“I don’t know what to do.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Franny said, staring aghast at the notebook page depicting one grizzly stabbing death after another. “Call an exorcist.”

Anne felt everything inside of her quivering like Jell-O. After seeing Dennis Farman’s artwork, she had gone directly from her classroom to Franny’s, where he was enjoying his break between his morning kindergartners and his afternoon kindergartners, sneaking a cigarette out by the sandbox.

“You have to come with me,” she said. “You have to come with me right now.”

She turned on her heel and started walking. Franny jogged up beside her in the hall.

“What’s going on?”

She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Honey, what to do about what? Have you killed one of them? No one will blame you. They’re fifth graders. It’s justifiable homicide.”

Anne didn’t smile. She didn’t laugh. She led the way into her classroom, took him straight to Dennis Farman’s desk, and opened it.

“He was doing this all morning,” she said now, and she told him everything that had happened.

“You have to show this to Garnett,” he said, staring at the drawing. “This is really creepy, Anne. This isn’t something to mess around with-not when you add this to him screaming at you that he wishes you were dead.”

“If I take this to Garnett, Dennis will be expelled.”

“Yes, and… that would be bad… how?”

“He needs help, Franny,” she said. “He’s got so much rage inside him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Franny’s jaw dropped. He grabbed the notebook out of the desk and pointed at the drawings of women with knives sticking into their bodies. “This is what he wants to do with it! Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“He’s a little boy.”

“He’s the son of Satan!”

“He’s the son of a man who beat him so badly last night he can’t sit in a chair today!” Anne said, keeping her voice down even as her temper rose.

“Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“Did you see any marks on him?”

“No.”

“Then tell Garnett, give this to him, and let him handle it,” he said, tapping his finger against the notebook to make her look at it. “You have to get this kid out of your classroom before he does this for real.”

“But, Franny, if Garnett expels him, what’s going to happen to him? He apparently has a difficult home situation. He’s socially maladjusted. He has no friends. He found a dead body, for Christ’s sake.”

“And let’s make sure the next one isn’t yours.”

“He’s eleven.”

“Do you not go to the movies?” he asked, incredulous. “Did you not see Halloween? Michael Myers was SIX YEARS OLD when he killed his sister.”

“And if we were living in a John Carpenter film, I’d be really scared.”

“You are really scared or you wouldn’t have come running to me. You would have told me tonight over Chinese. ‘Oh, by the way, Franny, one of my students did the most interesting thing today. He unleashed the contents of his disturbed mind in a sexually sadistic work of art. And how was your day?’

“And, if you’ll remember, last night you were telling me he was talking about other bodies in the woods, and that his only playmate is afraid of him.”

Anne sighed. That was all true. But she couldn’t help feeling that being in school with supervision and guidance was a better option for helping Dennis Farman than turning him loose, isolating him, giving up on him. Clearly, no one was there for him at home, physically, emotionally, or otherwise. If she could reach him now, maybe she could turn him around.

“And where is Mr. Dream Detective?” Franny asked. “Has he called you back?”

“No.”

“Well, he needs to get his tight little ass over here to serve and protect or I’m not letting him have his way with you.”

“He’s not interested in me.”

“And who can blame him, Holly Hobbie?” he asked. “Do you have anything in your closet besides these Little House on the Prairie dresses?”

Anne looked down at her outfit-a white puffed-sleeve blouse and a loose navy blue dress that hit just above her ankles. “This is a perfectly nice jumper.”

Franny rolled his eyes. “Only kindergartners and kinky role-playing prostitutes wear jumpers.”

Finally, she found a smile, knowing that had been his intent. Irreverence as diversion.

Sobering, he pressed Dennis Farman’s notebook into her hands. “You have to take this to Garnett, Anne Marie. If you don’t, and something goes wrong with this kid in your classroom… You have to do it.”

Anne looked down at the notebook images of women screaming, blood spurting from their wounds. The first bell sounded. Their warning that lunch period was almost over. Her kids had gym first thing. They would go directly to Mr. Alvarez outdoors.

She sighed and nodded, already feeling Dennis Farman slipping beyond her grasp. “I’ll go now.”

Steve Morgan looked like he’d had a hard night: dark smudges under his tired blue eyes, pallor a little to the pasty side of healthy. He was taking Tylenol as Mendez and Vince entered his office.

Still, he came around his desk and greeted them with handshakes. He was in his thirties, tall and lanky with a firm grip and a full head of sandy, wavy hair.

“Detectives, what can I do for you?” he asked, returning to his cushy leather chair. “Have a seat.”

Vince sat down in one of the two visitors’ chairs as if he was settling in for a long stay.

“Jane Thomas called and filled me in on what’s been going on,” Morgan said. “I’ve been up in Sacramento since Tuesday morning doing some lobbying for the center. I got back late last night.”

“Then you know we’re looking into the murder of Lisa Warwick,” Mendez said.

“Yes. My daughter was one of the kids who found her body. Lisa was the nicest person in the world. Who would want to kill her?”

“That’s what we’d like to find out,” Mendez said. “Ms. Thomas told us you and Lisa worked together on some cases involving clients of the center.”

“Yes. Lisa used to work at the center. After she got her nurse’s degree, she decided to volunteer as an advocate. She worked the evening shift at the hospital. It left her days free.”

“How well did you know her?” Vince asked. “Well enough that she would have confided in you if something had been going on in her life?”

“Like what?”

“Trouble with a boyfriend, someone bothering her at work, that kind of thing.”

“One of the ER docs liked to play grab ass with the nurses,” Morgan said. “Lisa asked me what to do about it. That was maybe a year, year and a half ago. I had a conversation with the man about what a sexual harassment suit could do to his career, not to mention his marriage.”

“And he stopped?” Mendez asked, making notes.

“He left. Took a position on the East Coast.”

“That must have been some conversation,” Vince said.

“I make a living persuading people to see things my way.”

“You must be very good at it.”

“I do all right.”

“Ms. Warwick hadn’t said anything to you about any problems recently?” Mendez asked.

The lawyer shook his head. “I hadn’t seen her for a while.”

“She never called? You never ran into each other?” Vince asked. “Never met for coffee, anything like that?”

Morgan narrowed his eyes slightly. “What are you getting at, Detective?”

“We have reason to believe Ms. Warwick was seeing someone before her death,” Mendez said, watching him.

“I’m a happily married man,” Morgan said. “Lisa was a casual acquaintance. I’m very sorry that she’s dead, and it tears me up to think of what she must have gone through. She was a sweet, gentle person.”

“But you weren’t romantically involved,” Vince said, finding it curious Morgan hadn’t said so himself.