Seven Minutes to Noon

turned quiet. Everyone knew that something had just happened. Everyone was watching them.
    Alice nodded. She couldn’t speak.
    “Let’s open the other pillows,” Frannie said calmly.
    Dana started in on one of the other pillows. ZL. Careful to follow the seams, she cut quickly and peered inside.
    “It’s white.”
    Frannie looked. “That isn’t hair.”
    “It’s some kind of foam, I think.” Dana opened the CC pillow next. “More foam.”
    “What the hell is this?” Frannie was peering into the PS pillow. “It’s gray.”
    “Looks like some other kind of man-made stuffing,” Dana said.
    “Get one of the techs in,” Frannie told Dana.
    As Alice kneeled in front of Lauren’s chopped-off hair, it was all she could do to stop herself from weeping. The cacophonous pile of hair. The riot of hard evidence. Sickening detail. What would it tell?
    Was there more than Lauren’s hair in the pile?
    Was Ivy’s hair in there too?
    Dana gently placed her hands under Alice’s elbows and lifted her off the floor.
    One of the forensics techs came in with a large paper bag. He gathered all the hair into the bag, sealed it and marked it with what must have been the code name for the case: Mommy Killer.
    “Get it right over to Forensics.” Frannie’s voice cracked slightly, but she regained herself. “I’ll call that guy who owes me a favor. I want DNA evaluation on every different hair strand he finds.” Frannie got on her phone and started talking, her words blurring as a storm began to murmur through Alice’s mind.
    Nell and Peter.
    “The babysitter.” Dana’s tone was soft, but probing. “Sylvie. What’s her full name?”
    “Sylvie Devrais,” Frannie answered.
    Where were they?
    The front door squealed open and cracked shut. Footsteps hurried through the front hall.
    “Alice!” It was Mike. Finally.
    Alice faced the archway connecting living room to front hall. “In here!”
    He walked in, looking hot and tired and almost crushed.
    Why was it so quiet? Where were the kids?
    “Didn’t you stop at Maggie’s?” Alice asked.
    “No one’s home,” Mike said in a tone burdened by both certainty and plea.
    “Sylvie said they were there. I told her you’d be stopping by.”
    “I rang the bell over and over. No one answered. I thought maybe they came over here.”
    “Maybe I misunderstood,” Alice thought aloud. “Maybe she meant they were with Maggie at the store.”
    “No,” Mike said, looking from face to face. “I thought the same thing. I called Maggie and she said she hadn’t seen them. Ethan went somewhere with Simon this afternoon. Sylvie’s only got our kids.”
    What was he telling her? It was wrong.
    “Where are my children?” she demanded, turning to Frannie. “Where are they!”
    A rivulet of sweat traveled Mike’s jawbone as he too turned to Frannie for answers.
    “Hello?” Maggie’s voice called from the front hall. She rushed into the living room, black and white polka-dotted skirt flouncing around her knees. “Did the children turn up? Why are the police here? Will someone please tell me what is going on?”
    “Mags,” Alice said. “Sylvie said she was taking the kids to your place to get them out of the rain. I thought she had Ethan after school today. I asked her to watch Nell and Peter at the park for a little while—”
    “Simon’s taken Ethan to the dentist. Sylvie knew the plan.”
    Maggie’s attention was snared by the window on which the words were still slightly visible. It took her a moment to decipher them backwards, then she read out loud: “‘Stop or they’re next.’ They?”
    And suddenly Alice knew. They were not her unborn twins, but her Nell and her Peter. Her babies. Alice ran to the window and pressed her hands against the glass, clawing at the underside of the backward words. Screaming. “You fucking bastard!”
    Mike followed her to the window and pulled her fist off the glass before it shattered. His face was rigid with anger. “I’m going out to look for them.”
    “Wait,” Frannie said. She got on her cell phone and spoke rapidly with someone on the other end. “Sylvie Devrais. Is our guy still on her?”
    “Your guy?” Mike glanced at Alice; he had to be thinking the same thing, that Sylvie was being followed just as Alice had been. Tested. Watched. If so, then had they all been under surveillance? Mike, Maggie, Simon, all the friends? Had Frannie thought all along that the killer was among them?
    Had she been