Danny Harrar had had a knife like that — his mother had listed it as something he always carried with him when she’d reported him missing, even told Anne about it.
But that was ridiculous. It couldn’t be the same knife.
Could it?
“Glen?” she called as she came back down to the basement to put the wet clothes into the washing machine. He paused in the midst of cleaning up the workbench and looked inquiringly at her. “Where’d this come from?”
He looked at the knife, and once more she thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. He shrugged. “I found it by the river,” he said. “I was going to give it to Kevin, but I guess I forgot.”
As he went back to clearing away the mess from the fish he’d just cleaned, Anne looked at the knife once again.
Then, instead of giving it back to Glen, she slipped it into her own pocket.
Anne had been sitting at the computer for almost two hours, though when she’d first come up from the basement, it was her intention to do no more than reconfirm her memory of Sheila Harrar’s description of her son’s pocketknife. When it checked out, she considered going down to Pioneer Square to find Sheila Harrar, but the memory of those strange, fleeting looks she’d seen in Glen’s eyes stopped her. She hadn’t been able to forget those brief glimpses she’d had of — what? Fear? Or something else?
Something, obviously, had happened while Glen and Kevin were fishing. Something that led Glen to cut the trip short.
Or had it been Kevin?
Could something have frightened Kevin and made him demand to be taken home?
As questions — unwelcome, unwanted questions — popped into her mind, all of them springing from the incredible tale Mark Blakemoor had woven over her uneaten lunch, Anne tried to think about other things. But the questions lingered, keeping her from going downtown in search of Danny Harrar’s mother. If something had happened between Kevin and Glen, she wanted to be there when her son came home. So she forced herself to stay at the computer and concentrate on the transcripts of the interviews she’d conducted years earlier.
The same themes kept coming up over and over again. Biology. Electricity. Metaphysics.
The more she read, the stronger the themes became, until it struck her what Richard Kraven’s true fascination had been.
Life!
He had been utterly consumed with analyzing every aspect of life itself! But if he’d been enthralled with life, why had he killed?
Then, her neck aching and her eyes stinging, Anne came across an interview she’d conducted with a former neighbor of the Kravens, a woman named Maybelle Swinney:
A.J.: What about when he was a boy, Mrs. Swinney? Do you have any memories that might have new significance, given what he’s been accused of?
M.S.: Well, now, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, and Edna Kraven and I were always good friends. But I always thought his fascination with taking things apart was real strange. Always wanted to find out how things worked, that boy did. Couldn’t ever just enjoy them for what they were — oh, no, not him. He always had to take them apart.
A.J.: What about putting them back together again?
M.S.: Oh, sure, he was always real good at that, too. Why, he could put almost anything back together. Except the things he … (Pause) Now what do they call it when they cut animals up in a lab?
A.J.: Dissecting?
M.S.: Dissecting! That’s it. Anyway, I don’t suppose he ever managed to put the things he dissected back together. (Laughing) Though I daresay he tried. Oh, I bet he tried!
The passage remained on Anne’s screen. Staring at it, she thought, What if Maybelle Swinney hadn’t laughed years ago before suggesting that Richard Kraven might have tried to put the animals he’d dissected back together again? Would I have thought more about the words then?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But what if that was exactly what he’d been trying to do? Now a new idea began to take shape in her head, an idea so vile she found herself wanting to back away from it even as it was forming. What if—
“Mom?”
Anne jumped, startled by the unexpected interruption, and looked up from the monitor, rubbing at her stinging eyes until she was able to focus on Kevin, who was standing just inside the den door. “Kev! You startled me!”
“What’re you doing?” the boy asked, moving closer.
Anne reached out, closed the file with a couple of quick clicks of the mouse. “Nothing much,” she said. Then, trying to keep her voice totally neutraclass="underline" “How was the fishing expedition? Did you have a good time?”
Kevin’s open features tightened into a guarded expression. “I guess,” he said.
“You guess? What does that mean?” Kevin glanced around, and it took Anne a second to realize what he was doing: looking for his father. So she’d been right — something had happened. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve got an errand to run in Pioneer Square. How about if you go with me, and you can tell me all about the fishing trip on the way?”
Kevin’s expression cleared instantly. “Can we go to the kite store?”
“We’ll see,” Anne temporized. “Get your jacket while I tell your dad where we’re going.”
The afternoon light was beginning to fade, giving the broad brick expanse of Pioneer Square a dismal aspect that was only intensified by the chill drizzle falling from the slate clouds gathered overhead. “When can we go home, Mom?” Kevin complained, clutching his newly purchased kite in one hand while trying to pull his other one free from his mother’s grasp.
“In a little while,” Anne promised. But it was the third time she’d said that, and she could tell Kevin didn’t believe her. And why should he? They’d just kept moving around while she asked one person after another where she might find Sheila Harrar. She finally interrupted her search for a stop at the kite shop, but that had only served to shift Kevin’s interest from the woman for whom they were searching to the kite he was now impatiently waiting to try out.
The conversation about the fishing trip had gone no better than the search for Sheila Harrar; all Kevin had admitted was that Glen had been “acting funny,” but she hadn’t been able to find out much more. “I don’t know,” Kevin kept saying, no matter how she’d phrased her questions. “He kept looking at me funny, that’s all. And then he made me go down the river and fish by myself.”
“By yourself?” Anne echoed. “He actually sent you off alone?”
Kevin nodded. “Then he went across the river and started messing around in some rocks, but when I wanted to come over and see what he was doing, he wouldn’t let me. That’s when we came home.”
That was all, but it had been enough to make her start worrying all over again.
Now, as the rain fell harder and a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, instantly followed by a crash of thunder, she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t give up the search for Sheila Harrar. If she came back tomorrow morning, she might even catch the woman in her room. She was about to head for the parking lot where she’d left the Volvo when a familiar figure rose up off one of the benches and shuffled toward the Grand Central Arcade. Her hand tightening on Kevin’s, Anne hurried after the figure.
“Mrs. Harrar?” she called. “Sheila?” The figure paused, turning slowly to gaze at Anne, and for a moment Anne thought she’d made a mistake. Then the woman’s lips curved in a smile and she shambled toward them.
It took no more than a second for Anne to realize that Sheila was drunk. Very drunk.
“I know you,” Sheila said as she neared Anne and Kevin. Her words were slurred and her eyes were bloodshot. “You came to see me, didn’t you? You want to buy me a bottle of wine?”
“How about if I buy you some coffee, Sheila?” Anne countered. “And maybe a cinnamon bun?”