capital C and the single descender from the y, like a lowercase letter stretching its arms and legs. He turned the pages more deliberately the second time.
Libby said, “AK and I went to the mall on Monday. She had a night home with her mom on Tuesday. Wednesday night we took the train downtown with Dennis and Sam and this friend of Dennis’s who goes to Madison.”
That was it. The only mention in over a hundred pages of transcript. Could this Sam be Sam Coyne? It had to be. Were many parents naming their kids Samuel thirty-five years ago? He couldn’t remember. It had been his business, bringing little boys into the world, and yet he couldn’t remember how many of them had been named Sam. The detective interviewing Libby hadn’t even asked for their last names. Sam who? Jesus Christ, Libby had given them the name of the killer and the cop didn’t even have the sense to ask what his last name was. What kind of an investigation was this? A botched one, but he already knew that.
Davis threw the rest of the bound statements back into the filing cabinet and went upstairs to AK’s old room. For years it had remained almost as Anna Kat left it, not for sentimental reasons but because Davis had no stomach for the day’s work it would take to pull everything out. Jackie would sit in here sometimes and mourn in her own way. When he married Joan, she turned it into a guest room. They never discussed it. She just did it herself and he didn’t object.
Some of AK’s things were still here, though. On a bookshelf were four years of yearbooks, including the one that had been delivered to the house after she died. Every margin on every page was covered with anguished eulogies and melodramatic farewells from teenagers dealing with the death of one of their own for the first time. There were song lyrics, lots of song lyrics, and drawings of flowers, and even sketches of Anna Kat, some of them skillfully done.
Laying it flat on the bed and kneeling beside it, Davis examined the senior class row by row. He found Sam Coyne easily: handsome, smug, wearing a novelty tie with a cartoon cat. He looked so much like Justin. Exactly like Justin, but with a crew cut. A shiver went through him, top to bottom. This was the last face to see his baby alive, and it was Justin’s face.
Coyne was the only senior named Sam. There were three boys named Dennis in her class. Among the underclassmen he discovered four more Dennises and one other Sam. But he hadn’t thought about girls. Turning to the index now, he came across six Samanthas, three of them in the senior class. Libby could have been talking about a Samantha, and when he looked for their pictures, a couple of the girls looked familiar.
Absently he started reading through the messages inscribed to her. They ranged from sentimental (“Parting is all we know of heaven / And all we need of hell”) to cruel (“Have a nice summer!”). How odd friendship is between teens, Davis thought. So intense. Every acquaintance is as close as a lover. Every minor slight an act of betrayal. The loss of a peer unthinkable.
The last two pages, left blank by the printer, were black-and-blue with ballpoint ink, irregular blocks of words covering the spread like a quilt. Davis rotated the binding, reading messages from less concise members of the Northwood East senior class. One of them, a poem – or more likely, song lyrics – froze the book in his hands:
They can’t hurt you now
It doesn’t matter what they say
You can still feel anger across the grave
But it was fun anyway
Sam
He read it again. And a third time.
A confession. Maybe.
The handwriting was precise, but it was definitely a boy’s – no teenaged Samantha would print with such bold, angular confidence. The words were not written hastily, but deliberately copied. The margins were careful and even. The strokes almost carved into the page.
You can still feel anger across the grave / But it was fun anyway. The words drilled into his heart and uncorked a gusher of rage. He was still trying to hurt her, still taking pleasure in her pain. Laughing. Taunting. Missing her only because he wasn’t done torturing her.
I’ll bury you, Coyne, he thought, his fingers on the front cover’s raised letters – ANNA KAT MOORE. I was so long without a child, I forgot I was a father. I got comfortable. I lost sight of you. I forgot what you did to her. Forgot that I wasn’t supposed to let you have the last word.
Davis thought, I’ll show you her anger.
– 77 -
“Do you even have your learner’s permit?” Shadow Barwick asked.
“No.”
“God.”
“Relax,” Justin said into his headset. “It’s like playing a video game. In fact, we are playing a video game. Remember.”
“ You might be playing,” Sally said. “This is real to me. I’m risking my life here.”
“We’re not going to die.”
“We’re chasing a serial killer!”
“So you’re convinced he’s the killer now?”
“I didn’t say that. You know what I mean.”
The blue Camry belonged to Justin’s Shadow mother. Unlike his real-life mother, Shadow mom hadn’t upgraded to a Sable, and the digitized import showed its age in the frayed floor mats and worn steering wheel. Tonight, for the fourth time in a week, Justin snuck out with the car, picked up Sally, and parked across the street from the garage underneath Sam Coyne’s apartment building. In reality, of course, they were both sitting in their pajamas at home.
“I’ve topped two hundred and fifty thousand points on Ultrathon Grand Prix,” he reassured her. “I’m a good driver.”
“Maybe you’d be better off playing your little driving game tonight,” Sally said. “I don’t think he’s coming out.”
“He has to sooner or later.”
The last Wicker Man killing had been ten weeks ago. According to Justin’s theory (illustrated on his revised chart), there would be a killing either in the game or on the real streets of Chicago very soon as Coyne felt the need to release his aggression. For many reasons, they were both hoping it would be in the game. Sally in particular was hoping it would be tonight. She was tired.
That’s not to say she didn’t enjoy her time with Justin. He was the only man in her life. He had read more books than many adults, and understood them better than she did. He could argue a point without being personal. He wasn’t an intellectual and could talk about movies and music and television, and also at length about Sally’s primary interest – life in Shadow World. If he weren’t so young, she’d no doubt be dating him by now. Given all the time they spent together, between the game and her dreams, some version of Sally practically was.
“Unless he doesn’t,” Barwick said. “Have to, I mean. At some point we need to give up on your theory, Justin. I don’t want to, but with all these late nights I’m having trouble staying awake at work. Both of me are.” The dashboard and computer clocks both said 12:30 a.m.
“Well, I have to go to school, ” Justin said, as if this stakeout had been her idea. Sally was reminded that when she was fifteen, she had been certain high school was so much harder and more boring than work would ever be.
“Wait.” She nudged him. “There!”
The garage was technically underground, a dead end in the maze of arteries carved underneath downtown known collectively as “Lower Chicago.” At night, however, visibility was just as good as it was on the upper streets bearing the same names. A black BMW glistened in the fluorescent light as it nosed under the corrugated door and turned onto the street. Shadow Justin checked the license plate.
“That’s him!” he said, and in a small window showing third-person point of view, Barwick watched her on-
