“ ’Cause they’re crazy,” Cody said.

“Sometimes. And when we hear about this scary, terrible stuff it makes us all feel like the world isn’t a safe place. You know what I mean?”

Cody nodded slowly. The fat terrier nosed its way into the room, jumped on the bed, sniffed the boy up and down, then went to the foot of the bed, and turned around five times before curling into a ball.

“Is that how you feel?” Anne asked. “Like if you go back out in the world something like that might happen to you?”

He thought about that one for a long time and chose not to answer her, which was an answer in itself. She couldn’t blame him. He had caught a glimpse of the worst thing one human being could do to another. Like ripples in a pond, that violence touched everyone who heard of it. Every woman in Oak Knoll would be locking her doors and windows tonight. How could Anne possibly convince a ten-year-old kid that violence couldn’t touch him?

And why would he trust her anyway? She barely knew him. If she had to admit it, she knew him less than she knew Tommy or Wendy. He wasn’t a good or enthusiastic student. The only attention he drew to himself was when he got caught up in Dennis Farman’s disruptive vortex. She felt guilty for not knowing him better, and wondered how many other kids she was seeing only in the periphery of her vision.

“That chicken smells really good,” she said, pushing to her feet. “Think you’ll eat some dinner?”

Once again he didn’t answer her. She felt his mind was still on the last question she had asked him, that he was still wrestling with something, but she couldn’t pull it out of him. He had to want to give it to her.

“If you decide you want to talk about it,” she said, “don’t be afraid to come to me, Cody. Or tell your mom. You don’t have to keep all those feelings bottled up inside you.”

Anne turned for the door, took a step, then another. Then Cody Roache said something that ran a chill straight through her.

“Dennis said there were bodies buried in the woods.”

Anne turned back around slowly.

“What do you mean, Cody? He said that yesterday? After you found the body?”

Cody Roache was as white as a sheet, his dark eyes huge behind the too-big lenses of his taped-together glasses.

“Before that,” he said in a tiny voice.

Anne came back to the bed and sat down. “I don’t understand. When did he tell you this?”

“A while ago. We were in the woods playing commandos and he told me there were dead bodies buried there.”

If he had told her this two days ago, Anne would have written it off as something Dennis would say just for shock effect. But as it turned out, there had been a body buried in the woods.

Maybe Dennis had been there on his own some other time and had seen something happening. From the corner of her eye she could see Cody staring at her intently, waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t know what to say.

“Do you think Dennis killed that lady?” he whispered.

“No,” she said. “No, of course not. What exactly did he tell you, Cody? Did he tell you he had seen a body?”

“He said there were bodies buried there and they were rotting in the ground and we were running over the top of them and stepping on them. And then there was that lady!”

She needed to call Detective Mendez. If there was a chance Dennis had seen something… She wondered if Dennis had told his father… and if Frank Farman had passed that information on to Mendez.

“I’m scared,” Cody said.

Anne looked at him sitting there curled into a ball in his red pajamas, his dark hair standing up in tufts.

“What are you scared of, Cody?”

He swallowed hard. “Dennis.”

“Dennis didn’t kill that lady.”

“How do you know?”

Because Dennis was an eleven-year-old boy and certainly not capable of doing what had been done. But Anne said none of that to Cody. Instead, she gave him the pat answer adults always give children when they don’t want or know how to tell them the truth.

“Because. I just know,” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to decide what to do next.

“Thank you, Cody,” she said, standing up. “You did the right thing telling me this.”

Cody didn’t look so sure about that. “Don’t tell Dennis I said it.”

“Don’t worry about Dennis,” Anne said. “Feel better. I would like to see you back in school tomorrow.”

She spent another few minutes with Renee Roache discussing what had happened and the fact that Detective Mendez would probably want to speak to Cody. Then she left the Roache home and the smell of chicken roasting, to go in search of Dennis Farman.

The Farmans lived not far from the Roaches in a two-story house painted battleship gray. Everything about the exterior was neat and tidy, squared off and symmetrical. No frills. Very military, she thought.

One of the Farman daughters answered the door. Both girls were in junior high school, enough older than Dennis that they probably did all they could to deny his existence. Anne couldn’t imagine anything more annoying to teenage girls than little brothers.

There was no sign or sound of Dennis as she waited in the hall for Sharon Farman to materialize. She looked at the family photos on the wall, noting that even as a toddler Dennis had looked like trouble.

Dennis said there were bodies buried in the woods.

Sharon Farman came into the hall, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She appeared to be still dressed from work in a skirt and blouse with long sleeves puffed at the shoulder and a ruffled stand-up collar. She had the kind of looks that had probably been quite pretty in high school, but were now worn down by years of smoking cigarettes, raising children, and the disappointment of being married to an asshole.

“Mrs. Farman,” Anne said. “I’m so sorry to interrupt your dinner-”

“We haven’t eaten yet,” Sharon Farman said shortly. “We’re waiting for my husband. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to check on Dennis.”

“Check on Dennis?” she said, as if that was the most absurd notion she had ever heard. “Why would you check on Dennis? You’ve just spent the entire day with him. I’d think that would be more than enough of him.”

“Dennis wasn’t in class today,” Anne said. “I assumed you kept him home.”

Sharon Farman looked incredulous and exasperated at the same time. “That little shit! His father took him to school this morning.”

“Hmmmm,” was all Anne could think to say. She’d never heard a parent refer to their child as a little shit, no matter how true it might have been. “Is he here now?”

The woman looked up the staircase and screamed, “DENNIS! Get down here!”

At the same time, the front door opened and Frank Farman walked in. His wife went right to him.

“Dennis wasn’t in school today,” she said. “Did you drop him off?”

“I got a call,” Farman said as he took off his giant cop belt hung with all manner of weapons and handcuffs. He hung it on the coatrack beside the door. “I told him to walk to school.”

Sharon Farman rolled her eyes, turned on her heel, and headed back to the kitchen where one of the daughters was yelling, “Mom, it’s burning!”

Anne turned to look at Frank Farman.

“I’m Anne Navarre. Your son’s teacher,” she said, annoyed. She had met him several times and he had yet to recognize her. She was of no importance to him whatsoever. She imagined no woman was.

“You came here to tell us Dennis wasn’t in school?” he asked. “You couldn’t pick up a telephone?”

“Actually, I came to see how Dennis is doing after what happened yesterday-”

“He’s fine.”

“I thought he might be upset-”

“He’s not.”

“Has Dennis talked to you about what happened?”

“The kids were playing and they found a dead body. What else is there to talk about? He’s a kid, for Christ’s sake.”