The Absence of Mercy

42

The young body—as yet unidentified—lay on the metal autopsy table and attempted to tell its story. There was no doubt the boy had been murdered. A long incision began just above the right clavicle and followed a slightly diagonal course across the anterior neck, ending just inferior to the left angle of the mandible. The incision had been deep, severing the internal jugular veins bilaterally, as well as the right carotid artery. Mercifully, the boy would have bled out in less than a minute, and had undoubtedly lost consciousness within the first thirty seconds. Hemorrhaging had been massive, as demonstrated in striking detail in the color photographs of the crime scene police had taken of the uncovered body lying crumpled in the snow amid a shredded carpet of scarlet contrasted on the dove-white backdrop.

Judging from the nature of the wounds and the zealous dismemberment of the body, there was also little doubt that the perpetrator of this crime was the same individual who had attacked the two previous victims. There were several human bite wounds that appeared to have occurred postmortem, and Ben was fairly certain the dental patterns from these wounds would match those sustained by the others. Mutilation of the body seemed to be a strong motivational component for the assailant. In this case, the victim’s facial features had been stripped away using an abrasive surface—something akin to a cheese grater was the first thing that had come to mind. As before, several of the victim’s digits had been amputated. They had either been cast within throwing distance of the body or had been stuffed into various orifices for Ben to discover during autopsy. The left hand, of course, was already accounted for.

The facial mutilation would make it difficult for family, once they were located, to ID the body. Confirmation of the child’s identity would most likely rely on fingerprints and dental records. Based on the anatomy, Ben estimated the victim to be about ten, maybe eleven—not too much older than Joel, he realized with a dull sort of horror.

So far, no one locally had been reported missing over the past few weeks. It was possible the boy was a runaway. According to Detective Schroeder, twenty-three runaways fitting the victim’s general age and gender had been reported missing from a 250-mile radius over the past six months. To Ben, that number seemed high, but when he’d asked Schroeder about it the detective had been nonplussed.

“Lot of kids decide to leave home and strike out on their own. The family environment in many of these cases is”—he shrugged—”less than ideal. Sometimes remaining at home is the more dangerous of their limited options.”

Ben looked through his open office door at the body lying on the table. Detective Hunt stood over it snapping off a few additional photos. “Not in this case,” Ben said.

“No,” Schroeder agreed from where he sat on the other side of the desk. His hair had grayed significantly over the past nine months, Ben noticed, and his eyes appeared to sag a bit more around the edges. The detective tapped his pen lightly on the corner of his notepad, then flipped to a fresh page. “Any idea about the time of death?” he asked.

Ben folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “It’s hard to pinpoint,” he began. “The body was buried in the snow, which causes some minor moisture damage to the superficial tissues but retards the decomposition process.”

Schroeder nodded. “Except for tracks left by the snowmobile and its occupants, the snow cover in the vicinity where the body was located was untouched. There were no surface tracks leading either toward or away from the scene. Which means,” he continued, “the victim wasn’t brought there from someplace else. He was murdered at the spot, presumably before or during the last snowfall, and was simply left there to be buried by the gathering accumulation.”

“From a timing perspective, that coincides with the delivery of the package I received on the front steps of the CO,” Ben said. “That was on the first day of the storm. The hand was cold and virtually bloodless, but no significant decomposition had occurred.”

“Which means that once again,” Carl noted, “he killed this one in broad daylight.” He shook his head. “It’s gutsy of him, I’ll give him that.”

“Maybe there’s a part of him that wants to be caught,” Detective Hunt suggested, entering the office and, with no other chairs available, selecting a spot against the wall behind Ben’s desk on which to lean his thin frame.

Ben turned to him. He had to look back over his left shoulder slightly. “Sorry about the cramped quarters, Detective,” he apologized. “There’re a few stools in the autopsy room, if you’d like to grab one of those.”

Danny waved away the offer. “Don’t worry about it, doc.” He smiled. “Once I make senior detective, the department’s going to give me my own chair to sit on. Chief Garston promised. Until then, I’ve learned to do some of my best thinking standing up.”

“It’s because the blood’s rushing away from your brain,” his partner observed, giving him a flat look. Carl was growing weary of this case. He’d more or less been in a bad mood since it had begun.

“Is that a picture of your family, Dr. Stevenson?” Danny asked, ignoring the insult. He gestured toward a framed photo Ben had sitting on his desk. It had been taken two years ago during a white-water rafting trip in West Virginia. In the posed shot, they stood shoulder to shoulder on a huge rock along the banks of the river, oars hoisted triumphantly over their heads as the water churned and sprayed in the background.

“Yeah,” Ben said, handing him the picture. “We’re a good-lookin’ group, ain’t we?”

Danny smiled. “What river is that?”

“Lower Gauley.”

“Ever try the Upper?”

Ben shook his head. “That’s quite a bit beyond our experience level,” he said. “People die on the Upper Gauley, Detective.”

Carl was glaring at his colleague. The anger had been building inside him during most of this inane conversation. Over the past few months he’d gradually come to the conclusion that having Danny Hunt as a partner was like trying to run a marathon with your shoelaces tied together. The kid slowed him down, often seemed not to appreciate the seriousness of their work, and showed more interest in chitchat than in examining the facts of the case in front of them. I really ought to have a word with Sam Garston about the kid’s overall conduct, Carl thought. Danny was a nice enough guy, he supposed—but he sure as hell wasn’t cut out for detective work.

“Are you finished?” he asked his partner coldly. “Because I’d like to talk about the case now. That is, if it’s okay with you.”

Danny nodded, handing the picture back to Ben. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out his notepad. “Sorry,” he said, eyes cast downward onto the pages in front of him.

“Thank you,” Carl replied. He turned to the doctor. “What do you make of the face? Was he trying to make it difficult for us to ID the victim?”

“I don’t think so.” Ben frowned. “He also amputated several of the kid’s digits, but I don’t think it was an effort to avoid fingerprinting. He left some of the fingers intact. In addition, all of the amputated digits were either found with the body itself or simply tossed aside in proximity to the crime scene.”

“So why destroy the face? Does that suggest any significance for psychological profiling?”

“Psychological profiling is not my area of expertise,” Ben replied. “But provided we think this is the same guy—which we do—I’d say no. The faces of the other two victims were damaged, but their general features remained intact. It doesn’t fit his MO.”

“Which is?”

“Judging from the injuries to the bodies, I’d say that each one has been progressively worse.”

“You think he’s getting better at desecrating them?” Detective Schroeder asked, glancing toward the metal table in the next room.

“No,” Ben said. “I think he’s experimenting—seeing just how creative he can get. I think his enthusiasm for this sort of work is growing.”

There were a few more questions, but they were mostly formalities. By now, they all knew what they were dealing with. In a way, they each shared a certain intimacy with the killer, wading through the aftermath of each successive massacre and getting to know him by the tattered pieces he left behind. Detectives Schroeder and Hunt thanked Ben once again for his time. “If you discover anything else that might be of assistance,” Carl reminded him unnecessarily, “please give us a call.” Ben assured them that he would.

The detectives took their leave and made their way across the parking lot to the unmarked cruiser out back. “You know,” Carl said as they pulled the doors closed against the bitter chill, “you really ought to try concentrating on your job for once.” He popped the key into the ignition and started the Chevy, but left it idling in neutral. “I mean, what in the hell was that all about back there? Is this case boring you? You’d rather go white-water rafting with the doc this weekend?”

“Sorry,” Danny replied. “I wasn’t trying to irritate you.”

“You think I’m out of line?” Carl challenged. “You think I shouldn’t be irritated?” He dropped the car into reverse and backed away from the building. He tried to let go of his frustration, telling himself he was overreacting, that the stress of the case was getting to him. Still, it was hard to let the anger go once it had taken hold of him. “I mean, why don’t you try getting your head out of your ass and start acting like you really care about solving this thing. I could use a little help here. You think you could manage that?”

Danny remained quiet, looking out through the passenger window. His right hand fidgeted with the armrest. Carl watched him for a moment, then shook his head in exasperation. There was no fight in the boy; that was the problem. If anyone had given Carl the type of verbal flogging he’d just dished out, he would’ve told them to go to hell; it wouldn’t matter who they were. Instead, the kid just sat there and took it.

He guided the car out of the parking lot and shot down the street in the direction of the station, the tires screeching slightly on the asphalt as they accelerated. Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the trip. Small homes and businesses streaked past them on either side. It wasn’t a huge town: one high school, a couple of gas stations, a few bars and restaurants for evening entertainment. Not much, really. But it was theirs to protect, theirs to safeguard. The thing was, nobody around here had been outwardly vocal about the delay in catching this guy. No one had stood up and said, “Why ain’t the police doin’ their job? That’s what I want to know!” It simply wasn’t that kind of place. These people were Carl’s friends and neighbors, and he knew most of them by name. For the most part, they were decent folks. People trusted that their Sheriff’s Department was doing everything in its power to put an end to this. The town seemed to have faith in that, and most people understood that a barrage of criticism wouldn’t make the department’s job any easier. That made it all the more frustrating for him that the investigation had failed to make any real headway since the last attack. The DNA sample from Clarence Bedford, the escaped psychiatric patient, had not matched any of the DNA left behind on the bodies by the perpetrator. And just like that, their most promising suspect—their only concrete suspect—had been swept off their list, leaving them with no one. That setback left Carl feeling angry and ashamed, and ready to bite the head off anyone who he judged wasn’t doing their part to get this case solved. That’s where Danny came in. The kid needed someone to light a fire under his ass, and by default Carl had been the one to do it. If I hurt the kid’s feelings, he thought as they pulled into the station ten minutes later, well, tough shit. If it yielded something useful, it would certainly be worth it.

For his part, Danny had sat quietly in the front passenger seat during the short ride, gazing thoughtfully out through the window at the parade of storefronts and side streets they passed. He cared very little about the rebuke he’d just received from his partner. His hide was considerably thicker than Detective Schroeder presumed. Nor did he need a fire to be lit under his proverbial ass, as his partner imagined. He had taken the case seriously from the start, and had logged more hours than anyone during this investigation, sifting through the BMV photos until their images appeared before him even in sleep. He’d carefully reviewed the evidence over and over, looking for something to stand out from the background noise. The results of his efforts had been as frustrating to him as they had been for Carl. He didn’t know why this should be the case. Hard work had always paid off for him in the past. Maybe he’d simply been thinking about it too much, trying to will something to happen when it clearly wanted to take its own sweet time coming to him. If that was so, the price of patience had been another dead child. That had pushed him back into a state of action once again, no matter how futile those actions might turn out to be. It was what drove him to bring his own digital camera to the autopsy review today. The body had already been thoroughly photographed by the crime scene investigators at the time it was originally discovered. Extensive pictures of the injuries were also taken during autopsy. Every wound had been well documented. It had not been necessary for him to repeat the process today. And yet he had felt the need to do so, if for no other reason than to involve himself as intimately as possible with the available evidence. And so, for twenty minutes he had remained with the body in the autopsy room while his partner and Dr. Stevenson talked further in the pathologist’s tiny adjacent office. When Danny had finished, he’d returned the camera to its carrying case and had joined the others in the next room. And then…

“The bodies of the victims took quite a beating,” he observed now offhandedly, breaking the silence as they nosed into a parking spot.

“You just noticing that, are you?” Carl responded.

Danny barely registered the remark. His tone was thoughtful: “One hand and multiple fingers amputated. Deep stab wounds. Genitals amputated on the first victim. Most of the face abraded away on this last one.”

“Yeah. It’s amazing how you’re putting all of this together,” Carl replied.

“You can’t inflict those sort of wounds with your bare hands.”

“I think we’ve already established that there was a weapon involved.”

“Several, most likely. Pretty tough to abrade someone’s face away with a regular knife.”

“Uh-huh.” Carl killed the ignition.

“And the amputations: You ever tried cutting through bone with a knife, even a really sharp one?”

“I’ve done some hunting.”

“So you know it isn’t easy, especially if you’re going to do a bunch of them in a short enough period of time to minimize your chances of being caught in the act.”

“Is there a point to any of this?” Carl asked, impatiently. “Or are you just playing catch-up?”

“While I was photographing the injuries today,” Danny replied, studying the palms of his hands, “I was just thinking about what type of weapons—or specialized tools, if you will—might be necessary to carry out something like that.”

“And?”

“And I noticed a lot of them either lying around in the sink or stored away in drawers in that very room.”

“Now, wait a minute.” Carl stopped him. “If you’re implying that the doc or his assistant might have had something to do with this, you’re way off the mark. If you’d been paying attention, you’d remember that we actually checked on that, mostly because we had nothing better to do. Both of them have solid alibis during at least one of the three attacks. And the DNA analysis from the assistant didn’t match the biological samples obtained from the bite wounds.”

“True. I’m just saying that the Coroner’s Office would make a nice source for acquiring some of the necessary instruments. I’ll bet some of the tools might not even be missed. Or perhaps,” he said, “they might have even been returned without anyone noticing. Think about it. What a great hiding place for a murder weapon: in an autopsy room in the midst of scores of similar instruments used to dissect cadavers on a daily basis. Hell, they might even have been cleaned by the CO staff between murders.”

“Interesting theory,” Carl replied. “But they keep that place locked up when there’s no one there. No security guard with an extra set of keys. Who would that leave? The secretary? You think she’s got the strength to carry out those kinds of attacks?”

“No,” Danny answered. “Besides, most of the stab wounds have upward trajectories—more consistent with a male attacker. Women tend to hold the weapon over their head and stab downward.”

“Generally, yes,” Carl agreed. “So would that imply a break-in? We could check, but I don’t recall the Coroner’s Office reporting any break-ins over the past year or so.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“So, according to your theory, we would be looking for someone with access to keys to the CO, but not necessarily the staff itself. Friends, family, lovers. That sort of thing?”

“Right.”

“Well… we could check into it—talk to a few people and see if anyone fits the profile—but I think it’s a real stretch. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Sherlock Holmes, but I do appreciate your willingness to get your head back into this invest—”

“There’s one other thing,” Danny said.

“What’s that?”

“The bite wounds. I can’t stop thinking about the bite wounds.”

“What about them?”

“Well, for one thing, it just seems… I don’t know… so animalistic. So savage. I find it the most upsetting factor, don’t you?”

“The whole thing’s upsetting, as far as I’m concerned,” Carl said. “I mean, that obliterated face today was pretty disturbing. But we’re in a gruesome business, kid. You’ve got to get used to stuff like that.”

“I know.” Danny was studying his hands again. “But I was photographing the bite wounds today.” He looked up and smiled thinly, a little painfully. “I had to focus in pretty close to get the detail clear enough.”

Carl sighed. “Yeah?” With the ignition off they’d lost the heater, and the late December Midwest cold was starting to settle into the passenger compartment. He wanted to get into the station where it was warm instead of sit out here and listen to his junior partner go on about things he could’ve discussed during their conversation with the doctor at the CO.

“Do you remember that abnormal gap between the upper left canine and the first premolar that the dental expert identified from the silicon castings of the bite wounds? He called it a diastasis.”

Carl nodded. “Of course. We looked into it. Nothing panned out.”

“Well, it looks to be consistent with at least one of the superficial impressions left on the skin of this body, too. It’s clearly evident, provided you know what to look for.”

“Which means the guy who killed this kid is the same one who attacked the other two. As suspected.”

“Right.”

“So? I don’t see how that moves us any closer than where we already were.”

Detective Hunt stopped studying his hands and looked up at his partner. He looked a little ill. Carl wondered if he might be coming down with his first winter cold of the season. Probably end up getting him sick, too.

“I noticed the diastasis twice today,” he said. “Once while I was photographing the body, and a few minutes later in the doc’s office. I don’t think it would’ve even registered in my mind if I hadn’t gone through all those BMV photos this past summer. I just looked across the desk and there it was. I had to get a closer look to be certain, but yeah—plain as day.”

“What are you talking about?” Carl asked, but something in his gut had begun to stir, and he thought he knew what his partner was about to say next.

“The photograph on the doc’s desk,” Danny replied. “The one of the whole family posing for a snapshot on the riverbank. Big smiles all around.”

“Who?” Carl asked. His mouth suddenly felt dry and unpleasant, as if he had been eating old mothballs extracted from his grandmother’s closet.

The young detective held his gaze. His face was as still and solemn as the autopsy room they had just vacated.

“Oldest boy,” Danny said, and with that he stepped out of the car and headed into the station, where it was warm.

43

Sam Garston sat back in his chair. The two detectives exchanged glances, but neither of them spoke further. Their phone call had caught him in the middle of dinner. Was he available to speak with them? “Of course,” he’d said. “What’s up?” Perhaps it was better if they spoke in person, Detective Schroeder had suggested.

“Well, I’m not heading out again unless it’s an emergency,” Sam had replied, glancing out through the kitchen window at the sleet that had begun to fall. “You boys might ‘s well meet with me at home, if it needs to be tonight.”

And so the two younger men had driven through mostly deserted streets and had trudged up the walkway to their boss’s front door.

“Cold out tonight,” Carla observed, ushering them in. “Interest you men in some hot coffee? Freshly brewed.”

Neither one of them had to think twice about that.

Having heard them out, Sam now turned his head to the right, his eyes studying his own living room wall. It was sparsely populated with photographs he’d taken over the years, mostly from the few vacations he’d managed during the course of his adult life. Those vacations had been short and all too infrequent. He and Carla had simply been too busy most of the time, distracted with a parade of unending duties and obligations. Their world had been small and neatly packaged, just the way they liked it. He just hadn’t thought of it that way until recently. Lately, though, Sam found his thoughts turning with increasing frequency toward retirement, and he wondered with a sort of tentative excitement what it would be like to return to a place in his life where his options once more seemed far greater than the sum of his responsibilities. It wasn’t far off now; he could feel it. In the meantime, there remained a few unresolved matters that demanded his attention.

“We’d better be damn sure about this before we start hauling people in for questioning,” he said at last. “If we’re wrong, the situation will be…” He searched for the right word. “Irreparable.” He looked at them both to make certain they understood. “Ben Stevenson not only has a close working relationship with this department, but he also happens to be a personal friend of mine.”

“A fingerprint match would clinch it,” Schroeder noted.

“No. I don’t want the boy brought in for fingerprinting until we’re reasonably certain.”

“A search warrant of the house would likely yield sufficient prints from the kid’s bedroom,” Danny suggested, “in addition to anything else we might find.”

“I’m not serving Dr. Stevenson with a search warrant of his home based on an observation you made from a photograph,” Sam told him, shooting an irritated glare in Detective Hunt’s direction. He tried to tell himself that it wasn’t Hunt’s fault. He was simply doing his job—a job Sam himself had assigned him to do. You have to follow the evidence where it leads, he reminded himself, no matter whose door it takes you to.

“Why don’t we petition a judge to order the release of the kid’s dental records, now that we have someone specific we’re interested in?” Danny suggested.

Sam considered it for a moment. “There are three local dentists in town,” he replied. “We don’t know which one he goes to. We’d have to ask the judge for a court-ordered release of records from all three. That’s going to raise some local interest. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to keep quiet in a small town.”

“How likely is it, anyway,” Carl wondered, “that he’s had recent dental imprints made, and that a physical casting would be available to send to the forensic odontologist. It would be a gamble that might very well turn up nothing.”

“I don’t know, Chief,” Danny sighed. “A limited search warrant of the home may be the most straightforward approach here—just to get fingerprints from the kid’s room and to take a quick look around. If we’re right, we’ve got him. If we’re wrong and the prints don’t match, we apologize to the doc and trust that, given the gravity of the investigation, he’ll understand.”

“I’d really like to avoid that if we could,” Sam responded. “I mean, what’s your degree of certainty here? I know Thomas Stevenson. He’s a good kid: smart, athletic, very likable…”

“Fits the profile,” Carl observed.

Sam traced his thumb across the leather armrest of his chair. “You really think he’s responsible for murdering and desecrating those kids, for attacking Monica Dressler? You think he’s capable of that?”

“We won’t know unless we check it out, Chief,” Carl said. Truth be told, he was somewhat surprised by his boss’s reluctance to pursue this lead.

“But what does your gut tell you?” Garston asked. “You think he actually did it?”

Carl shrugged. “Lord knows, I don’t want it to be him any more than you do. But just because we don’t want it to be so, doesn’t mean it isn’t.”

“Why don’t you try the high school,” a thin voice proposed from the kitchen, and Carla Garston’s frame appeared in the doorway. They all turned to look. “I’m sorry,” she told the detectives. “I know I’m not supposed to be eavesdropping. But after twenty-eight years of marriage, I can say with relative certainty that my husband will end up discussing this with me later tonight anyway. It saves him the trouble, if you think about it.” She raised her hands in a half shrug, as if to say, Gentlemen, let’s not quibble on the details. “I hope you’ll excuse the interruption.”

“What do you mean, ‘try the high school’?” Sam asked, nonplussed by his wife’s interjection.

“For prints,” she responded, drying her hands on a dish towel.

“Carla, do you have any idea how many sets of prints would be covering that place?” her husband asked incredulously.

“Not that many,” she replied. “You just have to limit your search to a finite area.”

“Such as?” Detective Schroeder asked.

“The door to his locker, of course.” She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment as she returned the towel to its rack near the oven, then rejoined them in the living room. “School grounds are county property. That should alleviate your search warrant predicament. Plus, the building’s empty for winter break. You could be in and out of there without disturbing a soul, except for maybe the janitor who could locate it and unlock the door for you.”

They looked at each other, each considering the idea and finding it basically sound.

Carla shrugged. “Seems like a good starting place, anyway,” she said. “Care for a refill on that coffee, Detective Hunt? Detective Schroeder? I still have half a pot here that will go to waste if you don’t drink it. Sam’s doctor says he’s not allowed to have caffeine before he goes to bed. He’s been struggling with a little insomnia lately.”

“I don’t think the detectives need to hear about that, Carla,” Sam advised her. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“It’s no secret,” his wife replied. “With the bags you carry around under your eyes some days, I’m sure any detective worth his rank could deduce as much just by looking at you.”

“I’ll take some more coffee, ma’am,” Danny Hunt said with a grin. “I can drink a whole pot and sleep like a baby. Got used to it in college, I guess.”

“I should’ve known you were a college boy.” She smiled at him and refilled his cup. “No wonder you’re so smart.”

Danny was twenty-seven, and still had the tendency to blush an embarrassing shade of magenta when the situation called for it.

“Criminal justice major, I presume?” Carla inquired.

“No, ma’am. Philosophy with a minor in biochemistry.”

“Ahh. All the makings of a fine detective,” she said, turning to refresh Carl’s mug as well. With the pot empty and a reasonable course of action now decided upon, she excused herself to get ready for bed.

44

“Thanks for the pictures.” She spoke into the cordless phone cradled between her neck and shoulder. She stepped into her bedroom and closed the door for privacy.

“You’re welcome,” he replied.

“I wish I was there with you.” Monica went to her computer and scrolled through the digital photos Thomas had e-mailed her that afternoon. Her favorite was a picture of him standing on a rocky outcrop overlooking the impressive expanse of a valley far below. Thomas was turned at an oblique angle to the camera, such that half of his face was highlighted by the light of the setting sun, while the other hemisphere was lost in shadows. The rocky landscape had taken on a deep ruddy crimson complexion, and the soft orange sky hovered in the background like an artist who chooses to add a few remaining strokes to a work he knows is already finished, simply because he cannot bear to pull himself away. She touched the photo with her thumb, stroking the side of his face. “When do you come home?”

“Three days. You think you can wait until then?”

“Nope.”

“Well, you’ll have to go find some other guy then.”

She smiled. “I don’t want another guy. I want you.”

He was quiet for a moment, and Monica crossed the room, sitting down on the side of her bed. She ran her fingers across the sheets, thinking about the day they had lain here together, his deeply tanned arms wrapped protectively around her while the afternoon unfolded splendidly around them.

“What’ve you been doing since I’ve been gone?” he asked.

“Nothing exciting,” she said. “Schoolwork and physical therapy, mostly. They’ve got me jogging on a treadmill now. Three days a week for thirty minutes.” She grimaced. “I hate running.”

“You shouldn’t. You’re good at it.”

“How would you know?” she said, a reflexive note of challenge in her voice. “You’ve never seen me run.”

There was a slight pause. “No, but you’re good at everything,” he told her. “I’ll bet you’re fast as hell when you want to be.”

She had a brief image of herself hurtling through the woods, her breath coming in ragged, terrified sobs—and then it was gone.

“Not fast enough,” she said, standing up and walking to the window. She pressed her fingers up against the glass. The front yard was still blanketed in heavy drifts. Tree branches spread their naked fingers toward the sky.

“Listen, I’ve gotta go,” he said. “Hang in there. I’ll be home in a few days.”

Don’t go yet, she felt like saying. We can talk for a little while longer, can’t we? She pressed her lips together and remained silent.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she replied, her voice faltering a bit on the last syllable.

She listened to the receiver until the connection was lost, until the mechanical voice on the other end told her that if she would like to make a call she could hang up and try again. She thumbed the off button and placed the phone on the desktop beside her, but remained standing at the window for a long time, looking out at the bleak afternoon. Except for a few parked cars, the street outside was vacant, devoid of the children who so frequently played there. These days everyone was being careful. Her eyes wandered across the stillness of front yards and driveways, overturned sleds lying lifeless and abandoned in the snow. From her vantage point behind the protective pane of glass, the scene suddenly struck her as offensive, almost obscene—as if she’d unexpectedly come across a dirty magazine sitting on the dresser in her parents’ bedroom. She had the urge to turn away, to pretend she hadn’t noticed.

“It’ll be okay,” she told herself, but she wondered now if it ever really would be—for any of them.

These days she wondered about that a lot.

45

It was Monday afternoon. The cold snap had finally decided to relinquish its hold on the region, and the snow and ice that had collected on the frozen ground almost a month ago had now, at long last, initiated its inevitable metamorphosis toward oblivion. Trillions of rivulets of muddied water set out on their sluggish, unhurried journeys into sewer drains, streams, ponds, reservoirs, and even into the porous flesh of the earth itself. The white landscape that had maintained a constant presence during the past few weeks now gave way to patches of brownish, puddled muck. Tree limbs, unencumbered of their heavy loads of frozen precipitation, stretched out their wooden spines as if straightening themselves at the end of a long day of stooped, hunchbacked labor, and the spines of many of the town’s residents bent to shoveling sidewalks newly freed from the thick layer of ice that had rendered the concrete walkways nearly impossible to clear only a day before.

So it was that Sam Garston found himself sitting in his office watching the snowmelt dribble past his window in large pregnant drops from the station’s roof down onto the sidewalk below. He had gotten a call from the lab less than an hour ago. Several of the prints they’d collected from the Stevenson kid’s locker that morning had matched those found on two of the three victims. (The body of the last victim, having been buried in the snow for several weeks, hadn’t yielded any salvageable prints at all.) “Was there any question about the match—any doubt in the analyst’s mind?” Sam had asked. “Not much,” the man on the other end of the phone had replied. The error rate of the software program they used for such purposes was about one in 1.6 million. That didn’t leave a whole lot of room for wishful thinking.

That had been enough to request a search warrant of the Stevenson residence, which Judge Natalie Grossman, presiding over the Jefferson County Courthouse that day, had granted them. Detectives Schroeder and Hunt had gone to pick up the document and would be contacting Sam in his office as soon as they had it in hand. He’d already notified Larry Culver from the FBI of their findings and pending search of the home. The bureau would send its own forensic team to assist them with evidence collection. The Stevenson boy would be arrested on-site and taken in for questioning. The rest of the family would also need to be questioned, however painful that might be for Sam personally. It was important to ensure that the boy had acted alone.

The call from the crime lab regarding the fingerprint match had invoked in Sam an unpleasant surge of nausea that he’d been unable to shake over the last fifty minutes, despite a generous swig from the bottle of Maalox he kept in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk. That, mixed with the onset of just a touch of mild chest pressure, made him wonder (with no small degree of concern) whether he might be in the process of having himself one of those all-American heart attacks he’d heard so much about over the years. Why not? he asked himself. He’d put in his time at a few greasy spoons in his day. He was certainly due for a few rounds in the ring with the ol’ Massive Coronary. If so, perhaps he’d be staring up at the inside of a closed casket before the week was through. “Now there’s a nice thought,” he muttered, as he watched a piece of melting ice abandon its grip on the gutter above him and tumble unceremoniously like the corpse of a dead bird to the concrete below. He took another swig from the bottle of antacid in his right hand, wincing at the thick, nasty artificial sweetness of it. Heart attack. Just the idea caused him to break out in a light sweat.

This is one of the many unpleasantries of the job, he thought: finding out that someone you knew, someone whose parents you’d had dinner with on more than one occasion and whose father was not only a colleague but also a friend, had wandered onto the wrong side of the law. (Hell, in this case “wandering onto the wrong side of the law” was a monumental understatement now, wasn’t it?) And yet, when Sam thought about the fury that had been unleashed on those young souls… When he thought about the heartbreaking agony sustained by those children’s parents… Indeed, that was the worst of it, he reminded himself. Not this.

As for this part—the arrest and its aftermath—Sam was merely fulfilling his responsibility, wasn’t he? It was a responsibility that’d begun when he’d entered the training academy as a young man. Back then, it had only been an idea, a concept—words he had uttered with the rest of his class during a graduation ceremony almost forty years ago. Still, he’d never suspected the measure of sacrifice the job would ultimately demand of him, or the personal casualties that would be sustained along the way. Now, decades later and near the end of his career, he could look back and finally take stock of the full weight of those casualties. His restless nights and the half-empty bottle of Maalox he now clutched in his hand were only the beginning. The uncomfortable pressure that had taken up residence in his chest this afternoon was also a part of it. But most of all, there were certain tragedies he had witnessed—their images stuck in his mind like desert burrs, caked with the dirt of time but sharp and tenacious nonetheless—that served to remind him that the world, or at least the human race, was indeed broken in some fundamental and perhaps irreparable way. That was the true measure of payment the job had exacted upon him over the years.

The phone on his desk began to ring. It would be Detective Schroeder, notifying him that they’d obtained the search warrant. The final act of this investigation was about to commence, and Chief Samuel J. Garston of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, having served steadfastly and dutifully on the force for the past thirty-eight years, two months, and fourteen days, realized he wanted nothing to do with it.

I do solemnly swear, he thought to himself, reaching for the phone, that I will faithfully and impartially execute the duties of my office… to the best of my skill, abilities, and judgment; so help me God.

It was Carl Schroeder on the line. The conversation was brief, a simple confirmation, and Sam hung up the phone within thirty seconds. He grabbed his coat off the rack and opened the door to his office. The chest discomfort he’d experienced earlier was subsiding, at least. There was that much. Hopefully, it had been nothing too serious. So help him God.

46

Detectives Schroeder and Hunt were the first to arrive at the Stevensons’ residence. There was one car in the driveway—Susan’s gray Saab—but after a protracted series of knocks on the front door it became clear that the house was empty. This wasn’t completely surprising, since it was the middle of the day and both of the physicians would presumably be at work. Officers were immediately dispatched to the hospital where Ben worked, and to the medical office Susan shared with a colleague. On the off chance that Ben was engaged in official duties at the Coroner’s Office, a car was sent to that address, as well. The building would need to be secured and thoroughly inspected regardless, since its numerous drawers, racks, and countertops could very conceivably host the weapons used in one or all of the murders. Chief Garston pulled into the driveway a few minutes after Schroeder and Hunt, and two additional cruisers arrived shortly thereafter, along with a van from the forensic investigation unit that had been dispatched to assist with the search of the premises and related evidence-gathering. The congregation of law enforcement vehicles and personnel quickly filled the Stevensons’ driveway and spilled out onto the narrow road servicing the suburban neighborhood.

Mary Jennings, who lived just across the street in a modest two-story split-foyer, noticed the accumulation of sheriff’s deputies and emergency vehicles from her kitchen window as she was preparing lunch. In a state of concern, she picked up the phone and dialed Susan Stevenson’s cell phone. As circumstances would have it, the voice that answered was neither across the street in the house now surrounded by police officers, nor at her medical office three miles away, but rather almost two thousand miles away, on the other side of the country.

“Hey, Mary. What’s up?”

Susan sounds particularly nonplussed, Mary thought, given the fact that half of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department is walking around on her front lawn. “I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay,” she replied. “There’re a bunch of cop cars sitting in your driveway. I thought maybe you guys might’ve had a break-in this morning.”

There was no response from the other end of the line, and Mary wondered if perhaps they’d been disconnected. “Sue?” she asked tentatively. “You still there?”

At first she thought that, indeed, she’d lost the connection. But as she listened she realized that the line was not completely dead. She could hear something in the background: the muffled voice of what sounded like a convenience store clerk ringing up a purchase (“Will that be all? Can I get you anything else today?”) beneath the subtle static of the open line. She began to take the receiver away from her ear when she heard—or at least thought she heard—a reply on the other end.

“—any?”

“Hello, Susan?”

“Mary, you there?”

“I’m here,” she replied. “Sorry. I thought we’d lost the—”

“How many?”

Her brow furrowed. She had no idea what her friend was referring to. “How many what?” she asked.

“Cops. Sheriff’s deputies, Mary.” Susan’s tone sounded strained and impatient. “How many police officers are at the house?”

Still, the question bewildered her. It seemed to Mary that this was among the least important details of the situation. “I, uh… I don’t know. Let me check.” She went back to the window and peered through the glass. “I assume you’re not at home,” she said.

Susan left the question unanswered. Instead, her neighbor repeated her initial query. “How many, Mary?”

Mary counted the vehicles and the people whom she could see. Most, but not all of them, were in uniform. “Five—no, six—cars,” she reported. “One white van. Looks like about… I don’t know… twelve to fifteen officers. It’s hard to say. Some of them are still sitting in their cars. It looks like they’re waiting around for something. I thought… I mean, I know it’s a horrible thing to say and all,” she continued, “but… I thought maybe they were waiting for an ambulance.” Or a hearse, she thought, but omitted this last part. In the back of her mind, she’d been worried that perhaps Ben had suffered a heart attack or even a cardiac arrest. Susan’s husband had been looking like he’d been under a lot of stress lately. He’d seemed too gaunt, too… haunted was the word that popped into her brain. Her body gave an involuntary shudder.

“—en there?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. What was that?”

“Is Ben there?” Her voice sounded tense but controlled, almost—as ridiculous as the idea seemed—as if she’d been expecting this development all along.

”No,” she said. “I don’t see Ben’s car, and I don’t see him. Maybe they’re waiting for him to get home.” A thought struck her then, and she was unable to keep the alarm out of her voice. “Oh, God, Susan! I hope it’s not the children! I hope nothing’s happened to one of the kids!”

“The kids are with me,” Susan replied.

“Oh, thank God!” she said. “Thank God for that, honey.”

The voice on the other end was quiet for a moment, then responded: “Yes. Thank God for that.”

For perhaps five seconds neither one of them spoke. It was a short pause, but within it, Mary was struck with the impression that a decision had been made.

“I have to go now, Mary,” Susan said. “Thank you for calling. I can’t tell you how important your phone call was, or how much I appreciate it.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, honey,” she replied, modestly brushing away the compliment yet pleased with herself for having been such a good friend and neighbor to the Stevensons, and to Susan in particular. Contacting her to make certain that she and her family were okay had just come naturally to Mary. It was the kind of thing neighbors used to do for each other all the time when she was growing up—and in the Midwest, she was proud to imagine, something neighbors still did for one another, no matter how disconnected and self-absorbed the rest of the country had become.

“You’ve always been a good friend to us, Mary. That friendship has meant a lot to me personally over the years. It still does. Regardless of everything else, I hope we can still have that.”

“Of course we can, Susan. You know you can come to me no matter what. If there’s anything I can do—anything at all—you just let me know.”

“Thank you, Mary. Good-bye.”

There was an audible click as the line was disconnected, and Mary returned the phone to its receptacle. She stood in the kitchen for a few moments, turning the conversation over in her mind. She realized that she’d learned very little about what was going on across the street at the Stevensons’ residence. Nevertheless, she decided that she had been able to offer them assistance, and for that she felt grateful. Humming quietly to herself, she went about setting the table for lunch.

47

The face of the sheriff’s deputy who appeared in the doorway of Trinity Medical Center’s pathology lab that afternoon belonged to Tony Linwood, a friend of the Stevensons. Looking up from his microscope, Ben recognized the deputy immediately.

“Hello, Tony,” he said, smiling. “Nice to see you.”

“Doc.” Tony nodded. His youthful, often animated face appeared neutral, his body language guarded.

Ben, who had begun making his way around the large desk to greet him, registered the officer’s tone and stopped, his fingers resting lightly on the varnished wooden surface.

“What brings you all the way down to what we in the business lovingly refer to as the ‘bowels of the hospital’?” he asked.

Tony’s feet shifted slightly, a little restlessly. “Chief Garston has requested your presence, sir.”

Ben felt his stomach clench. Not again, he thought. And so soon? He couldn’t face another one so quickly after the last autopsy. He simply couldn’t.

“Has there been another murder?” he asked apprehensively.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss things with you further, sir. I’ve just been asked to come get you.”

So formal. So guarded. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him: What if my presence is needed not as the medical examiner, but as the father of the victim? A moment of panic seized him, and he was struck with the nearly overwhelming urge to rush at the deputy, grab him by the front of his uniform, and demand to know what was going on. (“Is it one of my boys, goddamn it?! DID HE KILL ONE OF MY BOYS?!!”) If he’d taken such an approach, it wouldn’t have gone well for him—family friend or not. When Deputy Linwood had received the call over the radio, the dispatcher had said, “Possible suspect in a 187, needed for questioning.” One-eighty-seven was the radio code for homicide, and in a town that almost never saw such a crime, Tony had little doubt which series of murders the dispatcher was referring to. Any sudden rush by Dr. Stevenson would have resulted in Ben lying face-first on the floor with the full weight of the deputy’s knee pressing into the back of his neck.

Fortunately, Ben suddenly recalled that the boys were with their mother and grandparents in Arizona, and thus well out of harm’s way. Which left him with one residual thought: Who’s it going to be this time? He released a sigh of resignation. “Okay, let me get my keys.”

“You can leave your car here, sir,” Tony advised him. “I have instructions that you’re to come with me.”

Ben frowned. “I can just follow you, Tony. It’s not a problem.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I have specific instructions.”

Ben paused for a moment, considering. “I have instructions that you’re to come with me,” Tony had said. “I’m not at liberty to discuss things with you further, sir.” He’d never received a police escort to any of the other crime scenes. So, what was going on here? He was having difficulty making the pieces fit.

“Tony—Deputy Linwood,” Ben said carefully, opting halfway through his sentence for the more formal address. “Am I under arrest for something?”

“No, sir,” the officer responded. “Not at this time.”

48

The trip in the police cruiser was a short one, and none of them spoke. There had been a second sheriff’s deputy waiting for them just outside the lab, and the officer sat in the front passenger’s seat, with Tony at the wheel. Ben was relegated to the back, where the doors could be opened only from the outside. A thick Plexiglas divide separated him from the officers, and his knees were smashed up against the back of the seat in front of him.

He had no idea whether sheriff’s deputies worked in unison, or whether two officers to a car was the norm. He suspected the former, however, and wondered whether the second officer had been dispatched in case there had been a scuffle. It was hard for him to imagine—ridiculous, even—fighting with the police. What did they want to question him about? He wasn’t guilty of anything that he could think of. And yet, here he was, sitting in the back of a cruiser like a common criminal.

It didn’t take Ben long to figure out that they were headed for his house. Still, when they rounded the bend in the road and his driveway came into view, he was absolutely stunned by the number of police vehicles parked outside. The cruiser came to a stop several houses up the street. It was the closest they could get given the veritable parking lot of official-looking vehicles stationed along the modest residential street. Several of his neighbors stood on their lawns and front steps, gawking at the spectacle.

“Wait here,” the sheriff’s deputy in the front passenger seat, unfamiliar to Ben, instructed him. (As if I have a choice, Ben thought to himself.) Tony remained in the car, hands still gripping the steering wheel, although he’d already turned off the engine. Ben considered asking him again what this was about, but decided against it. If he was truly wanted for questioning regarding what appeared to be a fairly big deal, then perhaps the less he said, the better. He shook his head. He was already starting to think like a defendant. Boy, that hadn’t taken long.

He looked out through the dirty side window next to him. He could see Sam Garston approaching the car, accompanied by the deputy who’d ridden with them from the hospital. Sam looked grim and irritable. “What’s he doing in the back of the car?” he barked in their direction. “Let him out.”

Tony jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened the rear passenger door. Ben pulled himself into a standing position beside the cruiser.

“I’m sorry as hell to have to do this to you, Ben,” Sam said, drawing one of his large hands across the angle of his lower jaw.

“I certainly hope so,” Ben countered, not waiting for the man to finish. “Whatever this is about, Sam, I can assure you there’s no need for this sort of…”

“Ben?”

“…freak show…”

“Ben?”

“…I mean, I’ve got neighbors, for God’s sake! What’re they supposed to—”

“Ben, shut up,” Garston said flatly, and that did shut him up. Like a slap across the face.

Sam paused a moment, waiting for another outburst. The two deputies standing next to them glanced at one another, but said nothing. When he was certain that Ben was listening, Chief Garston continued.

“As I was saying, Ben, I’m sorry as hell to have to do this to you, but before we proceed any further I have to go over your Miranda rights with you.”

“My Miranda righ—” Ben began incredulously, but the large man in front of him continued speaking as if he hadn’t noticed.

“First,” he advised him, looking Ben directly in the eye to ensure that he was listening, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Ben felt as if he were hearing these words from a great distance. Sheriff’s deputies continued to mill about in his driveway and on the front lawn of his house. It seemed to Ben that their movements were slow and surreal, almost as if they were floating from place to place. To his immediate right, his next-door neighbors watched the exchange between him and the officers with fascination. Ben knew them both: Harry and Samantha Caddington. Susan was their family physician. Three years ago, she’d visited their son every day in the hospital while he was being treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She’d sat with them for countless hours at the boy’s bedside during the worst of the illness. They both had. Now, Ben noticed, they wouldn’t even meet his gaze.

“Second,” Garston continued, “you have the right to an attorney. Are you listening, Ben?”

“Yes,” he responded through numb lips, his voice dull and metallic in his own ears.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.” Sam paused for a moment, taking a breath. He appeared to be sweating lightly, despite the cold weather. “Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”

“Yes, I understand them,” Ben said.

“Good. Now, listen to me. You’re not under arrest, Ben. But we do need to ask you some questions.”

“Okay,” he replied weakly. It was all he could manage.

“We also have a search warrant for your house and property.”

“A search warrant,” Ben said, trying to make sense of the words. The term seemed strange and foreign to his ears, as if from a second language he was only just beginning to learn.

“Yes. Now we’ve been authorized to forcibly enter the house, if necessary. But it would avoid a bit of damage to your front door if you happened to have a key on you.”

Ben fished around in his right front pocket and brought out a small key ring, which he handed to one of the officers.

“Good,” Sam commented, nodding his head. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a piece of paper. “You have the right to inspect the search warrant, Ben.”

“It’s okay. I trust you, Sam.” He glanced again at his neighbors to the right, who hastily averted their eyes and began inspecting the concrete construction of their own front steps.

“You shouldn’t,” Sam said. “Not right now. As your friend, Ben, I advise you to take full advantage of your rights. Here, go ahead and read it.” He handed the form to Ben, who let his eyes wander over the language. It was written in fairly plain English, but the words seemed incomprehensible at the moment. He handed it back.

“Can we please get out of the street?” he muttered.

“Of course,” Sam replied. “Let’s go.”

He turned and led the procession to the front door. The officer who’d been given Ben’s keys fiddled with the lock for a moment. “It should only be the dead bolt,” Ben advised him, and he nodded. A moment later, there was the sound of the latch retracting into the cylinder. The officer placed his hand on the knob.

WHOOOOOO-WHOOO-WHOO-WHOOO!!!!

The deputy glanced at him, eyebrows slightly raised. “Dog?” he inquired.

“Oh, yeah,” Ben said. “Alex. Alexander-the-uh… He’s our”—security system, he was about to say—“Great Dane.”

“Great Dane?” the officer repeated. From behind the door the howling continued.

WHOOOO-WHOOOOO-WHOOOO-WHOO-OOOOO!!!

“You’d better let me put him in the basement.”

The officer with his hand on the doorknob looked at Sam, who nodded. “I’ll go in with him,” the chief advised them. “Everyone else stay here for a moment.”

The deputy stepped back and raised his right hand in a gesture as if to say, Be my guest.

Ben turned the knob and pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through. “Hold on, let me get his collar on,” he called back to Sam. Ben grabbed the choker chain from where it hung on the wall and slid it over the dog’s massive head. He placed a finger through the metal ring and guided the dog toward the interior door leading to the basement. As he moved the dog away from the front entrance, Sam took the opportunity to slide inside, closing the door behind him. He followed the two of them down the hallway.

Ben stopped at the door to the basement, but did not open it. He turned toward the chief. “What’s going on here, Sam?”

The man stared back at him. He looked sick—pale and slightly ashen. “It’s serious, Ben. A… a nasty thing.” He shook his head. “I wish to hell it wasn’t.”

“Tell me. Can you do that? Please, talk to me.”

The chief sighed. “Put the dog in the basement. We have to get started here. I’ll bring in the others and we can talk.”

Ben opened the door, flipped on the light switch, and ushered Alex down the steps. Closing the door, he moved to a chair at the kitchen table. He tried to brace himself for what was to come next. He knew himself to be innocent, and he wasn’t concerned about self-incrimination. That left Susan or one of the boys, and he didn’t see how any of them could be involved in anything remotely serious. He knew them too well for that. You live and interact with the people in your family through all of the joy and nastiness (“It’s serious, Ben. A… a nasty thing.”) that life has to offer. Along the way, the fabrics of what began as separate individuals are woven together into something new—something organic and inseparable. And the only thought that came to him now was this: Please, don’t let me lose them. If one of them had died, or had suffered some devastating injury, he wasn’t certain he had the strength to face it. Please, don’t let me lose them, he prayed silently to himself, or to God if He was out there and felt like listening. In this moment of confusion and disorder, it was the only sentiment that seemed to matter.

“Okay,” he said, his dark eyes watching the officers fan out across the house—his house—and one hand gripped the edge of the table for whatever stability it had to offer. “Tell me what this is all about.”

49

“No. You’re clearly out of your fucking mind.” Ben looked blankly at Detective Schroeder, who remained standing next to the sink, one hand resting on the granite countertop.

The detective returned Ben’s gaze with infuriating equanimity. “The evidence is pretty convincing, Dr. Stevenson.”

Get your filthy hand off that countertop, Ben wanted to scream at him. My wife cooks there!

“The evidence is wrong,” he said instead.

“The boy’s prints were on the bodies of two of the victims.”

“The boy’s prints…” Ben echoed, his voice dry and hollow, trying to make sense of the words. Suddenly, his son—his oldest son, whom he loved with unflinching purity and tenacity—suddenly his son had become simply “the boy” to this man standing in front of him.

“The boy has a name,” he advised the detective. “I strongly suggest you start using it.”

The three of them—the two detectives and Sam Garston—were silent for a while, allowing the shock of the news to dissipate slightly before proceeding further. They could have waited an eternity as far as Ben was concerned. A few minutes’ respite wouldn’t make a bit of difference to him.

“Ben,” Sam started. “You and—”

“I want this one to get out of my house!” Ben thrust an index finger in Carl’s direction.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” Sam replied. “This is Detective Schroeder’s case. He has the right to question you.”

Ben turned to Detective Hunt, the only one of the three officers who’d taken a seat at the table, and who thus far had not uttered a word. “Aren’t you also investigating this case?”

The detective nodded solemnly.

“Fine,” Ben proclaimed. “You stay.” He gestured once again toward the senior detective. “This one goes.”

None of the men budged. Carl Schroeder continued to stare at him, as if Ben were some sort of interesting insect he was considering adding to his collection.

“Listen, Ben,” Sam replied, “that’s not the type of tone you want to take during this interview.”

“It’s exactly the type of tone I want to take!” Ben’s eyes flashed once more in Schroeder’s direction. “I have nothing to hide—nothing!—and neither does my family. I am willing to cooperate with you, and I am willing to answer questions. But I will not sit here and listen to this man call my son a murderer!”

Silence filled the kitchen. In the adjoining rooms, nearly oblivious to their presence, teams of forensic crime scene examiners scurried about like beetles, fastidiously foraging for their esoteric treasures. Ben could hear them rattling about, conversing quietly with one another. He realized, of course, that he was behaving ridiculously. Carl Schroeder was simply doing his job. They all were. The chief and his team of investigators had followed the evidence to where they thought it led. They had made an egregious mistake, of course—that much was clear—and they would soon discover just that. In the meantime, was there really any cause for Ben to… (doubt)… to respond in this manner? It made sense to remain calm and to cooperate with them as much as possible. Didn’t it?

And what if they’re right? a voice spoke up inside of his head. What if they’re right, Ben? Have you even bothered to consider that?

Of course he had. He’d considered the idea for a fraction of a second before tossing it properly out through the front door where it belonged.

Is that right?

Yes, that was right. They could lay out all of the circumstantial evidence they had in their possession—make whatever wild accusations they wanted. They would not make him doubt the innocence of his own son. They would not.

Because you know your boy. You know what he’s capable of. And what he isn’t.

Damn right, he knew his boy. After almost seventeen years, he ought to, by God. If his son were involved in anything remotely close to what they were suggesting, Ben would know about it. Wouldn’t he?

Sure, the voice said. How could you not? After all, you’ve been through so much with him—with both of them.

Yes, he had. Susan, too.

Like the stint Joel spent in the hospital after falling over the rail of the upstairs balcony. Times like that.

Of course. Times like that.

Right over the rail, he went. An accident.

Yes. Such a terrible accident had a way of bringing a family togeth—

Because it couldn’t have happened any other way—right, Ben? The boy couldn’t have… been pushed… or thrown, for example.

Thrown? That was ridiculous.

Because you were right there. You saw it all, and you would’ve known, wouldn’t you? You would’ve known if something like that had happened.

But he hadn’t seen it. Not the entire skirmish. All he’d witnessed as he ascended the staircase was Joel’s body falling to the floor below.

And that’s it, right? Nothing else. Nothing you might’ve caught in your peripheral vision and chosen not to see?

No, nothing.

Because you know your boy. You know what he’s capable of.

Yes. He did. Didn’t he?

He looked up at them. They were watching him, all three of them, waiting for him to deny it again. From the look in their eyes—Even Sam? Yes, even his friend Sam—he could tell that the question was already settled in each of their minds, and that the only fool in this room… was him. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to accept what they were alleging. None of it made any sense to him. None of it at all.

“Call, Susan,” he said finally. “They’re visiting her parents in Arizona right now. Call my wife, and she’ll tell you just how crazy this all is. Call her. You’ll see.” And he gave them the number.

50

The desert sun beat down on the metallic hide of the automobile as the car tracked its course across the barren landscape. In the rearview mirror, another vehicle could be seen cresting the horizon. She found it hard to resist the urge to accelerate. Instead, she allowed the cruise control to do its job, keeping them at six miles per hour over the posted speed limit. She couldn’t afford to get pulled over. Not now. And yet, time was short, wasn’t it? How much time did they actually have? She didn’t know—couldn’t know for sure. Not knowing made her want to place her right foot on the accelerator and floor the motherfucker, and again she resisted the urge. If she panicked, it would all be over.

Another thought occurred to her, a saner thought: Stop. Stop now, either here or at the next exit (wherever that might be in this veritable wasteland of sand and sporadic scrub brush). Stop now and put an end to it before a horrible situation became much, much worse. In the backseat, two children slept—one hardly qualifying as a child any longer. If she took the next exit, found a gas station or a convenience store—anyplace with a landline (there’d been zero bars on her cell phone for the past forty minutes) and maybe another human being—she could make a phone call and just stay put. Allow it to end. She could allow herself to choose the only reasonable course of action.

Which was diametrically opposed to what she was doing now. She could try to convince herself that she was somehow protecting them, but… was she, really? She had known for a long time, she supposed, that this would end badly. She had known ten years ago, when he was six, when he would simply sit for long periods of time—hours, sometimes—watching them, his small face devoid of expression. It wasn’t normal; she didn’t need to be a child psychiatrist to know that. The thought had occurred to her that perhaps he was experiencing some type of seizure—absence seizures, they called them. But his eyes, intelligent and aware, suggested differently. To be absolutely certain, she’d taken him to a pediatric neurologist. “Why does he do that?” she’d asked, but after a half-dozen tests and a few thousand dollars in medical bills the specialist had deemed her son healthy.

“Nothing wrong that I can see,” he’d tried to reassure her. “He’s an intelligent, curious child. These episodes”—he’d shrugged, getting up from his seat and placing one chubby hand on the exam room’s doorknob, apparently eager to move on to the next patient—“are just part of his development. He’ll grow out of them. Something else will take their place.”

And Thomas did seem to grow out of them, too—for a while, anyway. She had taken comfort in the fact that his general demeanor, as well as his interactions with others, had seemed to normalize over the next two years. And while his affect was never what she would consider completely normal, at least he had seemed more willing to engage in the world around him. It was around that time, however, that she’d discovered the wood rat.

Ben had installed a small shed in the back of their yard the year before. He’d needed just enough storage space for the lawn mower, a few sawhorses, some planting pots, the circular saw, and a couple of shovels and assorted hand tools. It wasn’t a big structure, but it had a roof, four walls, and a sliding aluminum door with a latch that her husband usually kept locked.

She’d been working out back in the garden one late spring afternoon when she’d noticed that the door to the shed was standing slightly ajar. Normally, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it; but they’d been having some trouble with rodents getting into the trash lately, and the sight of that partially open door had brought with it the thought of what an absolute mess she’d have on her hands if the rats got in there and decided to chew through the four bags of topsoil she’d purchased last week. She went to the shed with the intention of simply closing that door and, as an added measure of caution, perhaps to pause for a quick inspection of the interior to ensure that no critters had taken up residence inside. When she arrived at the door, she threw a quick look inside and then started to slide the door closed on its plastic track. Then she paused, for an unpleasant stench seemed to waft through the structure’s open doorway. Oh, God. Something has found its way in there, she thought, and has probably died in the process. She wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about going in after it, either. But Ben—the usual cleaner-upper of such disgusting, odiferous delights—was out of town for the weekend and wouldn’t be back until Tuesday. God only knew how nasty that smell was going to get between now and then.

She reversed course and threw the door wide open, letting in the maximum amount of light to illuminate her ensuing inspection. She’d hoped, perhaps in vain, that the enhanced flow of fresh air would also dissipate most of the offensive odor. What she saw inside the shed amid the flood of sunlight was, in essence, unremarkable. Tools leaned lazily against the corrugated aluminum walls in their usual positions. The lawn mower sat dormant, patiently awaiting her husband’s return. Even the bags of topsoil appeared unmolested, their white bodies congregated in the corner of the shed like a small crowd of curious onlookers. Nothing seemed out of place, and there was no dead animal lurking in the recesses that she could see. Still, the smell was as pungent as ever—even more so now that she’d stepped inside.

She made her way to the back of the shed’s interior, allowing her nose to guide her rather than her eyes. It was here that the smell was most powerful, and she got down on her hands and knees to inspect the corners of the small enclosure, to push the bags of topsoil aside.

She found nothing.

Susan returned to her feet, hands placed squarely on her hips, as she continued to scan the inside of the shed from top to bottom. The stench was so noxious that she was forced to pull the front of the her T-shirt up over her nose, the smell of her own sweat and—yes, let’s be honest here—body odor preferable to the alternative olfactory assault. No matter how hard she looked, however, she was unable to identify the source of the odor.

Well, I’ve given it an earnest try, she told herself. This would be a job for Ben when he returned. It was one of the divisions of labor in their marriage. She had carried Thomas in her intractably expanding uterus for nine months, and was now three months pregnant with her second child and repeating the process all over again. She had been plagued by frequent episodes of nausea and vomiting during the first trimesters of both pregnancies, and by varicose veins and intermittent lower back pain at the end of her third trimester with Thomas. She had already pushed one child’s enormous head out through the smallest of orifices, and her body had been permanently altered by that experience in ways she would never feel completely at ease with. Now it would be her husband’s turn to retrieve dead things from the tool shed. It still wasn’t exactly a fair division of duties—he was getting off much too easy—but right then she was more than happy to cash in on her investment in their nuptial arrangement.

Susan exited the shed and slid the door closed behind her, glad to be free from whatever fetid thing still lingered inside. She was on the verge of crossing the lawn and returning to her gardening—perhaps, in retrospect, it would’ve been better if she had—but the obnoxious smell still hung in the air, even with the door to the shed closed and latched, and she remembered thinking to herself, What if it’s not inside the shed at all, but behind it?

Even then, she’d considered letting the matter go. It wasn’t her responsibility to go on a half-day scavenger hunt looking for this thing. The days that she truly had to herself, with her husband out of town and Thomas off with his friends, were few and far between. She ought to be enjoying the day, not traipsing around the yard searching for clues like some veterinary medical examiner. The hell with it, she decided. I’m going back to my goddamn garden.

And yet a moment later she found herself peering around the rear corner of the shed. The front of her shirt was once again pulled up over the bridge of her nose like a bandana, as if she were more intent on robbing a stagecoach than exploring her own backyard. That was when she spied it, the source of the odor. At first, she wasn’t quite certain what she was seeing—the mass of flies swarming around it was so thick. She took a step forward and shooed them away with her hand. The majority of the airborne insects retreated a short distance, although they still loitered in the area, waiting for her to depart and leave them once again with their prize. At her feet lay a large Tupperware container, its underside pointed toward the sky. It sat in a small patch of dirt behind the shed, facedown on a two-inch-thick section of lumber, which completely sealed the container’s only opening. Along the edges on all sides, a series of nails had been driven through the container’s plastic lip and deep into the wood beneath.

Condensation had accumulated on the inside of the chamber, making it difficult to clearly make out the details of the amorphous form inside. Its dark outline was perfectly still, its body nearly filling the confines of the small compartment. There was no doubt about one thing, however. Whatever had been purposefully imprisoned inside the container was quite dead. The reek of its decomposing corpse wafted up through multiple punctate holes in the plastic, obviously created with one objective: to allow the passage of air in and out of the container so the animal could breathe. And that was where her eyes kept returning—to those small air holes designed to prevent quick suffocation. Obviously, the animal had been meant to die. But it had been meant to die slowly.

She’d backed away in revulsion, moaning slightly. In doing so, she managed to trip over her own feet, and she sat down hard in the grass a few yards from the makeshift death chamber. If there had been an upturned nail in the grass, she would’ve sustained a significant enough injury to land her in the emergency department, but she was lucky in this regard—all of the available nails had been used for other purposes. The flies took this partial retreat as a sign to resume their swarming, and they did so with new enthusiasm, desperate to get inside. One of them flitted onto her forearm, and she swatted it away in a spasm of disgust. She pushed herself backward along the ground, crab-walking away from the pitiful shape in front of her as fast as her adrenaline-laced appendages could carry her. All the while, her eyes kept returning to the air holes.

Die slow, thing inside. Die slow. The thought sloshed around inside her head like a rotting jellyfish, and suddenly she turned clumsily over onto her hands and knees and vomited in the grass. The stink of it mingled with that of the dead creature only a few yards away, and the axis of the earth seemed to tilt unpredictably as she vomited again, abdominal muscles clenching each time the spasms passed through her bent frame. Small beads of sweat broke out on her back, her shoulders, her forehead. Her hands balled into small fists as she clutched the grass, afraid that if she let go now her body would simply slide away from the earth and into the blackness that surrounded her. She remained that way for a long time: eyes shut, fingers dug into the soft dirt for purchase, flies buzzing in her ears, the ground shifting dangerously beneath her.

When the worst of it was over, she simply lay motionless in the grass, waiting to recover. A rogue fly landed on her calf, and she twitched it away. She wasn’t certain how long she lay there. She had the place to herself, and no one came out to ask if she was okay. During that limitless space of time, she thought of many things, but mostly she thought of Thomas. She thought of her strange, dark boy staring at her from across the room at the age of six. She did not wonder whether he had done this, for in some deep, primitive part of her brain she knew with a mother’s simple certainty that he had. Instead, she wondered about the insignificant details: Where did he get the hammer? From the shed, of course. Where is it now? She was fairly certain that if she went back to look for it, she’d find it hanging in its usual spot on the wall. He returned the hammer, but left the animal. What does that mean? Why didn’t he try to hide it? The question made her want to cry, for what it meant to her was that her son was broken in some deep, irreparable way. She thought of the neurologist, with his thick-rimmed glasses, bow tie, and doughy body: “These episodes… He’ll grow out of them. Something else will take their place.”

It had. Something else had taken the place of those vacant stares. And the question before her was, What now? She asked herself whether she should confront him, and if so, how. Should he be punished? Perhaps punishment was too mild a response. Should he be hospitalized? What does a parent, or a physician for that matter, do with a… with a sociopath? For that was what she was dealing with here, wasn’t it? Normal people do not nail animals inside of a Tupperware container to watch them die. What’s more, normal people do not do something like that and just walk away when it’s over without shame or guilt, without hiding the evidence.

She allowed the analytical part of her brain to work it through. Medical school had provided her with enough basic knowledge of psychiatry to know that sociopaths—the more correct term these days was antisocial personality disorder—are essentially unaffected by all attempts at treatment. The fundamental problem was that they lacked the basic human ability to identify with others. They were unable to mentally place themselves in the position of another creature, be that a person or an animal. It wasn’t that they necessarily didn’t understand right from wrong; it was simply that they lacked the ability to care. Eating an apple and torturing an animal carried with them the same level of unrest within the conscience: none. In fact, it was as if the conscience—the ability to care about right and wrong—were anatomically absent from the brain. The same was true for the absence of mercy—not because mercy was something such individuals chose to withhold, but because it was a faculty they simply did not possess. The condition couldn’t be medicated away or repaired by psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, any more than those treatments might be expected to regenerate an absent arm or leg in an amputee. Over the centuries, medical treatment had become quite adept at fixing parts of the body that were broken: a shattered bone, or even a shattered mind; but it had never been very good at creating something, especially something as amorphous as a conscience, in situations where it never existed in the first place.

Likewise, from a rational point of view, the idea of punishing her child for this atrocity seemed somewhat pointless. Perhaps punishment would at least teach him that every action has its consequences. But if he had no ability to appreciate that the action was wrong, reprimand was unlikely to keep it from happening again.

What other options did that leave? Sending her son somewhere to be locked away? Following him around every moment of every day to ensure that this sort of thing—or worse—never happened again? Impossible. She sat in the grass, legs crossed in front of her and arms wrapped protectively around her knees. She sat there for a long time, some ten yards from the dead wood rat in its plastic cell, and searched herself for an answer. It wasn’t a situation she’d ever imagined encountering, and now that it was here she had no idea what to do with it. She could still smell the stench of the thing: its furry body bloated and rotting in the sun, tiny feet torn apart and matted with blood from useless attempts to claw its way out. She felt another hitch in her stomach and turned to the side to retch once again. This time nothing came. She had emptied herself completely.

She wiped her mouth with the back of one dirt-grimed hand and stared at the container nailed to the board with its respective cloud of flies. The sight of it repulsed her, made her want to distance herself from it as much as possible. And yet, she realized now that it was also a part of her. She owned it as much as her son did, for wasn’t there an inseparable connection between mother and child? From the moment of conception, the two are linked by body and blood, and that visceral intimacy continues well beyond childbirth. It becomes a part of who you are, as indissoluble as the color of your skin or the tempo of your heart. She was vaguely aware that it was somehow different for fathers, who seemed to be able to disconnect themselves at times from the lives of their children, or at least to compartmentalize their thoughts and feelings in accordance with their various duties and responsibilities. She’d never been able to accomplish that degree of mental separation. She was a mother above all else, and for better or worse, she felt inherently tied to the lives of her children. She had difficulty describing it any more clearly than that, but understood it perfectly and without reservation. And what it meant was that the thing in the container was hers as much as it was Thomas’s. And now she was responsible for taking care of it.

She got up, crossed the yard, entered the house, and retrieved a pair of latex exam gloves from the modest supply of medical equipment she kept on the upper shelf of her bedroom closet. She wished for a mask to cover her mouth and nose, but lacking that, she grabbed a bottle of Vicks from the bathroom medicine cabinet and smeared a generous amount of the vaporizing gel on the skin between her upper lip and nose, then covered her lower face with a handkerchief that she knotted behind her head. She returned to the shed and grabbed two large, black heavy-duty garbage bags that Ben kept for the disposal of raked leaves and other yard debris. Then, quickly, before she could think about it further, she walked around to the rear of the shed, snatched the contraption off the ground—it was heavier than she’d anticipated, although she preferred not to think about why—and tossed it into the open bag. Angry flies zipped around her head, but she did not pause this time to swat them away. Instead, she wound the opening of the bag around itself several times, tied it with an overhand knot, dropped this bag into the next with her discarded gloves, and repeated the process.

She walked with her (What was it? Discovery? Prize? Package of shame?) to the Saab parked in the driveway out front, popped the trunk, lowered the thing in, and slammed the lid closed again against the smell that still seemed to permeate through the tightly bound, double-bagged plastic cocoon. She barely remembered the twenty-minute drive to the local dump, barely remembered tossing it into the gaping mouth of excavated earth, and barely remembered standing there for a moment, watching it from above. She did recall, all too well, that after a few watchful moments, the bag appeared to move, just slightly, as if she had been mistaken and the thing inside was not quite dead yet. That had been enough for her. She turned quickly, showing it her back, and drove home in a cold sweat that clung to her body for the remainder of the day, even after a hot shower and fresh clothes. Weeks later, despite all of her efforts to eradicate the smell, the car still seemed to stink of the thing, although Ben never took notice. Perhaps it was only an olfactory memory. If so, she owned that, too.

The next time she saw Thomas, she said nothing about the incident. In fact, she found herself avoiding him. She wondered whether he’d gone looking for the animal, found it missing, and had realized she must’ve discovered it. She also wondered if he cared, and she imagined that, most likely, he did not.

A week later, she encountered Thomas alone in his room, lying on his bed and listening to music on his headphones. The bedroom door had been closed. Susan was carrying a basket of laundry in her arms. She rested the basket on one thigh, knocked lightly on the door, and when there was no answer, opened the door and entered the bedroom, assuming it was vacant.

When she saw that he was there, she paused in the doorway, not wanting to go farther inside, not wanting to be alone with him, even for the few seconds it would take to leave the clothes on his dresser. More than the encounter itself, she was disturbed by the realization that she was so uncomfortable in his presence. No matter what he has done, she reasoned with herself, I am still his mother. That role hadn’t ended that day behind the tool shed, and although her discovery had forced her to see her son as something different from what she’d previously perceived him to be, the basic dynamic of their relationship hadn’t changed. Had it? No, she decided. He was still her child, after all, and she had an obligation to look after him. How to fulfill that duty under the current circumstances was something she had yet to figure out, but the responsibility was there, the same as if he’d been born with cerebral palsy or mental retardation.

She motioned for him to remove his headphones so she could talk with him, and he did so with the normal reluctance of an eight-year-old boy. She stepped inside the room, set the basket of folded clothes on the floor, and closed the door behind her.

“I found the dead rat behind the shed,” she told him matter-of-factly, “the one you nailed inside the plastic container.”

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting his response to be. Denial, perhaps. Or anger. Lying. She was even prepared for tears. What she got instead was: nothing. He lay on his back in bed, his head propped up on one hand, and regarded her blankly, waiting for her to continue—waiting for her to say something of some significance.

When he made no reply, she continued. “You tortured and killed that poor, helpless creature. I want to know why.”

He continued to regard her, his face devoid of emotion.

“Are you sick, Thomas? Do I need to put you in a hospital? Is that what needs to happen here?”

Nothing. His green eyes remained disinterested. It was unsettling, the way he looked at her with that empty, dispassionate gaze. His response scared her, probably because it confirmed what she’d already feared. Suddenly she wanted to slap him. She wanted to cross the room, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him violently back and forth until some emotion—any emotion—registered on that face. She wanted to scream, “Fuck you for what this means! Fuck you for putting me in this position!” Instead, she picked up the basket of clothes and dumped them on the floor. It was a meaningless, pathetic act.

“You listen to me carefully,” she told him. “I won’t tolerate anything like this again. Ever. If you have a problem, you need to deal with it. If you need help dealing with it, I will get you help. But you need to ask for it. You need to show me that you want to get better. Because if you continue down this path, it will not end well, Thomas. I guarantee you that.”

The boy said nothing in response, showed nothing discernible in his expression. She turned and left the room, moving down the hallway and descending the stairs to the family room, nearly tripping over her own feet as she went. Her vision blurred slightly as tears of frustration threatened to spill over her lower lids, and she made a beeline for the front door, needing to take a walk and get away from the house for a while. As she passed by in the hallway, Ben glanced up from the kitchen table, where he was sorting through bills.

“What’s the matter?” he called to her.

“Nothing,” she said. It was the first time she lied to him regarding their son, but it would not be the last. “I’m going for a walk.”

“You want company?” he asked.

Sweet, sweet Ben, she thought to herself angrily. So well-meaning, and yet so completely oblivious. She tried to remind herself that it wasn’t fair to cast him in that light. How was he supposed to know? She considered taking him up on his offer, considered asking him to join her. But she knew that if she did she would end up telling him the whole story of the wood rat and their oldest boy’s newfound hobby. That would start a chain of events beyond her ability to control, and she wasn’t ready for that yet. She wasn’t ready to involve him. She needed time to think, and to observe what happened next. Yes, she would keep her horrible knowledge to herself for the moment. It seemed like the course of action with the least number of variables, and right now that strategy made sense to her. Perhaps it was the only thing that did. She had no way of knowing then how that decision would change the course of the years to come, or how the simplest decisions are sometimes the most important ones.

“No thanks,” she’d called back to her husband as she grasped the knob on the front door. “I need to be by myself for a while.”

All of that seemed like such a long time ago. Life moved on, as it always did, and she watched her boy grow older and more mature with the passing years. For nearly two years after the incident with the wood rat, she’d discovered no further evidence of similar behavior from Thomas, and she dared to imagine that her confrontation had paid off—that he had somehow gotten better. It wasn’t until shortly after his tenth birthday that she noticed the home-made signs stapled to several telephone poles in their neighborhood. Lost cat, they read, identifying the wayward feline as Mr. Tibbs, who was orange with a broad white stripe along his underbelly. Reward if found!! the sign promised, and gave a phone number and address to contact. The address belonged to Susan’s neighbor three houses down.

The first thing she’d done after reading the sign was to return home and look behind the tool shed. She didn’t think there would be… well, she didn’t know what she thought, exactly. But of course there was nothing there. That night she’d casually mentioned during dinner that she’d seen the signs alerting people to the missing cat, and she’d watched Thomas closely out of the corner of her eye for a response. He barely seemed to have heard her, which offered her little relief. What if he hasn’t gotten better at all? she wondered. What if he has only gotten better at hiding his true nature?

Several days passed. That weekend, while Ben and the boys were off at one of Thomas’s baseball games, she decided to pay their neighbor a visit. There was a cake-decorating class Susan was thinking about attending that summer, and she wanted to know if the mother, Annie, would be interested in joining her. They talked for a while, and as she was getting ready to leave, Susan mentioned that she’d noticed the signs regarding Mr. Tibbs, and she inquired as to whether he’d been found.

“Not a sign of him.” Her friend shook her head. “He was always an outdoor cat. Liked to wander through the woods out back, I suppose. Liked to stalk birds, too, although I don’t know what he’d do with one if he ever caught it. Sometimes he stayed out all night. I never paid it much mind.” She offered Susan a thin smile. “He always showed up at the back door for breakfast and dinner, though. That guy could eat. Most afternoons he slept inside on the windowsill.” She pointed toward the vacant sill, which looked sad and deserted in the cat’s absence. “Sally’s been pretty upset about it. She sure loved that cat.”

“He’ll show up,” Susan assured her, trying to sound more optimistic than she felt.

“I hope so,” Annie said. “I hope he didn’t get hit by a car or anything. If Sally came across him in the roadway, I’d have a pretty traumatized little girl on my hands.”

”Don’t think that way,” Susan responded, reaching over and squeezing her friend’s hand. “Cats are very resourceful animals. They know how to stay out of harm’s way.” She tried on a smile and found that it almost seemed to fit.

When she arrived home, she went to the tool shed, wanting a second look around. She found the door to the shed locked, just as it should be. She retrieved the key from the kitchen, removed the padlock, slid the door open, and stood inside. The interior was stagnant, and smelled vaguely of the combined scent of oil and earth. Being there reminded her immediately of the day she had discovered the wood rat. Recently cut grass clung to the wheels of the lawn mower. The bags of topsoil she’d purchased two years ago for her gardening were long gone. In their place was a spade-tip shovel, leaning against the far wall. Its tip was caked with dirt. She ran her fingers thoughtfully along the wooden texture of its long handle. The tool seemed to be the only thing out of place in the neatly arranged shack. Acting more on instinct than anything else, she picked up the shovel, exited the shed, and proceeded into the woods behind their house. It took her twenty minutes to find the recently dug grave, and only two minutes to exhume the body. Her right hand automatically went to the back hip pocket of her jeans, pulling out the heavy-duty black plastic bags she’d absently brought with her. She had no recollection of grabbing the bags from the shed, but she’d obviously done so. She must’ve known all along what she was bound to find.

She double-bagged the animal as before, barely taking notice this time of what had been done to it. She made the trip to the dump and disposed of it in a manner that, if discovered, would not lead to her son. She returned home, showered, and took a nap. Ben woke her from a dreamless slumber when he arrived home an hour and a half later.

“You okay, honey?” he asked, brushing the hair back from her eyes and feeling her forehead with the back of his hand. “You were sweating in your sleep. Are you sick?”

“No,” she responded, looking up at him, her thoughts still muddled with sleep. But your son is, she almost added, but again chose not to, leaving him out of this for the second time. God only knew why. “Just tired,” she muttered, and rolled away from him, trying to find her way back down into the merciful nothingness from which she’d been disturbed.