Public Secrets

put her arm around him, but it was weighed down with the white plaster cast. That had the fear bubbling quick again. She could hear in her mind the sound of that dry snap, the screaming pain that had followed.
It hadn’t been a dream—and if it had been real, then the rest …
“Where’s Darren?”

She would ask that first, Brian thought as he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. How could he tell her? How could he tell her what he had yet to understand or believe himself? She was only a child. His only child.
“Emma.” He kissed her cheek, her temple, her forehead, as if somehow that would ease the pain, for both of them. He took her hand. “Do you remember when I told you a story about angels, about how they live in heaven?”
“They fly and play music and never hurt each other.”
Oh, he was clever, Brian thought bitterly, so clever to have woven such a pretty tale. “Yes, that’s right. Sometimes special people become angels.” He reached far back for his Catholic faith and found it weighed heavily on his shoulders. “Sometimes God loves these people so much he wants them with him up in heaven. That’s where Darren is now. He’s an angel in heaven.”
“No.” For the first time since she had crawled out from beneath the dirty sink over three years before, she pushed away from her father. “I don’t want him to be an angel.”
“Neither do I.”
“Tell God to send him back,” she said furiously. “Right now.”
“I can’t.” The tears were coming again; he couldn’t stop them. “He’s gone, Emma.”
“Then I’ll go to heaven too, and take care of him.”
“No.” Fear clutched in his gut, drying his tears. His fingers dug into her shoulders, putting bruises on her for the first time. “You can’t. I need you, Emma. I can’t get Darren back, but I won’t lose you.”
“I hate God,” she said, dry-eyed and fierce.
So do I, Brian thought as he gathered her close. So do I.

T HERE HAD BEEN over a hundred people in and out of the McAvoy house on the night of the murder. Lou’s pad was overflowing with names, notes, and impressions. But he was no closer to an answer. Both the window and the door of the boy’s room had been found open, though the nanny was adamant that she had closed the window after putting the boy to bed. She also insisted the window had been locked. But there had been no signs of a forced entry.
There had been footprints beneath the window. Size 11, Lou mused. But there had been no impressions in the ground a ladder would have made, and no traces of rope on the windowsill.

The nanny was little help. She’d awakened when a hand had clamped over her mouth. She’d been blindfolded, bound, and gagged. In the two interviews Lou had had with her, she’d changed her estimate of the time she’d been bound from thirty minutes to two hours. She was low on his lists of suspects, but he was waiting for the background check he’d ordered.
It was Beverly McAvoy that Lou had to see now. He’d postponed the questioning as long as possible. Longer, after he’d scanned the police photos of little Darren McAvoy.
“Keep this as brief as possible.” The doctor stood with Lou outside the door. “She’s been given a mild sedative, but her mind is clear. Maybe too clear.”
“I don’t want to make this any harder on her than it already is.” What could, he wondered as the image of the young boy fixed itself in his mind. “I need to question the girl as well. Is she up to it?”
“She’s conscious. I don’t know if she’ll talk to you. She hasn’t spoken more than two words to anyone but her father.”
With a nod, Lou stepped into the room. The woman was sitting up in bed. Though her eyes were open, they didn’t focus on him. She looked very small and hardly old enough to have had a child, and to have lost one. She wore a pale blue bed jacket, and the hands lying on the white sheets were absolutely still.
Beside her Brian sat in a chair, his unshaven face an unhealthy shade of gray. His eyes looked old, red and puffy from tears and lack of sleep, clouded with grief. When he looked up, Lou saw something else in them. Fury.
“I’m sorry to disturb you.”
“The doctor told us you’d be coming.” Brian didn’t rise or gesture to a chair. He simply continued to stare. “Do you know who did this?”
“Not yet. I’d like to talk with your wife.”
“Bev.” Brian laid a hand over hers, but there was no response. “This is the policeman who’s trying to find … to