Public Secrets

hear the echo of Darren’s cries.
“Hard to sleep in a strange bed.” Liam got to his feet. His hand was awkward, but it was gentle as he patted her head. “Your grandda will fix you some warm milk.”
She sniffled as he took out an old, dented pan. “Can I stay with you?” she asked her father.
“Sure.” He carried her to a chair and sat with her on his lap.
“I woke up, and I couldn’t find you.”

“I’m right here, Emma.” He stroked her hair, studying his father over her head. “I’ll always be here for you.”

E VEN THERE, LOU thought. Even at such a time. He studied the grainy tabloid pictures of Darren McAvoy’s funeral. He’d seen the paper at the checkout of the supermarket when he’d picked up the whole wheat bread Marge had sent him out for. Like anything that had to do with the McAvoys, it had caught his interest, and his sympathy. He’d been more than a little embarrassed to have bought it, in public, from Sally the checker.
In the privacy of his own home, he felt even more like a voyeur. For a few pieces of loose change he, and thousands of others, could witness the intimacy of grief. It was there on all the faces, though they were blurred. He could see the little girl, her arm in a cast and sling.
He wondered how much she had seen, how much she would remember. The doctors he had consulted had all claimed that if she had witnessed anything, she had blocked it. She could remember tomorrow, five years from tomorrow, or never.
D EVASTATION AT G RAVESITE
There had been other headlines, dozens of others. Lou already had a drawerful.
D ID E MMA M C A VOY W ITNESS H ER B ROTHER’S
H ORRIBLE D EATH ?
S ON’S D EATH R OCKS D EVASTATION
C HILD M URDERED D URING P ARENTS’ O RGY
R ITUAL K ILLING OF R OCKER’S B ABY :
A RE M ANSON F OLLOWERS R ESPONSIBLE?
Garbage, Lou thought. It was all garbage. He wondered if Pete Page managed to shield the McAvoys from the worst of it. Frustrated, he rested his head in his hands and continued to stare at the picture.

He couldn’t pull himself away from the case. He was bringing his work home with him now, and bringing it home with a vengeance. Files, photos, notes littered his desk in the corner of Marge’s tidy living room. Though he had good men assigned with him, he double-checked all their work. He had personally interviewed everyone on the guest list he’d been given. He’d pored over the forensic reports, then had gone back again and again to comb through Darren’s room.
More than two weeks after the murder, and Lou had absolutely nothing.
For amateurs, they certainly covered their tracks, he thought. And they had been amateurs, he was certain. Professionals didn’t end up smothering a child that might have been worth a million in ransom, nor would they made such a poor attempt to give the illusion of a break-in.
They had been in the house. They had walked right through the front door. That was something else Lou was sure of. That didn’t mean their names were on the list Page had managed to compile. Half of Southern California could have walked into the house that night—and been given a drink or a joint or whatever party drugs had been available.
There hadn’t been any fingerprints in the boy’s room, not even on the hypodermic needle. There were only fingerprints of the McAvoys and their nanny. It seemed that Beverly McAvoy was an excellent housekeeper. The first floor had shown the disorder expected in the aftermath of a party, but the second floor, the family floor, had been clean and ordered. Marge would have approved, he thought as he imagined the rooms. No fingerprints, no dust, no signs of struggle.
But there had been a struggle, a life-and-death struggle. Sometime during it a hand had clamped over Darren McAvoy’s mouth and, perhaps inadvertently, his nose.
That struggle had occurred sometime between the time Emma had heard her brother cry—if indeed she had—and when Beverly McAvoy had gone up to check on her son.
How long had it taken? Five minutes, ten. Certainly no longer. According to the coroner, Darren McAvoy had died between two and two-thirty A.M. The ambulance call for Emma had been logged in at two-seventeen.
It didn’t help, Lou thought now. It didn’t help to have the times correlated, to have reams of notes and neatly labeled file folders. He needed to find just one thing out of place, one name that didn’t fit, one story that didn’t jibe.

He needed to find Darren McAvoy’s killers. If he didn’t, he