Mind Games

“That’s going to be our job now. If you can tell me what he looks like, that’ll help us do our job. If you’re willing, I’m going to send for a police artist, and we’ll see if we can get a sort of picture of him.”

Alice came back with the water, and for all her suspicions and fear, spoke kindly.

“Don’t drink too fast, okay? You take your time. Take little sips.”

“Thank you.” Thea knuckled a tear away before she drank. Then rested her head on Lucy’s shoulder.

“He was older than me, but not very old. Like twenty? Or not even. He had blondish hair, messy, straggly messy, I guess. He had blue eyes, but not dark, not even like medium. Really light blue, like washed-out?”

“All right.” Tate nodded at her. “Was he a white boy then, Thea?”

“Yes, sir. Pale white, like he doesn’t get in the sun much. Not very tall. I don’t know how to say. Taller than me, but not as tall as Grammie, and … his nose was skinny. Long and skinny. When he smiled, I saw his two front teeth were crooked. Like they crossed over each other some, and his lip poked out a little bit.”

She tapped her top lip. Then rubbed the same hand at her temple, squeezed her eyes shut as if in pain.

“He thought … he thought how he was going to the beach. He thought how he’d scored big, and had a fancy new ride to drive down to Myrtle Beach.”

“Lucy, it would help if we knew the makes and models of the cars Cora and John drove.”

“BMWs. Cora’s is a sedan, dark blue, and she’s only had it about a year now. John’s is an SUV, and it’s about three years old, I think. About that. I don’t know the license plates.”

“That’s all right.”

When he signaled Alice, she rose, started to take her phone out of her pocket.

“We don’t get very good cell service here. You can use the phone in the kitchen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, Thea, is there anything else you remember or can tell me? You never saw this man before this?”

“No, sir. But … His hands. They were even whiter than the rest of him. He was wearing those gloves the doctors wear, and when he came in, he left a bag and a backpack on the kitchen floor. He put the thing he used to cut the glass back in the backpack before he started upstairs.

“It was the watch that started it. I don’t know why or how exactly, but it was the watch.”

“That’s all right. Lucy, can you … corroborate any of this?”

“I didn’t see nearly as clear, Tate, and I never saw his face. But I saw what he did to John and Cora. I saw the gun in his hand—with those white gloves. It was a nine-millimeter.”

He rose when Alice came back.

“Is there anything we can do for you, Lucy? Do you want me to call your boys?”

“No, they need to hear it from me. See they find him, Tate. See they find who took my children.”

“Anything and everything we can do, we’ll do. You think of anything, you need anything, you call. No, we’ll show ourselves out.”

When they walked out, the rain had stopped.

“They’d already put out an APB on the SUV,” Alice told Tate. “The BMW registered to John Fox wasn’t at the house. How the hell did that girl know all that?”

“You weren’t born here, Alice, but you’ve lived here long enough to have heard about Lucy Lannigan.”

“Some, and I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“Up to you.” He got behind the wheel. “But she was in this house, her and that little girl, when this happened. We already knew they were murdered in their bed, pillows over their faces, single gunshot to the face. The son of a bitch.”

He slammed a fist on the steering wheel. “She said he took her father’s keys, and it’s the SUV, John Fox’s, they’re looking for. Goddamn it.”