Chapter 27

He remembered calling 911 and shouting for the cops to get to Lost Hills Elementary, though his office was seven blocks away and he knew he’d get there first. He remembered reaching the school’s answering machine two, three times and bellowing at the electronic voice reciting endless options. He remembered calling Annabel’s cell phone, instinctively. When the voice mail kicked on – ‘Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for’ – he recalled that they had just contacted him from the very phone he was calling and, cursing his stupidity and horn-blaring through a red light, he dialed home. Voice mail there, too. Annabel wasn’t back from practicum? At the beep he heard himself saying, ‘—they got her at her school I called 911 I’m three blocks away now two goddamn it I knew we should’ve kept her out of school—’ He was furious with himself for letting Kat out of his sight, for listening to Annabel, all that blind fear and rage seeking an outlet to blast out of him.

He skidded into the school parking lot, narrowly missing a mom unloading a birthday cake from her trunk and Kat’s first-grade teacher, who stared after him as he left the truck with two tires up on the curb. Door open, dinging behind him, he sprinted through the attendance office – ‘Where’s Katherine Wingate my daughter where is my’ – and through the side door onto the playground, leaving behind a panorama of startled faces. No kids – recess was over.

The multicolored jump rope lay on the asphalt, limp and snakelike.

His shirt plastered to his body, he dashed over, spinning circles, shouting his daughter’s name. He crashed to his knees over the jump rope, hard ground tearing his jeans, and lowered his head.

Through the cacophony in his brain, he thought he heard her voice, high and pure. Daddy?

And then again, ‘Daddy!?’

He turned. She was on a picnic bench at the edge of the quad, the nurse crouched before her, tending to a bloody knee.

It couldn’t be true.

He was running to her, but he wouldn’t believe it until he touched her.

The nurse stood, startled, as he approached.

‘Hey, Dad – your knee’s cut up. Just like mine.’

He gripped Kat’s arms, clutched her to him.

‘Ow. Dad. Dad. My knee. That hurts.’

‘How did this happen?’ he said.

‘Kids skin their knees on playgrounds,’ the nurse replied dryly.

‘No, there was a grown man who knocked her over.’

‘How did you see?’ Kat asked. ‘He was huge. He just kept walking. Didn’t say sorry or anything.’

‘We’re having some work done on the gymnasium,’ the nurse said. ‘I’m sure one of the workers accidentally—’

Mike hurried Kat off the playground, through the stunned-silent front office, and around his crash-parked truck to the passenger door.

Tires screeched as a vehicle barreled into them. Mike swept Kat behind him out of the way and met the lurching hood with a spread hand, Superman holding back a bullet train. The acrid scent of burning tire. The metal grille of a van, hot against his palm. Two feet more and he’d have been under the carriage.

The color of the van – white – dawned slowly. With a slow-burning terror, Mike lifted his gaze to the windshield. William at the wheel, his pupils jittering, a slash of a grin breaking the sallow oval of his face. In the passenger seat, his eyes fixed on Mike, Dodge raised two forked fingers to his throat and jabbed them into the pale skin above his trachea.

The engine revved, and Mike strong-armed Kat all the way up onto the curb. As the grille shoved forward, he rolled off the side, catching a glimpse of Dodge’s face, staring out at him, expressionless.

‘Holy crap, Dad, that guy almost killed us.’

Hidden behind his back, Kat hadn’t registered who was driving.

‘Buckle in,’ he said. ‘We gotta go.’

‘It’s just a knee, Dad. I don’t have to go home.’

‘We’re gonna take the day off, honey.’

‘Is this more of what—’ ‘I need you to trust me right now. I’ll explain everything to you later.’

He sped out of the parking lot, dialing home. Voice mail.

In the mirror he watched Kat’s expression as she worked through her worries and moved on to other matters. ‘So today in class, Kyle Safranski wouldn’t be quiet during reading group, and he kept talking, and finally Bahar was like, “Shut up, Safartski!”’

Redial. Voice mail. Hearing Annabel’s calm voice on the recording, he was hit with a flood of remorse for venting about her decision on the previous message – Goddamn it I knew we should’ve kept her out of school.

‘I got her,’ he said into the phone. ‘She’s okay. We’re coming home.’

‘Like Safranski, but with fart.’

He scanned the road ahead, checked the mirrors, but the white van was long gone. ‘Yeah, I got that honey.’

The image kept flashing in his mind: Dodge pressing two fingers into his neck, indenting the flesh, those shark eyes black and inscrutable. It was a prison sign, its meaning obvious: You are marked.

He adjusted the rearview, checked the oncoming traffic. He couldn’t wait to get home, behind locked doors, calling in Shep, shoring up their defenses.

‘—spilled her grape juice all over Sage’s leg. Shouldn’t she?’

He dug in the center console, reached back with the headphones. ‘Honey, do you want to watch a show?’

‘Out of school early and I get to watch Hannah Montana?’ She pulled the headphones on and settled back contentedly.

His hands drummed the steering wheel at the stoplight. Finally he was turning onto their street, pulling in to their driveway. Annabel’s car was there in the garage. She must’ve just gotten home, was probably listening to his messages now.

He waited for the garage door to close safely behind them, then turned to face Kat in the backseat. ‘You want to stay and watch till your show is over?’ He didn’t want her to get scared when he explained to Annabel.

‘What?’

He leaned over, lifted a headphone away from her ear, and asked again. She nodded and slipped back into a TV-induced haze.

He stepped out into the garage, wiping his palms on the thighs of his jeans, working out how to tell Annabel. The door from garage to kitchen swung open on well-greased hinges.

He gulped in the scene at once, undigested.

His wife’s purse and satchel bag, dumped on the kitchen counter beside the omelet pan. Way across on the family-room hearth, a man crouched, unaware, his bowed back facing Mike. A blood-streaked knife jittering in a fist at his side. A horrible wheezing from beyond. A pale feminine leg poking into view around the man’s left haunch, a familiar tan sandal strapped to the foot.

Annabel, bleeding out on the family-room floor.