The Absence of Mercy

13

Thomas lay in bed listening to music. He kept the volume low so he could also hear the sounds of footsteps in the hall, should they approach. He didn’t think they would, though. Now that his parents had gone to bed, it was unlikely they would get back up to check on him. Still, he’d locked the door just in case. Saturday night. Sixteen years old. And here he was: trapped in his own bedroom. Which was total bullshit, by the way. He’d been going out on his own for three years now. He’d never wound up drunk in the bushes, and he didn’t use drugs. He hadn’t knocked up a girl yet, either, which was more than he could say for at least one of his friends. And he knew how to protect himself. So what was the big deal about going out all of a sudden?

He knew one thing: His dad had been totally freaked out about the corpse they’d found in the woods two months ago. He supposed his old man had gotten a good firsthand look, since he’d been in charge of the autopsy and everything. It was probably good for him—rattled him up a little bit. That was the problem with getting old: You let yourself get comfortable. Complacent. It was up at seven with a cup of coffee, off to work all day, come home and maybe crack a beer in the evening before falling asleep in front of the tube. And even that was livin’ large. It was pathetic, really.

Then again, he imagined his dad probably felt the same way when he was sixteen—just never thought he’d turn out like this: old and scared and worried about getting enough fiber in his diet so he wouldn’t get constipated. It wasn’t really his fault. He’d played by all the rules and had gotten predictably screwed over just the same. What’d he expect, really? People live their whole lives for someday down-the-road, and eventually there is no down-the-road left.

They’d been asleep for forty minutes now, his parents. He’d been keeping an eye on the clock. It still wasn’t too late to catch a little action, which was exactly what he planned to do. He’d snuck out before—hell, he’d been practically forced to in this house. In the old days he’d sometimes tiptoed down the stairs and right out the front door. These days, however, Alex made it impossible to keep quiet: wagging his tail and whacking it on railing posts; shaking his head; sniffing and sneezing; clomping around behind him with those big, clumsy paws. It was ridiculous.

Two summers ago he’d taken a rock climbing course, and that had changed his whole approach to the home-escape business. He’d learned how to use a rope and carabiner, how to make a quick harness with webbing, how to set up anchors, and how to rappel. He’d learned about ascending, as well—using a set of Prusik hitches to scamper back up a rope into one’s bedroom at the end of the night, for example. No more sneaking down the stairs. No more Alex, the Amazing Blunder Dog, to get him busted. It was truly a beautiful thing, and had worked like a charm on countless occasions.

Thomas went to his closet and retrieved a navy blue backpack. Inside was a fifty-foot climbing rope, a single carabiner, a nine-foot piece of one-inch webbing, a pair of leather gloves, and two short thin ropes that he’d tied into Prusiks, one slightly longer than the other. He tied one end of the climbing rope to his bed frame using a figure-of-eight follow-through, opened his bedroom window, and lowered the rest of the rope to the yard below. With the webbing, he fashioned himself a basic harness, and he clipped the carabiner in at the waist. He fastened the longer Prusik to the rope and clipped it into the carabiner for self-belay, then wrapped the rope itself three times around the ’biner and locked the device. He shoved the remaining unused Prusik into his jacket pocket to be used later for ascent, put on his gloves, and turned out the bedroom light. He took a moment to glance out through the front window at the street, ensuring that it was quiet and empty. Then he went to the side window and slid it open. Taking the rope in his right hand and placing it against his hip to serve as a break, and using his left hand to mind the self-belay Prusik, he stepped through the opening and quietly lowered himself to the yard two stories below, pausing for a moment at the top to slide the window closed as much as possible. Once he was on the ground, he unclipped himself from the rope and left his equipment in the grass for when he returned.

The street was quiet and empty as he walked down the sidewalk, but two and a half miles away Devon Coleman was throwing a party to kick off his parents’ recent departure for their weeklong vacation in Cancún. The night was cool, and a light mist of rain had begun to fall. But Thomas felt good. After all, he was young, smart, and as far as he could tell, pretty much invincible. His gait was brisk, and he hummed softly to himself as he walked along. In no time at all he was turning onto Overlook Drive and could hear the pumping rhythm of music coming from the well-lit house down the street.

14

As far as high school parties went, this one appeared to be a huge success, if the throng of teenagers already swarming the place when he arrived was any indication. Devon’s parents might have a different perspective when they returned home next week, but tonight that was probably the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Devon’s family lived in one of those big brick Neocolonial-style homes that had become so popular with the upper middle class these days. The place was 5,600 square feet, Devon had once told him—a monster—and as the street name implied, it was perched atop a hill along with another twenty-some similar-looking dwellings, all with a commanding view of Main Street and most of western Steubenville. Tonight the place was pretty well packed.

Last week Devon had mentioned that since he had the house to himself, he wanted to have a few people over this weekend. Thomas had told him he would come, not realizing his dad was going to impose a mandatory lockdown for the rest of the year. He’d expected maybe twenty or thirty people, but as was the case with most high school parties, over the remainder of the week word traveled with the speed and dissemination of a brushfire in high wind. Judging from the masses assembled on the front lawn alone, Thomas guessed that at least half of the entire damn high school had decided to turn up. He shook his head. Just a few of Devon’s closest friends, my ass. Then again, with the combination of an adult-free party and plenty of free booze, what’d he expect?

He saw Bret Graham standing near the front door, plastic beer cup in hand, talking with Cynthia Castleberry. Bret, who wrestled in the 152-pound weight class just above Thomas during the winter season, had asked the attractive but somewhat standoffish varsity soccer starter out twice that year, and had been turned down both times—mostly because she’d been going steady with the same guy since freshman year. If nothing else, though, Bret could be pretty damn determined when he set his sights on something.

“Tommy boy, you finally decided to show up,” Bret greeted him as Thomas ascended the stairs leading to the front door.

“Nobody told me you were gonna be here, Graham,” he replied. “You bothering the ladies already?”

Bret feigned offense. “Take no notice of this one,” he told Cynthia. “He’s just upset because I remind him of what a substandard athlete he really is.”

“That’s right,” Thomas countered. “If beer bong ever makes it to the Olympics, you’re all set.” He turned to Cynthia. “You planning on driving this guy home, or should I call his grandmother to come pick him up again?”

She laughed. Her right hand, which had self-consciously abandoned its subtle but strategic caress of Bret’s upper arm when Thomas arrived, now returned to its previous position. “I’ll keep an eye on him, Thomas.”

“Then he’s in good hands and I’ll tell the grandmother she can stand down for the evening.”

“Screw you, Stevenson,” Bret said with an exaggerated bow, holding his arm out to gesture Thomas through the open front door.

Thomas smiled and squeezed past a small congregation of six or seven freshmen standing in the front hall. Dave Kendricks spotted his entrance and motioned to him from across the living room, where he stood with Eileen Dickenson, Monica Dressler, Lynn Montague, and Kent Savage.

“The man of the hour has arrived,” Dave announced, handing Thomas a beer. “Ladies, please wait for him to remove his jacket before ravaging him in your usual manner.”

All three of the females in the group colored slightly and glanced away. At six foot one and 145 pounds, Thomas was lean but well muscled, the confident, agile movements of his body an amalgamation of power and grace. His brown hair, cropped short in anticipation of summer, was just a few shades lighter than the deep tan of his skin, and his green eyes had a calming, almost mesmerizing effect that made them hard to look away from once they’d set themselves upon you. In a way, he was almost too good-looking, and he actually dated far less than some of his physically flawed counterparts, as if prospective girlfriends judged themselves more harshly in his presence, and had not yet developed the self-confidence to push on nonetheless.

“Eileen here was just telling me that she didn’t think you’d make it,” Dave advised him. “Seems the general consensus is that you’re too good for the rest of us lowly peasants.”

“I didn’t say that,” Eileen protested. She dared a quick glance up at Thomas, then looked away, fiddling with the cup in her hand. “I didn’t say that,” she repeated.

“Well, it was something of the sort.” Dave frowned, his brow wrinkling in concentration. “I mean, I don’t remember your exact words…”

“I do,” Kent Savage piped in. “She said, ‘You think Thomas’ll show up? I can’t wait to get him drunk and jump his bones.’”

Eileen blushed a deep crimson. “I definitely didn’t say that.” She shook her head in irritation and embarrassment. “I’m out of here,” she told them, and walked off toward the kitchen.

Lynn Montague headed after her, turning back quickly to admonish the two boys. “You two are such assholes. Do you know that? Like, grow up.”

“What? What did I say?” Dave asked, pursuing the girls with a slightly unsteady gait. Kent looked at the two remaining individuals, considering them seriously for a moment. Then his face brightened into a broad smile, the decision made. “More drinks!” he announced, arms raised triumphantly to either side, and he marched off through the crowd like a man on a mission.

Thomas and Monica watched him go. They were quiet for a moment within their own corner of the room as the din from the party continued unabated.

“I don’t think more drinks are the answer,” Thomas commented, placing his own beverage on the fireplace mantel.

Monica stared down into the recesses of her plastic cup. “She didn’t say any of that,” she told him quietly. “Just so you know.”

“Oh, I make it a practice never to believe anything either one of those intellectual midgets tells me,” Thomas assured her.

Monica nodded, her eyes still focused on her drink.

“So, how’s it going in Tulley’s class?” Thomas asked. “Is AP Chemistry as hard as people say?”

“It’s not that bad. Mostly balancing equations and knowing how things react with one another.”

“Sounds intimidating to me. My dad wants me to take it next year, but I don’t know.”

She looked up at him. “You’re smart. You could do it, no problem.”

“I’m smart enough to get by,” he said, “but I have to work at my classes. You’re brilliant in a way that I’ll never be. There’s a big difference.”

He smiled down at her, and she reflexively smiled back, then shifted her stance as she tried to think of something self-deprecating to say. Such compliments often made her uncomfortable—especially coming from one of her classmates. Since the first grade, she’d never gotten anything less than an A in her classes. The mere fact that she was now studying college-level material as a sophomore in high school was unlikely to put a dent in that perfect record. She was destined to become valedictorian without even breaking a sweat. But instead of being proud of her abilities, she often imagined them as an algae-covered chain around her neck, holding her at the bottom of the ocean while on the surface her peers enjoyed the ease and social camaraderie of normality. She wondered whether Thomas, with his natural athleticism and broad popularity, ever felt the same. Somehow, she doubted it.

“I’m a good test taker,” she finally replied. “It’s no big deal.”

“No, you’re smart. Very smart,” he told her. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

When she shook her head he placed a hand on her shoulder to emphasize his point. The touch made her feel a little dizzy, and she had to make a deliberate effort to steady her breathing.

“Don’t shake your head like what I’m telling you isn’t true, Dressler,” he said. “And never apologize for what you are. The only sane choice is to embrace it.”

She looked up at him, thinking that perhaps he was just making fun of her, but his face was solemn and earnest. “Is that what you do?” she asked.

He studied her for a moment. “I don’t have what you have. But if I did—hell yes, I’d embrace it. I mean”—he turned his head to either side to indicate the people milling around them—“look at these morons. We all envy you.”

“Hmmm,” she responded, grinning.

Thomas removed his hand from her shoulder, and she did her best not to ask him to put it back. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got to go find the man of the house, lest he think I didn’t show up to his lame-ass party.”

She nodded, raising the cup to her lips.

“I’ll catch you later,” Thomas told her. He turned and maneuvered his way slowly through the crowd in the direction of the kitchen, figuring he’d probably find Devon tending bar or replenishing supplies of ice, beverages, and plastic cups for the masses. But when he got there and scanned the room there was no sign of him—although there should’ve been. People were making an absolute mess of the place. Someone had decided, in fact, to start cooking fajitas. The house reeked of booze, Tabasco sauce, and freshly chopped onions.

Thomas moved down the hall and checked Devon’s room. The bed was mounded with jackets, but the room was otherwise empty. The door to the adjacent bathroom was shut, and he rapped lightly with his knuckles. “Yo, Devon. You in there, dude?”

“Room’s occupied!” a female voice called back. In a quieter, more soothing tone the same voice was telling someone, “It’s okay, honey. I’ve got your hair. Go ahead and throw up if you need to.”

Oh, man, Thomas thought, turning around and heading for the kitchen once again. In the hallway, he saw Ernie Samper.

“Hey, Ernie,” he said. “You seen Devon?”

“What?” Ernie looked a little stoned.

“Devon. You seen him?”

“No, I don’ know, man. You seen him?”

“If I’d seen him, I wouldn’t be asking you now, would I?”

“Oh, that’s a good point, man.” It was a small miracle the guy was still standing. Thomas started to move past him down the hall, but Ernie called after him. “Hey, Thomas. You know, I think he might be out back. I saw him smacking some golf balls or something out there.”

“Finally, some information I can use,” Thomas called back, and proceeded toward the rear of the house.

“Hey, bro!” Ernie hollered after him. “Grab me a drink while you’re back there, would ya?”

Thomas reached the door leading out onto the back porch and stepped outside. In slightly more hospitable conditions, the porch would’ve been considered prime real estate at a party like this, and therefore full of people. Tonight it had been drizzling intermittently, however, and the uncovered deck was vacant. He looked around briefly and had turned to head back inside when he heard a noise—a cracking sound, like a hammer striking plastic—coming from the backyard below. He walked to the railing and looked down into the yard. Devon was standing in the grass with a golf driver in his hands, the shaft of the club resting against his right shoulder. Scattered at his feet were several balls. Two metal buckets stood half empty beside him. At the sound of Thomas’s footsteps on the porch above him, he looked up. “Tommy boy, is that you?”

”Yeah, it’s me. What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” Devon smiled up at him, shielding his eyes against the glare of the porch light. “I’m practicing. Grab yourself a club out of the bag there and come hit a few.”

Thomas walked down the short set of steps and joined him on the lawn. His friend’s hair was soaked and dripping, and Devon raked it back from his face absently as Thomas selected a driver from the bag, set one of the balls on a tee, and lined up his club. The house, prestigiously situated atop the very hill that provided the residents of Overlook Drive that much-coveted overlook experience, gave way to a backyard that sloped sharply down and away. About two hundred yards to the south, the open grass ended where a thick patch of woods began. Thomas pulled the driver up and back, locked his eyes on his target, and swung hard. He was much more used to swinging a baseball bat than a golf club, and although his stroke connected soundly, the small white orb sliced wickedly to the left and landed out of sight deep in the spread of trees below them.

“Nice slice, T,” Devon remarked. He removed a tee from his right pocket, planted it into the soft earth, squared his shoulders, and swung with the practiced form of someone who may well have spent more than a few nights in this very spot pounding balls deep into his own backyard and the forest beyond. Thomas watched the ball sail through the night sky. It seemed to hang in the darkness for longer than simple physics and the gravitational pull of the earth should allow, and then disappeared into the canopy of foliage, whooshing through leaves and cracking into a few branches along the way. About a half mile south of them, a stretch of Main Street was illuminated in the pale yellow cast of streetlights. The distant buzz of passing motorists ascended the hill and reached their ears like excited children returning from play.

“You ever pound one all the way out to Main Street?” he asked.

“Nah,” Devon said. “That sucker’s about a thousand yards from here. Tiger Woods couldn’t hit one out to Main Street from this place. But I do try.”

To illustrate, he set up another ball and smashed it deep into the woods. Thomas hit another one himself, although this time he got on top of the ball a little too much and punched it straight and low along the ground. It hit a tree trunk at the far end of the yard and bounced halfway back to them.

“You need some practice, my friend,” Devon observed.

“Indeed.”

The two of them spent the next fifteen minutes hitting balls into the woods. The rain had stopped, at least for the time being, and the only sounds were the thumping music and laughter coming from the house behind them and the crack of the club heads striking dimpled plastic.

“You know your house is getting totally trashed right now, don’t you?” Thomas asked after a while.

Devon only shrugged. “Wouldn’t be a good party unless it did.”

“You ever worry about your neighbors ratting you out to your folks when they return?”

“Hey, it’s one of the costs of them going on vacation,” he said. “My folks know there’s gonna be a party while they’re gone. Besides, this year I’ve got a new arrangement with the neighbors.”

“What’s that?” Thomas teed up another ball and sliced it deep into the canopy below them. He was getting better at it already—just had to straighten out his swing a little, that was all.

“It’s understood that nobody here drives home drunk, and the neighbors pretty much leave us alone—maybe turn the volume on their TV up a little bit tonight if the music gets too loud.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you manage to hold up your end of the bargain?”

“Everyone comes and leaves either on foot or by cab. No exceptions. I presume, by the way, that your cheap ass traveled by foot.”

“I like to walk.”

“Right. Anyway, you know Frank Dashel, who lives four houses down from me?”

“No.”

“Well, he operates a tow truck company. He’s got one of his rigs sitting in his driveway tonight, all set to haul off any miscellaneous parked vehicles within a half-mile radius. Either you park in your own driveway or you get towed tonight. All the neighbors have been duly notified.” He dug into his pocket for another tee. “Actually, they love the idea.”

“So, you’ve got your own hired gun.”

“I didn’t have to hire him. Towing teenagers’ cars is a lucrative endeavor. Nobody wants to get the parents involved, everyone wants their ride back, and best of all, they almost always pay cash.”

“Any guilt about having your friends’ cars towed?” Thomas asked.

“Very few people actually get towed,” he said. “They know the rules. No one drives home drunk, and that way everyone makes it home alive. If they do end up getting towed, it’s the direct consequence of a personal choice. I really have nothing to do with it.”

“Your conscience is clean then.”

“It’s the only way to go.”

“Any visits from the cops?” he asked.

“Mike Stoddard lives in that ugly blue house across the street. Sheriff’s deputy. We also have an understanding.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.” Thomas pegged another grounder across the grass.

“Nice shot, Jack Nicklaus.”

“Who?”

Devon shook his head. “Dude, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I’m just misunderstood, that’s all. Most geniuses are.”

“And a few morons, as well, I’ve noticed.”

Thomas shook his head. For a while longer, they continued to take turns driving golf balls into the darkness.

“So your parents are pretty cool about you throwing a party like this while they’re away?” Thomas asked. He was thinking about his own rather uptight father and how he’d probably have a massive coronary if his son ever invited half of the high school student body to their house for booze and fajitas, the evening culminating in a line of kids puking into the toilet.

“Of course not,” Devon said. “But honestly, T, what are they gonna do?”

“I don’t know. Ground you? Beat you to within an inch of your life?”

Devon shook his head. “Corporal punishment came to a screeching halt last year when I finally became big enough to fight back—and did.”

“I was only kidding,” Thomas remarked.

“Well, I’m not.” Thwack! Devon punched another shot into the evening sky and marked its progress until it disappeared into the vegetation.

“You don’t care much for your parents, do you?” Thomas asked.

“No, I don’t,” Devon replied.

“Why is that?”

Devon raked his hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. “The simplest reason, I suppose,” he began, “is that I no longer respect them.”

Thomas rested his club against one of the porch’s support beams and sat down on the steps. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean,” Devon said, sitting next to him and looking out into the yard, “is that they have lost my respect. Especially my dad. I used to really look up to him, you know? Until I was about thirteen I used to think he was the total bomb. Smart guy, surgeon, hell of a golfer. I used to practically worship the ground he walked on.”

“So, what happened?”

“I guess I just started thinking for myself more. Questioning things. Challenging their point of view—and my own.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen.”

“Right. But you expect the people you admire to listen to you, to entertain the possibility that perhaps there’s more than one way to look at the world.”

Thomas shook his head. “You even discuss this stuff with your parents? Man, I gave up on mine a long time ago.”

“But that’s not the way it should be, T,” he said. “I mean, look at it this way: They’ve lived a lot longer than we have, right? They know the world is a complex place. So why shouldn’t they listen to us when we come to them for guidance, instead of telling us how we should be thinking, what we should be doing. It seems like the longer they live, the more closed-minded they become. They’re de-evolving, for Christ’s sake, and they want to take us along for the ride.” He used his club to tap mud from the sole of his left shoe. “We’re not looking for an instruction manual on the steps we should be taking to become just like them—that’s exactly what we’re afraid of. I mean, don’t they get that?”

“I guess not,” Thomas replied. He was thinking about his own battle with his father earlier that evening—how their relationship had turned into less of a collaborative bond over the years and more of an enforcement of rules and regulations, his father’s decree being: These are the things I am afraid of, and therefore the following restrictions on your life will apply. “My mother understands me to some degree, but I don’t think my father has any idea who I really am.”

“And once you realize that your parents aren’t in a position to help you because they’ve stopped questioning things a long time ago, then you’re pretty much on your own,” Devon continued. “It’s intellectual abandonment. Are you telling me I shouldn’t be pissed-off about that?”

Thomas held up a hand. “Hey, I’m not telling you anything. Except that you sound like you’re in serious need of a beer.”

“Nah, I stopped drinking,” Devon said. “It was making me stupid. There comes a point when it’s easier to get drunk than to get mad. That’s a dangerous place, T. When it’s all you have, it’s important to hang on to your anger.”

“Oh yeah? Then why the big party?” Thomas pointed a thumb in the direction of the house full of drunken teenagers directly behind them.

“Oh, that.” Devon cast a dispassionate glance up the steps toward the back door. “It’ll provide a topic of conversation for when my folks get home. I have a responsibility to wake them up if I can. Lord knows I keep trying.”

They sat in silence at the foot of the steps, listening to Axl Rose belting out “Paradise City”—an oldy-but-goody—from the living room speakers just inside. Devon returned the clubs to the golf bag, clapped his friend on the back, and started up the steps toward the back door. “Plus,” he said, “I have to admit I enjoy the background noise.”

Thomas rose from his own seated position and ascended the steps behind him.

15

The party started breaking up around 1:30 A.M. Twenty minutes after Devon placed a call to the cab company, a line of checkered taxis were assembled in front of the house. A number of people called their parents for rides home, and the kids who were only mildly intoxicated set out on foot. A few people lingered—they always do—but by 2 A.M. most of the crowd had dispersed. Thomas, himself, had set out on foot around 1:45. He had a long walk and needed to save some of his energy for shimmying back up the rope into his bedroom.

Bret Graham bid good night to Cynthia Castleberry. Her hand touched his arm one last time, and he placed a delicate kiss on her right cheek. “Call me,” he said, placing a slip of paper with his phone number into her soft palm, and he thought this time she would.

Devon, who was ready for the place to clear out, began cleaning up the kitchen. That was enough to make even the die-hard partiers realize the time had come for them to go. The art of attending a good party, of course, was to linger right up until the cleanup begins, and then to get the hell out of there before you wound up with a garbage bag in your hands. There was a fine line between being part of the problem and being part of the solution, and it was important to determine which side of the line you wanted to end up on at 2 A.M. Most people picked the former.

Brian Fowler and Monica Dressler were among the last people to set out on foot for home. They exited the community, turned right, and continued along Powells Lane to the north, talking and joking about the party. Ernie Samper had been totally shit-faced by the end of the evening and wound up giving a fairly decent reenactment of Jim Carrey’s karaoke performance of “Somebody to Love” from The Cable Guy. Toward the end of the song, Ernie had been pelted in the side of the head with a spinach-dip-laden cracker, which had started a brief but rather messy food fight. Around that time, Devon had started calling for the cabs.

“Don’t yoou want somebody to loovvve?” Monica now sang, as Brian gesticulated spastically to the imaginary music.

“Yeah, baby. Summer of luuuvvvv!” he proclaimed into the night. Somewhere nearby, a dog began to howl, which sent them both pealing off into laughter.

“Watch out for that spinach dip,” Monica warned.

“Incoming!” Brian yelled. He ducked his head and ran forward along the street, crouched at the waist. Monica laughed. The sound came out as a powerful snort, and she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Captain Pig at six o’clock, Commander!” Brian snapped to attention, saluting an imaginary officer.

“Shut up,” Monica admonished him, trying to sound stern. She couldn’t hold it together, though, and another snort escaped her.

“The swine approaches, Commander!” Brian said. “Shall we deploy the slop-guns?”

“You’d better shut up, Fowler,” she said, and this time he did. One shouldn’t call a girl a pig more than twice, even in jest. At sixteen, he didn’t know much about women, but he did know that. He waited for her to catch up.

To change the subject, he said: “Hey, have you gotten started on your paper for Ms. Bradford’s class, yet?” They shared English together and had a book report due next Thursday. Brian hadn’t begun yet, and if his usual and customary strategy was to be followed, he probably wouldn’t begin the project until late Wednesday evening. An Incredibly Insightful and Comprehensively Developed Book Report on J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, he planned to call it—or something of the sort. He paused for a moment: Catcher in the Rye? Or was it The Catcher in the Rye? He couldn’t remember, but a small detail like that might sink him if he wasn’t careful. He’d make that his first research question.

“…tomorrow.”

“What was that?” he asked.

“I said I’ve already put together an outline. I’m planning on working on the report tomorrow.”

Brian was impressed. “You made an outline?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “It’s part of the process. It helps me organize my thoughts. How do you write a paper?”

Wow, he thought. Girls are so weird. Nevertheless, he considered her question carefully for a moment. Develop a process? Organize your thoughts? That sounded like a lot of work. It might even take more than one night to complete. Maybe even several! No, no—that wasn’t for him. “How do you write a paper?” she’d asked. The answer had always seemed so obvious to him.

“I just fuel up on Mountain Dew and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” he responded seriously, to which Monica smiled, shaking her head.

They crossed the bridge over Route 22 on foot and followed the road to the left onto Ross Ridge Road. Here the lane cut through heavy foliage, and trees hugged the pavement closely on both sides. Three hundred yards ahead, a black mailbox stood sentry at the entrance to a dirt driveway leading to Brian’s house. They stopped here for a few more minutes to talk, then Brian proceeded down the driveway and Monica continued on along Ross Ridge. Her family lived in a cluster of homes off Bluck Drive, less than a half mile ahead.

She walked along, listening to the soft sound of her tennis shoes slapping and scuffing themselves across the wet asphalt. She thought of the party, of the swarm of teenagers spilling out onto the front lawn at the end of the night, of the sense of isolation she sometimes experienced even while among her friends, of the feel of Thomas’s hand on her shoulder and the way her heartbeat had accelerated at his touch. The rain had stopped falling at least an hour ago, and the sky had cleared, revealing the depth of space above her. She looked up into the heavens, realizing that what she was seeing were not the stars themselves exactly, but merely the arrival of light from those celestial bodies after a long journey through time and space. The vastness of that distance made the light of her own brief existence seem almost inconsequential.

She stopped walking in order to push herself up onto her tiptoes and stretch her arms out toward the sky, watching the shimmer of starlight as it played through her fingers like tiny grains of sand. That was when she heard a step. One single step, and then nothing.

She listened.

Silence played out as if it had something to hide.

A single step that had not been her own. It had been faint, but she’d heard it. She stood there quietly, listening now more intently to the night sounds all around her.

She was cautious now, holding her emotions at bay. She did not run. She did not look around. She pretended that she hadn’t heard, and began to walk again—just a little faster. Up ahead, she could see light cresting the hill, and she knew that on the far side of that hill was the community in which she lived. It lay maybe two hundred yards ahead. It was a tangible thing.

She stopped again, quickly. This time there were two steps before the silence. She heard them distinctly. Step-step. Silence.

She stood there in the middle of the street and tried to think. She told herself to remain calm. But all she could think about was the sound of those stealthy footsteps—step-step, silence—and what it meant. Someone was following her. Stalking her. They didn’t want to be heard, but they were taking two steps for her one, trying to close the distance.

Should I run?

She could feel the adrenaline pumping through her, but her legs felt wobbly and she didn’t trust them to do what needed to be done.

Should I scream?

It was almost 3 A.M., and the night was very quiet. Her scream would be heard. But how much time would pass before help arrived? Five, maybe ten minutes? That would be too late. And if she screamed now, she thought that whoever was following her would waste no time in trying to overtake her. In a way, she would be beckoning him to either cut loose or finish the job. Some primitive instinct told her that he would not cut loose. Not now. He was too close. She could feel it.

Step-step, silence.

There it was again. But where was it coming from? She glanced behind herself into the darkness, along the route she had just traveled. The road seemed to disappear into the forest on either side, as if it were being swallowed whole. She could see perhaps sixty feet in that direction. Beyond that was blackness. She looked at the trees to her left and right—tried to look past them into the shadows—but the foliage was thick here and it was impossible to see beyond the edge of the woods. Besides, the footsteps were not coming from the woods; she was certain of that. The sound they had made was flat and crisp, like the sound of her own footsteps on the asphalt. Whoever accompanied her tonight was either lurking in the shadows of the road behind her, or…

Step-step-step. Again, silence.

Her follower seemed less concerned now about being heard, which meant it wasn’t crucial for him to close the distance unnoticed. Because he had her now. He was close enough. And even if she ran, he must feel certain that he could overtake her. But the crest of the hill was so close now: a hundred yards, if that. Maybe he was underestimating her. She could run fast if she needed to. She knew she could. Her legs no longer felt wobbly and untrustworthy; they felt strong and prepared for whatever was to come next. But it was either now or never. She had a choice to make. If she faltered, it might be too late. She paused only long enough to draw in a deep breath and set her sights on the horizon the road ahead of her made as it topped the small hill. If she could reach that, she would stand a good chance of making it the rest of the way. She could hear the drum of her heartbeat strong and steady as it coursed through the frame of her young body. I am strong. I can do this, she thought to herself. Then she ran.

She ran with a dogged intensity of purpose—her legs pumping up and down, propelling her forward with all the force she could muster. She covered half of the remaining distance between her initial position and the top of the hill in perhaps eight seconds. She listened as she ran, anticipating the sound of pursuit, but behind her there was only silence. She had time to think that perhaps there was no one there at all, that the footsteps she’d heard had been nothing more than the product of an overactive imagination combined with a touch of alcohol. The image of her hauling ass up the hill at top speed, running only from her own imagination, made her feel stupid and more than a little embarrassed. She allowed herself to slow slightly, listening more intently for any more footsteps except her own. There were none. She stopped and looked back. Most of the road was still shrouded in shadows. Nothing moved or uttered a sound. Even the insects had been startled into silence by her unexpected fifty-yard dash. She placed her hands on her hips, breathing heavily, and she let out an uneasy laugh. I’m such a moron, she thought.

Then she heard it again: footsteps, coming quickly—running this time! They grew distinctly louder, and still she could detect no movement along the roadway behind her. Doesn’t matter, she told herself. Get the hell out of here! She once again turned to run.

That was when he crested the hill ahead of her, blocking off her only route of escape—her only plan. The distance between them was only fifty yards, and he closed it quickly. To her credit, she wasted no time, for there was really none to waste. She followed the only course of action that occurred to her as she turned left and barreled into the woods like a panicked animal. The branches slashed at her face and the bramble tore through the legs of her pants, leaving thin red marks on her ankles. She cut a jagged path through the scrub, trying desperately to lose him.

For a moment, the tactic seemed to be working, for she could hear him floundering behind her as he tried to push his way through the thorny undergrowth. A single thought raced around in circles inside her head as if it were a dog on a track: If I can put some distance between us, I can find a place to hide! I can lie low and quiet in the darkness! Cover myself with leaves! He’ll run right by me! If I can put some distance between us, I can find a place to hide—lie low and quiet in the darkness! Cover myself with leaves! He’ll run right by me! Low and quiet… cover myself with leaves… distance between us… run right by me…

As she ran, her breath slid in and out of her chest in terrified, ragged waves. Her legs shot out into the night, feet scrambling for purchase on the wet leaves and uneven terrain.

(… a place to hide… low and quiet in the darkness… run right by me…)

And she could make it! She could!! Just a little more distance was all she needed. But where was he?!

She might have made it if she hadn’t looked back—if she’d concentrated only on what was ahead of her. But she simply couldn’t help it. Not knowing whether he was gaining on her or whether she had lost him already was more than her panicked mind could cope with. And so she turned her head quickly to look, saw that he was still behind her—much closer than she’d hoped!—and the vision of him barreling through the woods after her sent a jolt of extra adrenaline into her bloodstream like a white-hot bullet. She spun her head around and shot forward, propelling herself over a fallen log, her sneakered feet barely touching the ground. But the act of glancing behind her had momentarily taken her eyes off what was in front of her, and as her left foot touched the earth, she ran directly into a stiff, leafless branch that jutted out at her at neck level.

She took the limb in the throat—its broken, slightly blunted end catching her directly in the windpipe. She heard the sound of her own teeth clicking neatly shut, as if she’d just chomped into a crisp stick of celery, and for a full second the world became completely hushed around her. The muffled slug of her heart beat twice in her ears, and she had time to wonder—even then—whether he was still there, tearing through the brush directly behind her. Then the pain in her throat rose up to meet her like magma erupting from the earth. She tried to draw in a breath but found that she was incapable even of that, and she fell gracelessly to her knees as if her lower legs had disintegrated in mid-stride. Her outstretched hands met the soft earth as she pitched forward, and a moment later she was crawling along a floor of muck and leaves and thorny brush that clawed at her face, arms, and legs. All at once, her breath returned. She greedily sucked in air through her bruised windpipe, emitting a high-pitched whooping noise that sounded to her like a scream in reverse. She drew in another breath and another, each accompanied by that same eerie shriek. She was no longer able to control the ragged, terrified sobs that poured forth from her body like heavily bleeding wounds. She refused to look back this time, and when the pressure of his foot pressed down on her left ankle, she kicked out blindly with her right leg, striking him high in the thigh—but not quite high enough. She tried to scream, but the sound that escaped her was small and without hope.

“Shhh,” he whispered. “It’ll be over soon.”

And then he was upon her.

16

Sam Garston was polishing off a second helping of Carla’s blueberry pancakes when the phone rang, disturbing them from their usual Sunday breakfast. He looked up at the clock, which read 8:14 A.M. His wife, who was seated closer to the phone, rose from her chair to answer it.

“Hello?” she said. Sam watched her closely from where he sat. Sunday morning phone calls were typically either one of Carla’s friends or the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher contacting him regarding some matter that required his immediate attention. He always hoped for the former, but frequently ended up with the latter.

“Oh. Hi, Carl,” she greeted the caller. “How are you?… Yes, we’re just finishing up breakfast. You’re welcome to stop over if you’d like… Oh, I see… No, that’s quite all right. He’s right here. Hold on just a moment.” She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to him. “It’s Carl Schroeder.”

Sam had already gotten up from his chair and was making his way across the kitchen. He planted a kiss on Carla’s cheek, took the receiver, and walked around the corner into the living room. He drew back the curtain to improve the light in the room, but the day outside was overcast and rainy, and the change was modest at best. “Yeah, Carl. What’s up?”

“There’s been another attack, Sam,” Schroeder’s voice advised him over the slight static of a cell phone. “Sixteen-year-old female this time.”

Sam’s body stiffened and he placed his large left hand on the window ledge. “Damn it,” he said. “Where?”

“North of town, along Ross Ridge Road.”

“You have the area cordoned off?”

“Of course.”

“Fine. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Go ahead and contact the medical examiner.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Carl replied. “We may not need him just yet.”

Sam had already moved to the bedroom, and was pulling his uniform shirt off a hanger. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“The victim,” Carl said, and this time there was no static over the line to garble the connection. “Sam, she’s alive.”

17

Martin Vance shifted in his chair, turning his head briefly to eye some of the other patients in Trinity Medical Center’s psychiatric unit. He glanced again at the metal sprinkler head projecting from a small hole in the ceiling directly above him. He didn’t like the looks of it. No, sir, Scooby-Doo-in-a-half-shoe—he didn’t like the looks of it at all. This was a real amateur job, of course. He could tell that right from the start. Could see the actual flip-floppin’ microphone up there—see it plain as day. He knew what they were doing, too. He’d been through it all before. When you knew the sort of things that he knew, when you had connections right out of Liberia and the Far East on a mainline receiver into your geranium cranium at 538 bits per second—well then, everyone had their ear to the grand ol’ wall, Paul. Not that it mattered. Not in the least. If they thought he was just gonna spill his guts for a little Geodon, a little Haldol truth serum in the form of one big hummer of a syringe… well, they had no idea who they were actually dealing with, did they? He’d seen this type of action before—in a thousand other disease-infested rat pits far worse than this mojo dime-bag. And he hadn’t talked then. Hadn’t told them a damn thing.

“Mr. Vance?”

Tight as a clam, he was—never get the pearl!

“Martin?”

He glanced over at the woman sitting across from him. Ms. Queen Mojo Dime-Bag, herself. Little Miss Harley-Davidson on the Seroquel Express.

“Martin, I see that you’ve been looking at the overhead sprinkler quite a bit during our session today. Does it bother you?”

He said nothing. It was best to just keep your mouth shut during the interrogations. He’d learned that much. Learned it the hard way. Let ’em play out their own string until they hung themselves with it, for all he cared.

He checked the corners of the room for traps, but didn’t see any. That was the worst kind, anyway—the ones you couldn’t see until it was too late. You step into one of those zombies and you’ll be cleanin’ up your own body shrapnel till next Easter.

“Would you prefer to sit somewhere else, Martin?”

Stupid sling-blade witch doctor talkin’ at him again. Which doctor? Witch doctor. Ha! That was a good one. Funny but it ain’t, as people like to say. Chief Interrogator Numero Uno. She’d been on his case since they’d dragged him in here yesterday afternoon. Black as night in the heart of darkness, that one. She’d cut him down to pieces in a second if she had any idea the sort of technical intel he was carryin’ around in his long-term memory. Enough to topple the balance of power, that was for sure.

“Yeah, any electric chair will do, right, doc?” he said. Let her chew that over for a while.

“I assure you that you’re in a safe place,” she replied. “Nothing in this room is designed to hurt you.”

He scoffed at the remark. Check the traps, baby. Check the traps.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s not what it’s designed to do—it’s what it can do. Isn’t that what they teach you in that military boot camp of yours? What if Mother Goose never came home? That’s the thick of it. Funny but it ain’t.” He glanced up at the microphone above him. It was capturin’ every flip-floppin’ word. Man, he had to be more careful with what he said. He couldn’t chance a slip-up. They’d be all over him. “You get those sektars off my back and maybe we can talk.”

“You’ve used that word before: sektars. I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Well, you should get familiar with it, tipsy-top. You and the goon squad, both.”

“Can you explain what it means?”

“Not if I wanna stay alive in this rat pit. Place is crawlin’ with ’em. Flip-floppin’ sektar parade last night. Couldn’t sleep a wink if I wanted to.”

“We can talk about strategies to improve your sleep, or I can ask the nurse to give you something in the evening to help you rest at night.”

“I’ll bet you could. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d like for you to feel better, yes. I think that the medications will help. Maybe we could start with just one.”

“And I’ll be up to eight H-bombs by the end of the week, with my brains oozin’ outta my ears. No thanks, Dr. Frankenstein.” He checked the corners again—thought he saw one. Just a glint of metal razor that was gone by the time the eyes focused completely.

“I respect your concerns, Martin. But I really am here to help you. Many of the thoughts you’re having are symptoms of a disease called bipolar disorder with psychotic features. The medications I’m recommending are designed to help improve those symptoms. That’s the goal.”

“Yeah? Well, you can kiss the bird with those word turds, you psychological nerd. This meeting’s over!” Martin Vance leapt up from his chair, which toppled backward, striking the floor with a reverberating bang. Dr. Subina Edusei was on her feet almost as quickly, positioning her own chair between herself and the patient. Two of the psychiatric unit’s techs exited the nurses’ station in a hurry and were three-quarters of the way across the room before Subina held up her hand for them to stand by a moment.

“Settle down, Martin. This is a safe place for you.”

Martin frowned. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no.”

“I’d like you to walk over to the other side of the room now. We can talk more later if you want.”

“I don’t want none of your magic beans,” he advised her, shoving his fallen chair with his foot and storming off toward the far wall. The few patients who’d briefly turned their heads to watch the standoff quickly lost interest as Subina left the common area through the locked doors leading to the nurses’ station.

“You okay?” Tania Renkin—one of her favorite nurses—asked, meeting her at the door.

“I’m fine,” Subina said. She sat down at the desk and began entering a note in the chart. “Martin’s a little riled up this morning.”

“You want him to receive anything else?” Tania asked. “He got ten milligrams of Zyprexa IM early this morning. I don’t think it’s touched him.”

“See if you can get him to take a Zydis ODT.”

“If he refuses?”

Subina shrugged. “Show him the needle, and tell him that’s his next option. See if that changes his mind about taking the oral medication.”

“It often does,” Tania agreed. She looked out through the thick glass partition into the common area. Martin was pacing at the far end of the room, muttering to himself. “Martin doesn’t scare me. I’ve taken care of him before.”

“So have I,” Subina replied. “About four months ago, in fact.”

“When he’s taking his medication, he’s actually quite pleasant.”

“Yeah. He’d definitely pass the bus stop test.”

Tania smiled. “The bus stop test: If you encounter a person at a bus stop and don’t think to yourself, Hey, this guy’s crazy…”

“…then they pass,” Subina finished.

“It’s amazing how many mentally ill people can pass the bus stop test. I wonder,” she mused, “out of all the people we come in contact with in our daily lives, what percentage do you think are psychologically unstable?”

“If you knew the answer to that question,” Subina said, returning the patient’s file to the rack, “you’d probably never leave your house.”

“Right.” The two of them watched Martin as he continued to pace the room. “By the way”—Tania pointed a thumb toward the security monitor behind them—“have you had a chance to see the guy in Seclusion Room Two yet?”

“I looked in on him this morning when I got here. What’s his story?”

“Don’t know.” Tania shook her head. “He presented to the ER last night, ranting and raving, covered in scratches, obviously psychotic, unable to provide any useful information. The ER doc gave him five of Haldol and two of Ativan, and he got medicated with Geodon and Vistaril before we brought him over.”

“How did he respond?”

“Not well. It still took four security guards to get him into that room. He almost bit one of them.”

Subina studied the monitor. The man inside the seclusion room looked like a human wrecking ball: probably six foot four and pushing 250 pounds, most of it muscle. He’d removed his hospital clothing, revealing a crisscross of superficial scratches that covered the dark black skin of much of his torso and extremities. As she watched, he walked to the padded door and punched it hard. The muffled sound of the impact reached their ears a moment later.

“Do we have a name?”

“Not yet. He’s not someone we’ve seen here before.”

“Well, he’s going to need more medication—but right now I think the safest course of action is to just let him be.” Subina opened the door to the hallway leading back to her office. “I need to make a phone call before rounds. I’ll see you in the conference room in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Tania replied as she entered her ID number into the automated medication delivery unit in the corner. “Let’s see if Martin will take his Zydis. We’ve got to get him looking good. In a couple of days, he might have a bus to catch.”

18

The usually vacant stretch of asphalt along Ross Ridge Road just north of Route 22 was presently flanked with vehicles positioned closely together along both shoulders of the roadway. Police cruisers composed the majority of parked cars, but an Action 7 News truck was also already on-site and two men were unloading camera equipment from the rear of the vehicle. Perfect, Sam thought, pulling over onto the soft shoulder. He killed the ignition, popped the trunk, and stepped out of the car. Down the street near the parked news van, he could see Diane Sellars making her way quickly toward him, camera crew in tow. Sam whistled to Tony Linwood, who stood nearby directing the occasional passing vehicle. “Tony,” he called over, “I do not wish to be interviewed by Ms. Sellars right now.”

“Okay, Chief,” the young deputy said with a nod, then headed off to intercept them.

Sam walked around to the back of his car. He retrieved a rain jacket from the trunk and donned it against the midday drizzle, which would steadily work its way to a respectable downpour before the afternoon was through. He crossed the street to join a small cluster of officers standing in a loose-knit circle in the wet grass. “Hey, Chief,” one of them said in greeting as he approached. The others turned.

Sam nodded. “Hello, Mike.” He regarded the yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape stretched along the edge of the woods for about a hundred yards. At the far ends, it turned a right angle perpendicular to the roadway and headed straight back into the forest. “Where’s Detective Schroeder?” he asked.

“Right here, Chief,” Carl announced from thirty yards away, walking toward them. He’d been canvassing the road slightly to the north, covering the area from where the police tape ended to a small cluster of houses just over the rise of the next hill. As he approached, he held up a Ziploc bag containing the tattered remains of a few small white cylinders. “Cigarettes,” he said. “Four of them, lying in the grass just on the other side of the hill. Pretty soggy and mashed to hell from the rain last night, but definitely worth a look.”

“Good,” Sam commented. He nodded at one of the officers. “I want that area cordoned off as well—and have the forensic guys examine the ground for shoe prints and anything else they can come up with.”

“Sure thing,” the deputy said, grabbing the police tape and a few stakes from the back of his car and heading off in that direction.

Sam turned to Carl. “What’ve you got so far?”

Carl pointed to a spot where the road’s asphalt met the shoulder. “She was discovered here.”

The grass in this area was matted down, and in a few places tufts had been pulled from the wet earth. The rain was doing its best to wash the area clean, but Sam could see what he presumed to be bloodstains in several areas. It didn’t take much of an imagination for him to picture the girl lying there weak and exhausted, having pulled herself hand over hand from the dark recesses of the woods. “Where was she attacked?” he asked.

“It looks like most of the struggle occurred at a spot about two hundred and fifty yards in,” Carl said. “Lots of broken branches and a fair amount of blood.”

“We need to get a canopy up in that area,” Sam said. “And one here, too. Get these areas protected from the rain as much as possible while there’s still any evidence left worth collecting.”

Carl motioned to one of the deputies standing behind them, who nodded and went to his vehicle.

“Who found her?” Sam asked, studying the woods.

“A motorist on her way to work came across the victim at 6:45 A.M. We got the 911 call at 6:48.”

“You’ve interviewed her?”

“Yeah. The lady’s a nurse at Trinity Medical Center, and was heading in for a 7 A.M. shift. She says she assessed the victim’s injuries and rendered what aid she could before placing the call to 911. Said the girl was unconscious, and that her breathing was so slow and shallow that at first the nurse thought she was dead. Fortunately, she checked for a pulse.”

Sam nodded. “Where’s the victim now?”

“They took her to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.”

“Why not take her to Trinity? It can’t be more than a ten-minute drive from here.”

Carl shook his head. “Trinity’s not a trauma center. The girl’s injuries were… severe.”

Sam’s eyes met the detective’s. “How severe?”

At first, Carl didn’t answer. The precipitation falling from the sky was really beginning to pick up now, and large drops of water congregated on the edge of his hood before cascading the remaining several feet toward the pavement. He looked down at the grass in front them, imagining what it must’ve been like for the girl as she crawled all that distance through these woods after the attack, as she lay here in the darkness staring up at the rain. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “She might not survive.”

The chief considered this for a moment. Behind him, the forensics van arrived and pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the street. Sam glanced over his shoulder as the two technicians emerged from the vehicle, then he turned back to Detective Schroeder. “Let them know what we’ve found so far,” he ordered. “Then come with me.”

“Where are we going?” the detective asked.

“Pittsburgh,” Sam called back, making his way toward the car. “I want to go see her.”

19

Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood lies along the southeast bank of the Allegheny River. When approached from the Fortieth Street Bridge in the late afternoon, the sun, low in the west, deepens the redbrick exterior of the neighborhood’s buildings to the color of bloodred clay, as if the river’s soil were giving birth to the edifices themselves. Behind them rises the massive structure of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, serving the area’s youngest, most vulnerable citizens.

“Wow. It’s huge, Dad,” Joel Stevenson exclaimed from the front passenger seat, his freckled face squinting upward as the Honda turned left on Forty-Fourth Street and came to a momentary halt in front of the hospital.

Ben smiled at his son’s awed exuberance. It doesn’t take much to impress an eight-year-old, he thought. Joel had complained of being bored for most of the hour-long ride from Wintersville, and Ben had been second-guessing his decision to bring him along. Now he was glad to have him here. He’d needed the company, and the boy’s incessant chatter had kept Ben’s mind from lingering on the horridness of what he’d been summoned here to witness.

He turned right at the next intersection and entered the mid-campus garage. They wound their way up several tiers and Ben nosed the Honda into an available spot. He’d received the call from Sam Garston at about 3:30 P.M. this afternoon. The girl had been in surgery for most of the morning and early afternoon. She’d sustained multiple life-threatening injuries, had briefly gone into cardiac arrest twice in the OR, but had managed to make it out of the operating room alive and was now listed in critical condition in the hospital’s pediatric ICU. Could Ben come up and speak with the trauma surgeons? Sam had asked. Maybe take a look at some of the wounds to compare them with those from the first victim?

Ben and Joel descended the garage’s stairwell, then took the enclosed walkway to the hospital’s first-floor information desk. After a brief consultation with the volunteer at the desk, they received visitor ID badges and were directed to the pediatric ICU waiting room, where they found Chief Garston and two detectives conversing quietly with a man and woman whom Sam introduced as the girl’s parents.

“This is Paul and Vera Dressler,” he informed Ben. He turned to the couple. “Dr. Stevenson has been assisting us with the investigation.”

Ben recognized Paul Dressler from a golf tournament they’d played in together a few years back. The man’s arm was wrapped protectively around the shoulder of his wife, who stood among them but looked at no one. Her right hand was clapped tightly across her mouth, as if ready to stifle a scream that threatened to erupt at any moment. Her gaze fixed itself on the front of Ben’s jacket as he stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m so sorry this happened,” Ben heard himself saying. “If there’s anything I can do…”

The woman made a small, indecipherable sound. Her husband nodded his head slightly in appreciation of Ben’s condolences.

Sam gestured toward the man standing to his left. “You know Detective Schroeder.”

“Yes,” Ben said, shaking hands.

“And I don’t believe you’ve met Detective Danny Hunt,” Sam continued. “I’ve assigned him to assist us on the case.”

Ben shook the young man’s outstretched hand, as well. “Detective.”

Danny nodded. Compared to the rest of the men, he appeared young and baby-faced, as if daily shaving had not yet become a necessary component of his morning ritual. With his button-down brown shirt and beige sport jacket, he looked relaxed and almost casual. But beneath the parted cascade of his light blond hair his eyes were sharp and intelligent, flitting from one face to the next and missing nothing in between.

They were silent for a moment before Sam turned to Ben. “The Dresslers would like to return to their daughter as soon as possible. I told them it might help our investigation if you had a chance to look at some of the injuries. They’ve kindly agreed to give us a few minutes to do that, and have consented for some photographs to be taken.”

Ben nodded. He looked down at Joel. “I’d like for you to wait out here for us, son. We shouldn’t be more than about fifteen minutes.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Paul assured him.

“I appreciate that,” Ben said, and he headed through the large double doors with Sam and the two detectives.

The pediatric ICU, Ben noted as they stepped inside, was more tranquil than he recalled. His time as a medical student and resident in such settings had been one of frenzied data gathering, countless procedures, extensive documentation, and protracted bedside discussions. It had been a whirlwind of endotracheal tubes and central lines, of ventilators and IV pumps—a seamless blur of medical histories and physical exam findings amid weeks of sleepless nights, as the pager attached to his belt beeped endlessly with its voracious, intractable demands. By comparison, the unit this afternoon seemed hushed, almost silent, as if the patients around them struggled to live or die on their own private battlegrounds, far removed from this physical place in which they lay.

Sam led them toward a room in the far corner. Its sliding glass door stood open, and as they approached a technician maneuvered a large portable motor-driven X-ray machine from the room with surprising grace. He smiled politely at the four of them before steering the contraption down an adjacent hallway. Ben and the officers exchanged glances and then proceeded into the room.

Inside, a young girl lay supine on a gurney. A thin blue hospital gown covered her chest, shoulders, and abdomen, her long black hair disappearing beneath the upper ridge of her torso. The remainder of her small frame was obscured beneath the crisp white linen. She lay motionless, except for the slight rise and fall of her chest in step with the measured mechanical pace of the ventilator. A plastic breathing tube protruded from between her pale, cracked lips, and numerous medication lines hung from an assortment of IV pumps attached to two metal poles at the head of her bed. From beneath the gown, an additional two large plastic tubes emerged, one on each side of her body, and descended into multichambered canisters, which bubbled softly. A bulky dressing covered her right ear.

Sam and the two detectives stood near the wall at the foot of the bed. None of them spoke, and the officers now seemed hesitant, as if waiting for something to happen. It took Ben a moment to recognize that they were waiting for him. To these men, this was a foreign place about which they had little understanding, and the young woman lying unconscious in the bed in front of them—held together by a bewildering assortment of tubes and instruments that doggedly sustained her tenuous existence—was an inexplicable enigma. He could sense their tension, their careful restraint, as if the slightest action might inadvertently tip the scales of recovery against her, as if her broken body might suddenly disintegrate and scatter like ash in the wind. This was his world, he realized, or at least it had been at one time in his training. They had asked him to come here to examine her injuries, yes—but they also needed him as a liaison to orient them to what they were seeing and its significance, to broker this space between those who would live and those who would die, and to tell them in which direction to go from here.

He was about to speak when a female voice behind them interrupted the silence.

“Hard to believe she made it.”

They simultaneously turned to encounter a woman in her mid-thirties dressed in blue scrubs and a white lab coat. Her dark hair was slightly disheveled, as if she’d been wearing a cap for most of the day. A stethoscope had been tucked into a side pocket of her lab coat, its earpieces peeking curiously out at them. The clogs she wore on her feet were enveloped by thin blue shoe covers, and there was a large orange stain—Betadine, Ben presumed—on the front of her left pant leg. A single black pen poked out from the front pocket of her lab coat above a hospital ID badge that dangled from a small metal clasp. She thrust out a hand in Ben’s direction.

“Karen Elliot,” she announced. “I’ve been in the OR with Ms. Dressler for a good part of the morning.”

Ben shook hands with the surgeon. Her skin was cool and dry, her grip firm and assertive. He introduced himself, Sam, and the two detectives. “The case is being investigated as an attempted homicide,” he explained. “We’ve received the parents’ consent to examine her injuries… if it’s okay with you, that is.”

“If her parents are fine with it, then so am I,” the physician replied. She stepped to the bedside, retrieved the stethoscope from the pocket of her lab coat, and listened to the girl’s chest for a moment. She wound the stethoscope into a loose circle, returned it to her pocket, then pulled an otoscope light from its resting place on the wall. As they watched, she pulled back the girl’s upper eyelids to shine the light into first one pupil and then the other, noting the response. The otoscope was returned to its wall mount, and the surgeon bent down on one knee to examine the plastic chambered canister to which each of the tubes exiting the girl’s chest was attached.

“Could you tell us about her injuries?” Ben inquired.

Dr. Elliot lifted the girl’s hospital gown to expose her abdomen. The skin along a midline surgical incision site had been left open, the wound packed with gauze. Ben spotted three Jackson-Pratt drains exiting the skin from other areas of the abdomen, their small chambers partially filled with a thin reddish fluid.

“Jesus,” muttered Detective Schroeder. “You haven’t even stitched her up yet.”

“There’s no point in it,” the surgeon replied, her eyes remaining on the patient. “The first surgery in cases like this is strictly damage control. Get in, do what needs to be done, and get out. The liver and small bowel were lacerated in several places. The spleen was bleeding so badly it had to be removed. The left kidney also took a hit,” she said, pointing to a urine reservoir bag hanging on the side of the bed. Like the fluid in the abdominal drains, the urine had taken on a bloodied maroon color. “Anyway,” Dr. Elliot concluded, “we’ll have to go back in at least once more to take a look at things—to make certain the bleeding from the liver is under control, to take another look at the bowel anastomoses, and to be sure nothing else was missed. So there’s no point in closing the abdomen yet.”

Ben nodded. “What other injuries did she sustain?”

“You name it, she’s got it,” she said. “Bilateral hemopneumothoraces, a small right ventricular puncture wound through the pericardium that I have no idea how she survived, multiple small bowel injuries, a grade III liver laceration, grade IV splenic injury requiring splenectomy, left renal laceration, facial bone fractures, tracheal contusion, a left ankle dislocation and medial malleolar fracture that was reduced in the OR, multiple soft-tissue avulsion injuries, and traumatic amputations of two fingers on the left hand.” She sighed, brushing the hair back from her patient’s forehead. “Most of her right ear is missing. Whoever did this did not intend for her to live.”

“How’s her brain?” Ben asked. “Any intracranial injuries?”

The doctor shook her head. “That’s one thing her assailant didn’t get around to. She’s pharmacologically sedated now, but provided her blood pressure holds and she survives these other injuries, I have no reason to believe she won’t wake up once she’s weaned off the sedative agents.”

“When will that be?” Ben asked.

“Don’t know yet,” she said, glancing at the green digital display of the machine monitoring the patient’s vital signs. “She’s still hypotensive, despite the vasopressors. A thousand things could happen between now and then. She could go into DIC, and I’m worried about that liver.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then Ben said, “Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Elliot, and for everything you’ve done for her so far. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to take a few photographs of the injuries. We shouldn’t be long.”

“Take all the time you need,” she said. “This poor girl…” She trailed off, her face becoming pinched and hard. She turned away from them for a moment, studying the monitor, one hand on her patient’s shoulder. Her fingers touched the thin plastic tubing of the central line that descended from an IV pump before it entered the girl’s body just beneath the right clavicle. The surgeon exhaled slowly, then her posture straightened as she turned to face them. “Take all the time you need,” she said again, and she strode quickly from the room and disappeared through the swinging double doors at the end of the hallway.

20

“The patient is a Caucasian female, age sixteen, identified by family as Monica Dressler. At the request of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and after consent from the patient’s parents, this examination is being performed at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where the patient is being treated for her injuries. The patient is currently intubated and on a ventilator, and she is pharmacologically sedated. She has a right subclavian central line, bilateral chest tubes, an open abdominal compartment following recent exploratory laparotomy, three abdominal J-P drains, and a Foley catheter in place. Bulky dressings have been applied to the left hand following traumatic amputations to the fourth and fifth digits….”

“…contusions to the face and anterior neck consistent with blunt trauma…”

“…bandaging to the site of the right ear, which was severed during the assault and was discovered at the crime scene by Jefferson County forensic…”

“…large avulsion injury to the region of the left deltoid, and similar soft tissue injuries to the left lateral thigh and upper back. Serrations along the wound margins are consistent with a human dentition pattern…”

“…eight puncture wounds to the anterior chest, resulting in bilateral hemopneumothoraces. According to the operative report, the pericardium and right ventricle were also penetrated, and a hemorrhagic pericardial effusion was discovered, requiring a pericardial window via the subxiphoid approach…”

“…an avulsion injury to the right breast. The lateral portion of the areola and underlying adipose tissue have been severed…”

“…penetration of the peritoneal cavity…”

“…left renal laceration from a penetrating wound to the left flank…”

“…report of multiple lacerations to the small bowel, liver, and spleen…”

“…fracture and dislocation of the left ankle with extensive swelling and ecchymosis…”

“…patient is currently listed in critical condition…”

“…Dr. Ben Stevenson, board-certified pathologist. A copy of this report was submitted to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department in compliance with Ohio state statutes pertaining to forensic evidence…”

“…End report.”

21

The trip back to Wintersville took considerably longer than the day’s earlier journey. After leaving the hospital, Ben had taken Joel to an ice-cream parlor that he’d frequented with Susan during their time in residency training. Ben hadn’t felt much like eating, but he’d promised his son this particular part of the excursion as an enticement for Joel to join him on the trip to Pittsburgh. Watching the boy wolf down two scoops of rocky road topped with hot fudge, whipped cream, peanut crumbles, and a maraschino cherry had proven to be too much for Ben’s already tenuous stomach. He’d chosen to distract himself by looking out through the large plate glass window at the passing pedestrian foot traffic. Dusk was beginning to fall on the city now, and Ben was eager to get home. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Susan to tell her they’d be getting back later than expected, advising her not to wait on them for dinner. “It’s just leftovers,” she said. “I’ll heat something up for you when you get home.” Ben looked across the table at his son as the boy twirled his spoon along the inside bottom of the tall glass, meticulously retrieving the last remnants of melted goodness for his consumption. “Don’t bother,” he told his wife over the phone. “I don’t think either one of us will be particularly hungry.”

He returned the phone to his pocket and placed his open palms on the table. “You ready, kiddo?”

Joel dropped the long metal spoon into his glass. “Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think she’ll die?”

“The girl we visited today in the hospital?”

Joel nodded.

“I hope not,” Ben replied. “It’s too early to know for sure. But the doctors and nurses are taking real good care of her.”

Joel peered into the bottom of his glass, then looked up at him. “But she might die anyway.”

Ben sighed. “That’s right, son. She might.”

The index finger of the boy’s right hand traced a line around the outside of his glass where the condensation had formed a small ring on the table. “Will she go to heaven, Dad? If she dies?”

Ben looked across the table. “I don’t know what happens to us when we die, Joel. Nobody really does.”

“Mom says we go to heaven.”

“I know.”

“But you don’t believe in heaven, do you, Dad?”

Ben’s gaze drifted to the right as he looked out through the window at the people shuffling by. A pedestrian darted across the street against the stoplight, causing an oncoming taxi to screech to a halt. The cabbie laid on his horn long and hard, yelling an obscenity out the window. The jaywalker turned and flipped the guy the bird.

“Sometimes I don’t know if we deserve it,” he said quietly.

Joel was silent for a moment, pushing his napkin around the table. “Mom says everyone deserves forgiveness. She says it’s not up to us to judge each other. It’s up to God.”

“Yeah?” Ben smiled, turning his attention back to his son. “Well, your mom’s pretty smart now, isn’t she?”

Joel looked back at him blandly. “She’s pretty smart, Dad.”

A bell jingled as the door in the front of the shop opened and two more patrons walked in, the sounds of the city nipping at their heels. The wind gusted briefly through the open entrance, sending Joel’s napkin scurrying to the floor.

“Okay,” Ben said, retrieving a replacement from the metal dispenser and sliding it across the table. “Wipe that chocolate off your face and let’s get going. It’s getting late.”

“Sure, Dad,” his son replied, smiling up at him. They slid out of the booth, gathered their jackets, and walked together toward the door.

22

That night Ben slept poorly, feeling alternatingly either too hot or too cold beneath the covers. After considerable tossing and turning, he’d finally managed to drift off, but he had fallen into a dream in which he was being chased through the halls of the hospital by a large black wolf. He’d fled down long corridors, the floor cold and sterile beneath his bare feet. Behind him he could hear the thing coming, its nails clicking and skittering along the tile. In desperation, he’d entered a room at the end of one of the passages, swinging the door shut behind him and flipping the dead bolt in its track. He stood with his ear pressed up against the door, listening, trying to get control of his breathing. There was no sound from the hallway beyond, only the soft, methodical whisper of the ventilator from the patient lying in the bed behind him. The wild drum of his heartbeat began to slacken in his ears. Then he heard it: a small click as the side rail of the gurney was slowly lowered, the creak of someone shifting their weight in the bed, the soft slap of feet touching the floor. He turned to find Monica Dressler sitting up facing him, her thin legs hanging over the side of the bed, the endotracheal tube still protruding from between her lips. Her eyes were vacant and unseeing, her right hand sifting through coarse black fur. Beside her, sitting at her feet and studying him with its greenish-yellow predatory gaze, was the wolf.

The image startled Ben awake, and he lay there in bed, sweating lightly, bunching the sheet into matted balls with his hands. Finally, he got up, walked across the bedroom in the darkness, opened the door, and slipped quietly into the hallway. The house was silent, except for the subtle pulse of the grandfather clock in the living room below. On the left side of the hallway stood the closed door to Joel’s bedroom, and beyond that on the right, lost in the shadows, was the door to Thomas’s room. No noise emanated from behind either, and after a moment’s pause Ben started down the hallway in the direction of the stairs, thinking he’d go to the kitchen to get some—

Suddenly, he stopped. Up ahead at the end of the hall, sitting there in the shadows, was the wolf. Ben could hear its panting, could just make out the outline of its body in the darkness, its long tongue lying flat and slightly protruding through its partially opened jaws. Ben took a step backward, his right hand grasping blindly for the light switch on the wall. Then the thing came for him, rising up from its seated position on its haunches and padding heavily down the short, dim corridor. Ben stood frozen in position, unable to move, bracing himself for the impact of the animal’s teeth on his thigh, for the weight of its body pulling him to the ground. His breath came in quick, hurried gasps, the sweat that had begun to dry on his skin now awakening once again and coalescing into tense, tight beads on his arms and back. A small sound escaped him—something between a whimper and a half scream—and although his fingers had finally located the switch on the wall he now felt both unable and unwilling to use it, knowing that to flip it on and to see the wolf in its full form would be too much for his mind to handle.

The creature came to a halt in front of him, and then suddenly and inexplicably, its tail began to swish back and forth in a friendly sign of greeting. The broad head pushed insistently against his left hip, and Ben’s hands went reflexively to the sides of its head to ruffle the ears and stroke the long, broad neck.

“Alex, you scared the shit out of me,” he said, exhaling slowly, then patting the canine’s right shoulder as the dog leaned into him in his usual fashion. The bony tail whipped enthusiastically from side to side, striking the wall with a loud crack.

The second door on the left opened, and Thomas’s head poked out into the hallway. “Hey.”

Ben looked up. “Hi,” he said. “Sorry to wake you. Alex just about gave me a heart attack.”

Thomas looked at the two of them without speaking.

“I was going to head down to the kitchen for something to drink,” Ben told him, glad to have someone to talk to. “Feel like coming?”

“Okay,” Thomas said with a shrug.

“Great,” Ben replied, leading the expedition down the stairs, through the living room, and into the kitchen. He flipped on the light, opened a cabinet, and pulled two glasses from the shelf. “What’ll it be?” He smiled.

“What’ve you got?”

Ben opened the refrigerator and perused the options. “Let’s see: milk, grape juice, water, Diet Coke…” He frowned. “There’s half a pitcher of unidentifiable pink stuff in here.”

“How about a beer?” Thomas suggested.

Ben turned and looked at him. “You want a beer?” he asked. To be honest, the option didn’t sound half bad right about now.

Thomas shrugged noncommittally.

“Okay,” Ben replied, retrieving two bottles from the back of the fridge. He looked at Thomas. “You need a glass?”

The boy shook his head.

“Good. Neither do I.” He returned the glasses to the cabinet, retrieved an opener, popped off the tops, and handed one of the bottles over to his son. “Cheers,” he said, smiling broadly, as he sat down at the table. The bottles clinked together.

Thomas lifted the beverage to his lips and took a long slug, and Ben followed suit. “Ahh,” he told his son, “nothing like an ice-cold beer at two-thirty in the morning, eh?”

Thomas smiled thinly and took another sip. “How is she?” he asked.

“Monica?” Ben let the second swallow of alcohol slide down his throat. The bottle felt light in his hand, and when he looked down he was surprised to see that it was almost empty. “She’s pretty banged up,” he replied, realizing as soon as the words had left his mouth that the euphemism didn’t nearly do justice to what he had witnessed today.

“Will she die?” Thomas asked, and Ben was struck by how similar the question was to the one Joel had asked him earlier that day.

“I don’t know,” he answered for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. He wondered how many others would be looking to him for the answer to that question, as if holding a medical degree somehow enabled him to look into the future, to retrieve the likely outcomes of people’s lives like rabbits from a magician’s hat.

Thomas finished off his bottle, and Ben rose from his chair to retrieve another two from the refrigerator, placing one in front of each of them. There was no cheerful salutation or clinking of glasses this time, and they sipped their beverages in silence. Unlike Joel, Ben realized, there would be no questions about God or heaven from Thomas, no discussion regarding forgiveness or salvation. Ben didn’t doubt that the questions were there, but his oldest son guarded his inner world much more tightly than Joel, keeping his thoughts and feelings mostly to himself. Over the years it had only gotten worse, the connection between them becoming increasingly distant. It was as if Thomas were standing on a boat that was slowly, almost imperceptibly, drawing away from a pier on which Ben stood and watched. He could still bridge the gap, he thought, if he needed to. But one day he worried that he would look down to find that the space between them had grown too wide for him to cross.

“I want to see her,” his son said suddenly, his eyes focused somewhere beyond this room that they shared.

“Sure,” Ben replied. “I’ll ask her parents if it’s okay if we visit her in the hospital. I’m sorry, son. I know she was a friend of yours.”

Is, Ben thought, correcting himself. She is a friend of his.

Thomas nodded, pushed his chair back from the table, and stood up. He walked to the counter and placed his bottles in the sink. “Good night, Dad,” he said.

“Good night, son,” Ben replied. He rose from his seat, intending to place a hand on Thomas’s shoulder, maybe even to give him a hug if the boy would allow it. But when he turned around, Ben found himself alone in the room—his oldest son already gone.

23

“Thanks for showing us in,” Detective Schroeder said as he and his partner followed the psychiatric unit manager down the corridor toward the elevators.

“I’m sorry he bothered you,” she said. She was well dressed and attractive, and she walked briskly along as she talked. “Patient confidentiality laws prevent us from providing you with any clinical information.” They stepped into the elevator and she leaned forward and pushed a button.

“It’s our job to follow up on these things,” Carl told her. The Sheriff’s Department had received a 911 phone call from the hospital’s psych unit yesterday. The man, who’d identified himself to the emergency operator as Harold Matthews, had wanted to talk to the detective in charge about “that girl they found in the woods.” Carl wasn’t particularly hopeful, since the call had originated from the psych unit, but he was at least willing to come here to see what the man had to say. It wouldn’t be the first unproductive lead they’d investigated in the last few days. Since the second assault, the Sheriff’s Department had been inundated with calls from civilians regarding suspicious characters and irregular goings-on within the town. None of these tips had led to anything fruitful. The truth was, there were simply a lot of weird people out there. Usually they settled into the background noise of everyday life. It took something horrific to recalibrate people’s tolerance for the odd and eccentric.

The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into a small lobby. There were two additional doors on opposite sides of the room. The woman had asked them to show their IDs before bringing them up here, and now she ran through a short list of contraband—lighters, cameras, and the like. They had none, and the unit manager used her hospital badge to buzz them through the door on their right.

They entered a common area where numerous patients sifted about. There were several small tables at which a few individuals were sitting, their bodies hunched forward as they applied their efforts to jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, and similar activities. In the upper corner of the room was a television, and several of the room’s occupants sat on a long couch, studying the screen with varied degrees of interest. Still others meandered about the room, their faces turned downward as they tended to their own private worlds.

“This way.” She gestured, continuing down a hallway to a small private room on the left. Inside, a large black man sat in the far corner. To the nurses who had seen him brought in to the seclusion room five nights ago—fighting with the staff, punching the door, covered in scratches—this seemed like a different person altogether. The antipsychotic medications had transformed his wild, frenzied state into a more subdued and cooperative demeanor, although he still eyed the detectives suspiciously as Carl settled himself into the only other chair in the room and Detective Hunt took up a position near the door.

“Mr. Matthews?” Schroeder began.

The man said nothing, only continued to stare, his eyes flitting back and forth between the two of them, as if they were juicy steaks he might suddenly decide to devour.

“I’m Detective Schroeder and this is Detective Hunt. We’re from the Sheriff’s Department. We were told you had some information you wanted to discuss with us.”

“You wit’ the police?” he asked in a deep resonant voice. There was a hint of a southern drawl to it.

“Yes, we are.”

“Mm-hmm. An’ how do I know for sure?”

Carl reached into his pocket and showed him his badge. The man seemed unimpressed.

“Jus’ ’bout anyone can git themselves one’ah them. You got a radio, too?”

Detective Hunt pulled back his jacket enough to reveal the small handheld police radio clipped to his belt.

“Mm-hmm.” The big man deliberated for a moment.

“Look, we’re very busy,” Carl advised him, beginning to stand. “If you don’t have anything to tell us we really need to—”

“I guess you ought ta know that I killed her.”

That simple statement brought the small hairs on the back of Carl’s neck to attention. He sat back down. “Who do you mean? Who did you kill?”

“That girl in the woods.”

“Now, before you say anything else,” Carl cautioned, “I need to read you your Miranda rights—just so you understand them.” The man listened patiently until Carl was finished. “Okay,” the detective continued, “now, what were you saying?”

“I killed her. Didn’t mean to, but I did.”

“The girl in the woods?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And when did you kill her?”

“Five nights ago. Roun’ two in the mornin’.”

“Where did it happen? Along what road?”

“Lockhart Drive.”

“What does she look like? The girl.”

“Pale skin. Long black hair. Little thing.” He paused. “They been showin’ her picture on the TV.”

“You’ve been watching the story on the news?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What did you do to her?” Danny asked.

“Don’t remember. Sometimes things git dim.”

“Did you rape her?”

“Nah.”

“The body was missing an arm,” Carl said. “What did you do with it?”

“Didn’t do nothin’ with it. Body’s still under the car.”

“What car?”

He looked back at them. Said nothing.

“Why did you kill her?”

“Couldn’t help it. Tried to stop—but I couldn’t. Now she’s lyin’ in the street dead, an’ it’s ma’ fault. ’Cause I can’t stop when I git goin’.”

“Where do you live?”

Only silence from the immense figure in front of them.

“Have you killed anyone else?”

He stared back at them. “I killed lots of ’em.”

“Where did you get those scratches on your arms?” Detective Hunt asked. “Did the girl do that to you?”

Nothing.

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here. Where are you from?”

“Tha’s all I wanna say.”

“I understand, but can I ask you just a few more questions?”

“Tha’s all I wanna say,” he repeated, his large hands clenching into fists on his lap.

“Sure, no problem,” Carl said, pulling out his notepad and pen. “Do you think you could write it down for us—what you just told us? It helps me remember. Write it down and sign your name at the bottom.”

“Mm-hmm.” He took the pen in his hand and put it to the paper. They waited while he worked. When he was finished, he handed the items back. Etched on the pad was a crude drawing of two stick figures, one lying on the ground and the other standing over her, hands to his head, his features frozen in a silent scream.

“Is this you?” Carl asked, pointing to the upright figure, and the man nodded.

“You should take me in. Can’t stay here. They’ll be comin’ for me soon, all the ones I killed.”

“We can’t take you in just yet,” Danny told him. “The doctors and nurses need to get you feeling better first.”

“They can’t do nothin’ for me.” The man dropped his eyes toward a corner of the room. “I can’t stay here.”

“Once you’re feeling better, we’ll come back and talk to you some more,” Carl promised. “Thank you for sharing this with us.”

The man’s eyes remained fixed in the corner of the room. His lips moved soundlessly, as if in a silent prayer or a conversation only he could hear. The detectives stepped out into the hallway. They walked to the nurses’ station and knocked on the door.

“Finished?” the unit manager asked, exiting the station and joining them in the hall.

“Yes, we are.”

“I’ll buzz you out then,” she said. They returned to the common area and she held her badge up against an electronic reader on the wall until a lock released, enabling her to push the door open. Once in the waiting area, she repeated the procedure to summon the elevator. “You can find your way out from here?” she asked.

“Yes. Thank you.” Danny offered her a smile as he and Carl stepped into the elevator.

When the doors closed, his partner asked, “So, what do you think?”

“He seems pretty disturbed. A few of his facts were correct, although most of them he could’ve gotten from the television news reports. The street name he gave was wrong, of course, and he didn’t contradict you about the missing arm.”

“He said, ‘Body’s still under the car.’ What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know,” Danny replied. “Maybe he’s talking about another body—one we haven’t found yet.”

“Now, there’s an unsettling thought.”

Danny shrugged. “Said he’s killed lots of ’em—that he tries to stop, but can’t.”

“He also seems convinced that she’s dead. If he’s been watching the news reports, wouldn’t he know that the girl’s still alive?” They reached the first floor and proceeded toward the front of the hospital.

“Let’s keep in mind that he’s crazy. This is all probably delusional thinking. Still… I’d like to know where those scratches on his arms came from.” They exited into the parking lot, squinting into the afternoon sun. “By the way,” Danny remarked, “why did you even bother with that attempt at getting a written confession? In his current state in a psychiatric unit, there’s no way it would’ve held up in court.”

“I wasn’t doing it for the confession,” Carl replied. He unlocked the car but stood there looking over the roof at his partner.

Danny paused for a moment with his hand on the latch. Then a dawning expression blossomed on his face. “Of course. Our killer is left-handed. You wanted to see what hand this guy writes with.”

Carl nodded. “Did you notice?”

Danny thought for a moment, recollecting the image of the pen poised above the paper. “Son of a gun,” he said.

“File the paperwork with the hospital to put him on a police hold. When he’s ready for discharge, we’re taking him in. Mr. Harold Matthews gives me the creeps, and I didn’t like that picture he drew. He may be crazy, but I don’t think we should write him off just yet. We need to be damn sure there’s nothing else to it.”

24

The office of Dr. Aaron Blechman, forensic odontologist, was located on the fourth floor of Children’s Hospital. It was situated at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor, as if the room itself had been added to the building as an afterthought. A small sign affixed to the door identified the occupant. Inside, the office was cramped, almost claustrophobic, the majority of the floor space inhabited by a modest oak desk, its surface strewn with a haphazard assortment of books and papers. The afternoon gray filtered through a small window overlooking Forty-Fifth Street and St. Mary’s Cemetery, just beyond.

“So what you’re saying,” Detective Danny Hunt summarized, “is that the bite wounds from the second victim are identical to those from the first.”

Blechman shook his head. “Identical, no. The angle of contact with the skin, the depth of penetration, the surrounding patterns of ecchymosis—these will vary from wound to wound. A human bite is a dynamic force. It has many variables.”

“But you think it was produced by the same person,” Detective Schroeder interjected. His face looked strained, as if he were in the process of recovering from a long, tenacious illness. In some ways he was. Fifteen years on the force, two failed marriages, an adult daughter living on the other side of the country with whom he barely spoke. These days he lived for the job. It was all he had left.

“The pattern of dentition appears similar,” Blechman answered. “Comparison of saliva DNA analysis from the bite wounds sustained by the two victims may provide you with a more definitive answer to that question.”

“We’re pretty certain we’re dealing with the same perpetrator,” Detective Hunt advised the odontologist, glancing at his partner. “Unfortunately, the saliva DNA analysis from the first victim failed to yield a match through CODIS.”

CODIS, Ben recalled, was an acronym that referred to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. The program had been established in 1994 as a DNA database for biological samples acquired in connection with violent felony crimes.

Ben furrowed his brow a bit. “So the fact that the saliva samples from the first victim’s bite wounds failed to yield a match through CODIS means…”

“It could mean any number of things,” Carl explained. “Previous violent felony crimes might have been committed by this guy before the inception of the database in 1994. Or he might have committed prior crimes from which no biological specimens were obtained.”

“Or,” Detective Hunt interposed, “this could be the perpetrator’s first venture into this sort of work.”

Ben nodded. “Well, it seems to agree with him.”

The room fell silent for a moment, except for the faint sounds of traffic rising from the street below.

“There is something else,” Blechman reported. “There seems to be a spacing anomaly between the upper left canine and the first premolar. It’s what we refer to as a diastasis—a small, abnormal gap between the two teeth. It measures about two millimeters.”

Schroeder was jotting this down in his notebook. “A diastasis,” he said. “Would this be noticeable to the average person?”

“Not glaringly so,” the odontologist replied. “The anomaly is subtle. You’d have to know what you were looking for.” He retrieved a plastic dental model from his bookshelf, indicating the involved teeth with the pointed end of a pencil. “It would be here,” he told them, “just behind the upper left canine.”

Carl looked at Sam. “If we could get a hold of the town’s dental records…”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t think so. Medical and dental information is protected by patient privacy laws. Ain’t that right, Ben?”

Ben nodded. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, established by the U.S. government in 1996, was now well entrenched in medicine. As a result, access to medical and dental records was tightly controlled.

“A judge might issue a subpoena for the dental records of a specific suspect,” Sam continued, “provided there was enough additional convincing evidence. But getting a subpoena for the dental records of the entire town is a lost cause.”

“Even in a case like this?” Carl asked.

“Especially in a case like this,” Sam replied. “Catching him is only the first step. We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize the DA’s ability to prosecute. I’d hate to catch him, only to see him walk on a technicality.”

“If I catch him, he won’t be walking anywhere for a while,” Carl muttered to himself, stuffing his notebook into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. He turned to Dr. Blechman. “You’ll let us know when the DNA report from the girl’s wounds comes back?”

“Of course,” Blechman replied, shaking hands with each of them. “If there’s anything else I can do to help, please let me know.”

They filed out into the hallway and headed for the elevators. “I presume,” Sam commented, “that we’re all heading to the same place from here.”

A soft bell chimed and the elevator doors slid open in front of them. “Absolutely,” Ben responded. “Let’s go see how she’s doing.”

25

The ICU waiting room appeared as if an impromptu town meeting were about to be called to order. Scores of familiar faces milled about, both in the waiting area and in the hallway just outside. The chairs normally situated in the center of the room had been pushed up against the wall to accommodate the standing-room-only crowd. Paul and Vera Dressler were surrounded by a throng of friends and neighbors, each offering their heartfelt support and condolences. A small table in the corner was overflowing with a striking assortment of flowers, whose fragrance and brightness seemed to permeate the room. Children sat together in small clusters, giggling and chattering rapidly to one another, and a collection of teenagers from Monica’s high school had gathered at the far end of the hallway, talking quietly among themselves.

As Ben and the officers approached, they were greeted with careful smiles and warm handshakes. They were pulled into the crowd as one of its own, and were quickly enveloped in questions and conversation. They inquired about the status of Monica’s recovery, and were updated regarding planned studies and procedures. Ben was barraged with questions regarding the girl’s injuries and prognosis, and when he made eye contact with Susan from across the room, he could tell that his wife had also been tasked with the responsibility of explaining the medical details of the case in a digestible fashion to those who had come here.

In addition to these questions, Ben was asked about the progress of the investigation, about which he simply deferred to Sam and the detectives. Have any suspects been identified? they asked. Are there any leads yet? Do you think Monica was attacked by the same person responsible for killing Kevin Tanner? Do you think this was done by a local, or just someone passing through? Ben answered them all in the same way: “I don’t know. You’ll have to speak with the detectives.” Which was the truth, he decided, more or less.

They had all come to see Monica: this child of the town who had sustained a brutal attack and had been left in the woods to die—this brave girl who had somehow summoned the strength to drag herself more than an eighth of a mile through the mud and underbrush to the side of the road in order to be found. They had come to support her parents, yes; but they all wanted to see her, to sit at her bedside and to pray for her recovery, to will her back to health by their sheer numbers, by the force of their desire to see her well.

It occurred to Ben then, as the faces around him began to blur together into something whole—something unifying—that Monica Dressler represented more than simply one of their own. In many ways, she was the town—a physical manifestation of the emotional assault they were all enduring together. To Ben and most likely to others, she represented their will to fight back, their refusal to succumb to the evil that had descended upon them. She had become an inspiration, even as she fought for her life. For if she could find a way to survive this thing, then perhaps so could they all.

26

“What do you mean, ‘He eloped’?” Detective Schroeder ran a hand through his dark hair. He was standing near the ambulance entrance next to the emergency department.

“Sorry—hospital terminology,” the security officer responded. “Patients aren’t prisoners, so we don’t usually say they ‘escaped.’ But in this case, well…” He looked back at the automatic sliding glass door. “We called it in to the police as soon as it happened. They’re out there looking for him right now.”

“I know we’re out there looking for him. I heard it over the radio.” Carl took a deep breath, telling himself to ratchet his anger back a notch. “How did this happen? I thought the psychiatric unit was a locked facility.”

“It is a locked facility,” the man confirmed. “You need an ID badge to leave the unit itself, and also one to summon the elevator.”

“I remember.”

“But the patient didn’t escape from the psych unit. He escaped from the ER.”

“What was he doing back in the ER?”

“He had a seizure on the unit—a pretty bad one, I guess. The nurse called us to come help them transport him down here. It took a bunch of us just to lift him onto the gurney.”

“Was he still seizing?”

“No, he’d stopped by then. But he was unconscious. I mean, I’m just security—I don’t know about the medical stuff—but that guy was dead weight.”

“So what happened then?”

“Once we got him onto the gurney, we left the psych unit, took the elevator to the first floor, and brought him to the ER. When we got here it was pretty crazy. They’d just brought in a patient in cardiac arrest. There were no beds available, so the charge nurse told us to put the gurney up against a wall by the ambulance entrance. Then the family of the cardiac arrest guy showed up and started going nuts. The ER staff needed help with them, and since our guy was unconscious we figured, you know”—he shrugged—“he wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But a few minutes later when I looked back at the stretcher he was gone. Just got up and walked out, I guess. Man, I’ve never seen a seizure patient wake up that fast before.”

“If it really was a seizure in the first place,” Detective Schroeder grumbled.

“What do you mean? You think he faked it?”

“Right now, I don’t know what to think,” he called back over his shoulder, heading for his car. “All I know is that he’s out there somewhere, and we’d sure as hell better find him.”

27

The junkyard at S&D Auto Salvage off Thistlewood Drive had always been referred to by the younger generation as simply the Yard. The quarter-acre lot was enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with an arthritic, twisting spine of barbed wire. A simple glance at the scattered heaps of scrap metal and rust-laden automobile carcasses was enough to make one check the expiration date on their last tetanus shot. A pockmarked sign, yellowed with age, hung at a listless angle near the padlocked front gate, advising would-be visitors that TRESPASSERS WILL BE DEALT WITH ACCORDINGLY—conjuring images of a toothless, barefooted proprietor in overalls with a shotgun at the ready. A mangy, ill-tempered Rottweiler named Rocco patrolled the premises, endlessly pacing the makeshift aisles between the abandoned detritus, as if anything here were actually worth stealing.

The Yard was clearly no place for teenagers, and as such it was really no surprise that this had become the chosen meeting spot for all sorts of gatherings and events. Ernie Samper’s father, an accountant by profession, had inherited the place when his own father had died eight years ago. He should’ve sold it, for an accountant knows very little about the world of scrap metal and automobile salvage, but he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. As odd as it might sound, the place had taken on a certain sentimental value, and so it remained in the family but otherwise sat dormant as the years went by, the cars and decrepit office trailer slowly settling into the dust like everything else within its fiercely guarded perimeter.

“What I don’t understand,” Dave Kendricks was saying, “is how the police let something like this happen so soon after the first murder.”

“They can’t be everywhere at once,” Eileen Dickenson pointed out from her seated position on the sun-welted hood of what was once recognizable as a blue Chevy Malibu. “I don’t think it’s fair to blame this on them.”

“That’s ’cause your dad works for the Sheriff’s Department,” Kent Savage commented. He plucked a small stone from the dirt, took aim, and hurled it at the left headlight of a Ford Ranger eighty yards away. There was a metallic chink as the stone bounced off the front grille, a foot and a half to the right of its intended target.

“That’s got nothin’ to do with it,” Eileen responded, glaring in his direction. “When things go wrong, everyone always wants to blame the police. They’re an easy scapegoat. I didn’t see you offering to walk people home that night.”

“Well, Brian Fowler walked her home, and she got attacked anyway,” Kent retorted.

“He didn’t walk her all the way home, though, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. So maybe we should blame him.”

“I think he blames himself enough already,” Devon said. He reached down with his hand and scratched Rocco behind the right ear. The dog growled and wagged his short, stubby tail simultaneously, apparently uncertain what to make of the unsolicited affection. “How is he, by the way?” Devon asked. “Has anyone heard from him?”

The others were silent. Despite multiple phone calls and attempted visits, none of them had seen Brian Fowler in almost two weeks. His chair, along with that of Monica Dressler, sat empty at school as the academic year drew to a close, constant reminders of the two teenagers’ absence and the circumstances behind it. If that vacant space was a distraction to learning, none of the teachers had mentioned it. The seats remained empty, day after day. No one dared sit there, and no one dared remove them.

Paul Dalouka spoke up. “His stepfather told my mom that Brian received permission to finish the school year early.”

The others nodded.

“I don’t blame Brian,” Eileen Dickenson commented. “There’s no way he could’ve known.” She looked around, as if searching for support in her assertion. “Any one of us would’ve done the same thing.”

“I agree.” Heads turned toward Natalie Rhodes, who was sitting cross-legged in the dirt. “A lot of us walked home alone that night.” She looked up at Bret Graham, who was leaning against the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle that had clearly seen better days. “Your house is, what, four miles from Devon’s? Mine’s at least that far. We both got home safely.” She frowned, her eyes returning to the ground in front of her. “This isn’t something any of us could’ve predicted.”

“Except it had already happened once before,” Devon replied. He shook his head. “I never should’ve let people walk home that night. I should’ve insisted on cabs for everyone.”

“There aren’t that many cabs in the entire town,” Thomas pointed out. “People would’ve been waiting at your place for hours.”

“Good. They could’ve helped me clean up,” Devon replied, and a slight snicker ran through the group. Rocco stood up and disappeared into the junk maze, resuming his patrol.

“That dog’s senile, Ernie,” Russell Long commented.

Ernie Samper smiled. “Ugly, too. But at least he’s got personality, which is more than I can say for the majority of you losers.”

“He patrols a scrap heap,” Russell advised him. “I just wanna draw your attention to that, Ernie—in case you didn’t notice. The dog guards trash.”

“He’s hardworking, dedicated, and professional,” Samper replied. “Ya oughta try it sometime.”

“Well, right now he’s urinating on a lime-green refrigerator,” Marty Spears noted, adjusting his glasses as he squinted into the sun. They all looked, and indeed Rocco was, the dog’s left rear leg cocked skyward in an unbecoming pose.

“That’s gonna hurt the resale value,” someone quipped, and they all laughed at this, their guilt and pain momentarily forgotten. The remains of the automobiles within the Yard seemed to study them silently, hunkering their tired, broken frames ever closer to the earth. Somewhere to the east on Route 22 the impatient thrum of newer vehicles could be heard passing along the highway, and the distance from there to here suddenly seemed both very far and very close at the same time.

“Let’s get outta here,” Paul Dalouka suggested. “I’m sick of this place.”

Natalie Rhodes stood up and stretched, her right knee popping softly. “You stay here long enough, you become part of the heap,” she said, and this was met with some general consensus.

They filed out through the front gate, engaging one another in scattered conversation. Ernie was the last to leave, looping the rusty chain through the gate and locking the padlock behind him. He followed the loose procession up the steep hill of Sycamore Street, and when he reached the crest he glanced back at his father’s unlikely establishment, which appeared to fade slightly into the afternoon haze, the dog staring back at him through the metallic skin of the chain-link world in which he lived.

28

The days and weeks following the attempted murder of Monica Dressler passed as time often does in the wake of such an event: slowly at first, for those most intimately affected by the tragedy. Shock and disbelief gave way to sporadic fits of incapacitating emotion, the rage and anguish bleeding forth from their bodies like fresh-cut wounds, leaving them raw and vacant and still without answers. They sat alone in the private chambers of their grief, and the passage of time was measured not by the clock on the wall but by the changing faces of the people around them.

The girl’s surgeon, Dr. Elliot, had turned optimistic, advising Paul and Vera Dressler that their daughter was recovering faster than expected. The large plastic tubes protruding like extra appendages from between Monica’s ribs were removed, and the lungs remained inflated—a very good sign, the surgeon informed them. The second exploratory laparotomy had been performed, and after they found that there were no additional injuries and that the bleeding from the liver had completely subsided, they surgically closed the abdominal wall and brought the skin together with sutures. The three abdominal drains were removed, one on each successive day following the second exploratory. The fractured bones of the left ankle had been straightened and secured with titanium plates, and the swelling had diminished significantly. The plastic surgeon had come by to discuss plans for reconstructive surgery of the right breast and the partially amputated right ear. He had every reason to expect, he advised the parents, that the cosmetic results would be excellent. As for the two amputated fingers on the left hand, prosthetics could be utilized, and even the functionality of that hand would remain good, since the thumb, index, and middle fingers remained intact.

And yet… the girl would not wake.

The sedative agents that had dripped steadily into her veins since her arrival at the hospital had been stopped three days ago. Dr. Elliot had advised the parents that it often took time for the body to metabolize the remaining drugs in the system, even once the infusions were discontinued. It wasn’t unheard-of, she’d told them, for the effects to last many hours or even days. But by now three days had gone by, and still nothing.

Like many in the town, Ben and Thomas had made the trip to Pittsburgh several times now to check on Monica’s progress and to visit with her parents. After her first visit, Susan had elected to stay home with Joel during subsequent trips. “It’s upsetting for me to see her like that,” she’d told her husband one afternoon in the kitchen, “and I don’t think it’s good for Joel either to keep going back.”

“Paul and Vera appreciate the support, Susan,” Ben had responded, surprised by his wife’s unusual skittishness. “You might want to reconsider.”

“I can’t,” she replied. “But you and Thomas should go. I think he needs to see this side of things.”

Ben nodded. The day Monica was discovered along the roadside, Susan had confronted Thomas about sneaking out to the party the night before. Her intuition had been right, and after a brief denial their son had admitted to leaving the house against their bidding.

“It was reckless of him to sneak out like that,” Ben agreed. “I just keep thinking that something like this could’ve happened to him.”

Susan dragged the dish towel across the counter, shepherding crumbs over the edge and into her upturned hand. She opened a cabinet door and deposited them into the trash can. “It’s hard to know how to deal with children as they get older,” she mused. “We can’t control the choices they make, the people they become.”

“We just have to do the best we can,” Ben said, trying to reassure her.

His wife looked out the window, and as Ben followed her gaze it occurred to him that the world out there suddenly seemed too big, too capricious, too hard and full of sharp edges.

“I just don’t want to lose him,” Susan said to herself, her voice wavering near the end.

Ben walked up behind her, cupping her shoulders with his hands. “Don’t worry,” he told her, placing a soft kiss on the back of her neck. “We won’t.”

She turned her head sideways in order to smile back at him, touching the knuckles of his right hand with her fingers. “I know,” she said, but her eyes were sad and lost in a place Ben didn’t quite know how to reach.

29

Carl Schroeder sat in the small, crowded conference room with the other men and waited for the phone to connect. Sam Garston sat across from him, Detective Hunt to his left. His junior partner twirled his pen nervously. Carl wished he would stop. It was getting on his nerves. He would have told him just that, too, if the three other men—FBI field agents, newly assigned to the case and now in charge of the investigation—hadn’t been there to witness it. Instead, he sat there in silence waiting for his brother, Mike—a computer analyst with the bureau—to pick up the damn receiver on the other end of the line as the speakerphone rang and rang over the quiet hum of the air conditioner.

So far their best lead had been the bite wounds sustained by the victims. Saliva specimens from the wounds had failed to yield a match through CODIS, but there had been one important match, which explained the presence of the three FBI agents in the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office today. DNA specimens obtained from the bite wounds sustained by the second victim had matched those from the first. Hence the assailant had been the same person, which meant that in all likelihood they were dealing with a serial killer. The second victim hadn’t died, so the perpetrator still had another two murders to go before he truly fit the definition.

The detectives did not intend to wait for those to happen.

The psychiatric patient who’d escaped from the emergency department had been their only real suspect, although Carl still didn’t know what to make of him. There was something disturbing in the absolute certainty with which he’d confessed, in the unflappable conviction in his voice, and in the picture he’d drawn of himself standing over the victim, a silent scream plastered on his lips. The FBI had employed the skills of a forensic profiler to assist them in the case, and she’d pointed out that psychiatric patients with fixed delusions can often be quite convincing. Whether those delusions were somehow tied to reality was difficult to say. The problem was, they hadn’t been able to locate him. The name he had given—Harold Matthews—had apparently been fictitious, and he certainly wasn’t a local. If he was a drifter, Carl thought, perhaps he had drifted on to some other part of the country by now. They might never see or hear from him again. Then again, it was all too possible that they might—and that was what worried him.

The injuries from the two victims had been photographed extensively, and color photos of the wounds were now scattered on the table in front of them, coalescing into a grotesque collage of macerated flesh. Silicon castings had been constructed from the wounds by the forensic odontologist in Pittsburgh, and one of the more superficial wounds had left a reliable enough dental imprint for the odontologist to identify an abnormal widening—a diastasis, he’d called it—between the upper left canine and the first premolar. It wasn’t much of a lead, but at least it gave them something to go on. But where did they go from here?

Then an idea had occurred to Carl two days ago while brushing his teeth. He’d returned his toothbrush to its plastic holder and had smiled into the mirror, inspecting his handiwork. Is there any easily accessible resource, he’d wondered, that might be utilized to yield information about an individual’s dental pattern? A general subpoena for the dental records of the entire town was not a feasible option, but what about simple photography? How much information could one get from a close-up picture of a person’s smile, for example? He didn’t know. Maybe not much, except for obvious anomalies such as missing teeth or a severe overbite. He would have to check with the dental specialist. The other question was how to obtain such pictures, and he thought he had an answer to that. It had presented itself on the computer screen in front of him every time he’d made a routine traffic stop as a patrolman in his earlier days on the force: driver’s licenses. There was a face smiling back on nearly every one. Okay, it was true that some people didn’t smile when they had their picture taken, but most people did. At least 70 percent, he’d guess. He’d looked at enough driver’s licenses to know. And the pictures of every licensed driver were on file with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. So the question was, how much detail regarding dental anatomy could actually be gathered from those pictures? You’d have to use a software imaging program to zoom in on the smile and adjust the resolution accordingly. You’d have to take measurements and compare them with those obtained by the forensic odontologist. Was it plausible? He’d contacted Mike to find out. The answer was typical for all things technical: It depended on the data.

The software programs to magnify and analyze photographic images were certainly available, and their capabilities were constantly improving. The FBI had been using them for more than two decades for a variety of applications. Photographs for driver’s license identification were now taken digitally in every state, which would make them easier to manipulate. Most people partially revealed the upper central and lateral incisors, canines, and first premolars when they smiled. Big grinners might reveal the second premolars, and some people revealed the bottom central and lateral incisors and canines, but that was less common. Of course, some people didn’t smile at all for the license shot, and some states were now instructing them not to. Presently, Ohio wasn’t one of them. So what they’d really be focusing on, Mike had told him, was four to eight teeth along the upper dentition in those individuals who’d smiled for their pictures. In a two-dimensional photograph, the most reliable measurements would be the length of the cutting surface of each tooth and the space between them. How useful that information would be depended in large part on how much of the dental anatomy the forensic odontologist had been able to reconstruct from the photographs and silicon castings of the bite wounds. Hence the plausibility of gleaning useful information depended on the data, but more from the forensic dental analysis than from the numbers crunched by the software programs from the BMV snapshots. The computer work would actually be the more reliable of the two. Computers were predictable. Real life was always the wild card.

With the FBI now formally involved, Mike had been given the go-ahead to review the BMV photos and see what he could find. They’d begun with licensed drivers from Jefferson County. If that didn’t yield any positive results, they could expand outward to adjacent counties. It was still a long shot, and Carl knew it. All of this was assuming that their suspect even had a driver’s license. But at least it had given them a place to start. Now the six of them sat and stood in various positions around the rectangular table and listened to the phone ringing on the other end as they waited for Mike to answer at his lab in Sacramento, California.

On the seventh ring the line was answered: “If you know the mailbox number of the party you are trying to reach, please press 1 now,” a courteous voice instructed them. Special Agent Larry Culver swore under his breath. He flipped open his cell phone and began dialing the direct line to a unit supervisor. The rapidity of Detective Hunt’s pen twirling bumped up a notch, and this time Carl quietly leaned over and asked him to kindly stop before he was driven stark raving mad. The scattered photographs of the two victims lay on the table in front of the six men and waited patiently for the plodding machinery of justice to respond.

30

“How is she today?” Ben asked, as he and Thomas took a seat. The girl’s mother, Vera, was at the windowsill arranging flowers in several of the large glass vases that stood sentinel over the motionless figure in the bed beside them. The endotracheal tube was gone, removed two days ago by the respiratory therapist, and the room seemed oddly quiet without the sound of the ventilator to which they’d become accustomed. The room itself was also different, no longer the bright lights, frequent alarms, and bustling tempo of the ICU; this was a more sedated step-down unit for less critically ill patients.

“She spiked a fever last night,” Paul Dressler advised them. “Dr. Elliot says it looks like a urinary tract infection. They started her on antibiotics and removed the bladder catheter.” He looked at his daughter. “She seems better today.”

Ben nodded. “The Foley catheter makes UTIs inevitable. It’s good that it’s out.”

“She wears a diaper now.” Vera spoke up from where she stood at the window. “We change her every few hours. They said we should…” She hesitated, glancing at Thomas for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t need to hear about that.”

“Has she woken up at all?” Ben asked, moving on to another subject.

“No,” Paul replied. “Nothing yet.”

“They said she’ll probably wake up very soon,” Vera told them. There was a hint of desperation in her voice, her eyes taking in each of their faces in turn. “Dr. Elliot says there’s no reason she shouldn’t.”

The girl’s father sighed. “They did an MRI of the brain three days ago,” he reported. “It was completely normal.”

“Well, that’s promising,” Ben told them. He tried to sound reassuring. “These things sometimes just take some time. I’m sure the doctors—”

“‘Very soon,’ is what they said,” Vera repeated, as if Ben had been disagreeing with her.

“Well,” Paul interposed, “we’ll just have to see, Vera.” His wife gave him a contemptuous look, then turned her back on them and began sorting the flowers once again.

They were quiet for a moment before Paul turned to Thomas. “How’s school?”

“Fine,” Thomas said. “But we all miss her.”

Paul smiled. “She’d be glad to hear that. You know,” he said, “I’m amazed at how many of her friends made it all the way up here to Pittsburgh to see her. Funny… she never thought she was that popular.”

Ben rose from his chair. “I have an appointment with Dr. Blechman in a few minutes to go over some findings from the DNA analysis. Mind if Thomas stays with you while I’m gone?”

Paul nodded. “Happy to have him.”

Ben excused himself from the room and made his way through the hallways in the direction of the forensic odontologist’s office. He knew the hospital well, having rotated here during his intern year of residency, but also having spent a considerable amount of time at Children’s Hospital during his younger son’s own stay in the pediatric ICU in December 2010.

It had all happened so quickly, as he remembered. Joel and Thomas had been playing upstairs—goofing around, taunting one another, racing down the hallway. Even now, as he walked down the hospital’s familiar corridors three years later, Ben could still almost hear their footsteps pounding on the floorboards above him.

“Quiet down, up there!” he’d yelled from the kitchen doorway. “I’m on the phone!”

Who had he been talking to? He couldn’t remember. The boys hadn’t quieted down, though. In fact, they’d kicked it up a notch. Ben could hear the sound of small plastic action figures striking the walls. They were throwing them at one another. Joel started to shriek in protest to some unseen torture his older brother was likely bestowing upon him.

“Listen, let me call you back,” Ben said. He hung up the phone and started for the stairs. He’d ascended only three steps when he heard the rail from the second floor balcony groan in protest. A moment later, Joel’s body came hurtling past him from above.

Ben was completely stunned. All he could do was to watch his son fall. Joel went headfirst, and when he reached the bottom his skull contacted the wooden floorboards with a sickening crack that echoed through the open foyer.

Ben never recalled descending the stairs and running across the room, but he must have done so because at the next moment he was kneeling beside his son, calling out his name, asking if he was hurt, telling him not to move. There was no need for those instructions. The boy’s body lay splayed across the floor, quiet and motionless.

A few seconds later Thomas was also there, kneeling next to his father and gazing down at his brother in disbelief. “Holy crap,” he whispered. “He fell. I… I don’t think he saw the rail. He ran directly into it—didn’t even slow down. Just hit it and flipped right over. Joel?… Joel, are you okay?”

“Go get the phone,” Ben instructed him. “Call 911. Tell them we need an ambulance. Go!”

The ambulance had rendezvoused with a medevac helicopter, which had brought Joel here, to Children’s Hospital. His son had remained unresponsive for ten days. They had begun to lose hope. And then, just like that, he had awakened.

“Thom—as.”

“Joel. It’s Dad, Joel. Open your eyes. I’m right here.”

“Daaad?”

“Yeah. It’s me, son.”

The boy’s brow furrowed. He ran his tongue across dry, cracked lips. He started to speak, then stopped, reformulating the question in his mind. “Did… did I fall?”

Ben tried to answer and faltered, the words hanging stubbornly in his throat. “Yes, son. You fell.” He watched Joel try the idea on for size. The boy’s eyes searched the room, taking it in for the first time.

“I fell a long way down. Didn’t I, Dad?”

“Yes. You did.”

“But… but now I’m back,” Joel announced, although his inflection was uncertain, as if he were making a statement and asking a question at the same time.

“Yes,” Ben answered, needing to reassure himself as well as the boy. “Now you’re back.”

“Okay,” Joel said, then closed his eyes for a moment.

Don’t close your eyes, son, Ben thought. Don’t slip away from me again. He was on the verge of saying something when the boy’s lids fluttered open.

“Dad?” The voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Yeah?”

“Were you scared?”

Ben felt his face contort as if he’d been struck. His lips tightened into thin white lines that he pressed firmly together. He looked back at his son solemnly and nodded.

Joel seemed to consider this carefully for a moment, then he looked up once more into his father’s eyes and told him, “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

“—floor?”

“Hmm?”

“What floor?” a female voice asked again, pulling Ben from his reverie.

He looked around. He was standing in front of an open elevator. A young woman was perched just inside, her right hand preventing the door from sliding shut.

“Oh… Yes, thank you.” He stepped across the threshold. “Fourth floor, please.”

The woman reached forward and pressed the button. She appeared to hesitate for a moment, then asked, “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Ben replied. “Why do you ask?”

She smiled at him. “You were talking to yourself.”

“Oh. Sorry about that,” he apologized. “I was just… thinking of something that happened a few years ago.”

She nodded.

Ben glanced down at his feet, slightly embarrassed. Joel’s voice (“You don’t have to be scared anymore”) still echoed inside of his head. He looked up at the woman standing beside him. “What did I say?” he asked.

“I think you said”—she paused, frowning uncertainly—“‘But I am.’”

31

It seemed that she was always in the woods, in the dark belly of the forest. She ran panic-stricken through the trees, the bramble snatching at her calves and ankles with its greedy carnivorous claws, tearing deep red fissures into her flesh. Her chest heaved with exertion, the dank air filling her lungs over and over and yet never quelling the incessant burning within. Branches grasped at her shoulders as she passed, slowing her escape, trying to pull her to the ground. The voice in her head raced around on its little track (… low and quiet… cover myself with leaves… distance between us… run right by me…) and ended up right back where it had started. She could hear him coming for her, could sense him getting closer, could almost feel the outstretched fingers brushing up against the back of her neck. Her sneakers dug for traction in the wet mud. He was so close now. She could hear his breath coming in quick, measured gasps. She couldn’t shake him, couldn’t hide from him, couldn’t outdistance or outmaneuver him. Soon he would be upon her, his fingers tightening around her throat, his teeth sinking deep into her neck.

She glanced backward—saw him barreling through the bushes a few yards behind her. In utter terror, she propelled herself onward, leaping over a thick nest of bramble. Then suddenly, she was falling, her body accelerating downward past a wall of mud and roots that jutted out at her like gnarled, severed limbs. She fell for several seconds, then landed awkwardly, feeling the snap of her left ankle as she struck the bottom of the ravine. The pain was excruciating. She rolled over onto her back, her hands clutching the deformity of her lower leg, and she opened her mouth to scream. Then she stopped, the cry dying in her throat before it was uttered.

He was looking down at her from the lip of the precipice high above, his features unrecognizable in the darkness. There was no sound except for her own ragged breathing and the soft rustle of tree limbs in the wind. The two of them stared at one another for several seconds, and she had time to think, This is not how it happened before. This is something different. Then she watched as he got down onto his stomach and swung his legs out over the edge, his feet searching for purchase amid the sporadic knobs of roots protruding from the wall. “No,” she whispered, peering up at him as he began lowering himself slowly, one foothold at a time, toward the bottom of the ravine.

There was no option of standing or running, she realized, looking down at the ruined, grotesque angulation of her ankle. She tried to pull herself up into a seated position, but the slightest movement of her leg brought the dull, throbbing pain to a sudden, unbearable crescendo that blanched her vision and caused her to teeter on the brink of unconsciousness. Maybe that would be better, she thought to herself. She did not want to be awake when he reached her, could not endure the horror of simply lying here sprawled in the mud, watching him close the distance between them.

“Got to wake yourself up,” a thin voice sounded somewhere off to her left. She turned her head in that direction. In the dim light, she could make out the shape of a female figure lying on the ground about fifteen feet from her current position. The face was turned away from her, but the voice had a familiarity to it that she almost recognized.

“Are you okay?” she asked the girl, for there was something not quite right in the shape of the torso, in the stillness of the chest that did not rise and fall with the usual cycle of breathing.

“Look! He’s already halfway down.” The girl pointed with her left hand toward the figure above them. Two of her fingers were missing.

“I… I can’t move,” Monica told her. “My ankle… it’s broken.”

The girl turned her head to look up at the night sky. The top of her right ear, Monica could see, had been torn away, leaving behind a jagged, glistening line of cartilage.

“You’re not where you think you are,” the girl said. “The worst of it is already behind you. You’ve already made it to the roadway.”

“What roadway? I don’t understand.” Monica glanced upward. The figure had almost completed his descent. Soon he would be—

“Wake up!” The girl’s voice was filled with urgency.

Monica shook her head. “No. I can’t just leave you here.”

To her surprise, the girl lying beside her began to laugh. It started softly, then rose in pitch and volume until it filled the night sky above them. A moment later, the figure descending the wall reached the bottom. He turned and quickly traversed the few remaining yards between them. There was an instrument—something long and sharp—in his left hand, and he began to raise it high over his head. Monica turned to look at the girl. “I can’t leave you here!” she wailed.

“No? You sure about that?” The girl turned her head so that she was staring directly back at her. The girl’s face was a mirror image of Monica’s own, only the eyes were dead and vacant. “You sure about that?” it said again, as the left arm of the figure looming above them began to swing downward.

“Wake up!” she screamed, and she wasn’t certain which body she inhabited now—the living or the dead. “Wake up! Wake up! WakeupWakeupWakeup!!”

The instrument plummeting like a raptor from the sky…

And somewhere in Children’s Hospital her eyes flew open, staring into the darkness of a room she did not recognize, her body still bracing itself for the blow.