Secrets to the Grave

“Nope. I won’t turn the lights off.”

“Bad Daddy comes when the lights are off.”

“Bad Daddy can’t come here,” Anne said, gathering the pictures back up off the bed.

She followed Vince into the hall, pulling Haley’s door only partially closed.

Mendez got to his feet with a look of tense expectation.

Vince shook his head. “No go. It may have been too dark for her to recognize the killer that night. Or she might only relate that person to Bad Daddy if he was dressed all in black.”

“You know, people don’t look the same when they turn on you,” Anne said quietly. “I remember how Peter Crane looked when he was above me, choking me. His eyes went flat and cold, like some kind of beast’s. The angles of his face stood out as if the skin were being pulled tight against the bone. He didn’t look like Tommy’s dad, or everybody’s favorite dentist, or the man who had come to my door just minutes earlier. It was like he was wearing a mask and then he took it off and I saw what he really was.”

Vince slipped his arm around her and drew her closer to him, just to let her feel that he was there and strong and protecting her.

“Haley may not have recognized the man who hurt her,” she said. “Because it wasn’t a man who hurt her, it was a monster.”

Mendez sighed, defeated. “I’d better call my mother and ask her to light a candle for Gina Kemmer then, because she’s the only one left who can ID this guy.”

Good, Anne thought, as she slipped away and went back into Haley’s room. Just relating her own experience in a few brief sentences had brought the terrible image of Peter Crane’s face that night back to her mind with such sharp clarity it was painful. Her heart was beating quick and shallow, and she felt weak both physically and mentally.

If Haley could be spared that ...

“Let’s make up a story tonight,” she said, settling in beside her little charge.

Haley snuggled into her, thumb at the ready. Anne brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead and began.

“Once upon a time there was a land where there were no monsters and no mean people and no bad daddies ...”

When Haley had drifted off, Anne slipped from the bed and padded downstairs in her stocking feet. The house was quiet except for soft smoky saxophone music drifting out of Vince’s office. He was sitting at his desk with only the desk lamp on, concentrating, peering down through his reading glasses at notes he had made.

He glanced up at her and smiled, took off his glasses and set them aside. He looked tired. Anne tunneled her fingers into his thick hair and smiled back.

“Come to bed, Daddy Vince,” she said.

“Mmmm ...” He pressed his cheek to her breast and sighed. “I am so exhausted, so wiped out, so out of gas ... and I still want you, Mrs. Leone.”

He pulled her face down to his and kissed her, a deep, slow, sexy kiss.

“But ... ,” Anne said as they emerged back into the real world.

“But ... I want to go over these notes one more time. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s an answer in here somewhere and I’m just not seeing it.”

“Maybe you’ve been looking at it too long.”

“Can’t see the forest for the trees? Maybe so. It’s probably hiding right in front of me. I’m just beating myself up over Zahn,” he admitted. “I pushed too hard. I’m afraid I might have triggered something in him he can’t get back from.”

Anne brushed a thumb over the bruise on his cheek where he told her Zander Zahn had struck him. “We can’t know somebody else’s tipping point. Most of the time, we don’t even know our own until it’s too late.

“I looked at those pictures tonight ... ,” she said. “I’m sure not one of those men ever believed they could do what was done to that woman. And yet, one of them probably did.”

Vince nodded, then broke the darkness of the thought.

“How’d you get so smart?” he teased.

“I married well,” Anne said, smiling. “Come upstairs. You can tell me a bedtime story.”

They walked up the stairs hand in hand.

Vince spoke softly. “Once upon a time there was husband who loved his wife ...”

70

Thunder rumbled. In the distance Dennis could see flashes of lightning far away. He loved it when it stormed at night. But the rain had stopped for now, which suited him fine. The fire would burn better without rain.

Dennis felt like he had a thunderstorm inside his brain. Anger rumbled and grumbled then BANG! Flashed like lightning. He was so mad he wanted to just run shouting, spinning around, flinging his arms, crashing into things. Then he wanted his hands to turn into knives and he would slash his way through crowds of people and blood would be spurting everywhere. He would spin and turn and cut people in half and cut their heads off.

And at the end of his rampage would be Miss Navarre. And he would stab her and stab her a million times like the guy that killed that lady in the newspaper. He would stick his knives inside of her and down her throat and in her eyes and through her brain. And she would be alive the whole time until he cut her head off.

She didn’t care about him. She didn’t show up again. And nobody told him she wasn’t coming. He had worked so hard to write his report about the murder like she wanted him to. Two whole pages.

Dennis didn’t like to write. It was hard for him. He didn’t always get the letters to go the right way, and he didn’t understand punctuation. He wrote what came in his head, but it didn’t always come out like it did for other people like stupid brainiac Tommy Crane or Wendy Morgan. They did everything right. Dennis did everything wrong.

But he had done his writing assignment for Miss Navarre because she said she would bring him something cool if he finished it. Nobody had ever given Dennis anything special because of something he had accomplished. Mostly because he never accomplished anything. Besides, his dad had always said he was stupid and would never amount to anything, so why should he try?

Miss Navarre probably thought the same thing, and that was why she hadn’t shown up. Why bother? Why should she take time out of her life for him when she could be teaching kids like Tommy and Wendy? Or because she could be fucking the FBI guy, which she probably did all the time because she was a whore.

Dennis was going to show her. He would accomplish BIG things starting tonight.

He dug way under his mattress and started pulling out his stash. He put his money and candy and stuff he wanted to take with him into a plastic bag with a drawstring that someone had thrown in the trash.

He hid the bag under his dirty laundry in the closet, then got out the stuff he needed to start the fire. Fires. He had it all planned out. He knew exactly where to start.

The nurse had gone by half an hour ago. He would have plenty of time now.

Dennis slipped out of his room and looked up and down the dimly lit hall, then darted away from the nurses’ station, going to the empty room at the far end of the hall. The lights from the parking lot glowed in through the window, allowing him to see well enough.

Dennis had snuck into this room and hid several times over the past year. This was the room where the staff dumped extra pieces of equipment—extra wheelchairs, extra poles for IV bags, bed trays, chairs. A couple of green oxygen tanks were shoved way in the corner of the room most difficult to see from the door—and farthest away from the sprinkler in the ceiling.

There was all kinds of stuff to burn in the room—paper towels, old newspapers. Dennis wadded up paper and made a pile on the floor. He tipped one of the oxygen tanks onto it. He had seen this done on a TV show. Oxygen