"This is scary stuff," said Step. "I know you're already careful with the kids, and so am I, but I really think we shouldn't even let them in the back yard without being out there with them the whole time."
"Absolutely," said DeAnne. "But Step, didn't you notice?"
"Notice what?" he asked.
"You're going to think I'm crazy."
"Probably," he said. But his joking tone didn't fit now; he realized that DeAnne had sounded genuinely scared. She really thought that whatever she was about to point out to him would make him think she was crazy.
"Show me," he said.
"I was hoping you'd just see it yourself. Look at the pictures of the lost boys, Step. Look at their names."
He did. "Do we know any of their families or something?" That was absurd- if anyone they knew had had a child disappear, they'd have known about it before now.
DeAnne laid a list of names on the table. It was written in her handwriting. Step compared them to the names under the pic tures, since that seemed to be what she intended. Most of the names under the pictures were listed on the paper, or at least were similar. Scott Wilson matched the name "Scotty" on the list. "David" matched David Purdom. "Roddy" would be Rodd Harker. "Jack" could be a nickname for Jonathan Lee.
"Does the story say anywhere that this Jonathan Lee is nicknamed Jack?" asked Step.
"No," said DeAnne. "I hope he isn't."
"Well, then, what were you writing this list for?"
"Step, I didn't write this list today. I wrote this list back in June."
Step waited for the other shoe to drop. Then he made the connection. "That's a list of Stevie's imaginary friends. I remember Jack and Scotty"
"It's more than that now," she said. "I've heard other names since then. I know I've heard him talking about a Van and a Peter, and look."
Step looked, and two of the boys were Van Rosewood and Peter Kemeny. "Good heavens," he murmured.
"This is really weird."
"Is that all you can say?" she said. "That it's weird?"
"It scares the shit out of me," said Step. "But usually you prefer me not to talk like that. What does this serial killer thing have to do with our son?"
"I don't know," said DeAnne. "Nothing. It couldn't."
"Maybe Stevie's been reading the names or something."
"But three of the boys disappeared before we moved here. We never would have seen articles about them.
This article here is the first one ever to list all these names together. Think about it, Step. Stevie came up with almost the same list as these detectives did, and there's no way he could have done it. No way that makes any sense."
Step's hands were trembling as if it were cold. He was cold. "It's not just almost the same list," he said. "If Jonathan really is Jack, then this last one, Alexander Booth ..."
"He's never talked about an Al or an Alex," said DeAnne.
"But I watched him playing a computer game this morning and I heard him saying, like, Come on, Sandy.
Sandy's a nickname for Alexander, too."
DeAnne pressed her face into her hands. "This article already scared me, Step. But then when I saw this-what can we do?"
"I don't know," said Step. "I don't even know what it means."
"Remember that record we got in the mail? The anonymous one?" asked DeAnne. "The song about I'll be watching you?"
He hadn't thought about it in a long time. It was still on the radio a lot, but all the things that had happened since the record came had put that old scare far into the background. Now, though, it took on truly sinister overtones. "Do you really think..."
"What if this ... serial killer ..."
"Watching us," said Step.
For a moment DeAnne seemed to go out of control, uttering some high whimpering cries while she hid her face in her hands. Step wasn't sure how to deal with this, or what was happening to her; he put his hand on her back, as if to steady her, as if she were tipping and he was going to put her back upright. "Oh, Step," she whispered. "Oh, Step, I'm so scared. Who could it be? What if the serial killer has ... talked to Stevie?"
"Impossible," said Step. "You read the article. They say that this serial killer is extremely dangerous because he isn't leaving any evidence anywhere. They aren't even sure there's a serial killer anyway. Because they haven't found a single body. That's how these boys got on the list-their bodies haven't been found."
"But maybe he . ... No, Stevie would have told us."
"We could ask him. If anybody has ever talked to him."
"No," said DeAnne. "He's going to school tomorrow. There's going to be talk about this serial killer everywhere. They're going to be warning all the children about talking to strangers. He'll connect that with us asking him if somebody already talked to him. He's got trouble enough already without his own parents connecting him so personally to this."
"But he's already connected," said Step.
"Might be connected. This might just be a coincidence."
"Van and Sandy aren't such common names," said Step.
"Well, Sandy isn't Alexander and Jack isn't Jonathan."
"So what else do we do? Call the police? Oh, yes, Officer, we have a real lead for you in this serial killer thing. Our son, you see, has been hallucinating these imaginary friends, and they happen to have the same names as those lost boys. What? Oh, don't you have time to talk to us?"
"You're right," said DeAnne. "They'd think we were crazy." She fretted with the list, something she did when she was nervous, folding and tearing at paper until it was reduced to confetti. Step reached out his hand and put it over hers.
"Don't tear up that list," he said. "You wrote that before this article came out."
"Yes, but I don't have any witnesses of that."
"You sent a copy of it to Dr. Weeks, didn't you?"
. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that would prove that we had at least some of the names before. And we did get that record."
"I think you're saying that we should call the police."
"We should call somebody," said DeAnne. "We should do something. You don't find out that there's some weird kind of link between your son and a serial killer and then just fold your hands and say, How interesting."
Step looked again at the newspaper. "So, how accessible do you think this Doug Douglas is?"
They soon found out. DeAnne looked up the number of the police department and Step called. He asked the switchboard operator to connect him with Detective Douglas. "He isn't in on Sundays, but I'll try his line."
It rang once and a man picked it up. "Is this Mr. Douglas?" asked Step.
"No," said the man.
"Is he there? Can I speak to him?"
"Can I tell him what it's about?"
Step covered the receiver and whispered to DeAnne: "I think he's there." Then, into the receiver, he said,
"It's probably about nothing. It's something that doesn't even make any sense to us. But maybe it'll mean something to him."
"Can you be more specific?" asked the man.
"About the story in the paper this morning."
"The serial killer story" said the man.
"Yes," said Step.
"I'm the one designated to take down all reports and informa tion, so you've already reached the right place."
"But we don't have any report to make," said Step. "And what we have might not be information. And- look, can't I just talk to Mr. Douglas? It'll only take two minutes and then I'll be out of his hair."