But she had to go.
Emily burst ahead and scurried up the rocks, leaping from boulder to boulder. Sarah took a slower approach, climbing up, scraping her palms as she went. “Shit.”
They came to a small rock shelf outside the cave’s mouth. A cool breeze wafted out, Chilling Sarah’s skin.
She peered into the cave but couldn’t see more than a few feet inside.
Had she stuck her hand inside, she felt as if the darkness would chew it up and spit it out.
“We don’t have a light,” Sarah said.
“Look,” Emily said.
From inside the cave came a pale, white glow, a flashlight beam bobbing in the darkness. Coming toward them.
“Who’s there?” Sara said. “Where’s Heidi?”
The light died near the cave’s mouth and when the man in the ragged army jacket stepped out, both of them screamed.
The man reached out and grabbed both of them, yanking the girls into the cave. Sara was nearly jerked from her feet, no more substantial than a leaf in a strong breeze.
He smelled like something dead.
Tom was listening to Edna McGrath discuss the finer points of quilting when he noticed the girls still weren’t back. He checked his watch, realizing that it had been a good forty-five minutes since he’d sent Mary to look for them.
“Quilting boring you?” Edna said. She was a rope-thin woman in a screaming blue pants suit. She always smelled of cigarettes and cough drops.
“I’m sorry. I have to see where my girls ran off to.”
Edna clucked her tongue but Tom ignored her. Free from hearing about the joys of quilting, Tom took a walk around the picnic grove. There was no sign of the girls. They should’ve been back by now.
A little flutter of panic kicked up in his belly. He spotted the reverend nearby and Tom approached him. “Reverend, have you seen the girls?”
The Reverend shook his head. When he was sure they weren’t in the picnic area, he went down the nearest trail. He would find them, and when they got home, they’d get the belt for disobeying their father.
He heard footsteps on the path. Slapping the ground hard. Dean, Mary’s crush, came into view. His tie was askew and blood soaked the front of his khaki dress shirt. As he reached Tom, the boy’s face looked like he’d seen the devil and lived.
Tom saw him, but Dean didn’t see Tom. He noticed Tom at the last second, nearly bowling into Tom, who put his hands up. Dean put on the brakes.
Breathless, Dean said, “Someone took Mary. I tried to stop him, but he was too strong. God, there was so much blood.”
His lower lip quivered and tears ran down his face.
“Where are the other girls?” Tom asked.
“Dead. All dead.”
“You think he did it?” Detective Mike Rogowski said.
“I know he did it,” his partner, Frank O’Bannon replied.
O’Bannon eyed Dean through the two-way mirror that looked into the interrogation room three. They’d taken the kid’s blood-drenched shirt (and the olive-green t-shirt underneath) as evidence. He was currently wearing a surplus beige prison shirt from the state pen up in Mansville. They kept a box of prison clothes on hand, usually reserved for drunks that puked or pissed themselves.
The boy’s hands were cuffed and secured by a chain to a ring bolted into the floor.
“Sweating like a whore in the communion line,” Rogowski said.
“I’d be too if I murdered four girls,” O’Bannon said.
“You want to go in first?” Rogowski said.
“My pleasure. And you need to shave those goddamned mutton chops.”
Rogowski said, “The ladies like the feel of them on their inner thighs.”
“My ass. You look like fucking Captain Kangaroo.”
“I’ll have you know that Captain Kangaroo gets all the pussy he wants.”
O’Bannon waved him off. The sideburns were to make up for Rogowski’s thinning hair. He was dating three girls at once, no doubt to make up for what happened with his wife. Rogowski’s old lady had been caught in a cheap motel with a uniformed officer half her age. Rogowski was currently living out of that very same hotel.
O’Bannon had never married, and for that he was glad. He ate a lot of shitty TV dinners and slept alone most nights, which suited him fine. Half the cops he knew were either divorced or banging other women on the side. He’d take the quiet bachelor’s life and Swanson’s TV dinners over that crap any day.
He straightened his tie and entered the interrogation room. The kid looked up. He looked scared. They all did at this point; there weren’t many tough guys in the box.
“Let me get those for you,” O’Bannon said, taking the key ring from a clip on his belt. He unlocked the cuffs and the kid took them off. They clattered on the floor. The kid rubbed his wrists.
“Get you some water?” O’Bannon said.
“No sir. I’m fine.”
Sir. The boy was clean cut and had signed up to serve his country. Frank didn’t understand it, but he knew from experience anyone could be a killer. He’d once arrested an eighty-year-old church trustee who’d stabbed her husband in his sleep with a knitting needle.
“Did you call your parents? They let you use the phone, right?”
“My mom’s dead. My father’s stationed in West Germany.”
“We can get word to him,” O’Bannon said. “Any other relatives?”
“All out of state, sir.”
They’d gotten an initial statement from Dean, but Frank wanted to hear things in the kid’s own words. “Tell me what happened out there.”
The young Marine told Frank how Mary Harwell had chatted him up
