Stranded

put on any additional clothes, claiming it was way too hot and she needed to cool off.
    “Damned bugs are crawling all over the place,” she had told Maggie as she picked at the scabs already on her arms. “They’re in my clothes, too.”
    Maggie hadn’t seen any evidence of bugs in the house and wondered if they were hallucinations caused by the drugs. The house was, in fact, remarkably clean for a place that had been vacated ten years ago. Someone had been taking care of it and it certainly wasn’t Lily.
    Taking a break from her bug and skin-picking obsession, the woman had found a half-eaten candy bar among the scattered empty wrappers. She was now nibbling around the peanuts and nougat. She took cautious bites at the side of her mouth. Her teeth were in worse shape than Maggie had originally thought. Despite the discomfort, it sounded like the woman was grinding her teeth in between bites.
    As Maggie looked around the bedroom again, she wondered if Lily had flushed her entire stash and, if so, what she’d do when she realized it.
    “She was really good to me,” Lily said suddenly without prompting.
    It took Maggie a couple of seconds to realize she meant the farmstead’s owner.
    “How long did you live here?”
    “I don’t remember,” she said, as all the nervous motion of her body lessened.
    Lily’s eyes darted around for the answer. Her leg stopped jerking and her fingers stopped picking. Even her teeth stopped grinding.Maggie couldn’t help thinking how much her movements, her reactions, looked like those of an emaciated animal.
    “Why did you leave?” Maggie asked, but when Lily’s eyes met hers, Maggie realized that wasn’t any easier of a question.
    The woman finally shrugged her bony shoulders and said, “Everybody has to leave sometime.”
    “Do you come back often?” She tried to make it sound like she was only making conversation, even looking back outside the window like she couldn’t care less if Lily answered.
    “As long as the key’s where she left it, I figure it’s okay.”
    She was still on defense. That wasn’t what Maggie wanted.
    “Some strange stuff must have happened,” Maggie said, waiting for Lily’s eyes and then nodding out the window to emphasize she meant out in the backyard.
    Another shrug. Not defensive but simply not interested.
    “When you’ve stayed here before,” Maggie tried again, “did you ever notice anything weird?”
    “Weird?”
    “Did you ever see anyone else on the property?”
    “Just the construction guys.”
    “How about at night? Any vehicles? Any lights?”
    “Oh yeah, there was one night I saw lights.”
    Maggie kept calm. This was what she suspected. Had Lily been here when the killer dumped the body in the garbage bag? Or when he dumped any other bodies? Did she see him? Could she have watched while he pulled a body from his trunk? While he dug the grave?
    But Lily was silent.
    “You saw headlights?”
    “No, the lights were up higher.”
    They had long suspected the killer could be a long-haul truck driver.
    “Like on the cab of an eighteen-wheeler?” she asked when it was obvious Lily needed some help remembering.
    “No, higher.”
    “Spotlights? Floodlights?”
    The woman stopped again to give this some thought and Maggie found herself on edge, patience wearing thin. If Lily had been here and saw something. Saw someone …
    “Out of the sky,” she said. “Bright like stars. Dozens of them.”
    Then she swatted at her leg.
    “Damn bugs,” she said, scratching at a scab until it started to bleed. “Sons of bitches are under my skin now.”
    And Maggie realized that if Lily had seen the killer, the woman probably wouldn’t even remember.

CHAPTER 11

    They talked in whispers. Detective Lopez was at the door with a uniformed police officer. Noah’s mother and father stood by the window. It was difficult for Noah to hear what they were talking about because the sound of Ethan’s screams had returned inside his head. The screams weren’t loud. In fact, they were muffled, as though coming from outside his hospital room, somewhere down the hall. But they wouldn’t stop. It was a constant, frenzied screech that clawed at Noah’s brain like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
    At one point he sat up and clapped his hands over his ears. He rocked back and forth, moaning, wishing, begging Ethan to shut up. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until he saw the horror on his mother’s face. But instead of