Speaking in Tongues

years’ mandatory counseling.
    But, no. Peter Matthews had laid his hands upon the neck of a sixteen-year-old girl and had pressed, pressed, pressed until she was lifeless. And so a plea bargain wouldn’t do.
    The Court: The defendant will rise. You have heard the verdict of the jury and have been adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree. The jury has not recommended the death penalty and accordingly I hereby sentence you to life in prison . . .
    He went to prison and the last thing anyone remembered about Peter was his telling a guard he was going to play with his new friends. “Won’t that be way cool?” Peter asked. “We’re going to play ball, a bunch of us. They want me to play ball. Awesome.” Then he disappeared into the laundry room and was found, in several pieces, five hours later.
    Why, Tate had wondered back then as he sat alone in the musty file room, had he been so vehement about prosecuting the boy? Why?
    The question he’d asked himself often in the past few years.
    The question he asked himself now. What would have been so bad if the defendant . . . if Peter had been put on probation and gone into a hospital for treatment?
    Wasn’t that reasonable? Of course it was. But it hadn’t been then, not to the Tate Collier of five years ago. Not to Tate Collier the whiz-kid commonwealth’s attorney, the man who spoke in tongues, the Judge’s grandson.
    Why?
    Because the thought of a killer depriving parents of their child was unbearable to him. That was the answer. That was all he thought. Someone stole away a girl just like Megan. And he had to die. To hell with justice.
    Tate had never seen Peter’s father, Aaron Matthews, at the trial or hadn’t paid any attention to him if he’d been there. The man was a therapist, Tate remembered from reading the boy’s history and evaluations. Lived alone. His wife—a therapist as well,and reportedly more successful than her husband—had committed suicide some years before.
    Aaron Matthews . . .
    Well, he could give the police a name and address now. They’d find him. He only prayed Megan was still alive.
    Now, in Konnie’s office, he dialed Bett’s home phone. Her voice mail gave her cell phone number and he dialed that. She didn’t answer. He left a message about what he’d learned and told her that he was at the county police station.
    He started down the hall, striding the way he’d walked when he’d been a commonwealth’s attorney and cut up these offices as if he owned them, playing inquisitor to the young officers as he grilled them about their cases and the evidence they’d collected.
    He pushed through the door to the Homicide Division and was surprised to see three startled detectives stop in the tracks of their conversations. He smiled ruefully, remembering only then that he was a trespasser.
    One detective looked at another, an astonished gaze on his face.
    “I’m sorry to barge in,” Tate began. “I’m Tate Collier. It’s about my daughter. I don’t know if you heard but she’s disappeared and—”
    In less than twenty seconds he was facedown on a convenient desk, the handcuffs ratcheting onto his wrists with metallic efficiency, his Miranda rights floating down upon him from a gruff voice several feet above his head.
    “What the hell’s going on?” he barked.
    “You’re under arrest, Mr. Collier. Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?”
    “For what? What’re you arresting me for?”
    “Do you understand your rights?”
    “Yes, I understand my fucking rights. What for?”
    “For murder, Mr. Collier. The murder of Amy Walker. If you’ll come this way, please.”

Chapter Twenty-five
    She cradled him, sobbing.
    Megan had eased Joshua LeFevre into the pale light from the outside lamp. He was even more badly injured than she’d thought at first—terribly battered—riddled with slashes and bite marks, the wounds crusted with dirt and dried blood. One eye was swollen completely closed. Most of his dreads had been torn off his scalp, which was covered with mud and scabs.
    He could speak only in a ghostly, snapping wail. No, it hadn’t been Peter Matthews’s leering voice she’d heard; it was Josh’s. His throat was split open and his vocal cords had apparently been cut. When he breathed, air hissed in through both his mouth and the slash. The bleeding seemed to have stopped but she bound the denim rope around his throat anyway. She could think of nothing else to