Mind Games

Tate took a chair, then the deputy—Alice, Lucy remembered. Alice, named for her grandmother.

Lucy held Thea close as she looked into Tate’s eyes. She didn’t need the words to know, but he had to say them.

“I’m sorry, Lucy.” His voice was a rumble, like the thunder over the hills. “I’m so sorry to tell you Cora and John are dead.”

“He killed them.” Thea burst out with it even though Lucy gave her a warning squeeze.

“Who?” Alice demanded, and ignored the cool look Tate sent her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who, but he cut a hole in the back door, the sliders, and reached in and unlocked it. He hated the house and he wanted the house. He hated them and he wanted them dead.”

“How do you know that?”

“Deputy.” The warning in Tate’s voice carried enough weight to silence her.

“Lucy, the Fredericksburg police are investigating, and they’ll want to talk to you, probably the kids, too. I know this is as hard a time as hard times get, but maybe you could answer some questions for me now. It might be easier to talk to me to start with.”

“All right. All right, Tate.”

“I want to ask you if Cora or John said anything about being worried, about any threats.”

“No, they didn’t, and we just talked to them last night. I just had this feeling tonight about them, so I—”

“They didn’t know him,” Thea interrupted. “He didn’t know them, but he hated them anyway.”

“Thea…” Lucy trailed off, and feeling the trembling under her arm, her poor little girl, she made herself accept the after.

Not just her after, she thought. But Thea’s after.

“You go ahead, darling. You go ahead and tell what you saw and what you know.”

“He was so mad, Grammie, at them. Even though he didn’t know them. He hated they had a fancy, big-ass house. That’s what he thought in his head … and the watch, Mom’s watch Dad gave her for their anniversary. She only wore it for special. I don’t know how he knew about it, exactly, but—”

She broke off, cuddled closer to Lucy. “I didn’t really see until he was cutting the hole in the door, the one that goes out of the kitchen to the patio, the pool. He was mad about the pool, too, and the—and the grill.”

“How do you know that?” Alice asked, and this time, Tate let it go.

“Because I saw it, and I felt it.” Hot tears spilled down her cheeks to be wiped away with an angry fist. “I dreamed it, and I was there. Right behind him, and he didn’t like that. Breathing down his neck—he could feel … He didn’t see me like I did him, but he felt something.”

“Let her be now, Deputy.” Tate looked at Thea with kind eyes. “You go ahead, Thea. You tell us what you can.”

“He got madder as he walked through the house. It all made him mad, should’ve been his. Like these people worked for a fucking living.”

She paused, flushed a little. “I’m sorry, but he thought that.”

“That’s all right, darling.” Lucy kissed the top of her head. “You don’t worry about that.”

“He walked down toward the stairs, then he saw the pictures on the wall. Dad calls it the family gallery, and they made him mad. But then he saw my picture. He didn’t like it, didn’t like feeling like I could look right at him. Like he knew I could see him. Like he felt me.”

“Did he, Thea?”

“I don’t know, Grammie. I swear I don’t know for sure. But … it scared him, and I know he wanted to hurt me. He wished I was there, so he could. He had a gun. He walked up the stairs, and got madder and … happier? Mad and happy, going up the stairs with the gun.

“They were sleeping.”

She saw it now as clearly as she had in the dream, and told it the same way.

He walked into the room where they slept, in the cool of the air-conditioning. Her father lay on his back, her mother on her side facing him. Pillows stacked on the floor. Her mom liked lots of pretty pillows on the bed when it was made up in the morning.