Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [340]
Her eyes flicked right, then left, and she leaned back, leaving the album in my hands. I left it open to his thirteenth birthday party. The smiling faces of him and his friends clustered around a cake.
Her breath came out in a long, slow rattle. Not a sound that you hear out of the living much. She swallowed convulsively and reached for her husband’s hand. He was still standing. His face relaxed a little just because she’d reached for him.
“They found Stevie’s car off the road, as if they’d been run into the ditch. The police think that they were picked up trying to hitchhike,” he said.
“Stevie wouldn’t have gotten into a car with strangers,” Barbara said firmly, “and neither would Cathy.” Her eyes were a little less wild. “They were good kids.”
“I’m sure they were, Mrs. Brown.” People seemed to want to make saints of the dead, as if their very goodness should have protected them. Purity was not a shield against violence, in fact sometimes ignorance got you killed faster.
“I’m not saying they weren’t good kids,” Steve said.
She ignored him, and she’d taken her hand back. Both her hands were clasped around her purse, clutching it in her lap, as if she had to hold on to something, and his hand wasn’t enough.
“They wouldn’t have gotten in a car with strangers. Stevie was very protective of Cathy. He wouldn’t have done it.” She was so certain that there was nothing else to say about that particuliar speculation.
“Then did they know the people that gave them a ride?” I asked.
That seemed to throw her. She frowned, and her eyes darted from side to side, like something trapped. “No one we know would have harmed Stevie, or Cathy.”
She’d been sure about the stranger thing, but she wasn’t really sure about this one. Somewhere in her was enough logic to know that either they got into a car with strangers or they got into a car with people they knew. There were no other choices.
“The police think that they might have been forced into another car, maybe with a weapon,” Steve said.
She was shaking her head over and over. “I can’t bear the thought of someone pointing a gun at them. I just can’t think who would have done such a thing.”
He patted her shoulder. “Barb, maybe you better wait out in the other room, while I finish talking to Ms. Blake, here.”
She was still shaking her head. “No, no, she’s going to help us. She’s going to bring Stevie back, and he can tell us who did this to him and to Cathy, and it’ll be all better. We need to know who could do such a horrible thing.” She looked up at me, and her eyes cleared for a moment. “Stevie and Cathy would not have gotten into a car with strangers. We’d talked about it. He knew that if someone pointed a gun at him and tried to force him into a car that they wouldn’t let him live. We’ve talked about that since he was a little boy.” Her breath caught, but she didn’t cry, not yet. “I know he would have done what I’d told him to do. He would have grabbed Cathy and run into the woods. The car was parked right next to the woods. They could have hidden in there. It had to be someone he knew, or she knew. It had to be someone we know, Ms. Blake,” she said, changing her tune from a minute ago. “Our beautiful boy was taken away by one of the people that have been over to our house, eating our food, giving us flowers. Someone we know is a monster and we didn’t know it.” There, that was the true horror. Not just that her son and his girlfriend had been murdered, but the murderer had to be someone Barbara and Steve Brown knew.
What must it be like to stare into the faces of your friends, your children’s friends, and wonder, was it you? Or you? Which one of you did it?
I couldn’t even argue with her, because you are more than 80 percent more likely to be killed by someone you know than by a stranger. An ugly statistic, but true.
“You say ‘monster.’ Do you mean just that they