Detective Mendez looked like he’d gotten caught saying something he shouldn’t have. “It’s really too soon to say.”

“Have there been other cases the public doesn’t know about?”

“What’s a cereal killer?” Tommy asked.

Miss Navarre looked really annoyed now when she looked at the detective. Detective Mendez turned his attention back toward Tommy.

“Tommy, can you describe to me what you saw, anything unusual you might have noticed at the scene?”

“Well, the dead lady,” Tommy said. Duh.

“Anything else?”

Tommy shrugged again, then tugged down on the sleeves of his striped rugby shirt and rubbed his arm. “The dead lady. And there was a dog. He was guarding her. He was black and white.”

“Did he have a collar?”

Tommy looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “Mmmmm… maybe… I’m not sure.”

“Did you touch anything around the dead lady?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No way.”

“Did anybody else touch anything?”

Tommy looked at the tabletop again, considering the wisdom of ratting out Dennis Farman. It didn’t seem like the thing to do if he wanted to stay in one piece.

“Tommy?”

Miss Navarre. He looked up at her and knew she knew he was stalling. She said a lot with her eyes. He didn’t want to let her down, what with being kind of in love with her and all.

“Uh… I didn’t touch anything. And I know Wendy didn’t touch anything.” Maybe if he left it at that…

Miss Navarre turned then to his parents. “Will Tommy be staying in school today?”

Tommy looked up at his father, willing him to say he could stay. His mother had talked about a psychiatrist. He had seen psychiatrists on television, and Lori Baylor had gone to one after her mother died of breast cancer. From what Tommy had been able to discern, all they ever did was make people lie down on a couch and talk about their feelings. Tommy had nothing to say on that subject. His feelings were not anybody else’s business.

“Principal Garnett tells us you’ve had some training in child psychology,” Tommy’s father said.

“Yes. Some,” Miss Navarre said. “Wendy Morgan is staying, if that helps in your decision-making.”

Tommy bugged his eyes out at his father. Please, please, please, please. He liked school. School was where he was happiest-except for when he was playing baseball or watching baseball. School was normal. At school he didn’t have to be watching adults and trying to figure out what they were thinking and how it would affect him.

“But you don’t have a degree,” Tommy’s mother said.

“No, I don’t.”

“And the school isn’t going to provide someone who has.”

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“And how will you handle the situation, Miss Navarre?” his mother asked, already expecting an unsatisfactory answer.

“We’ll talk about what happened with the class,” Miss Navarre said. “I think the best thing we can do is be open and honest with the kids.”

“Talking about serial killers?” Tommy’s mother said, giving Miss Navarre her Cold Eye as Tommy called it. “You think that’s appropriate, Miss Navarre?”

“No,” Miss Navarre said, raising her chin a little. “But talking about what happened to their classmates, talking about what’s going to happen next, talking about how a police investigation works, turning a negative experience into an opportunity to learn-all seems very appropriate. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Crane?”

Tommy’s mother sighed impatiently. “I think everyone on the school board is going to get a call about Mr. Garnett’s poor decision not to call in a professional.”

“That’s your prerogative,” Miss Navarre said. “In the meantime, I’ll do the best I can.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring.”

“I want to stay,” Tommy blurted out. Now he got the Cold Eye. It might have been better for him if he had ratted out Dennis Farman and kept his mouth shut about this. Oh well. It was too late now. “Please, Mom.”

His father spoke up then. “Let’s see how it goes. I like your ideas, Miss Navarre. I know you have the kids’ best interest at heart.”

“I do.”

Tommy’s mother stood up abruptly, checking her watch.”Are we finished, Detective?” she asked. “I have an appointment I have to get to.”

Detective Mendez and Miss Navarre looked at Tommy’s mother, a little surprised. Tommy wasn’t surprised. His mother was mad and she was cutting them off, dismissing them. She was done here and on to other, more important things. She didn’t like anything to disrupt her schedule.

Detective Mendez said, “You’re free to go.”

Tommy’s mother turned and walked out. His father put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder and looked down at him. “You’re sure you’re okay with staying, Sport?”

Tommy nodded. He was sure. Especially now. The last thing he wanted was to be stuck with his mother in one of her moods.

His father patted him on the shoulder and stood up.

“Miss Navarre, thank you for your efforts. If there’s anything I can do to help, please call.” He turned to Detective Mendez. “Good luck with your investigation, Detective. It sounds like you might have your work cut out for you, if this guy is what you think he is.”

“They’re never so clever that they don’t get caught eventually,” Mendez said.

“And if they are,” Tommy’s father said, “I guess we never know it, do we?”

He handed his business cards to Mendez and to Miss Navarre, squeezed Tommy’s shoulder one last time, and walked out.

Tommy breathed a sigh and rubbed absently at his arm. “Can we go back to class now, Miss Navarre? I just want everything to be normal.”

“Sure, Tommy,” she said. “Let’s go do something normal.”

Of course, Tommy knew nothing would ever feel quite normal again, but he could certainly pretend.

Karly Vickers was living in a cottage owned by the Thomas Center. The center had placed her in a receptionist position at Quinn, Morgan and Associates, a law firm. She would have a sixty-day probationary trial with full pay. If she succeeded in the job, she would then start paying for her own utilities. At the next plateau she would begin paying a small amount of rent to the center, another step toward self-sufficiency. When she was back on her feet entirely, the center would help her find her own living arrangements, and the cottage would welcome a new woman starting a new life.

Jane drove directly to the cottage. She didn’t take the time to phone her assistant. She didn’t even take the time to change out of her gardening clothes.

There’s been a murder…

The sense of unease was now like a ball of dough sitting in her stomach.

Karly’s car, an old Chevy Nova she owned herself, was not sitting in the driveway.

She could have gotten cold feet about the job, Jane told herself. Karly, twenty-one, had come to the center from Simi Valley with zero self-esteem, a victim of an abusive boyfriend who had beaten her so severely she had been unrecognizable to her own mother. The boyfriend had vanished, escaping justice, leaving Karly in so many shattered pieces it had taken her a year and a half to come this far in her recovery.

Jane had a photograph of the boyfriend imprinted on her brain. As far as she knew, he was still at large. Could he have somehow found out where Karly was living? Upon entering the program at the center, Karly had signed a contract agreeing to reveal her whereabouts to no one, not even her family. Periodic phone calls to her mother were carefully arranged and monitored. The phone service to her cottage was local usage only.

But Jane knew all too well the things women would do to sabotage themselves. She had seen abused women go back to their abusers over and over. The strength it took to break that cycle was sometimes beyond their reach.

The front door of the cottage was locked, suggesting Karly had left of her own free will. Jane had a set of keys to all of the center’s properties. Surprise inspections were part of the deal. She let herself in and looked around, careful not to touch anything.