Secrets to the Grave

72

“He did what?”

Anne felt all her blood drain to her feet. Willa Norwood, her CASA supervisor, stood in her hallway just inside the front door looking ridiculously festive in her colorful African dashiki and kufi hat.

“They think he set fire to the mental health center.”

“Oh my God,” Anne said. “I have to sit down.”

“It happened last night around midnight,” Willa said as they walked through the house, through the family room where Haley was curled up on the couch watching cartoons, and on to the kitchen.

“He set fire to his own wastebasket six months ago,” Anne said. “How could they let him get hold of matches again?”

“I don’t know. Apparently, the fire started in a room they use for storage,” Willa said. “Why it wasn’t locked, I don’t know. But Dennis has been caught messing around in there before.”

“Did someone see him?” Anne motioned to her supervisor to take a seat at the breakfast table, and dropped onto a chair herself.

“Another patient says Dennis came into his room and set fire to his wastebasket. This is really bad, Anne.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to think of somewhere to move him—”

“No,” Willa said.

The expression in the woman’s eyes made Anne’s heart thump in her chest.

“I mean it’s really bad. One of the other patients suffered third-degree burns when he tried to move the wastebasket.” She took a deep breath to deliver the worst of the news. “And an oxygen tank went through a wall and killed the woman in the next room.”

“Oh.”

The word came out on a breath that seemed to empty Anne’s lungs entirely, and she sat there, unable to move or speak or think, until her head swam.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Dennis had killed someone. Intentional or not, he was now the thing he claimed to admire most—a killer. “Where is he? I’ll have to—Maybe Franny can watch Haley—”

“We don’t know where he is, Anne,” Willa said. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where? He’s a twelve-year-old boy with no money and no home.”

“In all the confusion with the fire and the explosion and dealing with the wounded, nobody saw him leave. He’s missing.”

The hospital had an open campus. Anybody could come or go anytime they wanted. Even patients—unless they were on a locked ward—could walk out of the building and off the property, and occasionally did. Staff usually kept everything under control, but the scene would have been chaotic. Everyone would have been concerned with the fire and the casualties.

Dennis had killed a woman. He would be able to read about himself in the newspaper.

“This is my fault,” Anne said.

Willa reached across the table and put a hand on Anne’s arm. “No, it isn’t. You’ve done more for that child than anyone in his life.”

“I couldn’t get there to see him yesterday. I promised him I would be there and I would bring him something special if he did his writing assignment.”

“That doesn’t give him an excuse to set the hospital on fire.”

“Everybody in his life has let him down. I was trying to be the one person who wouldn’t do that to him.”

She shook her head and swore under breath. Her thoughts tumbled like kaleidoscope pieces. “What do we do now?”

“The sheriff’s office has been notified. They’re looking for him. I don’t think you should do anything.”

“Yeah.” Anne sighed. “I’ve done enough already, haven’t I? The court wanted to send him to a juvenile facility after the first incident. I begged for that not to happen.”

“You were trying to do what you thought was best for the child, Anne. That’s all you can do.”

“He’ll be going there now.”

“There’s no getting around that.”

“No.”

“You did the best you could, girl,” Willa said, patting her hand.

“I know,” Anne said. “I just wish it could have been good enough.”

Dennis had walked what seemed like most of the night before getting to his old house, careful not to let anybody see him. He was good at that. He used to roam all over town in the night, looking in people’s windows and watching them have sex and stuff. Once he had seen a man fucking a blow-up doll. That had been crazy.

He didn’t know what had happened to his family’s house or any of their stuff. With his mother dead and his father dead and himself stuck wherever the court put him, his stupid half-sisters had gone away to live with some relative who didn’t want anything to do with him.

Ha! They’d be surprised when they saw his picture in the paper.

To his shock, when Dennis had finally gotten to the house, practically everything had been ripped out of it—walls and floors and carpets. A big, huge trash bin was parked in the driveway, and it was full of junk like old drywall and linoleum and a broken toilet.

Dennis decided it didn’t really matter to him that all the Farman stuff was gone. They hadn’t had anything very nice anyway. And most of Dennis’s prized possessions had been in his backpack that the detectives had taken away from him. They had probably divvied up the good stuff, like the pocketknife he had stolen from his father’s dresser, and the cigarette lighter he had taken from his mother’s purse. Probably nobody had wanted the dried-up rattlesnake head.

He had spent a cold night in the house with no blankets and no bed, but he was an outlaw now, so he had to just get over it. Today he would steal some stuff and find a place to hide it. He had always heard that bums lived in Oakwoods Park. Maybe he would live there too.

When it got light out he walked to the convenience store hoping, hoping, hoping with his fingers crossed that the old raghead guy that owned the place wasn’t working. He had chased Dennis out of the store a million times for shoplifting stuff and trying to look at the dirty magazines.

That Paki bastard—that was what Dennis’s father had called the old man, so Dennis called him that too.

Luckily the person behind the counter was a big, fat, pimple-faced girl, and the store was really busy with people getting coffee and doughnuts and burritos and stuff, so she didn’t notice Dennis.

He cruised the aisles, lifting a little thing here and there and slipping them into the big pouch pocket on the front of his hooded sweatshirt. A Slim Jim, some Lifesavers, a tire gauge—just because he’d always wanted one.

He could have whatever he wanted now. He was calling all the shots. Nobody could tell him what to do—especially not that stupid twat Miss Navarre.

The television bolted to the wall behind the counter was showing the morning news. Dennis watched with one eye, waiting to see a picture of himself on the screen.

Some woman had been rescued after falling down a well. There were no new leads in the murder investigation of local artist Marissa Fordham. Some crazy-looking white-haired guy had gone missing. Finally the screen filled with a shot of the county mental health center with flames shooting out a window on the second floor.

Dennis inched closer to the counter and strained to hear. According to the reporter, the fire had been contained to the second floor and damages to the building were minimal. But—and here was the exciting part. Dennis almost shit his pants when he heard it—one person had gone to the hospital with third-degree burns, and one had been killed—KILLED!—when an oxygen tank had blown through a wall.

He had killed somebody! The excitement was almost too much for him. Holy shit! He had killed somebody! He was a killer!

To celebrate, he bought himself a breakfast burrito and a Mountain Dew with some of the money he had stolen from the nurse. Then, because he was feeling like such a hotshot killer and all, he decided he would buy himself some cigarettes.

“And a pack of Marlboros,” he said.

The pimple-faced girl looked down at him. “Get real and get lost.”

“They’re for my mom.”

“No, they’re not.”

“Yes, they are, and she’s a real bitch. You want me to go and get her? She’s in the car.”

The girl looked out the window like she was looking for his mother, then rolled her eyes and gave him the cigarettes and his change. Stupid cow.

Dennis took his stuff and left, not sitting down to eat his burrito until he was out of sight of the store.

He felt different now than he had twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes ago he had been just a kid. Now he was a killer. He felt bigger and stronger and meaner. He was going to show everybody just how bad he was. And he was going to start with that bitch Miss Navarre.