by Lisa Gardner
She turned the plate in her hand and rhythmically washed the back.
When she and Shep had first moved into this neighborhood eleven years ago, they were one of the few couples with kids. Since then the neighborhood had grown and so had the families. There must be five toddlers on this block alone. Two of the girls in Becky’s class lived just four blocks over. There were a number of boys as well, though most of them were too young for Danny. Sandy had always thought that was a shame. It was so easy for Becky to find someone to play with, whereas Danny had to be driven to someone’s house. That took planning. That took having a parent home to serve as chauffeur.
Danny had never complained, though. He seemed content to read books or stay at school or play on the computer. Later in the evenings she’d sometimes go on walks with him around the neighborhood. They’d wave at the other families. Danny would check out houses with DirecTV. Or sometimes she’d walk and he’d ride his bike around her and show off stunts like riding no-handed for her amusement.
She’d always liked those walks. She’d felt safe, passing through their modest community where everyone worked hard and knew one another’s name.
This morning Sandy didn’t feel comfortable enough to step outside to get the morning paper. She was too afraid people would stop and stare. And she wasn’t sure which bothered her most, the looks of anger or of pity.
She stayed in her kitchen, a prisoner under house arrest, and scrubbed her appliances until they sparkled. Then she attacked the kitchen floor, all the while pretending it was just another day in the neighborhood and her life hadn’t really ended two days ago.
This morning Sandy had called the detention center at promptly seven A.M. It had been forty-eight hours since she’d last spoken with her son, and she desperately needed to see him. Was he frightened, was he scared? Did he understand what was happening to him? Did he miss her or call out her name in the middle of the night?
What if he was having nightmares? What if he wasn’t getting enough to eat or the blankets scratched or the sheets itched? For God’s sake, she was his mother and she needed to be with her son!
The head of the detention facilities, a Mr. Gregory, had firmly but politely informed her that Danny had already begged them not to let his mother in. The director had located Danny in the cafeteria first thing this morning to mention that his parents wanted to visit. Danny had immediately grown so agitated that staff members had had no choice but to return him to his room.
It appeared he was too traumatized to deal with his parents. Maybe in a week or two.
Sandy had never heard of anything so ridiculous. If her son was traumatized, all the more reason for her to come. She could bring his favorite toy, bake his favorite cake. Please, something, anything . . .
Don’t leave me on the outside like this. Don’t leave me feeling so helpless.
Mr. Gregory informed her that her son was still under suicide watch. And they’d had to return Danny to his room because, at the mention of seeing his parents, he grabbed a fork from another youth and tried to puncture his own wrist.
She and Shep were not to visit. Period.
The sound of the lawn mower stopped. A sharp bang as Mr. McCabe removed the clippings bag. He was probably dumping the grass on his flower beds. Sandy had seen him do it a hundred times. Churning the grass clippings into the beds to replenish the nitrogen. Working the soil tenderly with his old, gnarled hands.
She finally set the plate in the drying rack. The dishes were done. Her countertops sparkled, her floor was freshly mopped. She’d even cleaned the stove and wiped down the microwave. Now it was eight in the morning and Sandy didn’t know what to do.
She turned toward Becky, who was eyeing her somberly from the kitchen table.
“Would you like more cereal, honey?”
Becky shook her head. The bowl of Cheerios placed in front of her fifteen minutes ago still appeared to be untouched.
“What about some fruit?” Sandy coaxed. “Or what about pancakes? I can make you chocolate chip pancakes!”
Sandy regretted the words the moment she said them. Chocolate chip pancakes were Danny’s favorite.
Becky shook her head.
Sandy resiliently turned toward the refrigerator, searching for more options. Becky hadn’t eaten in nearly two days.
“I know,” Sandy said brightly, “how about some salad!”
She eagerly pulled out the clear glass bowl. The salad had been among four dishes that had arrived on their front porch yesterday. The others had contained macaroni and cheese, a ham-and-potato dish, and some kind of mystery-meat surprise. This bowl had impressed Sandy, however. The mixture of strawberry Jell-O, apples, bananas, walnuts, and whipped cream was a favorite children’s salad, and it touched her that others were thinking of Becky. God knows, the little girl was suffering too.
Sandy held up the brightly colored salad for Becky’s inspection. Becky had always loved Jell-O and whipped cream. . . .
A slight hesitation, then finally Becky nodded. They had a winner!
Sandy dished up a large bowl for her daughter, humming slightly to herself in honor of having scored a victory. She poured a glass of orange juice to go with Becky’s breakfast. After another thought, she poured a glass of juice for herself as well and joined her daughter at the table.
From the living room came the sound of Shep snoring. He’d been out most of the night and returned at some small hour of the morning, reeking of beer. Sandy knew without asking where he’d gone. Rainie’s house. Whenever he was troubled, whenever he had something on his mind, he always went there.
Once Sandy had entertained wild notions of what must be going on at the Conner residence. Everyone had heard stories of Rainie’s mother and what kind of woman she’d been. Sandy had imagined her husband and his deputy rolling around in a torrid embrace. She had fantasized about them laughing together and giggling madly over what an idiot pretty little Sandy Surmon must be not to suspect a thing.
One night in a fit of jealous rage, she’d hightailed it over to Rainie’s tiny home in the middle of the soaring woods. She’d driven up the dirt driveway at full steam, already formulating a bold confrontation in her head.
She’d discovered her husband and Rainie sitting on the huge back deck in complete silence, each just staring out into the woods and holding a beer.
Sandy had gone back home without ever saying a word.
Over the years she’d come to realize that she simply couldn’t fathom her husband and Rainie’s relationship. She didn’t know what caused the long silences between them or the unspoken exchanges. She didn’t understand how Shep could sometimes seem to belong more to Rainie than to her, when Sandy had borne him two children and, as best as she could tell, Rainie only handed him bottles of Bud Light.
Whatever bonded them was deep, but at least it wasn’t sexual. So Sandy did her best to fight her nagging, painful wish that Shep would come to her when he was troubled, instead of heading to another woman’s house for hours of companionable silence.
“Mommy, what happened to school?”
Sandy looked at her daughter, genuinely startled by the question and the sound of her daughter’s voice. Becky had barely spoken since the shooting, and when she did, it was generally a one-word statement. “What do you mean, honey?”
“There’s no school today.”
“No, Becky, there’s no school today.”
“Tomorrow?”
“You don’t have to go to school tomorrow either, sweetheart. I don’t want you to worry about school. It’s all done for a bit.”
Her daughter continued to eye her intently. “Are the other kids going to school?”
“You mean your classmates? No.” Sandy was trying to pick her words carefully. “They’re all done with school for a bit as well.”
“It’s not summer.”
“It’s almost summer.”
“Mommy, it’s not summer.”
“Becky . . . You know something bad happened at scho
ol, right? You understand that?”
Becky nodded.
“Well, that bad thing has made everyone sad. You’re sad, aren’t you?”
Becky nodded again.
“I’m sad,” Sandy said softly. “Daddy’s sad. And the other kids, they’re sad too. So for a little bit, because everyone is so sad, there’s no school.”
“But someday?”
“Someday, Becky, yes, there will be school. But it’s okay, honey! It won’t be until you’re ready, and we’ll make sure the school is very safe. So the bad thing—”
“The monster.”
Sandy hesitated. “Yes, so the monster can’t happen anymore.”
Becky stared at her. Her eyes were big and serious. Sandy hadn’t realized until now just how old her little girl had become. Then Becky returned her attention to her bowl of whipped cream and Jell-O. Sandy understood. Becky didn’t believe her. She already assumed her world wouldn’t be safe again. Not in a time when monsters could go to school.
Sandy returned to the kitchen sink, downing the last of her orange juice and then carefully, methodically washing the glass. The light on the answering machine blinked madly at her, but she’d already heard the message yesterday. Mitchell trying to find her, before Shep had changed their phone number to end the relentless calls. Mitchell, so sorry to disturb her at a time like this, but he was desperately trying to get his hands on the Wal-Mart reports. Could she please give him a quick buzz and tell him where he might find the files?
Sandy knew what he was looking for. She could picture the files perfectly in her mind. But she hadn’t picked up the phone and called him back.
Maybe Shep was right. Maybe she’d been working too much, putting her own needs in front of the children’s. If she’d been home more, paying more atten-tion . . . If Danny had felt safer, more important, more loved . . .
If . . . if . . . if . . .
Sandy shut off the water. Her hands were shaking on the faucet; she had tears in her eyes.
Mommy, what happened to school?
I want to make the world safe. Oh God, honey. I wish I could make the world safe for you.
“Mommy.”
Sandy turned back to Becky. For a moment, she thought she saw blood on her daughter’s face and she nearly screamed. Strawberry Jell-O, her mind filled in belatedly. Strawberry Jell-O.
But then she saw the tears in her daughter’s eyes.
“My tongue hurts.”
Sandy rushed across the kitchen. She looked at her daughter’s mouth, and to her dismay, she realized it was bleeding. Poor Becky’s tongue was bleeding.
“What happened? Did you bite your tongue? Ah, honey, let me get you a washcloth and an ice cube. Hang on a second.”
She picked up the salad, carrying it over to the sink. It wasn’t until she was running a fresh washcloth under the tap that she looked in the bowl and noticed the way light glinted off fragments of Jell-O.
Very slowly, Sandy got out a spoon. She dug through the salad. She pulled out five shards of glass.
Baby killer. Baby killer. Baby killer.
It’s a children’s salad! Even if you hate us, what kind of animals put shattered glass in a fucking children’s salad!
She returned to Becky with surprising calmness. She wiped off her little girl’s face; she gave her an ice cube to suck on. Already the bleeding appeared to have stopped. The glass shards were small. Maybe they hadn’t done much damage.
Tenderly Sandy feathered back Becky’s fine blond hair. “How are you feeling, honey?”
“Okay.”
“Did you eat much?” she asked lightly.
Becky shook her head. “Not hungry.”
“If your tummy hurts, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
Becky nodded. Sandy decided to let it go. Becky seemed fine and Sandy didn’t want to frighten her with another trip to the emergency room.
“I know,” Sandy said briskly, “let’s make some snickerdoodle cookies! I’ll bring out all the ingredients and you can help me measure everything. How does that sound?”
Becky shrugged.
“Wonderful. Let me just clean this stuff up and we’ll be on our way.”
Sandy gave her daughter a bright, reassuring smile. She kept her chin high and her features composed. Then she returned to the kitchen sink, where she spooned all the Jell-O salad and the three other casseroles into the garbage disposal while she swore to herself that she would not, would not, would not cry.
“Don’t let the monster get you, Mommy.”
“Becky, I would never dream of doing any such thing.”
SIXTEEN
Thursday, May 17, 6:33 A.M.
QUINCY DID NOT DREAM of his daughter. In the gray hours of the morning, he tossed and turned in the pink Motel Hotel, caught in a case that had happened nearly a decade ago. Thirteen-year-old Candy Wallace, with the pretty blond hair and hundred-watt smile. Beautiful, sunny Candy Wallace, who was raised a devout Baptist and had no idea of the true evil that lurked in men’s hearts.
She was snatched on her way home from school on a normal Wednesday afternoon. One minute she was walking down the street. The next, a pile of books was all that remained.
But Candy’s captor hadn’t really wanted Candy. He wanted Polly, her sixteen-year-old sister, and getting the wrong sibling angered him. So he took to calling the Wallaces’ home. He would put Candy on the phone. And then he would do things to her while her sister and parents listened.
After the first phone call, Quincy was brought in to listen as well. They considered him to have expert ears.
Now, in the throes of his dream, he did not remember Candy Wallace’s screams or the agonized face of her mother. He did not recall her sister Polly begging for the man to stop, to please come take her instead. She would willingly go with him if he would just let her little sister go. Please, please, please. . . .
Mostly, Quincy remembered Candy’s last words, after five days of endless agony.
“Please don’t be sad, Mom and Dad. It’ll all be over soon and I know I’m going to a better place. God loves me and will take care of me. I’m going to be fine. I love you. I love even this bad, bad man. My heart is true.”
Quincy woke up with tears on his cheeks.
He lay in his bed for a long time, thinking of the strength of a thirteen-year-old girl, thinking of God and faith and the things he’d left behind after too many years on the job.
A day after the last phone call they found Candy Wallace’s body, naked, bruised, and mutilated. Three weeks after that they arrested the man who did it, an unemployed handyman who had once worked on the air-conditioning unit at the Wallaces’ home. He said Candy had insisted on telling him that God loved him, so he’d cut out her tongue. Quincy had thought that there was nothing they could do to this man that would ever be enough.
He’d flown back to Virginia feeling isolated and worn to the bone.
He’d entered his home but walked away from his family, because he’d never learned to go from a crime scene to the people he loved. At times like this, he couldn’t look at his daughters without seeing all the horrors that could befall them. The handymen, the drifters, the charming law students. He couldn’t look at his family without seeing pain and suffering and death.
Now Quincy got out of bed. He called the hospital to learn that Amanda’s condition hadn’t changed. His ex-wife was asleep in the room if he wanted to speak with her. Quincy told the nurse not to wake her. His other daughter, Kimberly, was not at the hospital. She had probably returned to school. Like him, she seemed to have accepted that her sister was gone, a defection to Quincy’s camp that Bethie couldn’t bear.
Of course, things between his ex-wife and their younger daughter had been tense ever since last year, when Kimberly had announced she was studying sociology at New York University. Someday she wanted to be a profiler with the FBI. Just like her dad.
Quincy pulled on an old pair of running shorts and a gray FBI T-shirt. He hit the street, inhali
ng sharply at the cold sting of morning. Then he was off and running, still thinking of a young girl’s dying screams and unfailing love. Still thinking of his own daughter, and the tragedy he hadn’t protected her from after all those years of trying to make the world a safe place.
And then he was thinking of Rainie and her shadowed gray eyes and strong, stubborn chin. The way she took her punches. The way she still got up for the fight.
Once he’d made the mistake of thinking that isolation was protection, that focusing solely on his work would make a difference for people, for his family. He had listened to a young girl die, but he had not heard what she was saying.
Quincy was old, but he was learning.
He ran for a long time, with the mountain air cool and clean against his cheeks. He greeted a beautiful morning in a lush, coastal valley and he understood why Rainie Conner still lived here, perfectly.
SHORTLY BEFORE ONE, Quincy showed up in the tiny task-force center in the attic of city hall. He hadn’t expected Rainie to be back yet from the autopsies scheduled in Portland, but she was already sitting at her sawhorse desk when he arrived. She didn’t look up right away, scribbling intently on some piece of paper.
He took a moment to study her. Her face was paler than yesterday, the shadows deeper under her eyes. Another sleepless night, he presumed, coupled with a brutal morning. Autopsies were never easy, particularly when they were of children.
Judging from her focused movements, however, Rainie still had no intention of slowing down.
She reminded him of someone else. It took him a moment to place the name. Tess. Tess Williams. Another case, years ago, but with a better ending. Tess had made the mistake of marrying the perfect man, the kind other women always said was too good to be true. In Jim Beckett’s case, they were right. The handsome, dedicated police officer had had a small sideline activity. He pulled over beautiful blondes for speeding, and then he murdered them. Tess had been the first person to figure out her husband’s evil doings, and she’d slowly gathered the evidence against him while still sharing his bed.