells, ruined her work ethic, made her stupid?

She was not getting married. She was not having children. She was not going to have sex in her office. So she might as well read the fucking case reports, because this was her life. This was what she had left. Five dead in Dorchester and no one alive to tell the tale.

She made it ten more minutes, then said Screw it and headed home. Time for a cold shower, reheated Chinese food, and a good night’s sleep.

D.D. was just pulling onto I-93 when her cell phone rang.

She grabbed it impatiently, barked out a greeting.

It was Phil; he didn’t sound good. “We got another one.”

“Another what?”

“Family. Dead. The male with a bullet between his eyes. Get over here, D.D. And bring your Vicks.”

D.D. was not a fan of vapor rub or scented cotton balls when working a crime scene. Some of the guys rubbed lemon juice on their hands, then cupped their palms over their noses. Others chewed half a pack of spearmint gum-swore that overwhelming their taste buds limited their olfactory senses.

D.D. was old-fashioned. She believed to effectively work a scene, you needed all your senses, including smell.

She regretted her high standards the second she walked through the door.

“What the fuck is that?” she snapped, one hand immediately covering her nose and mouth, the other swatting at a fly.

Alex Wilson was standing in the cramped family room. Rather heroically, he held out his handkerchief. Her eyes were watering, but she waved him off.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. She remained standing in the doorway, trying to get her bearings while controlling her gag reflex.

Place looked like a dump. The floor at her feet swam in garbage. She saw grease-stained cheeseburger wrappers, empty containers of McDonald’s fries, wads of tissues, and-heaven help her-a soiled diaper. Then the diaper moved and the world’s fattest cockroach streaked across the dirt-brown carpet before disappearing beneath an open pizza box dotted with green-colored pepperoni.

“Son of a bitch.” D.D. was back out the door, off the front steps, and over the edge of the property, where she willed herself not to puke in front of the crime-scene team or, heaven help her, the local news. Her eyes swam with tears. It took several gulping breaths of rain-swept August air to calm her stomach.

She had just straightened, turning toward the house to debate round two, when she spotted Bobby Dodge ducking beneath the yellow crime-scene tape at the end of the drive. Given a choice between tap-dancing with a cockroach or tangling with a Massachusetts State Police detective, she headed straight for the state cop. Who also happened to be her former lover. Who also now happened to be a happily married man.

“My crime scene,” D.D. stated by way of greeting.

“My apologies,” Bobby replied easily. They went too far back for him to ever be seriously insulted. D.D. found that annoying. The rain three hours ago had finally brought the August heat down into the eighties. It was still muggy, and Bobby had his sports jacket slung over his right arm, revealing a dark blue short-sleeved shirt embroidered with the gold insignia of the state police.

“Why are you here?” D.D. demanded.

“I was in the neighborhood?” He grinned at her. He was cute when he grinned and he knew it.

“Don’t you have a baby to tend to, or something like that?”

“Carina Lillian,” he said immediately, already fishing into his back pocket for the photo. “Nine pounds thirteen ounces. Isn’t she beautiful?”

He moved closer to one of the outdoor floodlights, holding the wallet-sized photo beneath the glow. D.D. registered fat red cheeks, narrow little eyes, and a distinctly pointed head.

“She looks just like you,” D.D. assured him.

“Vaginal birth,” he said proudly.

And thanks to those two words, D.D. thought, she would never have sex again. “Annabelle?” she asked, referring to Bobby’s wife.

“Doing great. Breast-feeding like a champ and getting Carina settled onto a nice schedule. Whole family’s great. And you?”

“I’m not breast-feeding like a champ.”

“Someone’s loss,” Bobby told her.

“Why are you at my crime scene?”

“We have an interest.”

“Ah, but I have jurisdiction.”

“Which is why I thought we could walk through it together.”

“Please-you were hoping I wasn’t here yet, and you could wander through at your leisure.”

“From plan A to plan B,” Bobby agreed.

“Tell me about your interest.”

“Marijuana,” he said.

“Dealing?”

“And importing, we believe.”

She frowned, studying him. “You think this is some kind of gangland hit?”

He shrugged. “I was hoping to walk through the scene to see if it feels like some kind of gangland hit.”

“Whole family, you know.”

“That’s what I was told.”

“ Lot of bodies for marijuana wars,” D.D. said. “Meth, okay. Heroin, sure. But the dope dealers…”

“Don’t like to get so bonged up, I know.” Inside joke. Cops. They had to have something to laugh about.

“All right,” D.D. conceded. “You can join the party. But I still think this is my scene.”

“Then you still have my apologies.”

D.D. made it all the way into the family room this time. Alex was no longer there, but had left an array of yellow evidence placards in his wake. D.D. held her hand over her nose and breathed shallowly through her mouth. Her gag reflex started to kick in, so she pinched her forearm as hard as she could. The pain overrode the smell. Lucky her.

Beside her, Bobby had gone quiet. He used to be a police sniper, and his ability to retreat, to be both in the moment and outside of the moment, had always appealed to D.D. Now she could feel the coiled tension in him. He was appalled but, like any good cop, focusing his rage.

In the middle of the cockroach-infested family room sat a brown-and-gold plaid couch. And in the middle of the brown-and-gold plaid couch sprawled a dead white male, duded up as a wannabe Rastafarian, complete with a rainbow knit hat. D.D. put his age in the late twenties, early thirties. He sported a dozen tremendously long dreadlocks, two large sightless brown eyes, and one small bullet hole, center of his forehead. His right arm was flung off the sofa, toward the floor. Beneath his dangling fingers, on top of a paper bag filled with God knows what, rested a snub-nosed handgun. Looked like a twenty-two to D.D.

“Not much blood,” Bobby commented.

“Probably soaked into the sofa,” D.D. muttered.

She noticed that a wadded-up tissue about three feet away was starting to move. She wondered how many rules of Crime Scene 101 she’d violate if she pulled out her Glock and went after whatever was under the tissue.

A cockroach crawled out, stopped for a second-she swore to God it was studying them-then went about its cockroach business, disappearing beneath another foul pile of refuse.

“I’m showering with bleach when I get home,” D.D. gritted out between clenched teeth.

“Eucalyptus oil,” Bobby informed her. “Pour it straight in the bath. Works every time.” He added primly, “And it makes for very soft skin.”

D.D. shook her head. She turned away from Mr. Dreadlocks and, feeling a bit hopeless about the whole damn thing, headed deeper into the house.

The woman had gone down in the kitchenette just off the family room. The knife, bearing a black curved handle that matched the set in the wooden block on the counter, was still lodged in her back. This hadn’t been a clean kill. The grime-covered floor was further soiled with red streak marks from the woman trying to crawl forward on her elbows. She’d made it about four inches before succumbing to her injury.

The kitchen stank worse than the family room. D.D. noted rotting food in the sink, sour milk on the table, and mold growing up one corner wall. She’d seen some things in her time. She’d heard some things in her time. She still didn’t know how anyone could live like this.

Off the kitchen was the lone bathroom. Garbage overflowed the shower stall, including gallon jugs filled with yellow liquid. The toilet was clogged and didn’t appear to be working. That made D.D. eye the gallon jugs all over again, wishing she didn’t know what she now knew.

Leaving the kitchen area, they made it to the hallway. A kid, looked sixteen, seventeen, was spread-eagle outside the first bedroom door. He appeared to have been shot twice. First time in the upper leg. Second time was the money shot-a neat round hole one inch above his left eye.

Inside the bedroom, Alex was bent over the body of an adolescent girl. She was wearing shorts and a tank top. It appeared she’d been sleeping on the twin-sized bed. She’d tossed back the cover sheet, maybe hearing a noise in the hall. She’d just made it to sitting when the bullet caught her above her right eye. She’d fallen to the side, one of her hands still fisting the stained pink sheet.

This room was cleaner, D.D. noted. Impossibly small and cramped, but neater. The girl had painted the walls pink with swirls of green and blue. Her sanctuary, D.D. thought, and noted a pile of paperback novels stacked in the corner.

“Third child’s behind me,” Alex spoke up.

“Third child?”

“On the floor.”

D.D. and Bobby sidestepped their way to the foot of the bed. Sure enough, in the three feet between the twin bed and the outside wall was a small cushion, and on top of the cushion was a much younger child, probably three or four. She had a tattered blanket clenched in her fingers and one thumb still popped in her mouth. She could’ve been sleeping, except for the blood on her left temple.

“Never woke up,” Alex said, his voice subdued, tense.

“So it would seem,” D.D. murmured. “Is that a dog bed? Is she sleeping on a dog bed?”

“Looks it,” Bobby said, his voice flat.

“And what the hell is going on with her arms and legs?” D.D. had managed to inch closer, noting a myriad of fresh red cuts and faded silvery scars crisscrossing the girl’s limbs. D.D. counted a dozen marks on one dirty leg alone. It looked as if someone had taken a razor to the child, and not just once.

“Please tell me someone had called child services,” she muttered. Then realized it didn’t matter. At least not anymore.

She and Bobby slid back out of this bedroom, made it around the teenage boy, and headed for the last room. It was only slightly larger than the first. A double bed was wedged against the wall. An old wooden cradle sat beside the bed.

Bobby stopped moving.

“I got it,” D.D. said. “I got it.”

She left him in the doorway, walked straight to the cradle, and looked in. She forced herself to take her time, to spend a good two to three minutes on it. She considered this a service to the dead. Don’t rush their last moments. Study them. Remember them. Honor them.

Then nail the son of a bitch who did it.

She returned to the doorway, her voice low, steadier than she would’ve thought. “Infant. Dead. Not shot. I’m guessing suffocated. There’s a pillow on its stomach.”

“Boy or girl?” Bobby asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Boy or girl?” he snarled.

“Girl. Come on, Bobby. Out of the house.”

He followed her, because in a residence this small, there wasn’t much choice. Every step they took risked trampling a piece of evidence or, worse, one of the bodies. Better to get out, into the humid summer night.

By mutual consent, they paused outside the front door. Took a second to breathe in deep gulps of heavy, moist air. The noise had built at the end of the drive. Neighbors, reporters, busybodies. Nothing like an August crime scene to bring out a block party.

D.D. was disgusted. Enraged. Disheartened.

Some nights, this job was too hard.

“Male first, then the mother and kids?” Bobby asked.

She shook her head. “No assumptions. Wait for the crime-scene geeks to sort it out. Did you recognize Alex Wilson inside?”

Bobby shook his head.

“He teaches crime-scene management at the Academy and is shadowing our unit for the month. Smart guy. By morning, he’ll have something to report.”

“Is he single?” Bobby asked her.

“Bite me.”

“You started it.”

She gave him a look. “How?”

“You called him smart. And you never think men are smart.”

“Well, I once thought you were smart, so obviously my batting average isn’t perfect.”

“I miss you, too,” he assured her.

They both fell silent, once more contemplating the scene.

“So you think the male did it?” Bobby asked.

“We didn’t see any drugs.”

“Not in the house,” Bobby agreed. “What do you say we check around back?”

They checked around back, found a small wooden shack that looked a bit like an outhouse. Inside, bales of marijuana were stacked floor to ceiling.

“Hello, drug dealer,” Bobby murmured.

“Goodbye, gangland hit,” D.D. corrected.

“How do you figure?”

“When was the last time one dealer offed another dealer, only to leave behind the first dealer’s stash? If this was about drugs, no way these bales would still be sitting here.”

“Maybe the rival couldn’t find them.”

She shot him a look, then glanced pointedly at her watch. “We found them-in less than sixty seconds, I might add.”

Bobby pursed his lips. “If not a gangland hit, then what?”

D.D. was troubled. “I don’t know,” she acknowledged.

They both fell silent. “Your crime scene,” Bobby said finally. “My apologies.”

She looked at him, his steady gray eyes, the solid shoulders she had once let herself cry on. “My regret,” she said.

They walked back around the house.

Bobby exited down the drive.

D.D. returned to the scene.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Lucy started screaming shortly after midnight. The desperate, high-pitched shriek sent four of us bolting down the hall. We made the mistake of pouring into her room as one unit, and the sight of so many adults sent her into a fresh paroxysm of terror.

She attacked the window, beating it with her fists. When the shatterproof glass held, she whirled around and slammed herself into the neighboring wall. Her head whipped back. She cried out again, before careening across the room and pounding into the next wall. She still wore the oversized top, and it flapped around her bony knees like a giant green cape.

I put up a hand, gesturing for everyone to hold still. Technically, I wasn’t even on the clock. I’d logged out hours ago, but had never made it home. I’d debriefed with Karen, visited with Greg, caught up on some paperwork. I’d worked for thirty-six of the past forty-eight hours. Now I was tired, frazzled from Lucy’s escape, and wrung out from the detectives’ visit. After they’d left, I’d made the mistake of looking up the Dorchester murders on the Internet. I could picture Ozzie inside that white-trimmed triple-decker. Patrick, Denise, Ozzie’s older brother and sister.

And that put my father’s voice back in my head. “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”

Two and half days now. Sixty hours and counting.

“She’s disassociating,” Cecille, an MC, murmured beside me.

She was right. Lucy’s dark eyes held a glassy sheen and she was striking out at things only she could see. Her nightmare had carried her to the wasteland between sleeping and waking. She was reacting to our presence, but not really processing. Kids like this were nearly impossible to wake, and it almost always ended badly.

Now Lucy flung herself against another wall and started pounding her head.

“Ativan,” Ed stated across the room. He was an older MC, heavyset, balding. He liked to cook and the kids loved him for it.

“No shit,” I muttered back.

“I can get her.” Ed was already on the balls of his feet, preparing his heft for action. He was going to rush her, try to grab her in a bear hug. The feeling of being enveloped soothed some kids, helped bring them down. I knew immediately Lucy wasn’t that kind of kid.

“No!” I grabbed his arm, stalling him. “Touch her and she’ll go nuts.”

“She’s already nuts. We gotta get her sedated before she takes everyone with her. It’s nighttime, Danielle. You know what it’s like at night.”

I knew, but forcefully grabbing a child as damaged as Lucy… I couldn’t stomach it.

“Everyone out,” I ordered. “Just out. We’re not doing any good.”

Lucy was back at the window, banging futilely against the glass. There was a hopelessness to her actions that hurt to watch. As if she knew the glass wouldn’t break, as if she knew she couldn’t escape, but she had to try.

How long had she banged on the freezer door? How many hours and days had she spent, forced into a fetal position, feeling her arms and legs burn from the cramping muscles?

These kids were tougher than us. These kids were braver than us. That’s why we loved them so.

We backed out slowly, easing into the lit hallway, where the domino effects of Lucy’s outburst were already in motion. Kids were off their mattresses, looking wild-eyed as Lucy launched into a fresh series of shrieks. Jimmy raced by, arms outstretched as he reacted to the stress by making like an airplane and taking flight. Jorge and Benny were hot on his heels.

Verbal kids were chattering away. Nonverbal kids were curling into balls. Suicidal Aimee stood in the doorway, looking as if the world were ending, but then, she’d known it would. She disappeared, shuffling back into the darkness of her room, and Cecille swiftly followed her.

Lucy began to wail. A thin, anguished sound that built, then fell off, then rose to a crescendo all over again.

“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop!” Jimmy yelled, roaring down the hallway, arms straight out, bathrobe flapping.

Lucy wailed louder.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Benny and Jorge took up the chant.

“Midnight matinee,” Ed boomed over the growing uproar. “To the movie room. Popcorn for all.”

He started to herd dazed and distraught children away from Lucy’s room, toward the common area. I joined suit, gathering as many kids as possible as I worked my way to the medicine dispensary. I tried to appear as if I were merely walking fast when, really, I wanted to bolt.

The wails continued, a long heartbreaking ladder that made the adults pale, even as we pasted reassuring smiles upon our faces.

I found myself picturing my father. He was standing in my doorway, framed by a halo of hallway light. “Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”

The pitch of his last words matched Lucy’s wail perfectly. Songs for the dying.

I wanted Lucy to shut up. I needed her voice out of my head.

I finally reached the dispensary and grabbed the Ativan. Two more kids went racing by. I snagged the first, then the second, got them to the movie room, where the MCs were getting it together now. A movie was on, audio blasting almost loud enough to drown out the ruckus down the hall.

Lucy screamed more frantically, and I bolted for the rest of my supplies. Having the proper sedative was only half the battle. The real problem would be administering it. Most kids, we talked through the process or even bribed. Lucy, however, didn’t have language skills.

She was a mystery to us, and she was a mystery now screaming so shrilly my head hurt. The windows should shatter. The building should implode from so much anguish.

“Oh Danny girl. My pretty, pretty Danny girl.”

I grabbed three pieces of cheese and a boombox and raced down the hall.

I walked straight into the room. Lucy was so beside herself, I figured it hardly mattered. She must’ve spotted me out of the corner of her eye, however, for she launched herself at me immediately, fingers curled into claws, gouging at my eyes.

She caught me in the shoulder. I staggered back, surprised, making a low, involuntary oomph under my breath.

I had an image of tangled brown hair, and dark, desperate eyes too big in her pale face. She launched herself again. Instinctively, I brought up the boombox and used it to block. She whacked it with her hand, hard enough to hurt. Her arm recoiled. She held her right hand against her chest and whimpered.

I hit Play, filling the room with a light piano mix. Music soothes the savage beast.

Not Lucy. She kicked at my shins.

I pedaled backwards, trying to put distance between us. She stalked me, up on the balls of her feet, gaze never leaving my face.

She wanted to gouge out my eyes, dig her fingers into my sockets and squeeze. I could see it on her face. Something had gone off inside of her. A switch thrown. A link with humanity further breaking. She wanted blood. She needed it.

I kept moving, careful to stay out of corners and remain within line of sight of the doorway.

I was stronger.

She was faster, a swirling blur of green shirt and pale, flashing limbs.

She lashed out with her foot again, catching me in the side of my knee. I stumbled and the boombox fell to the floor. She snatched it up and hurled it at the window. It bounced off the shatterproof glass, landing on the floor, where George Winston resiliently carried on.

Lucy didn’t seem to notice. I was already up, moving quickly toward the open doorway. She seemed to register the angle, instantly understanding my intent. She dashed left, cutting me off from the doorway, herding me deeper into the room. I got the mattress between us, thinking that might help. Then I started circling back around, always mindful of the doorway.

Lucy gave up on stalking, leaping across the mattress instead.

The direct attack caught me off guard. I barely got my hands up before she head-butted me in the stomach. The force of her attack carried us both back, slamming me into the window. She was wild now, clawing with her fingers, jabbing with her knees. I tried to catch her hands, make some attempt to subdue her.

She grabbed my arm with both of her hands and yanked, hard. The sudden force bent me forward, and she immediately leaped upon my back, grabbing fistfuls of my hair. Then she got one hand around my neck and squeezed.

I careened over to the next wall, backing into it solidly. She held, so I performed Greg’s favorite maneuver-I bent forward and flipped her over my head.

She landed on the floor hard, the wind knocked from her small chest. I saw her eyes widen, her mouth forming a soundless oh. She was stalled, but probably not for long. Quickly, before she could get back on her feet, I jammed a tablet of Ativan into the first piece of cheese and formed it into a messy ball. I rolled it to her, then stumbled toward the open doorway.

Ed was standing there, looking horrified.

“What the-”

“Shut up! She’s not done yet.”

True to my words, Lucy was already lurching to her feet. She swayed more now, her eyes gone flat, glassy. She staggered forward one step, then another. Her toe hit the cheese ball, sent it rolling across the carpet.

The motion caught her eye. She stilled, staring at it.

I held my breath, taking out the other two pieces of cheese and busily rolling them up. Think cat. That’s what soothes Lucy. Get her into a feline state of mind.

I rolled the second piece of cheese across the floor, shooting it like a marble into her line of sight. Lucy tracked that one, then jerked back to the first. I could see her body rearranging itself, instinctively taking on a more feline pose. I tossed the third piece toward her feet: That did the trick. She pounced, catching it in her now pawlike hands and batting it into the air.

“Where is the Ativan?” Ed was asking. “For heaven’s sake, Danielle-”

“Shut up!”

I didn’t want him distracting her. I needed her focused on the cheese. Play with the cute little cheese balls. Bat them around. Then gobble them up.

She made me work for it. Five minutes going on six, seven, eight. One ball started to disintegrate. I held my breath, waiting for the tablet to be revealed. But that ball contained only cheese. Lucy finally stopped, lapping little bits of cheddar off the carpet, then making her way to the next ball, then the next. One… two… three.

The cheese was consumed, the tablet downed. I finally sagged with relief, realizing for the first time that my legs were unsteady, and my arms felt like they were on fire. I had blood on the backs of my hands. More running down my cheek.

“Did you…? How did…?” Ed started again.

“It was in the cheese,” I murmured, tugging him back, trying to get him out of the doorway. “She just needs a few minutes. It’s over now, she’ll be out soon.”

“Jesus, Danielle, your face, your neck… You need medical attention.”

“Then it’s a good thing we work at a hospital!” I didn’t mean to snap at him, but couldn’t help myself. I was still wired, nerves all jangled. I wished Greg were here. I wished… I needed…

Then I thought of George Winston, still plugging away on the floor of Lucy’s room, and I wanted to laugh, then I wanted to cry, and I knew it was all too much.

I retreated to the bathroom, where I splashed water on my face and told myself I absolutely, positively did not still hear my father singing in my head.

When I returned to Lucy’s room fifteen minutes later, she was curled up in a corner, one arm extended above her head. She was moving her hand this way and that, watching the shadows her fingers made upon the wall. Her movements were lethargic; the sedative was bringing her down.

She’d sleep soon. I wondered what she’d see when she closed her eyes. I wondered how she found the strength to get up again.

I eased into her room this time, making my body small. I halted not far from her and sat cross-legged. Her head turned. Her jaw was slack, her cheeks had lost their angry flush.

She looked like what she was-a nine-year-old girl who’d been through too much.

I wanted to brush back the tangle of her hair, but I kept my hands at my side.

“It’s okay now,” I whispered. Probably more for my benefit than hers. “Rough night, but these things happen.”

She cocked her head as if listening to my words, then resumed studying the flow of her fingers, held high above her head.

“You’re safe here,” I told her. “We’re not going to hurt you. All we ask is the same consideration. No more attacks, okay, Lucy? We don’t hit here. We don’t bite, kick, or pull hair. It’s one of the only things we’ll ask of you. To treat us nicely. We’ll treat you nicely, too.”

“Bad man,” she chimed, her voice so soft, so girlish, it took me a second to register that she’d spoken.

“Lucy?”

“Bad man,” she said again.

I didn’t know what to say. Lucy was speaking. She had language skills.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “No bad men. You’re safe here.”

Lucy turned her head. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, the Ativan taking effect. She reached across and grabbed my hand. Her fingers were strong, her grip tighter than I would’ve thought, given the sedative.

“Bad man,” she said again, fierce this time, urgent, her eyes blazing into mine.

“It’s okay-” I tried again.

“No,” she said mournfully. “No.” She released my hand, curled up, and went to sleep.

I stayed beside her, watching over her thin, pale form.

“Bad men die. Life gets better,” I said, to both of us. Then I shivered.