The tea was plain old Lipton from a bag, but it was warm and there was fresh cream and lots of sugar. Taylor sipped her cup and held an ice pack against her leg with a paper towel. Ms. Potts had fixed her up, but only after she assured her that she’d gotten a tetanus booster just six months earlier. It was required by Metro—like a dog, she had to get all her shots regularly.

Baldwin had settled in at the small wooden dining table looking like a giant. Sharon Potts was about five feet tall, and her house reflected that. Everything felt small, compact and efficient. Clean and homey, nothing superfluous. Just like its owner. Who was quick to share her story. Taylor got the sense that even though Ms. Potts worked around, with and for people all day, she was terribly lonely.

“Of course I remember the Copelands. Laws, there’s no one in town who doesn’t. It was terribly sad. Betty, she had a sickness. Even growing up, that girl was wrong in the head. Everyone knew it, and we all tried to help. But some kids are just born bad, and there’s nothing you can do to help them. I knew her mama, God rest her soul. She was terrified for that child. Loved her to pieces though she never knew what she was going to get into next. Overloved her, really. She was pretty much blind to her faults. But you know how it is, no one can ever tell what happens behind closed doors. I think she let the cancer get her, so she wouldn’t have to witness what she’d given birth to. Breast cancer, you see, late stage, and her so young. She was barely forty, died when Betty was seventeen or so. Right before she graduated. That spooked Betty, I think, because her mama was always the one place she knew she could turn when things got tough.”

“What about her father?” Taylor asked.

“He was off in the merchant marines.” She snorted. “Which is a fancy way of saying no one really knew who Betty’s father was. Edward Biggs married Barbara when Betty was about three or so, gave her his name. But by that time he was so busy with the restaurant, and Betty was such a handful. He died early, and Barbara, that’s her mother, Barbara did the best she could. Barb was a good woman. But when she died, Betty had no one. So she took up with Roger Copeland. Got herself knocked up, knew he’d take care of her. Roger was an honorable man.

“They moved in after they got married. It was much nicer then, the neighborhood, I mean. Sweet little place for starting a family. And all he could afford, what with the baby practically here already and whatnot, and that BBQ joint not doing so well.

“Everything seemed normal, on the surface. I’ve been working up at the hospital going on thirty years now, and I’m telling you the God to honest truth here. Something was wrong in that house. I saw those boys come in with the strangest maladies. And Betty, hell, Betty was an expert. She could have been a doctor. Knew more than I did about these foreign diseases. She spent practically all her time looking through that huge copy of Gray’s Anatomy. She’d sit on the front porch with a glass of cool tea and read like her heart was about to give out.

“Roger was gone all the time, and those boys, those poor boys. We did what we could, tried to help, to be neighborly. Brought food over, covered dishes and the like, offered to do the laundry. But Betty wouldn’t let us get too close. She beat those kids, treated them like animals inside the house, but outside, she played the role of doting mother. They were all cowed by her. Roger included. I think that’s why he was so anxious to leave.

“When the boys were sick and in the hospital, she would hover over them and berate us like we were idiots. Insist on giving the medicine herself, things like that. The winter my mama died was when the oldest took sick. I wasn’t here, I had to go and stay up with her at the hospice. I came back and everything was changed. Roger was dead, Edward was dead, Betty was in jail, poor Errol was in the loony bin sick as a cat, and Ewan was here by himself, trying to make ends meet. Then they put him in that home and he just fell apart.

“That slut who Roger got pregnant should have taken in those boys, but she pranced off and married Anderson, made sure she and her little bastard were taken care of. I always hated her a little for that, and I know it’s a sin. But if she’d loved that man at all, she’d have seen to his boys. As it was, when Errol killed himself, she was in Myrtle Beach, with her girlfriends. Ewan had no one to help him plan his little brother’s funeral. I remember him sitting by the gravesite, eyes just blank. Once he hurt that girl and disappeared, the whole story faded away, into town legend. The house got taken by the bank, and no one’s been there since. They never were able to sell it. The walls probably scream.”

Taylor felt a chill go through her at the thought, reflexively sipped on the strong hot tea.

“What was he like?” Baldwin asked.

Ms. Potts was enjoying her bit of company on this cold night, and she was a natural storyteller. She bustled around her little kitchen, fixing them some more tea and setting out a plate of cookies. Tagalongs, from what Taylor could see of the box. Her stomach growled in a decidedly unladylike fashion. The nurse just smiled and pushed the plate of cookies closer.

“Ewan? Like his mama, I daresay.”

“Like her how?”

She tapped her finger on the table, thinking. “Messed up in the head. He tried so hard. It was heartbreaking, really, watching him struggle. Like he knew what he did was wrong and bad, but he just couldn’t help himself. Take the dog. That stake you tripped over? They had a dog when Ewan was about ten. Just a mutt, nothing special. He found him over the tracks, back in the woods. Boyo loved that dog. Slept with him. Walked him. Played with him. And when he shot him, and the dog lay there dying in the front yard, whimpering and bleeding and looking up at the one good thing in its poor little life, he stood over it and cried. I watched him do it. That’s when I knew. He was wrong, bad wrong. But he didn’t want to be that way, I don’t think. He was compelled.”

Taylor set her half-eaten cookie back on the plate. “You saw him shoot the dog?”

“I did. I’d just gotten home from my first shift. Heard the shot, looked over. Ewan was standing there, snot running down his face. I remember he looked up at me, and he was so stricken. ‘I had to,’ he said. ‘He was hurt.’ But that dog was fine, right as rain. He killed him because he wanted to.”

Baldwin nodded. “He equated pain with love. That’s what his mother’s Munchausen’s did to him. The only way you can tell someone how much you love them is by hurting them. Physically hurting them. It brings all the attention to you.”

“That sounds about right. Betty did love those boys, no one could deny that. But she hated them a bit, too. She must have. How else could she have kept hurting them, over and over and over?”

Taylor met Baldwin’s eyes. They were beginning to have a better understanding of their adversary. Such understanding could lead to sympathy if they weren’t careful, and suddenly Taylor felt like they were stalling. It was time to go. Time to erase this bastard off the face of the earth.

“Ms. Potts, you’ve been a wonderful help,” Taylor said. “Thank you so much for fixing me up. We need to get back on the road now.”

With minimal protestation, the nurse saw them out, pressed the extra Tagalongs into Taylor’s hand. She accepted them gratefully; she needed the sugar boost, could eat again despite the knowledge she’d just gained and the heavy, late lunch. They promised to stop by again if they were ever in town, then made their way to Baldwin’s BMW.

The noose was drawing tighter.